President warned prior to the vote that any Republican who voted against tariffs would ‘suffer the consequences’

About six in 10 US adults say president Donald Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into American cities, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

Views of Trump’s handling of immigration - which fell over the course of his first year - remained steady over the past month, with about four in 10 saying they approve of the president’s approach.

Opposition leader ousted as Barbados Labour party wins all 30 seats in assembly

The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has won her third election victory, with her Barbados Labour party sweeping all seats in the House of Assembly, state TV reported.

Mottley’s BLP won all 30 seats available, unseating the opposition leader, Ralph Thorne, after the prime minister – who has built one of the strongest global profiles of any Caribbean leader – won the support of voters across the island country, CBC Barbados reported early on Thursday.

Polymarket and Kalshi are less regulated than betting sites, but users can win or lose large sums on the platforms

Yadin Eldar, 21, has been betting on prediction markets since 2019. His friends think he’s “crazy”, he said. But the craze surrounding these platforms is rapidly gathering steam.

Users can bet on virtually anything, from the outcome of Sunday’s Super Bowl to whether the US will invade Greenland, every second of every day.

(Awal)
On her self-released debut, the singer-songwriter championed by Chappell Roan doubles down on the wonky charm that made her go viral on TikTok

We often hear about the damaging impact of social media on pop, from toxic fan culture to the way online gossip reduces lyrics to a treasure hunt for details about artists’ private lives. But it’s also worth noting its positive effects: how TikTok users can make improbable tracks from pop history go viral; how social media can transform the fortunes of an artist who probably wouldn’t have got past a record company’s reception in our current, risk-averse era.

Which brings us to North Carolina’s Isimeme Udu, better known as Hemlocke Springs, who rose to fame posting homemade videos of her songs on TikTok. There’s always a chance that a label might have gone all in on a bespectacled 27-year-old former librarian fond of neon-coloured wigs, purveying “awkward Black girl anthems” via a lo-fi take on 80s-influenced synth pop, but you wouldn’t bet on it. Self-released, her tracks have racked up millions of streams and attracted the attention of Doja Cat and Chappell Roan, both of whom took her on tour: cue a video of Springs supporting Roan at New York’s Forest Hills stadium last autumn, performing Girlfriend while most of the 13,000-capacity audience sings along.

• FA assessing whether he brought game into disrepute

• Manchester United co-owner told by Starmer to apologise

The Football Association will look at whether Jim Ratcliffe brought the game into disrepute through his claims that the UK has been “colonised” by immigrants.

The Manchester United co-owner, a billionaire based in Monaco, caused widespread anger with his comments and has been called on by Keir Starmer to apologise. His remarks have not gone unnoticed within the FA, which will examine further before deciding whether he has broken any rules. It is too early to say whether any formal investigation will follow.

After state sees four deaths and 40 hospitalizations, public health officials and foraging experts urge caution

A wet winter in California has produced a surge of wild fungi – a shroom boom that would typically have foragers cheering. But among the chanterelles and porcinis, a much more dangerous fungus called the death cap – also known as the Amanita phalloides – is causing alarm.

The state health department reports that, between late November 2025 and early February 2026, there have been four deaths and 40 hospitalizations linked to consumption of dangerous mushrooms, an outbreak the department describes as “unprecedented”. That’s far above the average for the state, which typically sees fewer than five mushroom-poisoning cases annually.

Twenty-seven entries shortlisted in 21 categories including website of the year and newspaper of the year

The Guardian has been nominated for more than 20 honours at this year’s Press Awards, including for website of the year, daily newspaper of the year and newspaper of the year (daily and Sunday).

Twenty-seven entries from the Guardian have been shortlisted across 21 different categories by the judges of the UK’s prestigious journalism awards.

• Igor Medved sent home by country’s Olympic committee

• ‘Alcohol was consumed in violation of our team rules’

Finland’s ski jumping head coach, Igor Medved, has apologised after being sent home for violating team rules by drinking alcohol at the Winter Olympics.

The news was confirmed by the Finnish Olympic committee, who said that Medved had left Italy due to “alcohol-related issues”.

Kasho Iizuka’s feature casts trans actors to revisit a notorious 1965 trial that made gender reassignment illegal for more than 30 years. He explains why the history remains unfinished

The so-called “Blue Boy trial” in 1965 was a landmark moment for trans visibility in Japan. Now it has become a landmark film, directed by Kasho Iizuka, a transgender man and one of very few queer film-makers working in the commercial Japanese film industry.

