From keeping whites white to preventing ‘bacon neck’, keep your clothes looking better for longer with these expert hacks
First, be sure to buy the best quality you can. Layla Sargent, founder of The Seam, which connects people with skilled menders, cleaners and restorers, advises going for “a slightly higher denier, a good amount of elastane/Lycra, and reinforced toes and gussets”. Brands such as Falke, Heist and Swedish Stockings should last longer than a supermarket three-pack.
Government plans to protect species by increasing woodland and removing greys, but campaigners say it needs to go further
When Sam Beaumont sees a flash of red up a tree on his Lake District farm, he feels a swell of pride. He’s one of the few people in England who gets to see red squirrels in his back garden.
“I feel very lucky to have them on the farm. It’s an important thing to try and keep a healthy population of them. They are absolutely beautiful,” he said.
Police investigating whether blast that injured at least 169 others at Friday prayers in Islamabad was suicide attack
An explosion ripped through a Shia mosque on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital during Friday prayers, killing 31 people and injuring at least 169 others, according to officials. Police said they were investigating whether the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.
There were fears the death toll from the blast at the Khadija al-Kubra mosque in Islamabad could rise as some of the injured were reported to be in critical condition. Television footage and social media images showed police and residents transporting the injured to nearby hospitals.
From minting coins featuring his own face to covering buildings with gold, the president’s proposals for marking America’s semiquincentennial say a lot about the country’s backwards outlook
When the United States celebrated its bicentennial on 4 July 1976, it marked the occasion with the opening of the National Air and Space Museum’s exhibition hall on Washington DC’s National Mall. Designed in a boldly modernist style by the blue-chip firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (now HOK), it stood as a testament to American aeronautical derring-do, from the Wright brothers to the moon landings.
At the time, even though the stench of Republican political shenanigans was never far off, with Gerald Ford replacing the disgraced Richard Nixon in 1974, there was a sense of a nation embracing progress, looking forward, not back. For all the historical re-enactments of Washington crossing the Delaware, the US chose to see itself through the prism of modernity and technological puissance.
US star clocks successful practice run a week after injury
Olympic medal race is set for Sunday at Cortina
Lindsey Vonn moved a step closer to one of the most improbable Olympic starts in Alpine skiing history on Friday, producing an aggressive and largely clean downhill training run on the Olimpia delle Tofane course less than a week after fully rupturing the ACL in her left knee and being airlifted off a mountain in Switzerland.
The 41-year-old American clocked 1min 40.33sec in a fog-delayed session, but the time itself was secondary to what the run represented: proof that she can still attack a course at speed – and survive it – as she targets Sunday’s medal race.
From a £149 John Lewis version to LA’s gorpcore take, the ‘good intention’ bag is intended to look good but hold more
It’s not a multi-thousand pound handbag from Hermès that best captures the new era of It bags, but a £149 tote from John Lewis.
Launched this season, it’s deeper (45cm) and taller (33cm) than your average handbag, and comes loaded with good intentions. It’s able to hold your packed lunch, flask and book, as well – at a push – as your gym kit. The high street retailer is calling it the Intentional tote bag.
Singer says articles about his health and birth of son ‘outside even the most basic standards of human decency’
Elton John has said articles about his health and the birth of his son by the publisher of the Daily Mail were an “abhorrent” invasion, as he described its behaviour as “outside even the most basic standards of human decency”.
Appearing briefly at the high court via video link, John said he was “incensed” when he was told about allegations that private investigators working for Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) had tapped phone calls and accessed private medical information.
Sergei Lavrov blames shooting of Vladimir Alekseyev on Ukraine but does not back up Kremlin claim with evidence
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Milan on Friday to oppose the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the closure of schools and streets in the city ahead of the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Games.
Reuters reported that protesters – mostly students with signs reading “ICE out” – assembled in Piazzale Leonardo da Vinci, in front of a building of the Politecnico University in the eastern part of the city.
There is a huge buzz for the Games that are the pinnacle for the athletes but competing through illness and injury is all part of the test
One of the great joys of being an Olympian is arriving at the athletes’ village and, with it, the shift in your identity from just being a skeleton athlete to being a part of Team GB. There is a real belonging in putting on the T-shirt or jacket with your country’s flag on, and of course with the Olympic rings – a symbol of hope and peace and togetherness.
When I arrived in Sochi, my first Winter Olympics in 2014, I went into my room and I remember collapsing on to the bed with huge pride but also an overwhelming initial feeling of loneliness. I remember being emotional, crying. There was the relief that I had finally made it to the Games, but also a question of “what do I do now?” Fortunately, I didn’t dwell on that for long and dragged myself to the Team GB food hall.
