Heinis of France is in the air, it feels hein just looking at him, and he jumps 129, giving him 133.8 points; he moves above Karhumaa and into the lead.
I’ve also got the curling on and, if you’ll excuse my parochialism, I’m not watching pool leaders Switzerland monstering defending champions Sweden, rather USA v China, for reasons of relevance to GB. The Americans now lead 2-1 playing the fifth.
England are into the second phase despite struggling for form but Jamie Overton insists ‘there’s plenty more cricket in us’
If there was one thing the players of England and Italy agreed on at the end of a hugely entertaining and, from an English perspective, frequently concerning match at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, it was that the situation favoured their opponents.
England felt the Italians, unburdened by expectation, enjoyed a free hit. “It’s not an easy game, because all the pressure is on us,” said Jamie Overton. “It’s not easy for them either, but they can go and show what they can do.”
Zelenskyy calls for allies to ‘respond to all these strikes against life’ as US-brokered talks between senior Russian and Ukrainian officials begin
Luke Harding in Kyiv and Pjotr Sauer
The choice of Switzerland marks the first time the talks involving Russia will be held on European soil after earlier rounds in Abu Dhabi and Istanbul.
The Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran strongly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, has died. He was 84.
“Our father was a servant leader – not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in a statement.
By turning the novel into just a corset-heaving love story, the director has stripped it of what made it so boundary-pushing
It’s difficult, when watching Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”, not to imagine what Emily Brontë would have made of it. Before I get into it, I feel obliged to state that although I love the book I am not a purist. I often relish creative reinterpretations of classics. Admittedly, this one came with a fair few red flags, from the casting of Margot Robbie (simply too old, Cathy is a teenager) and Jacob Elordi (simply too white, Heathcliff, while his origins are uncertain, is described as darker skinned) to the unhinged marketing and crass brand tie-ins.
Nevertheless, I was still excited to see it. So why did I leave the cinema not only bored, but feeling a little bit sad? Fennell said she wanted to make the film she imagined at 14, the age at which many of us read the novel in English class. Fennell focuses almost entirely on the “love story” at the expense of almost all of the novel’s other themes. Of course, if you’re a teenager in love, the doomed connection between Cathy and Heathcliff does captivate, although as an abuser who hangs a dog, Heathcliff is not exactly fanciable. I do understand the impulse behind Fennell’s fan-fictiony desire to have them consummate their love, when Brontë, who probably never touched a man her entire life, left all that desire unrealised. Horniness at the expense of all else, however, can feel terribly hollow.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
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US undercover investigator Greg Squire can spend 18 hours a day befriending child sex abusers, to try to identify them and get justice for victims. He reveals the toll the work has taken on him
Greg Squire can never forget the video that opened his eyes to what child sexual abuse could mean. It was a Sunday and he was at his home in New Hampshire, sitting out on his deck, his two young children running around, playing. This was 2008, about a year into Squire’s career as an agent for Homeland Security – he’d been a postman before this – and he reached for his laptop, checked his inbox and saw that the results of an email search warrant for a suspect had come in.
He clicked on a video. A girl was sitting in an adult bed, a child’s picture book beside her. Squire watched as a man came into the frame and began reading it to her. For a moment, it could have been a normal scene – maybe it would be – until the man proceeded to remove the girl’s clothing. Then he raped her. Squire watched her “endure” it – “it looked like her soul left,” he says.
They are hardly essential, but can act as useful teachers
The problem
Lots of houseplants fail because they aren’t getting enough light. But what does “bright, indirect light” really mean in practice? Light meters and apps promise to turn guesswork into numbers, but are they useful, or just kit for professionals and plant nerds?
The hack
Light meters measure the amount of light hitting a spot. Some are dedicated devices; others are phone apps that use the camera sensor. Instead of guessing whether a corner is bright enough, you measure it and then find the right plant for that spot with more confidence.