The original legal case concerned a doctor who was prosecuted for performing gender reassignment surgery on transgender women, amid law enforcement frustrations that female-presenting transgender sex workers could not be prosecuted for their profession due to their being legally male. The doctor was found guilty of violating Japan’s eugenics laws, which prohibited surgeries resulting in sterilisation if they were deemed inessential. “Blue Boy”was a slang term for transgender individuals assigned male at birth, and the verdict effectively outlawed gender reassignment surgery in Japan until 1998. Despite this, the case raised the domestic profile of transgender people.

Gustavo Gatica lost his sight in 2019’s nationwide unrest but as the country prepares to swear in a far-right president the man who fired the rubber bullets has walked free

On the evening of 8 November 2019, Chile’s capital was gripped by protests amid a wave of nationwide unrest. While thousands demonstrated peacefully in Santiago’s Plaza Italia, violence broke out down a side street on the fringes of the square, where riot police with rifles battled protesters.

Among them was Gustavo Gatica, a 21-year-old psychology student at the University of Chile, who threw a stone towards the police and stooped to pick up another. The last thing he saw was a line of advancing officers in the shadow of a tower block.

Being codependent is often seen as a bad thing. But a new book makes the case for ‘healthy dependency’

Many of us desire deeper relationships. What we don’t always agree on is how close is too close. Dating advice often casts intimacy as a tightrope – pull back too much, or push for more. Either move is read as a red flag. Between discussions of incompatible attachment styles, the importance of boundaries and the dangers of love-bombing, it’s easy to get the impression there’s a correct level of closeness to aim for.

In truth, intimacy isn’t one-size-fits-all and comfort levels vary – not just between individuals, but across their relationships.

To understand the change in Washington Post’s fortunes, it is worth comparing its demise to the New York Times’s trajectory

Not so long ago – it’s been less than a decade – the New York Times and the Washington Post were almost neck and neck in the race for readers, reputation and scoops. The Times was always bigger, but the two were somewhat comparable.

These days, that’s far from reality. The Post has been declining in influence, newsroom staff and financial health – losing at least $100m a year – while the Times is on an astonishing upward trajectory, with operating profit approaching $200m annually.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Bored with my DIY hopelessness, I’ve decided it’s time I learned some basics

I bought a drill. It is yellow. It is my first drill. I bought it because I’m 59 next month and thought it was about time. It’s nearly a half a century since I joined the rest of the world in giving up on myself when it came to practical skills. My brother, who is younger, was good at that stuff, which I wasn’t. He was also very good at Lego, which I wasn’t. What I was good at was unclear. Reading, possibly. Anyway, he was the practical one and I wasn’t and that was the end of it. And, in the way of these things, this truth got truer as time went on.

And I’ve got sick of it, not in the sense of feeling emasculated or anything, just bored by my hopelessness, bored of bothering and/or paying people to do things. I don’t want to do anything particularly advanced. I just want to be able to drill a hole.

The Complicité founder remembers his teacher’s wicked laughter, provocative demands and infinite generosity

• Philippe Gaulier dies aged 82

Many speak of a teacher in their childhood who changed them, someone who reveals knowledge about the world they carry with them for the rest of their lives. I didn’t have one of those. It wasn’t until I was 24 and living in Paris, where I stumbled into Philippe’s class almost by accident, that this happened. Provocative, demanding, deliberately inappropriate and utterly hilarious, Philippe taught me not to carry anything. No baggage, no ideas; knowing nothing is all you need. Because we are all ridiculous.

His mother was Spanish, and we would eat her meals with relish when she came to cook for him, or rather with him, in his appartement lined with his writings, many of which had “rêves” inscribed on the spine. He would refer to his father as “ce salaud bourgeois” (that bourgeois arsehole) and he delighted in telling me the story of being thrown out of school aged eight because he punched the gymnastics teacher who was trying to instil discipline into young boys by turning them into military martinets.

Manchester United co-owner, who lives in Monaco, faces growing backlash for using ‘far-right narratives’

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Monaco-based billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has been accused of hypocrisy and using “far-right narratives”, as a backlash grew over his claims that the UK was being “colonised” by immigrants.

Fans called the Manchester United co-owner’s comments “disgraceful and deeply divisive”, while Keir Starmer said his claim was “offensive and wrong”, and called on the Ineos chief executive to “apologise immediately”.

Studies show Depo-Provera users have much higher relative risk of developing meningiomas, although overall risk remains low

UK law firms are considering legal action on behalf of women who developed brain tumours after using the contraceptive injection Depo-Provera.

Depo-Provera is a high-dose synthetic progesterone, prescribed for contraception and other menstrual symptoms, administered via injection every three months. According to UN calculations, 74 million women worldwide and 3.1% of UK women aged 15-49 use injectable contraception.

