Known as “Ms. Shirley”, she used TikTok to bring food, dignity and hope to Skid Row and beyond

Shirley Raines, a social media creator and non-profit founder who dedicated her life to caring for people experiencing homelessness, has died, her organization Beauty 2 The Streetz said Wednesday. She was 58.

Raines was known as “Ms. Shirley”, to her more than 5 million TikTok followers and to the people who regularly lined up for the food, beauty treatments and hygiene supplies she brought to Los Angeles’ Skid Row and other homeless communities in California and Nevada.

Reform UK leader speaks at GB News event also attended by industry minister on second UAE visit in two months

Nigel Farage has paid a visit to Dubai to build diplomatic relations with United Arab Emirates ministers and drum up donations for Reform UK from wealthy expats.

The two-night trip was his second visit to the Gulf state in two months, after a £10,000 trip hosted by Abu Dhabi to attend the Formula One grand prix.

The future Hall of Famer was given a warm welcome against the team where he began his career. But Wednesday’s game felt particularly poignant

A 60-second tribute video honoring LeBron James has become routine over the past eight years whenever he returns to Cleveland, the city where his NBA journey began.

But Wednesday night at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse was different – and it felt that way long before James’s Los Angeles Lakers fell, 129-99 to the Cavaliers in a nationally televised game.

Exhibition at York Minster celebrates nearly forgotten 12th-century archbishop said to be behind Ouse Bridge miracle

The inscription on the large 13th-century stone slab on display at York Minster does not bode well: “Qui ceci dit svp er caput rogeri de Ripvn.” Or, as it translates: “Which fell on the head of Roger of Ripon.”

“We don’t quite know who Roger of Ripon was,” said Jennie England, research coordinator at the cathedral. “But he survived, and a miraculous incident was reported in the 1280s when a stone fell on someone’s head.”

In this adapted excerpt from The Crown’s Silence, which examines the royal family’s links with slavery from Elizabeth I to the present, Ottobah Cugoano directly appeals to the monarchy – but is met with silence

One autumn day in 1786, an unexpected parcel arrived at Carlton House, the London residence of George, Prince of Wales. The sender was Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, a free Black man living in London, one of roughly 4,000 people of African descent in the city at the time. Inside the package were pamphlets describing the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and the brutal treatment of enslaved people in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. The accompanying letter, signed “John Stuart,” Cugoano’s alias, urged the heir to the British throne to read the “little tracts” enclosed and to “consider the case of the poor Africans who are most barbarously captured and unlawfully carried away from their own country”.

Africans, Cugoano warned, were treated “in a more unjust and inhuman manner than ever known among any of the barbarous nations in the world”.

Catrani/Accademia Dell’Annunciata/Doni
(Arcana)
A sumptuous, elegant account of Barbara Strozzi’s 17th-century vocal music – performed with warmth, clarity and persuasive expressive freedom

Barbara Strozzi was a true 17th-century revolutionary. The adopted and quite possibly the natural daughter of poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi, she grew up in the bosom of the Venetian intelligentsia, taking part in debates from the age of 15. Her tally of 120 published works for solo voice was unequalled by any of her contemporaries. Despite remaining single, she managed to support four children on the income from her music alone. The quality of her output is matched only by Monteverdi.

Virtuosissima Sirena comprises a handful of cantatas and arias interspersed with effervescent trio sonatas by Legrenzi and Castello. Accademia dell’Annunciata’s lineup of two violins, cello, theorbo, double harp and harpsichord lends the music a shimmering sweetness that’s perhaps more sumptuous than the composer would have expected but is nonetheless enchanting.

With hundreds of thousands of homes still without power, we spoke to residents affected, many confined indoors

More than 40 people have died in a huge winter storm in the US. Schools were closed and flights cancelled as people grappled with heavy snowfall and icy conditions.

Nearly 300,000 households are also still without power, several days later, according to poweroutage.us. We spoke to people affected by the storm. Here are some of their responses.

Vincent Chan, 45, is already facing years behind bars for molesting girls aged three and four at a nursery in London

A paedophile nursery worker has admitted a series of new charges including filming up the skirts of girls as they sat in a classroom.

Vincent Chan, 45, is facing years behind bars for molesting girls aged three and four while working at Bright Horizons nursery in West Hampstead, north London.

Despite an estimated outlay of $6bn since 2022, LIV appears to be far away from establishing itself in the the manner of PIF projects in other sports

In one sense, it is difficult to detect anything warm and cuddly in all of this. Elite golfers, who were already obscenely rich, take the bounty on offer from a Saudi Arabian-backed disruption model before shuffling back whence they came – essentially for a trivial penalty – when the novelty wears off. This is hardly sport at its purest. Instead, an admission by Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed that they blundered in believing the fairways were greener on the LIV side. The PGA Tour, desperate to portray itself as the big boy in the playground, welcomes one-time pariahs back with open arms. Other golfers who spurned LIV’s fluttering eyelashes scratch their heads, wondering why they bothered.

There is, however, an underlying and endearing point. All the petroleum pounds in the world are no substitute for legacy. Trying to match the achievements of Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy carries significance. LIV golf has no relevance beyond its own domain. Saudi Arabia has made inroads into various sports but, in golf, the kingdom is unquestionably doomed. LIV is on the road towards oblivion, far earlier than most had anticipated. Only those who will gain financially from its continuation can try to spin an alternative story.