Billionaire says he exercised ‘terrible judgment’ in maintaining contact with sex offender and Ghislaine Maxwell
The billionaire Thomas Pritzker has stepped down as executive chair of the hotel chain Hyatt, after revelations over his ties with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Pritzker said he had exercised “terrible judgment” in maintaining contact with the sex offender and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in recruiting and grooming underage girls.
More than two years after Israel’s devastating war in Gaza began, the West Bank has become an increasingly volatile front in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. While international recognition of a Palestinian state has gathered momentum, the situation on the ground is moving in the opposite direction. Israel’s government has advanced new annexation legislation, settlement growth is accelerating, and daily life for Palestinians is becoming more restricted and precarious.
In a new series, reporter Matthew Cassel travels through the West Bank to document what daily life looks like under deepening occupation. Starting in Hebron and moving north to Ramallah, villages outside the city, and finally Nablus, he meets people across generations to ask: what does the idea of a ‘Palestinian state’ mean today?
Anastasia Kucherova has been living in Milan for 14 years
‘It’s important to show not all people think the same way’
The woman who carried the Ukrainian team placard at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony was a Russian living in Milan, who chose to perform a small act of resistance to show her support for Ukraine.
Anastasia Kucherova, an architect who has been living in Milan for 14 years, was unrecognisable in a hooded silver puffer coat, with her eyes also covered with dark glasses.
Wuthering Heights is inseparable from its landscape – but northern actors seldom get the lead role, instead are pigeonholed as stereotypical or supporting characters. This Bradford-born actor objects
Emerald Fennell’s casting choices for her new version of Wuthering Heights have already been much scrutinised. As well as the apparent “whitewashing” of Heathcliff by casting Jacob Elordi in the part, there’s the fact 35-year-old Margot Robbie is playing a woman 20 years her junior.
Plus, of course, they’re both Australian, not British – and certainly not from Yorkshire. Fennell has offered a defence of her casting choices as a “personal fantasy” – but amid all the scoff and chatter surrounding the film and its myriad deviations from the book, the erasure of regional authenticity risks going under-discussed.
Film-maker Juri Rechinsky documents moments of kindness and compassion among the death and grief that surrounds evacuation and forensics teams
“My son, my sunshine, my beloved child.” A mother is overwhelmed by grief as she strokes the face of her son, a soldier lying in a coffin, killed on the frontline. Another week, another Ukrainian film about the terrible toll of the war. This documentary from film-maker Juri Rechinsky follows two evacuation missions in Ukraine: teams of volunteers transporting the elderly and frail from their homes to safety away from the front; and the operation to return the remains of fallen soldiers to their families. It’s a painful film, haunted by death, but also tender and moving, with a powerful message that compassion, love and resilience can be acts of defiance.
It opens with the evacuation of the elderly from their homes to a processing centre in a former hospital (where one volunteer addresses them “comrade grannies”). From here they will be relocated to more permanent housing. As she prepares to leave her flat, one woman frets: “My hair is a mess.” An English volunteer called Elizabeth is all gentleness, smiles and patience as she clasps the woman’s hands in her own. Rechinsky also films women and children getting on to trains leaving Ukraine, tugging along wheelie cases, babies bundled into their warmest onesies.
My group, Swim Deep, plays to crowds of hundreds across the UK – but in China, we play to tens of thousands. And we’re not the only ones
When I joined the band Swim Deep 13 years ago, my dreams were much like those of any young musician: to play Glastonbury, to tour America and to hear our music on the radio – all of which we’ve managed to achieve. But what I hadn’t counted on was finding a fanbase in China. Despite us never having knowingly released our music there, Swim Deep recently returned triumphant from our fourth run of shows on Chinese soil in barely 10 years, and we’re not the only British indie band benefiting from this unexpected opportunity.