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Women’s Super G 11.30am GMT

Men’s moguls 12.15pm GMT

Labour mayor of Greater Manchester joins those criticising Ratcliffe over his comments

Sir Simon McDonald, the former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, has urged No 10 to do “more due diligence” as it prepares to replace the cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, with Antonia Romeo, the frontrunner for the role. Rowena Mason has the story.

Steven Swinford from the Times says McDonald’s comments have provoked a furious backlash from people within government. He has posted this comment from a government source.

This is a desperate attempt from a senior male official whose time has passed but spent their career getting Britain into the mess it finds itself in today. A computer says no culture, that cannot challenge the status quo.

Antonia is a disrupter. She isn’t settled with the status quo. She is one of the few senior officials that has always fought against the computer says no culture embedded in the British state

From One Battle to Another to Marty Supreme, supermarket magnates, professors and special agents have been stealing scenes on screen

Striving for realism, Timothée Chalamet knew what the scene required. “I’m really getting in the guy’s face and I’m really trying to get him angry with me,” the lead actor recalled recently about the making of Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. “I was saying to Josh, ‘He’s not getting angry with me, he’s not getting angry with me.’”

But it turned out the unnamed extra had been paying attention. Chalamet added: “I did another take, and then the guy said, ‘I was just in jail for 30 years. You really don’t want to fuck with me. You don’t want to see me angry.’ I said to Josh, ‘Holy shit, who do you have me opposite, man?’”

• Club’s former manager says Spurs reluctant to take risks

• Spending and wage structure holding them back, he feels

Ange Postecoglou has described “curious” Tottenham as “not a big club” after their sacking of Thomas Frank. Frank succeeded Postecoglou last summer but was unable to reverse their fortunes in the Premier League and was shown the door on Wednesday with Spurs 16th.

“Having been in that position now twice in the last six months, it’s tough,” Postecoglou told the Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast. “You know that he can’t be the only issue at the club. It’s a curious club, Tottenham. It’s made a major pivot at the end of last year, not just with me but with [the executive chair] Daniel [Levy] leaving as well, and you’ve created this whole sort of environment of uncertainty.

Marineland Antibes, the French government and animal welfare groups all agree on the need to rehome the listless killer whales but no one can agree where

In a sprawling aquarium complex in south-eastern France that once drew half a million visitors a year, only a few dozen people now move between pools that contain the last remaining marine mammals of Marineland Antibes. Weeds grow on walkways, the stands are empty and algae grows in the pools, giving the water a greenish hue.

It is here that Wikie and Keijo, a mother and son pair of orcas, are floating. They were born in these pools, and for decades they performed in shows for crowds. But since the park’s closure in January 2025, they no longer have an audience. When they are alone, they “log”, or float at the water’s surface, according to a court-ordered report released last April.

Andreas Graf lived without screens and no idea of the date or time. The conditions were often brutal – but he found kindness and friendship as he rode

In April 2022, Andreas Graf set off on his bike from his home in Norway. His dream was to cycle to India. A week later, having reached Sweden, it was already becoming more of a nightmare. “It was pouring with rain and I was lying in my tent in my half-wet sleeping bag and I was like, I could be in my very cosy Oslo apartment,” he says. “I had this good life, a career, a partner, and I had left everything behind.”

He was 31. Friends were settling down. Graf had a well-paid job in industrial engineering, but was still renting in a houseshare. “I had started to think about whether to make a financially reasonable and sensible decision, or do something else. I went for option two.”

Before the Post’s sweeping layoffs and Lewis’s abrupt resignation, his tenure was marked by controversy and clashes with staff

Standing on the seventh floor in the center of the Washington Post’s open newsroom on the morning of 3 June 2024, publisher Will Lewis decided to deliver some tough love to a news organization he had taken charge of five months earlier.

Lewis, a veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, had replaced Fred Ryan, a former Ronald Reagan aide who had presided over some of the Post’s profitable years – during the first Trump administration – but lost the confidence of some staffers after clashing with employees during a late 2022 town hall.

Hundreds of thousands Ukrainians without power, heat and water after strikes targeting energy infrastructure

Meanwhile, at Nato HQ, Elbridge Colby, the US undersecretary for war, said it was time for the US and Europe to “march out together,” sounding a rare conciliatory note as he arrived in Brussels for a meeting of alliance defence ministers earlier today.

The hawkish Colby is representing the US instead of defence secretary Pete Hegseth, but his high status as arguably the leading military adviser to Donald Trump means his presence instead of his immediate boss is not being taken as a significant snub.