Equinor becomes latest fossil fuel firm to backtrack on clean energy pledges with move to halve budget to $5bn
The Norwegian oil company fighting to open a giant new oilfield off Shetland has cut billions of pounds from its green spending plans in favour of producing more fossil fuels.
Equinor set out plans on Wednesday to halve its investments in low-carbon energy while producing more oil and gas, becoming the latest in a line of fossil fuel firms to backtrack on its green promises.
Families say they want accountability for ‘bad decision-making’ relating to Valdo Calocane
The families of the Nottingham attacks victims have called for individual doctors responsible for Valdo Calocane’s treatment to be named and held accountable.
At a press conference on Wednesday, after the publication of a report detailing Calocane’s mental health treatment before his killing spree in June 2023, the families of Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates said they wanted accountability for “poor leadership and bad decision-making”.
Company saw ‘strong start to the fiscal year’ according to its CEO, partly due to higher profits from streaming business
Walt Disney sharply outperformed Wall Street’s quarterly earnings estimates on Wednesday, with results buoyed by the strong holiday box office performance of animated sequel Moana 2 and higher profits at the company’s streaming business.
The strength in entertainment helped offset a decline at Disney’s domestic theme parks, which were impacted by hurricanes Helene and Milton in Florida. The parks-led Experiences group also incurred about $75m in expenses associated with the December launch of the Disney Treasure cruise ship.
Epic lineup convenes for farewell to heavy metal icon at Birmingham’s Villa Park stadium in July, with Metallica, Slayer, Pantera and many more in support
Having been the original voice of heavy metal, survived multiple bouts of ill health and relieved various bats and doves of their heads, Ozzy Osbourne is to bring one of the great performing careers to a close with a final gig: a reunion of the original Black Sabbath lineup in their native Birmingham, together for the first time in 20 years.
Titled Back to the Beginning, the charity gig will be held at Villa Park on 5 July, with tickets on sale from 10am on 14 February. The supporting lineup is a Who’s Who of metal greats, including Metallica, Slayer, Pantera and many more, and the concert’s musical director, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, promises: “This will be the greatest heavy metal show ever.”
Money stolen falls from record $1.25bn to $813m as more victims refuse to pay off criminal gangs
Ransomware payments fell by more than a third last year to $813m (£650m) as victims refused to pay cybercriminals and law enforcement cracked down on gangs, figures reveal.
The decline in such cyber-attacks – where access to a computer or its data is blocked and money is then demanded to release it – came despite a number of high-profile cases in 2024, with victims including NHS trusts in the UK and the US doughnut firm Krispy Kreme.
Ruling says allegations by actor’s legal team ‘should not have been made’ in open court
A high court judge has criticised lawyers representing Noel Clarke for making “unacceptable” allegations against Guardian journalists which “should not have been made and publicly aired without foundation”.
Mrs Justice Steyn dismissed claims that there had been any fabrication of evidence by them and said any deletion of documents was “not in breach of any rule or duty” to preserve them.
Lakers sent Anthony Davis to Mavs in return for Dončić
James admits team’s focus may turn to younger players
LeBron James says he spent two days in disbelief after the Los Angeles Lakers traded away Anthony Davis, his close friend and teammate.
The top scorer in NBA history is finally coming to grips with the idea of forming a new partnership with Luka Dončić, who also holds a special place in James’s esteem.
Europe’s biggest firm, whose sales of Wegovy almost doubled, feels it can ‘meet demands’ of US administration
Europe’s biggest company, Novo Nordisk, has rebuffed fears of a hit to its business from Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs, as it reported better-than-expected revenues after sales of its weight-loss drug Wegovy almost doubled.
Combs denies wrongdoing alleged in three new lawsuits filed against rapper and mogul, including claim he ‘effectively imprisoned’ male adult entertainer
A fresh round of lawsuits alleging sexual assault have been filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs, though the rapper and mogul continues to deny wrongdoing.
On Tuesday, a man filing in New York’s Southern District court anonymously as John Doe alleged that Combs coerced him into sex acts over a number of years. The man, who worked as an adult entertainer in Las Vegas, claims he was hired by Combs in 2007 to perform a strip show, and was subsequently booked on other occasions lasting until 2012 at hotel rooms and Combs residences across the US.
Charles is king of 14 Commonwealth realms – but possibly not for much longer. A look at the drive for decolonisation. Plus, Bob Marley at 80
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I spoke to Natricia Duncan, our Caribbean correspondent, on the latest moves on behalf of Commonwealth countries to decolonise their national identity. But first, the weekly roundup.
