Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power plants as severe frost set in have been described as ‘crimes against humanity’
Outside the main pumping station for Bucha, three engineers, bundled up in parkas, are working on the emergency generator keeping the Ukrainian city supplied with water.
One holds a heat gun to the generator’s filter in an effort to unfreeze it, his face reddened by blowing snow and a daytime temperature of -12C (10.4F). Watching attentively is the city’s mayor, Anatolii Fedoruk. The generator in his office is also frozen when the Guardian visits and he apologises for the lack of coffee.
Judge finds Durham trust violated nurses’ dignity and created intimidating environment by allowing use of single-sex space
A group of nurses who complained about a trans colleague using single-sex changing rooms at work suffered harassment, an employment tribunal judge has ruled.
The judge found the nurses’ dignity was violated and they encountered “a hostile, intimidating, humiliating and degrading environment” at work.
Kemi Badenoch said Robert Jenrick is now “Nigel Farage’s problem” and that he creates “instability” wherever he goes.
The Conservative party leader told the Press Association that Tories who supported Jenrick feel “betrayed” he has joined Reform UK.
Absolutely, he’s Nigel Farage’s problem. Now he and his acolytes are people who create instability wherever they go, and they can go do that in Reform.
They are a party that is just about people who want drama and intrigue - the public, quite frankly, are sick of this.
Reform leader calls the child sexual abuse offender ‘a good man, a really good guy’ in 27-second Cameo video clip
Nigel Farage has fallen victim to another prank on the paid video service Cameo, this time paying tribute to the child sexual abuse offender Ian Watkins.
Cameo allows fans to pay celebrities to make personalised video messages, with the Reform party leader offering his services from £78.45.
The governor of the Bank of England has urge the world’s leading global institutions to fight back against the rise of populism, warning that it represents one of the biggest threats to improvements in living standards.
After Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis, calls grow for accountability in the shooting of Keith Porter Jr on New Year’s Eve
Family and friends of a Los Angeles man who was killed by an off-duty US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer over the holidays are urging local officials to arrest and prosecute the federal agent.
Keith Porter Jr, a 43-year-old father of two, was fatally shot by an ICE officer on New Year’s Eve outside his apartment complex, according to LA and federal officials. An LA police department (LAPD) spokesperson said after the incident that Porter had fired gunshots into the air. A US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said the off-duty immigration officer was “forced to defensively use his weapon” while responding to an “active shooter”.
The woodwind player who taught André 3000 music theory releases his searching debut album next month
From Los Angeles Recommend if you like Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Shabaka Hutchings’s flute music, the Coltranes Up next Debut album And So It Is released 13 February
For woodwind players, breath is everything: the lifeforce of artistry, the thing that furnishes sound with personality. But a few years ago, the Los Angeles saxophonist Aaron Shaw realised he was becoming increasingly breathless. In 2023, aged 27, he was diagnosed with bone marrow failure, meaning he wasn’t producing enough oxygen-carrying red blood cells. A change of approach was required.
The Cut Up by Louise Welsh; The Persian by David McCloskey; The 10:12 by Anna Maloney; Very Slowly All at Once by Lauren Schott; Vivian Dies Again by CE Hulse
The Cut Up by Louise Welsh (Canongate, £20)
This welcome third outing for gay Glaswegian auctioneer Rilke opens with his discovery of a body. Obnoxious jewellery dealer Rodney Manderson has been killed outside the Bowery auction rooms, stabbed through the eye with the Victorian hatpin that his boss, Rose Bowery, has brandished in front of the nation on Bargain Hunt. As she discussed the pin’s virtues as a deadly weapon as well as its millinerial uses, the fiercely loyal Rilke decides – while feeling grateful to have skipped lunch and trying not to think of jelly – to remove it before calling the police. They soon decide they’ve got their man, but Rilke’s not so sure; the roots of the crime may lie in the past – in particular, a notorious reform school. With a central character who feels like an old friend, The Cut Up is as sharply observed, humane and beautifully written as its two superb predecessors.
The Persian by David McCloskey (Swift, £20)
Former CIA analyst McCloskey’s fourth novel centres on Jewish Iranian dentist Kam Esfahani. Dissatisfied with life in Sweden, where his family relocated when driven out of Iran, and wanting the wherewithal to move to California, he accepts an offer from the chief of Mossad’s Caesarea Division. Returning to Tehran, he runs a fake dental practice as cover for assisting in “sowing chaos and mayhem in Iran”. Things go awry when he enlists double agent Roya Shabani, widow of an Iranian scientist killed by the Israelis. The book takes the form of a series of confessions that Kam, now caught and imprisoned, is forced to write by his torturer, and these documents – which may or may not reveal the whole truth – are interspersed with flashbacks. Kam’s cynical tone and mordant humour serve to underline not only the horror, but also the inherent hypocrisy of the endless cycle of violence and retribution: this masterly novel is tragically topical and utterly gripping.