Wigmore Hall, London Grammy-winning Giddens fused folk, opera, jazz, pop and classical elements in a recital ‘honouring composers who don’t often get called composers’
‘Hopefully you didn’t come for banjos and guitars,” Francesco Turrisi quipped, seated at the Wigmore Hall’s grand piano. A ripple of laughter passed around the hall – which had sold out on the strength of the artists alone, with no hint of what they might perform. But then, when half of your duo is Rhiannon Giddens – multi-Grammy-winning folk singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “genius” grant recipient and now a Pulitzer prize-winning composer to boot – the name is all it takes.
For this second concert in their Wigmore Hall residency, Giddens and long-time musical partner Turrisi asked a question: what might our version of a recital look like? The answer was an eclectic fusion with folk, opera, jazz, pop and classical elements all adding their accent to a traditional voice and piano concert – a performance “honouring composers who don’t often get called composers”.
After weeks of breakup talk, the Bucks and their superstar stayed together. The Knicks and Timberwolves, meanwhile, made smart additions
It’s hard to match the absolute insanity that was the 2024-25 NBA trade deadline, and to the majority of the league’s credit, teams didn’t really try. But there was still some notable movement ahead of Thursday’s 3pm EST deadline – to varying degrees of success. Let’s do the early assessment of who came out on top, and who left us scratching our heads.
Gus Kenworthy says ‘enough is enough’ over ICE in US
ICE agents are in Milan with US vice-president JD Vance
Team GB skier Gus Kenworthy has launched a blistering attack on US Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers by urinating the words “Fuck Ice” on the snow just before the start of the Winter Olympics.
In a post on Instagram the 34-year-old, who will compete for Team GB in the free-ski half-pipe in Milano Cortina, also urged Americans to write to their senators to “rein in” ICE and border patrol.
Nintendo’s monster-collecting franchise was pilloried as a ‘pestilential Ponzi scheme’ in the 90s. But as its celebrates its 30th birthday, it now stands as a powerful example of video games’ ability to connect people
When I was 11, it was my dream to compete in the Pokémon World Championships, held in Sydney in 2000. I’d come across it in a magazine, and then earnestly set about training teams of creatures, transferring them between my Pokémon Red Game Boy cartridge and the 3D arenas of Pokémon Stadium on the Nintendo 64. I never made it as a player but I did finally achieve this dream on my 26th birthday, when I went to Washington DC to cover the world championships as a journalist. I was deeply moved. Presided over by a giant inflatable Pikachu hanging from the ceiling, the competitors and spectators were united in an unselfconscious love for these games, with their colourful menageries and heartfelt messaging about trust, friendship and hard work.
It is emotional to see the winners lift their trophies after a tense final round of battles, as overwhelmed by their success as any sportsperson. But it’s the pride that the smaller competitors’ parents show in their mini champions that really gets to me. During the first wave of Pokémania in the late 90s, Pokémon was viewed with suspicion by most adults. Now that the first generation of Pokémaniacs have grown up, even becoming parents ourselves, we see it for what it is: an imaginative, challenging and really rather wholesome series of games that rewards every hour that children devote to it.
The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old US president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account, and shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
PC; Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel This mischievous roguelike escapade featuring utterly fiendish felines is compelling, and impressively tasteless
You know that old saying about cats having nine lives? Well, as far as Mewgenics is concerned, you can forget it – and you can also forget the idea that a game about cats has to be in any way cute. These kitties are red in tooth and claw, prone to strange mutations, and strictly limited to just the one life, which often ends swiftly and brutally.
Such is the nature of roguelike, a format that has spawned some of the biggest indie hits of the past 20 years. In these games, failure is permanent; dying sends you back not to the last checkpoint but back to the beginning, the game reshuffling its elements into a new shape for your next run. And so it goes in Mewgenics. You gather a party of four felines and send them out on a questing journey, from which they return victorious or not at all.
Obsessing over individual players and political chaos leaves less time to focus on the misogyny. And that’s for the best, isn’t it guys?
Fair play to Bill Gates’s ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, a woman who fronted up to appear on a podcast this week while so many of the men who feature in the latest Epstein files drop found that their diaries had them scheduled to stay hiding under their rocks. Melinda was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, obviously, and executed a very graceful drive-by. “Whatever questions remain there of what I don’t – can’t – even begin to know all of it, those questions are for those people, and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me. And I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.” Oof. Yet she also said, more generally: “I think we’re having a reckoning as a society, right?”