Aprilia rider hit the track face first as his helmet shattered
Spaniard has three weeks to recover before season starts
Reigning MotoGP champion Jorge Martín fractured his hand and his foot which will both require surgeries after a nasty crash in pre-season testing in Sepang, Malaysia, on Wednesday, casting doubts on his title defence this season.
Martín, who made the switch from Pramac Racing to Aprilia after winning the 2024 MotoGP championship, lost control of his bike on turn two where a highside launched the 27-year-old into the air before he landed hard on the tarmac.
The president’s appalling threat to seize Gaza and drive out its people imperils global stability, even if he never deploys a single US soldier
The comments were brazen, swaggering, jaw-dropping, audacious, and, to many, simply outrageous. “Stupéfaction mondiale” was how the French paper Libération responded on Wednesday morning. The sober-sided New York Times contented itself with “improbable”. A US senator gave voice to what will surely become a drumbeat charge across the Middle East and beyond in the hours and days to come, that what Donald Trump had said about Gaza amounted to “ethnic cleansing by another name”.
On Tuesday, at the end of his White House meeting with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump declared that the US should seize control of the Gaza Strip and permanently remove its 2.2 million Palestinian inhabitants to resettlement in places such as Egypt and Jordan. The US would “own it and be responsible”, said Trump. “We’ll take it over and develop it,” he added. There would be “unlimited numbers of jobs and housing” for “the people of the area” – though which people they would be was not specified. Gaza would be turned into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
Trump’s attacks on civil rights don’t just affect people of color, they reach other citizens as well
I found myself cheating on CNN, where I’m a political commentator, with MSNBC last weekend. I just had to watch my friend, Nikole Hannah-Jones, articulate a great point that many have missed: Donald Trump is pursuing a racial agenda, not an economic one.
This isn’t historically novel. Most progress is met by this kind of backlash – from the “Red Shirts” and Klansmen who used brutal violence against Black citizens following the gains of the Reconstruction era, to the voting restrictions that followed the election of Barack Obama. But this time is different.
A superbly rich bean stew laced with duck fat, sausages and pork belly
Being French, this rich, leguminous casserole passes as “a voluptuous monument to rustic tradition”, rather than being relegated, like our own pease pudding and ham, to the faintly dismissive category of “comfort food”. In truth, however, it is both: soothingly starchy and deliciously savoury. My take on this classic dish makes no claim to be the one true Carcassone, Castelnaudary or Toulouse cassoulet, but it is worth your time.
Soak 8 hr+ Prep 15 min Cook 4 hr 15 min
Serves 6-8
Saints attorney maintains disclosure of messages showing team execs’ aid in softening media coverage was ‘violation’
An attorney whose lawsuit discovered the existence of emails showing how top executives at the NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans tried to help New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese soften critical news coverage about the church’s management of a clergy-abuse scandal has challenged the sports teams’ assertions that the communications were protected by a court order.
Nonetheless, an attorney for the Saints on Tuesday issued a statement doubling down on his position that the material’s disclosure to the press was “a violation of [a] court order protecting them”.
The easiest Derby winner ever was his greatest triumph but the horse’s fate at the hands of the IRA haunted him
Aga Khan IV, who bred and owned the magnificent, ill-starred Derby winner, Shergar, among dozens of champions to carry his famous green and red colours over the course of six decades in the sport, has died at the age of 88.
Shergar was the most emphatic Derby winner in the Classic’s 202-year history when he romped to a 10-length success under Walter Swinburn at Epsom in June 1981, but it was his subsequent kidnapping from the Aga’s Ballymany Stud in County Kildare by an armed gang in February 1983, barely a year after his retirement from the track, that projected Shergar onto the front pages of newspapers around the globe.
Belgian club has its own name, unique brand and the freedom to develop a philosophy away from just winning
Club YLA are fourth in the top division of the Belgian Women’s Super League, which is exactly where they finished in 2023-24. Catching current leaders Leuven and multiple time champions Anderlecht is a long-term goal but this is a club doing things a bit differently.
The club is the women’s team of Club Brugge, led by CEO Guillian Preud’homme, with its own unique brand created in cooperation with the Dutch company Studio Dumbar in order to attract new supporters, boasting its own merchandise range with different colours to the men.