Wangerheim joins from Hammarby on contract to 2029
WSL2 Birmingham land fellow Swede Leidhammar
Manchester United have signed the Sweden forward Ellen Wangerheim from Hammarby on a contract until June 2029. The 21-year-old becomes the Women’s Super League side’s third signing of the January transfer window, after Hanna Lundkvist and Lea Schüller.
Matt Johnson, United’s director of women’s football, told the club’s media channels that Wangerheim was “one of Europe’s best young talents”, saying: “As a dynamic, invasive and versatile forward Ellen brings variation and a natural scoring instinct to the team. Everyone at the club is excited to have her at Manchester United and the opportunity to help maximise her potential.”
Force paid to fly TikTok influencer back to UK after he avoided police custody for almost 12 months
Using a £16,000 private flight to extradite a TikTok influencer wanted on dangerous driving charges back to the UK was “not necessary or proportionate”, a judge has told Surrey police.
Harrison Sullivan, 24, known as HSTikkyTokky, had to be repatriated to the UK last summer after he avoided police custody for almost 12 months after a car crash in Virginia Water, Surrey, in March 2024.
Is there any circumstance on Earth that would make these people, in all their finery, sit this thing out?
The truest thing ever said about the Golden Globes was by Tina Fey when she hosted the awards in 2019 and described the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of junket hacks, as operating out of the “back booth of a French McDonalds”. The HFPA was disbanded in 2023 after allegations of racism, but 95 former members retained voting rights and on Monday, the show went on.
The campaign by ‘Candidate Vieira’ mirrors the country’s growing anti-establishment sentiment
In Lisbon’s Campo de Ourique market earlier this week, conversation had turned – a little inevitably – to Sunday’s presidential election, which will decide who will take over from the outgoing Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
But amid the usual claims and counter-claims, promises and pledges, one candidate has been offering voters something a bit more enticing than his competitors.
Reducing the number of rooms while creating more space turned an uninspiring house into a thing of beauty with an exotic garden to match
Already weary from multiple house viewings that didn’t meet their criteria, Purvi Harlalka and Jyothish George were unenthused when details of a large, long-neglected HMO (house of multiple occupancy) in north Londondropped into their inbox. First impressions in real life were equally lacklustre, at least for George.
“We arrived for our viewing and he whispered, ‘There’s no way we’re going to buy this dump!’” says Harlalka. “But later, I convinced him of its potential. It had so much light and, importantly, a garden. I knew it was the one.”
This week’s furore is microplastics researchers’ ozone moment. If they fail, the powerful plastics lobby will step into the breach
Debora MacKenzie is a science journalist and author of Stopping the Next Pandemic: How Covid-19 Can Help Us Save Humanity
Are we being injured and killed by ubiquitous, teeny-tiny shards of toxic plastic? Or aren’t we? For many months, the Guardian has reported a series of worrying scientific results that our bodies are full of jagged microplastic particles that could be giving us everything from heart attacks to reproductive problems.
But on Tuesday, the Guardian revealed that a significant number of scientists think many of these studies showed no such thing. Or maybe they did. The methods are new and riddled with problems, so we can’t always reliably tell.
Debora MacKenzie is a science journalist and author of Stopping the Next Pandemic: How Covid-19 Can Help Us Save Humanity
I’d love to claim the Hand & Heart in Nottingham taught me something profound – but it was mostly about bankrolling free rounds
When I was a teenager, before Tripadvisor, pubs lived as mental notes rather than star ratings. There was the one where – exactly like that scene in The Inbetweeners – we realised they’d serve us a pint at 16 if we ordered some food (one shared plate of chips). There was the one you might get lucky in on Christmas Eve; the one you’d take a girl to, to impress her with the romantic views; and the one that only served cider in halves because it was so brain cell-poppingly strong – a pub best tackled before a bank holiday Monday, known colloquially as “Super Cider Sunday”, when you still had a few brain cells to spare.
These long, hangover-free January weekends offer a great opportunity for some horticultural housekeeping
Lots of pressure at this time of year, isn’t there? All those pink cheeks and sweaty brows puffing their way around the park in dusted-down trainers; all those Botivo mocktails (delicious, for what it’s worth) as we strive to self-improve during one of the most grisly months of the year. I’ve never really been one for resolutions, nor time-measured sobriety (amazing how having small children deflates one’s desire to drink enough to conjure a hangover). I prefer to believe that we should mirror what the outdoor world is doing at this time: namely hibernating in an attempt to store up energy for the warmer months that are to come.