China has had an enthusiasm for British and Irish pop acts for years, long before its ¥500bn (£531m) music industry overtook France to become the world’s fifth largest in 2023. Jessie J became a phenomenon after winning the country’s premier singing competition in 2018, while Westlife have spent decades playing to thousands in Chinese arenas and stadiums. But less heralded is a growing interest in grassroots UK indie bands, for whom the unexpected demand – and promise of excellent pre-gig catering – presents a financial and spiritual lifeline as returns increasingly diminish on home soil.
Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane’s impact is clear but where the Spanish giants go post-Xabi Alonso only Florentino Pérez knows
All eyes are on Real Madrid again but in a different way than to which the 15-time Champions League winners are accustomed. Every fan expects Real to be among the best eight in Europe but they are in the playoffs for a second season in a row after a 4-2 defeat at Benfica in the final league fixture.
Looking back, Carlo Ancelotti’s impact at Real is even clearer, as is the case with Zinedine Zidane, who won three successive Champions League titles with the club. Why were they suited to this club? Because they themselves once stood on the pitch alongside outstanding footballers. Ancelotti also played under Arrigo Sacchi at Milan while Zidane scored key goals in Champions League and World Cup finals. People with this aura are respected by the best.
A high street is punctuated by burned-out buildings like rotten teeth in an otherwise perfect smile – what’s going on?
On the banks of the River Clyde, half an hour to the south-east of Glasgow, Bothwell is one of the city’s prettiest and most prosperous commuter towns, famous for its medieval castle and annual scarecrow festival. Bothwell’s Victorian villas and secluded enclaves of luxury modern mansions sell into the millions to the TV personalities, professional footballers and entrepreneurs who favour its environs.
Bothwell Main Street, a designated conservation area, showcases glorious floral displays in summertime and year round an array of independent boutiques, jewellers and beauticians buck the trend for high street degeneration.
Franjo von Allmen has led the way for the men with three golds and Loïc Meillard’s slalom victory brought a fourth gold
Switzerland’s men have dominated the ski slopes of Milano Cortina. Not since the super-G and the team combined were added to the Olympic programme in 1988 has one country won four of the five events – a feat achieved with Loïc Meillard’s victory in the slalom on Monday. Only Brazil managed to stop them in these Games.
Franjo von Allmen has been their undisputed star, heading home with three golds in his hand luggage. After winning the downhill on the opening weekend, he was given a helping hand by Tanguy Nef’s scintillating slalom run as they won the team combined. Nef deserved an individual medal of his own and sat in the leader’s chair for a while on Monday until tumbling out of the podium places all together.
There’s a lesson here for the UK and the anti-WHO Nigel Farage – Trump attacks it in public, but in private he knows he still needs it
Donald Trump is persistent. In his first term as president, he withdrew the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) on 6 July 2020, giving the necessary one-year notice period. Soon after, Joe Biden was elected, and he reversed this executive order within days of being in office, reinstating the US support for the agency on 20 January 2021. While many hoped this would be the end of the story, Trump came back with a vengeance in his second term and immediately signed an executive order withdrawing on 20 January 2025.
This means that – buried under news of other Trump-related chaos – the US formally left the WHO at the end of last month. It is just the second time in the agency’s history a major power has left. In 1949, during the cold war, the USSR withdrew citing unhappiness with the US influence over the organisation. In 1956, with concerns over disease surveillance and spread, the USSR re-engaged with the UN system.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
In an extract from his book, Richard Fitzpatrick reveals in the early 1960s the grand Italian club was equipped for doping like ‘a small hospital’
The quantity of drugs floating around the campus at Inter in the early 1960s meant the club was equipped like “a small hospital”, to borrow an expression used about the doping culture at Juventus in the 1990s. Inter’s coach Helenio Herrera – or “HH”, as he was known in the world of football – used the players on the youth team as “guinea pigs” for his drug experiments, according to Ferruccio Mazzola, who was on the books at Inter’s academy at the time (and a younger brother of Sandro Mazzola, one of the team’s star players).