When a frazzled couple asked me and my friend to witness their wedding, I forgot my training in suspicion and began reconsidering my instincts
Growing up in a family of refugees, I was raised to approach strangers with caution. After experiencing displacement, my parents instilled in me the idea that trust had to be earned; they had seen the risks that come with being vulnerable in a new environment. Being wary of the unfamiliar was their way of ensuring we stayed safe in a world that wasn’t always welcoming.
As I got older, their anxieties became my own. I would automatically assume, for example, that someone asking for directions might run off with my phone, or that someone asking for money might scam me.
From Roxie and Velma in Chicago to Mrs Robinson in The Graduate, discover the designs of the Broadway great Patricia Zipprodt (1925-99), whose illustrated memoirs have been published
Online retailers face controls as part of crackdown on ‘dangerous products’ flooding bloc’s market
Online retailers such as China’s Shein and Temu will face strict new customs controls as part of a crackdown by the European Commission on “dangerous products” flooding the EU market.
The commission said many of the billions of low-value products that enter the EU each year were not compliant with the bloc’s laws and that European firms that respected the rules were losing out to competitors selling unsafe or counterfeit products.
Gang swindled victims out of €150,000 by posting fraudulent adverts for pets on secondhand shopping sites
Spanish police investigating an online gang, which swindled prospective puppy-buyers out of more than €150,000 (£125,000) by duping them into paying for nonexistent dogs and fictitious vets’ bills, have arrested six people and frozen 14 bank accounts.
Officers from the Policía Nacional began looking into the gang – which was based in the Basque province of Biscay but operated across Spain – and discovered it was fraudulently advertising mobile phones as well as pets.
Global Fighters Association looks to football as model
Former middleweight Paul Smith says aftercare is needed
Paul Smith says the lack of care and protection for boxers “is not surprising anymore” and that the Global Fighters Association (GFA) will bring support to fighters.
Much like the Professional Footballers’ Association, the GFA aims to introduce a framework where financial support and adequate aftercare is offered to athletes. Retired middleweight Smith – brother to active British fighters Liam and Callum Smith – is one of the group’s founding members alongside the likes of Amir Khan.
The Maga kingpin has only been president for a couple of weeks, but the chaos he has unleashed is already much worse than I thought it could be. I’m genuinely frightened
The day after Donald Trump won the election, everyone in my liberal corner of Philadelphia seemed shell-shocked. At preschool drop-off, a mom burst into tears. At the playground, a gay parent I know told me that they were aggressively downsizing in case they had to flee the country. Meanwhile, I felt oddly sanguine and thought people were being a tad dramatic. I rolled my eyes about Ellen DeGeneres relocating to England. I was optimistic that Trump 2.0, while horrific, wouldn’t actually be the end of US democracy.
This was an unusual attitude for me, because catastrophising is one of my main pastimes. I spent about 10 minutes this morning staring at a red dot that has appeared on my nose, wondering if it meant I was dying. But when Trump won the election, I was already too emotionally drained from a year of watching Joe Biden help turn Gaza into an unliveable hellscape to worry about things getting even worse.
This moral failure and sends a clear message – the government prioritizes deterrence over dignity and cruelty over compassion
In a move that has reignited outrage, the president, Donald Trump, signed an executive order to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Guantánamo Bay, aiming to detain up to 30,000 immigrants labeled as “high-priority criminal aliens”. For many, including myself, this decision is a painful reminder of the facility’s dark history – a history marked by torture, indefinite detention and systemic dehumanization.
Guantánamo Bay, a name synonymous with human rights abuses, was first repurposed in 2002 under then president George W Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a detention center for individuals branded as “the worst of the worst”. I was among those detainees – abducted, shackled and transported like cargo, blindfolded and unaware of my fate. The memories of roaring military planes, soldiers barking orders and the growls of attack dogs still haunt me.
Mansoor Adayfi is the author of Don’t Forget Us Here
Liverpool coach left Chiesa and Gomez out of latest squad
You need more than 20 players in this country, he says
Arne Slot has called on the English football authorities to expand match-day squads to 23 players to help with the hectic schedule teams such as Liverpool are undertaking. Currently in domestic competitions, a manager is only permitted to name nine substitutes, leading to difficult conversations about leaving individuals out.
Liverpool face Tottenham in the second leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final at Anfield, after losing 1-0 in the first leg almost a month ago. Slot, who will be without Trent Alexander-Arnold for Tottenham’s visit, had to omit Federico Chiesa and Joe Gomez from the squad that played against Bournemouth on Saturday and the Dutchman would rather to have been able to include them.