Cards on the table, I don’t think we’re having one at all. Look at the headlines, or what’s dominating all the news bulletins. We’re talking about anything but the things that most need to be reckoned with. In the UK, we’re talking round the clock about Peter Mandelson, the one guy in this we at least know wasn’t making sexually abusive use of Epstein’s trafficked women and girls. Even if he did offer Epstein image rehab advice, which, as discussed here in depth on Tuesday, was a foray into the moral abyss. (Again.) But the frenzied and remorseless focus on political fallout – and not the male-on-female debasement that is the entire heart of this story, and always has been – is weird, isn’t it? I had a mirthless laugh at the New Statesman’s cover this week, which characterised the Mandelson affair as “the scandal of the century”. Guys, it’s not even the biggest scandal of the scandal.
Researchers say blood sample strip, which can be used at home, can pick up virus that causes cervical cancer
A pioneering test of period blood for signs of cervical cancer could be a convenient, non-invasive and accurate way of screening for the disease, researchers have said.
A regular sanitary pad topped with a blood sample strip can pick up human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes most cases of cervical cancer, and could be used by women at home, the results of a study indicate.
‘I am feeling pretty good about myself,’ says Bruce Mouat
Figure skaters Gibson and Fear in bronze position
Snoop Dogg and the sport of curling made for a very odd mixture at the Winter Olympics on Friday with British competitors Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds even more shocked than the crowd and the millions tuning in when they got a picture request from the rapper.
Mouat and Dodds had maintained their unbeaten record so far at the Games with a 7-4 win over tough opponents Sweden, but were just as pleased to meet the US superstar.
Experts identify potentially serious breaches over treatment of people and call for ‘one in, one out’ scheme to end
The UN has called on the UK and France to halt the controversial “one in, one out” asylum system, warning there could be “serious violations of international human rights law”.
Nine experts, including seven special rapporteurs, wrote a 20-page letter to Downing Street and Paris on 8 December 2025 outlining detailed concerns about potential breaches of human rights they had identified in the scheme. They gave the two governments 60 days to respond and on Friday published their letter.
Led by women, queer-friendly, diverse: this model can break so many boundaries. But if we lose spaces to meet in, it can't happen
Something quietly profound happened last Ramadan. In a year when the war on Gaza hardened public debate into camps, when half the UK was found to believe that Islam – and therefore Muslims – to be incompatible with British values, when the general volume of Islamophobia was ratcheted several notches higher by Reform UK’s rise in the polls, hundreds of Muslim Londoners gathered every night to build the kind of community and connection we were told had been decimated. Lost to whatever the flavour of blame is at the moment: doomscrolling, the telly streamers, individualism promoted by late-stage capitalism, a society fractured by the cost of living.
For a month, Muslims came together in the capital and put on iftars, the evening meal that breaks the day’s fast, that reflected the world we want to live in: inclusive, often female-led and queer-friendly, properly diverse, rooted in generosity. A community without judgment, formed outside mosques, free from the performative piety Olympics. Which all sounds deeply earnest, but believe me when I tell you that these were some of the most vibey events I went to last year.
Nosheen Iqbal is the host of the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast
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A totally tropical livener with familiar cachaça and lime and an intriguing kiwi jam twang
This tropical, vibrant drink is our most popular cocktail, perhaps because it’s a twist on something familiar. Rather than building it in the glass with crushed ice, as for a traditional caipirinha, this is shaken so that the kiwi jam is mixed into the drink more thoroughly.
Jake Garstang, restaurant manager and sommelier, Maré, Hove, East Sussex
After plundering her tearaway teens for the comedy classic, Lisa McGee is back with a Scooby-Doo-style caper. As How to Get to Heaven from Belfast hits our screens, she explains why the craic’s about to get deadly
How do you follow up a show about girls in Derry? With one about women in Belfast, obviously. That’s what Lisa McGee has done. Her new eight-parter, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, is as far away from Derry Girls as you can get when the distance between the worlds amounts to 70 miles along the A6.
Or as she puts it: “I wanted a shit, female, Northern Irish A-Team!”
The Barbz have built a parasocial relationship with the rapper – in some cases to their own detriment
Nicki Minaj is back doing PR for Donald Trump, and it’s messier than ever. Last week, she appeared at a treasury department summit in Washington DC to show support for Trump accounts, a new kind of investment account designed to “provide eligible American children with tax-advantaged investment accounts courtesy of President Donald J. Trump”, according to a government website.
The most disappointing part of the rapper’s recent turn toward Maga, though, is how her stans – a significant portion of whom are Black and queer – are responding. After the summit, Minaj’s followers defended her online and even helped push Trump’s agenda. “In a society full of hate and division, supporting Nicki Minaj is reminding people to see past political differences and see the human in one another,” one supporter wrote. Oh brother. Minaj is a perfect example of the cult of celebrity, the dangers of modern fan culture and how celebrity worship can intersect with politics in truly dangerous ways.
Connexion