“I can describe the effects of those white tablets,” he wrote in a confessional memoir. He said he couldn’t sleep after taking HH’s pills. The hallucinations left him like a fish thrown up on the bank of a river. “I was shaking all over. I looked like an epileptic. I was scared. Also, the effect lasted for days and was followed by a sudden, tremendous tiredness.”
British No 1 beaten 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 by Croatia’s Antonia Ruzic
World No 67 reels off six games in a row to claim victory
Emma Raducanu lost the final six games in a 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 defeat against Antonia Ruzic in the opening round at the Dubai Tennis Championships.
The British No 1, whose original opponent Elisabetta Cocciaretto withdrew at late notice because of fatigue, fought back in the second set to level the match and led 2-0 in the decider before losing all momentum.
The pound is weakening, as traders anticipate the Bank of England could cut interest rates next month.
Sterling has fallen by two-thirds of a cent against the US dollar, to $1.355, its lowest rate since 6 February.
The market reaction has been swift. The pound has sunk on this news, GBP/USD is down by 70 points and it has lost the $1.36 handle. It is the weakest currency in the G10 FX space on Tuesday, and the pound is now trailing behind the dollar, and is the weakest currency in the G10 so far this month.
As the UK economy softens, the bias is to the downside for sterling.
Despite the best efforts of the fine cast this psychological thriller about a war correspondent returning to her home town falls short of exploring the full scope of family trauma
Fans of Nuala Ellwood’s bestselling psychological thriller about a war reporter revisiting the horrors of her childhood in Herne Bay may decide to stick with the book after this drab adaptation. Like a black sock that has infiltrated a wash-load of white bedsheets, the story has come out a dreary dull grey. The movie is stubbornly unintriguing despite a fine cast of actors doing their utmost. Even the almighty twist ending fails to pick up the pace.
Jenny Seagrove plays Kate Rafter, a hardened correspondent haunted by PTSD. She’s back from a stint in Aleppo for her mum’s funeral and staying in her childhood home. Seagrove plays it imperiously, eyes flashing; Kate has witnessed terrible atrocities, and seems irritated by the smallness of the lives in her home town. But she is raw and damaged; there are flashbacks to Iraq where she befriended a young boy, and some unconvincing scenes of sessions with a psychologist trying to unpick the trauma of her childhood in a home terrorised by a violent alcoholic father. When Kate starts hearing a child crying in the next door house, no one believes her.
Three women, two real and one fictional, seek social justice in an ambitious novel that explores power in 1970s America
What kind of justice can we have in a world driven by power? The actor turned writer Sophie Ward likes to fuel her novels with philosophical conundrums and set herself complex writerly challenges. Her ingenious, Booker-longlisted Love and Other Thought Experiments was structured around philosophical thought experiments, from Pascal’s Wager to Descartes’ Demon, with a chapter narrated by an ant living inside a character’s brain. The Schoolhouse explored the ethics of self-directed schooling and of policing in a complicated cross-period procedural. Now she turns her attention to questions of justice, freedom and power in the 1970s United States, with a tripartite structure bringing together three women – two real and one imagined.
It’s 1971: the Manson Family have just been found guilty and hundreds of thousands are marching against the Vietnam war. In the Netherlands, 25-year-old Andrea Dworkin escapes her abusive husband and attends a debate between Chomsky and Foucault on justice and power. Back in the US, the poet Muriel Rukeyser throws herself into protesting once again, though her lover, the literary agent Monica McCall, tells her rightly that her health won’t stand it. The third character is loosely based on the family history of Ward’s own Korean-American wife.Phyllis Patterson welcomes her son home to rural Illinois from the army base in South Korea, and attempts to build a relationship with her new Korean daughter-in-law and grandchildren. All three women are testing their own capacity for justice in an unjust world.
The iconic photographer believed his two years shooting horse fairs, pubs and dance halls in the 1980s had been overlooked. A new exhibition aims to put that right
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