England’s most renowned butterfingered culprits share the lingering regret that came from a single moment
We all know what it is like to drop a catch. Remember when your colleague tossed you that Pink Lady over your desk, about eight years ago now. To the day. It was such a dolly! You malfunctioned didn’t you? Let yourself down, the apple fell on to your keyboard with an embarrassing clatter. Qwerty? Droppy more like. What about that time you fumbled the car keys off that simple over-bonnet-toss and there was a small but quite significant part of you inside that died for ever as you scrambled among the filth on the pavement. That is where you belong now, Droppy, among the dirt and grime, on the floor alongside your spilt opportunity.
The cricket writer and author Jon Hotten has come up with best description I’ve found for that truly awful feeling of dropping a catch in cricket (or indeed otherwise): “A hollowing out of the spirit.” “It’s not like failure with the bat or the ball, which is more personal,” Hotten writes, “It’s a failure that directly and immediately affects the bowler and the captain … It weakens you psychically, sometimes physically.”
Alphabet guidelines no longer refer to not pursuing technologies that could ‘cause or are likely to cause overall harm’
The Google owner, Alphabet, has dropped its pledge not to use artificial intelligence for purposes such as developing weapons and surveillance tools.
The US technology company said on Tuesday, just before it reported lower than forecast earnings, that it had updated its ethical guidelines around AI, and they no longer refer to not pursuing technologies that could “cause or are likely to cause overall harm”.
The city is determined to solve the ‘whodumpedit’ mystery after a huge pile of refuse was discarded, blocking the road. But with fly-tipping across the UK on the up, will it be possible to find the culprit?
Squinting through her car headlights in the early dawn, it looked like some sort of surrealist horror. Weighing just short of 30 tonnes, the enormous pile of rubbish had appeared on Elaine Hutchings’ doorstep in Lichfield overnight. “The road was carnage,” she says. The smell of mildew was nauseating. Granted, Hutchings is only 5ft (1.52 metres) tall – but the heap loomed over her. “I just stood there in shock.”
Discernible among the bricks and rubble were toilet seats, office chairs, school exam papers from 15 years ago and, somehow compounding the absurdity of it all, a single hairdryer. “Nothing would surprise me as to what was in there,” says the 54-year-old business director. “It could have cost someone their life. I was so upset that somebody would even consider doing that without a thought for anybody.”
Kansas City have all the ingredients needed for bad guys: victories, dubious calls and unlikable players. But they’re also exactly what sports need
The term Chiefs fatigue, already in heavy use throughout the season, has only become more common the closer we get to Sunday’s Super Bowl. The team’s pursuit of a three-peat with a quarterback on pace to break all sorts of records for some reason doesn’t do it for most people outside Kansas City.
That so many teams (ahem, the Bills) have come so close to unseating the Chiefs only to head home in despair, means frustration and anger is naturally directed at the winner. But is it really fair to cast Kansas City as the NFL’s leading villain?
PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC; Warhorse Studios/Deep Silver A medieval rags-to-riches fantasy demands extreme patience of its players, but those willing to put in the hours will be rewarded with an absorbing simulation
Life was tough in 16th-century Bohemia, and so it is here, in its virtual counterpart. The first 10 hours of this game were thoroughly miserable. Stepping into the mud-soaked boots of Henry, a humble blacksmith-turned-knight, I am sent to deliver a message across a war-ravaged region. Yet before Henry can fulfil his duty, he falls victim to a deadly ambush, leaving himself and his Lord, Hans Capon, stranded without a penny or sword to their name.
As a stranger arriving in tattered rags, bloodsoaked and desperate, no one believes that you are a nobleman, or has the time to listen to your increasingly urgent pleas. Townsfolk comment on your odour and refuse to let you into various establishments. It’s a truly humbling gaming experience, creating a soberingly bleak recreation of what it’s like to be among medieval society’s downtrodden.
The LSU star and one of America’s most media-savvy athletes drew criticism for her call for more maximum scores. But she promises she has the sport’s best interests at heart
Livvy Dunne is worried about the future of women’s college gymnastics. The NIL powerhouse, who has scored major brand deals with Vuori and American Eagle, among others, has started her final season with the national champion LSU Tigers. But she’s made the biggest splash in this young season on social media by posting on X over her concerns over the popularity of gymnastics.
“I’m sitting here watching NCAA gymnastics and the empty seats are concerning,” she wrote in a note on X last week. “If you want fans to enjoy the sport and increase viewership, you have to look at what makes the crowds go crazy! People understand what a perfect 10 is and want people who do things that look great to be rewarded.”
