Charge is designed to protect much-loved monument from overtourism, but not all visitors like the idea
Teresa Romero is in Rome to celebrate a milestone birthday and one of the first things she did on Monday was visit the Trevi fountain to participate in the ritual of tossing a coin into the waters of the late baroque masterpiece.
Speaker Mike Johnson faces narrow margins for House passage after Senate split off DHS funding amid backlash over fatal immigration enforcement shootings
House speaker Mike Johnson is set to swear in Christian Menefee, a Democrat who recently won a runoff election for a reliably blue seat in Texas.
Menefee’s victory, however, means the margin in the House is even more slim: 218 Republicans to 214 Democrats. His current term will end at the end of the year, and he’ll have to start campaigning almost immediately for the 2026 midterms. But this time, it will be for a new district, after the GOP-controlled legislature successfully gerrymandered the state’s congressional map.
Spain’s prime minister has pushed back against critics of plans to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, asserting that Spain is choosing the path of “dignity, community and justice”.
The 46-second video, which features Pedro Sánchez speaking in English with subtitles in Spanish, was posted on social media at the weekend. “Some say we’ve gone too far, that we’re going against the current,” he said. “But I would like to ask you, when did recognising rights become something radical? When did empathy become something exceptional?”
Wael Tarabishi, who has a lifelong muscle disorder, died after Maher, his father and primary caretaker, was detained
Until three months ago, Wael Tarabishi and his father, Maher, were inseparable. It was a necessity; in addition to being best friends, Maher was the caretaker for 30-year-old Wael, who was diagnosed with a progressive muscle disorder called Pompe disease when he was a child.
As Wael’s mother said in November, Maher was his son’s “case manager, his equipment company, his doctor, his everything”.
For a quarter century, In the Mood for Love has remained one of cinema’s most romantic texts; it only makes sense that audiences swooned when Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art programmed the Wong Kar-wai film at its Australian Cinémathèque in late 2025. Two sessions in the venue’s 220-seat main cinema sold out swiftly. A third session was added at short notice on a night the 20-year-old site isn’t usually open, and neared capacity, teeming with eager viewers.
And not just classic cinephiles, either. The film, says Amanda Slack-Smith, Australian Cinémathèque’s longstanding curatorial manager, “got out to a lot of communities. We’re seeing a lot of intergenerational families coming in – older parents with their 50-year-old kids, and they’re bringing their kids.”
Demand by US that it take control of Arctic island is for many a reminder of troubling imperial past
On a bitterly cold recent morning in the Canadian Arctic, about 70 people took to the streets. Braving the bone-chilling winds, they marched through the Inuit-governed territory of Nunavut, waving signs that read: “We stand with Greenland” and “Greenland is a partner, not a purchase.”
It was a glimpse of how, for Indigenous peoples across the Arctic, the battle over Greenland has become a wider reckoning, seemingly pitting the long-fought battle to assert their rights against a global push for power.
Itoje missed start of camp to attend mother’s funeral
Arundell makes first England start in three years on wing
Jamie George will captain England in their Six Nations opener against Wales on Saturday with Maro Itoje named on the bench while Henry Arundell has been selected for a first start in three years.
Itoje missed the start of England’s training camp in Girona to attend his mother’s funeral in Nigeria and Steve Borthwick has opted to name the second row among the replacements. Itoje has a remarkable record of appearing in every minute of England’s matches for the last six Six Nations campaigns but Alex Coles and Ollie Chessum assume second-row duties against Wales.
Peter Mandelson has resigned from the Labour party over his links to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Here’s how the depth of their relationship – both before and after Epstein’s conviction for sexual crimes – has come to light.
Marius Borg Høiby arrested on suspicion of assault, making threats with knife and violating restraining order, police say
The son of Norway’s crown princess, Marius Borg Høiby, has been arrested on new charges just days before the start of his rape trial.
The Oslo police district said Høiby had been arrested on Sunday evening on suspicion of assault, making threats with a knife and violating a restraining order.
Rightwing populist elected in landslide after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to cocaine trade
The rightwing populist Laura Fernández has won Costa Rica’s presidential election in a landslide after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade.
Fernández’s nearest rival, centre-right economist Álvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40% needed to avoid a runoff.
Online gaming legend Mark Fischbach writes, directs and stars in this feature about a convict on a vague intergalactic mission – but his barebones production has nothing to show
William Goldman’s old showbiz maxim continues to apply that nobody knows anything. Independently financed horror movie Iron Lung has been smuggled into multiplexes without the usual promotional hoopla, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.