Still, if you really feel you must do something vaguely horticultural at this time of year, can I suggest you get your seeds in order? I still think about a photograph I saw of Monty Don’s seed stash in a colour supplement years ago. It was housed in a pleasingly bashed-up vintage index-card cabinet, tucked against the wall of his potting shed – a building with more natural light and square footage than many flats I’ve lived in. How chic! How clever! How deliciously organised!
From Gilmore Girls to Perry Mason, readers reveal the programmes that never fail to bring them joy
I really think Toast of London is Matt Berry’s best work. It’s hilarious. The plots are daft, the cameos are often left-field but work well, and it has loads of great nonsensical gags. It’s a shining example of a sitcom with an unlikable protagonist that you can’t help but root for anyway. I must have watched it from beginning to end at least 15 times. Every friendship and relationship in my life eventually reaches a crossroads: will they like Toast or not? Rhys, 24, Cardiff
Jeanne Shaheen, the most senior Democrat on the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations said ‘millions of Americans are deeply concerned about the recent rhetoric of the United States taking over Greenland’
Meanwhile, Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto does not seem to be convinced about the merits of European military deployments to Greenland.
Speaking to journalists, he wondered “what a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred soldiers of any nationality could do” in Greenland. “It sounds like the beginning of a joke.”
“It’s not a competition to see who sends the military around the world.”
“A part of me is not sure how much of this is a distraction, to try and take the attention of the American people away from some very real issues that we have in the United States right now.
The cost of living is a real concern for Americans [and] Donald Trump got elected saying he was going to address the cost of living.
Flood warning raised to highest level with roads washed away and rain forcing evacuation of Kruger national park
Large areas of north-eastern South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique have been inundated for several days with exceptionally heavy rainfall. Some locations in South Africa recorded hundreds of millimetres of rain over the weekend, such as Graskop in Mpumalanga, where 113mm fell in 24 hours, and Phalaborwa, which recorded about 85mm of rainfall. Rain has continued to fall across the region since the weekend.
The deluge has been driven by a slow-moving cut-off low pressure system that has remained anchored over the region, repeatedly drawing in moisture and triggering intense downpours. Further heavy rainfall is expected on Friday and over the weekend. Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, could expect daily rainfall totals to exceed 200mm by the end of Friday, while western parts of South Africa and north-western Eswatini may record more than 100mm.
Veteran president holding off main challenger Bobi Wine after campaign marred by violence at opposition rallies
The veteran Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, held a commanding lead in early presidential election results announced on Friday, as conflicting accounts emerged of violence after the vote.
Museveni, who is 81 and has ruled Uganda since seizing power in 1986, is seeking a decisive victory after a campaign marred by violence at opposition rallies.
Afcon is moving to a four-year cycle, a decision the Confederation of African Football has been accused of forcing through without proper consultation. Ed Aarons and Romain Molina report:
Several presidents of African football federations have told the Guardian they were not informed of the decision until it was surprisingly announced by the Caf president, Patrice Motsepe, on 20 December, prompting claims that the confederation breached its statutes by failing to seek approval at a general assembly.
(A$AP Rocky Recordings) Now a father of three and burgeoning actor, Rocky finally comes back to music with his strongest album since his 2013 debut – though there’s plenty of flab
It has been eight years since A$AP Rocky, once and future king of New York rap, released an album. In the world of hip-hop, where even A-list stars such as Rocky’s friend and collaborator Tyler, the Creator are prone to releasing multiple albums a year, this is a lifetime. In the time since Rocky released his third album, 2018’s Testing, Kanye West has rebranded as a born-again Christian, swerved to the right and released five albums. Rocky hasn’t been sitting around: he’s been a press mainstay, thanks to his relationship with pop superstar Rihanna, with whom he now has three children, and last year was acquitted of firing a gun at a former friend, dodging up to 24 years in prison. He has also found acclaim as an actor, starring opposite Rose Byrne in the lauded dark comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest.
Aside from a few one-off singles, such as the Tame Impala collaboration Sundress, Rocky has released music in fits and starts in recent years. (In terms of mainstream stars, perhaps only Rocky’s romantic partner outpaces him when it comes to leaving fans waiting: it has been a decade since Rihanna’s last record.) Testing yielded the Skepta-featuring hit Praise the Lord (Da Shine), but otherwise fell flat with mainstream audiences and critics alike, lacking the dynamism and potent charisma of his breakout albums. That album seemed to leave Rocky at a crossroads. Would it serve him best to continue exploring its slipshod experimentalism, or to make an attempt at retrenchment, and return to the more straightforward music that made him famous?
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