Agency staffers overseas – except those deemed essential – placed on leave as diplomats’ union plans legal action
The Trump administration is placing US Agency for International Development direct-hire staffers around the world on leave, except those deemed essential.
A notice posted online on Tuesday gives the workers 30 days to return home, upending the aid agency’s six-decade mission overseas.
EXCLUSIVE: More than five million lose the chance to vote in local elections this year. Elections cancelled in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Thurrock, Surrey, East and West Sussex, Hampshire and Isle of Wight - replaced with elections to new unitary councils in 2026
We are waiting for the press conference to start and will bring you a live stream (in Swedish) and top lines as soon as it does.
Germany’s Social Democrats gained three percentage points in the latest YouGov poll this morning, but still remain in the third place just weeks before the general election on 23 February.
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
The eurozone’s private sector returned to growth, marginally, last month, a new survey shows.
S&P Global’s monthly poll of purchasing managers across the euro area has found that the region’s economy was able to eke out growth in January, for the first time since August.
“The slow pace of growth in the services sector, which was evident almost all of last year, continued at the start of 2025. Putting it more positively, growth at service companies played a crucial role in keeping the eurozone economy in expansion over the past year.
Sluggish, but slightly accelerating growth in new orders and employment gives hope that this sector will gain a bit more momentum in the first quarter of this year.
Demand growth has subsided in line with a tight monetary stance, and the positive output gap in the economy is narrowing. Housing market activity has eased, and house price inflation has lost pace. There are signs that economic activity is stronger than preliminary national accounts figures imply, however, and wage costs continue to rise.
Although inflation has eased and inflation expectations have fallen, inflation pressures remain, which calls for a continued tight monetary stance and caution regarding decisions going forward. This is compounded by elevated global economic uncertainty.
Luca Casarini is most prominent person to come forward since WhatsApp said that 90 people, across two dozen countries, had probably been hacked
The Italian founder of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, who has been a vocal critic of Italy’s alleged complicity in abuses suffered by migrants in Libya, has revealed WhatsApp informed him his mobile phone was targeted by military-grade spyware made by the Israel-based company Paragon Solutions.
An estranged mother and son confront their past, in the new novel from the author of Union Atlantic
The great American novel may be hard to define, but Adam Haslett is certainly having the great American career. Twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer and once for the National book award, he has followed up an acclaimed debut (the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here) with three novels at dignified intervals of six to eight years, including the highly garlanded Imagine Me Gone. On the side, a constellation of fellowships, and a journalistic career. As a way to pursue a life in writing, I would say to my own students: this is how it’s done.
It’s strange, then, to read Mothers and Sons and reflect on just how much of his third novel wouldn’t make it through a writers’ workshop. Haslett is a writer of extraordinary strengths – he excels at an emotional undercurrent, the trancelike rhythms of routine and the cauterised numbness of trauma – whose architectural abilities, the skills required to craft the underlying tectonic structure of a story, seem strangely underdeveloped here.
A 50th-anniversary release for Chantal Akerman’s meticulous masterpiece, voted the best film of all time by Sight and Sound
A woman’s work is never done in Chantal Akerman’s icily deadpan, degree-zero movie from 1975, now on rerelease for its 50th anniversary. Over three hours and 20 minutes, from a sequence of fixed camera positions, it blankly transcribes the ordinary life of Jeanne Dielman, a fortysomething widowed single mother, living with her teenage son Sylvain in a modest one-bedroom apartment in central Brussels (he sleeps in a foldout sofa bed in the front room).
The flat is heavily furnished in a style that clearly dates from before the second world war, the glass-fronted dresser weirdly reflecting the flashing blue lights from the store across the street, a touch which the audience will come to notice in time and which may be a premonition of the police’s future arrival. The hours and the days go by, each like the last. Jeanne cooks, washes up, cleans, goes shopping, shines Sylvain’s shoes; sometimes she looks after a neighbour’s baby in a carrycot; she mends Sylvain’s jacket, fatefully leaving her dressmaking scissors in the bedroom. And in the afternoons, while he is out at school, Jeanne supplements the widow’s pension we see her collecting from the post office by having sex for money with gentlemen visitors who are discreetly attended to on a towel placed primly over the counterpane on what was once Jeanne’s marital bed. But her life and state of mind come to pieces – gradually, then suddenly – for reasons which we, the audience, have to supply.
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