Though Markiplier is approaching the horror genre from a notionally fresh angle – by adapting Dave Szymanski’s eponymous space-submarine sim – he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth; this is Moon in dimmer light. Beset by ominous rumbles and mounting doubts about the state of mankind, the begrimed and squalid craft singlehandedly piloted by Fischbach’s straggle-haired convict Simon is indistinguishable from the average teenage bedroom. Our hero staggers round this intergalactic deathtrap completing vaguely specified missions – ram this, repair that, download something or other – like a harassed dad ticking off his Sunday to-do list. In this, Simon proves more proficient than Fischbach’s offscreen self, who is either stumped by or oblivious to the film’s fundamental issues.
Trump’s presidency has brought a windfall to billionaires while hurting the poor. In these conditions, democracy cannot survive
Trump ran on a promise to lower costs on day one, but a year into his presidency, the real beneficiaries are his billionaire donors. Instead of making life more affordable for everyday Americans, Trump has used the presidency to enrich himself and his billionaire allies, while making the largest cuts to Medicaid and food assistance in history and leaving working families behind.
As families struggle with rising costs, Trump has effectively turned the White House into a slush fund, running the federal government like a personal ATM. Public money, political favors and government power are funneled to his friends and family businesses, while regulatory agencies and enforcement mechanisms are hollowed out or weaponized for profit. His oligarch allies, from big tech executives to big oil barons, are already seeing massive returns on their political investments. This is not democracy. It is a hostile corporate takeover and working people are being exploited.
Joseph Geevarghese is the executive director of Our Revolution. Rashida Tlaib is a US representative for Michigan
A rather luxuriant cheat’s way to fill that savoury pie/tart hole in your life
No time to make shortcrust? Bought puff pastry makes an instant (and decadent) alternative. Yes, I know you can buy ready-rolled shortcrust, but I wouldn’t: it’s trash. If this column didn’t have a 30-minute time constraint, I’d blitz 200g plain flour and 100g cold cubed salted butter to sand, then add one egg yolk and a tablespoon of cold water, then blitz for a few seconds, and no longer, until it just comes together. I’m unorthodox, so I then tip the pastry straight into a pie dish, quickly pat it into place and freeze for 15 minutes. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 180C(160C fan)/350F/gas 4, before removing the paper and baking beans and tipping in the filling – it’s really not very much work. But it does add 20 minutes to proceedings, which disqualifies the recipe from this column. So it’s bought, pre-rolled puff pastry instead.
There were tears after a nonsensical draw with Atalanta but young possession-based team is heading places
For the second time in less than three weeks, Cesc Fàbregas found himself standing in front of the TV cameras, trying to explain a scoreline that made no sense. “It’s not normal,” he had insisted last month, after Como lost 3-1 to Milan despite “making 700 passes to their 200” (659 to 320, actually, but who’s counting?). Yet there was more than a hint of deja vu on Sunday as his team drew 0-0 at home to Atalanta while holding 79% of possession and attempting 28 shots.
Opta put Como on 5.24 expected goals – the second-highest figure accrued by any Serie A team in a shut-out since the analytics company started tracking such data 15 years ago. An astonishing number, against opponents who finished third in Serie A last season and who had taken 13 points from their previous five games.
Manager bites the bullet despite sublime late equaliser against Gladbach and next appointment will be telling
Every little detail of it suggested it would almost immediately find its way into the annals of legend. It started as a last-ditch attempt from a set piece, in the fourth of five minutes of stoppage time, with the clock ticking towards the climax at seemingly twice its normal pace and the goalkeeper Mio Backhaus wandering up for the corner in desperation rather than genuine hope of his Anatoliy Trubin moment.
It was pinball; Marco Grüll’s delivery was headed out, nodded back towards goal by Isaac Schmidt and heading out for a goal-kick, only for Senne Lynen to stretch and just about keep it in, slicing it up in the air, before it fell to Keke Topp. It felt as if the 21-year-old’s sublime finish had been cut and pasted from a different sequence entirely, a sumptuous left-foot volley on the swivel that arrowed past Borussia Mönchengladbach’s goalkeeper, Moritz Nicolas, hitting the net and lifting the roof off. Werder Bremen’s equaliser felt like a near-miracle. On a day and in a minute that looked like it would inevitably be their coach’s last, they had finally, improbably coaxed the sound of the ship horn and The Proclaimers’ “500 Miles” from the Weserstadion’s speakers with a goal to snatch a point at the last.
It still wasn’t enough for Horst Steffen. At 9.45am on Sunday morning the sporting directorm, Clemens Fritz, a veteran of considerably more successful Werder teams as a player, entered the Weser dressing room to tell the players that Steffen’s reign was over. Firing a coach with hours rather than days to go before transfer deadline is far from ideal, although in Werder’s case there is hardly a bottomless bucket of euros to fund an impromptu squad makeover. But even with Saturday’s timing, even with Topp’s heroics, Bremen’s board felt forced to act.
The 28-year-old has rebuilt from crushing disappointment in the skeleton four years ago to become Britain’s best hope of Winter Olympic gold at Milano Cortina
“Excitement is definitely the word I’d use,” Matt Weston says as the world No 1 and the reigning world champion in the skeleton looks ahead to the start of the Winter Olympics this week. Weston has just won the skeleton World Cup, winning five out of seven races and finishing second to his team-mate, Marcus Wyatt, in the two others.
The 28-year-old is clearly Team GB’s strongest hope for a gold medal at Milano Cortina and enthusiasm and belief pours out of him. “I’m just so excited,” he says. “The pressure is higher, it’s a bigger event, and there are a lot of eyes on me. But at the same time there’s that confidence heightened by the momentum and the results I’ve got behind me. I know I can perform.”
Player stunned Solanke’s first goal stood at Spurs
‘It’s not fair because we work so hard’
Rodri has joined the chorus of dissatisfaction at Manchester City towards referees, saying they must remain impartial in the face of what he perceives to be general ill-feeling towards his club.
The midfielder was stunned when Tottenham’s goal for 2-1 against City on Sunday was allowed to stand. It was scored by Dominic Solanke, who appeared to kick through the leg of the City defender Marc Guéhi, sending the ball partly off him and into the net. Solanke later scored a sensational volley to earn Spurs a 2-2 draw and leave City six points behind the Premier League leaders, Arsenal.
The prime minister called for the House of Lords to modernise procedure so that peers can be more easily removed from the upper chamber
Peter Mandelson “leaked a sensitive UK government document to Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary that proposed £20bn of asset sales and revealed Labour’s tax policy plans”, the Financial Times is reporting.
In his story, Jim Pickard says:
The memo, dubbed “Business Issues”, was written on June 13 2009 by Nick Butler, who at the time was special adviser to the then prime minister Gordon Brown.
The confidential document, which was released by the US Department of Justice as part of a tranche of millions of files relating to Epstein, had been sent to British government officials including cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood.
It is right that Peter Mandelson is no longer a member of the Labour party. Disciplinary action was underway prior to his resignation.
Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes destroyed the lives of so many women and girls, and our thoughts remain with his victims.
The US president tried to kill offshore wind projects – now four are back under construction
Construction has resumed on four offshore wind mega-projects after they survived a near fatal attack by Donald Trump’s administration thanks to rulings by federal judges. These are being seen as victories for clean energy amid a wider war being waged on it by the Trump administration.
The wind farms are considered critical by grid planners as America faces an energy affordability crisis. Together, the four projects will contribute nearly five gigawatts of energy to the east coast, enough to power 3.5 million homes.
Island’s first tropical storm of season may bring 150mm of rain – meanwhile, eastern Europe freezes with possible night-time lows of -30C
At least three people have died and nearly 30,000 people have been affected by flooding after Madagascar’s first tropical storm of the season hit over the weekend.
Tropical Cyclone Fytia formed to the north-west of Madagascar over the northern Mozambique Channel on Thursday.
The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been reopened by Israel for a limited number of people on foot, as fragile diplomatic efforts to stabilise the conflict inch forward.
Israeli forces took control of the Rafah crossing – Gaza’s only crossing not shared with Israel – in May 2024, describing it as necessary to prevent weapons smuggling by Hamas. The move isolated the territory, cutting off a critical lifeline for Palestinians seeking access to medical care, travel and trade.
The once-lauded director of Black Swan and The Wrestler has drowned himself in AI slop with an embarrassing new online series
If you happen to find yourself stumbling through Time magazine’s YouTube account, perhaps because you are a time traveller from the 1970s who doesn’t fully understand how the present works yet – then you will be presented with something that many believe represents the vanguard of entertainment as we know it.
On This Day… 1776 is a series of short videos depicting America’s revolutionary war. What makes On This Day notable is that it was made by Darren Aronofsky’s studio Primordial Soup. What also makes it interesting is that it was created with AI. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it is terrible.
Lionel Messi’s presence has been crucial to the defending champions’ excellent offseason
Winning MLS Cup brings only a couple guaranteed returns: the cup itself and a cash prize ($300,000, roughly the salary of one MLS backup defender). Historically, it has also ushered in a near-mandatory squad rebuild, a consequence of MLS’s parity-driven design. With rare exceptions, great teams find it nigh-on-impossible to keep the band together, or to improve on what they already have.
Not so for Inter Miami this year. After a slew of high-powered offseason additions capped by Friday’s $15m capture of Monterrey striker Germán Berterame, a historically fortunate franchise has gotten even better; completely unlike the 29 MLS Cup champions that preceded them.
Connexion