David Zwirner, London
Though they were created for comic books, the artist’s horny and hilarious drawings of his own neuroses, and of glamazons in thigh-high boots, are unnervingly powerful on gallery walls

It is unnerving to walk into a gallery and see all your deepest fears and anxieties splayed out across the wall, but that is the power of Robert Crumb. For more than half a century, the wiry, weird, difficult and awkwardly horny artist (now in his 80s) has been churning out underground comics that lay bare his deepest neuroses, and reflect yours back in the process.

Now he is being celebrated in an ultra-high-end London gallery, with pages ripped from his notebooks and framed up like the finest of fine art. Except this isn’t fine, it’s filthy and angry and paranoid. It’s classic Crumb: skinny men quivering with worry and fear and hormones in a cruel, uncaring, senseless world – filled with towering women in thigh-high boots, obviously.

The actor was promoting her new lingerie line – and in 2026, marketing requires more than a glossy ad

I would hate to have to launch a new product in 2026. Imagine a scenario where you’ve developed some ingenious new widget that costs millions of dollars to design, produce and bring to market. You could have quit numerous times. You probably wanted to, because there’s a new season of The Traitors and you have to catch up. But you never surrendered. You persevered, and your brilliant invention is ready for the world. All you have to do now is convince a society besieged by a nonstop cavalcade of crises to care. If the US government could kindly stop sending paramilitary forces to occupy major cities, that would be great for my brand.

This is the predicament faced by poor Sydney Sweeney, the actor best known for HBO’s Euphoria and the recent film The Housemaid. This week, Sweeney debuted a new lingerie line called “Syrn”. I presume it’s meant to be pronounced “siren”, since that’s a suitably sultry-sounding name. Also, confusing, which might be part of the brilliant marketing plan behind the launch. If you baffle enough people, they’ll be sure to Google you to see what your damn problem is anyway. If I was the marketing lead on this project, I would have suggested “Syren”, since that at least has a real vowel in it, like most actual words. Unfortunately, “Syren” was the name of a Confederate blockade runner during the civil war, which we (and very particularly Sydney Sweeney) would probably want to avoid associating with.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

The author and spoken word artist’s delivery is full of tenderness and humour as she confronts the outdated notions of innocence that surround women

The latest collection by the poet Hollie McNish is dedicated to anyone who has been “blamed, shamed, pressured, tortured, dehumanised, de-mothered over a man-made concept about your own body”. Virgin is a series of poems and prose stories aimed at busting myths and challenging stereotypes about sex and the body.

McNish tackles the persistently weird and outdated notions of innocence and purity around young women: “Do not tell me which touches have mattered the most / This is your obsession not mine.” In Send Nudes she notes how any shame about those who have sent “a snapshot of your body stripped autumn bare” lies with the person who broke trust by sharing or mocking it, and not with the sender.

The actor on manifesting the part of Hagrid in Harry Potter, struggling with his looks and his issue with Strictly

You’re big on pies on your Insta. What’s your go-to pastry recipe and, briefly, your favourite filling – savoury and sweet? TopTramp
Well, as much as I can make it, I like to have a little block of shop-bought shortcrust or flaky pastry in the fridge. It’s so much easier to just roll it out and stick it on top. The pies have to be double crust. The one I make the most is slow braised, tiny chunks of steak with minced beef and roasted shallots, like a minced beef and onion pie. The kids love that with chips for Saturday night dinner. I like making chicken and mushroom with leek, although my partner’s a veggie, so she would probably say fish pie, with boiled eggs, which is a real labour of love, so I tend to save that for special occasions. I like a nice apple and cinnamon pie with a Demerara sugar crust, and cherry pie made with that really shit fake filling.

What happened to your live-action remake of Captain Pugwash? keithrickaby
That was nearly 10 years ago. There was quite a good script. I think the money was coming from China, and I’m not sure they’d seen Captain Pugwash before. I think it was one of those things that never quite reached escape velocity. I do remember they just had normal names, and not the double entendres like Seaman Staines or Master Bates that everyone thinks were in the cartoon.

The star’s urgent and to-the-point protest song is not subtle about its target and right now that’s why it works so well

Bruce Springsteen’s new protest song isn’t open to interpretation.

In Streets of Minneapolis, the Boss condemns “King Trump’s private army from the DHS” that “came to Minneapolis to enforce the law – or so their story goes”. He names Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both killed by federal agents amid protests. He rages against “Miller and Noem’s dirty lies”, referencing the faces of the Trump administration’s onslaught against immigrants.

Sundance film festival: comedian Iliza Shlesinger’s nonsensical misfire is a swirl of cliches, unfunny comedy, stock characters and bizarre direction from Josephine Decker

I will give Chasing Summer this: there’s something inherently interesting about its unexpected union of two opposite forces. On one side there’s Josephine Decker, an unusual film-maker whose genre-challenging work spans experimental theater (2019’s Madeline’s Madeline), claustrophobic psychodrama (2020’s perversely thrilling, woefully underseen Shirley) and magical realism (the 2022 YA grief flick The Sky Is Everywhere). On the other, comedian Iliza Shlesinger, whose brand of fast-paced, ribald, sometimes hilarious (and sometimes too gender-essentialist) standup is both subverted and enhanced by her own white, blond conventional attractiveness. I can’t imagine many saw the former choosing to direct Chasing Summer, a Hallmark-esque comedy written by and starring the latter. Theoretically, the collision should generate sparks.

It does, though I can’t imagine in the way the odd couple intended. The 98-minute film, which premiered this week at Sundance, is one of the most bizarre combinations of director and material I’ve ever seen, more curious car crash than collaboration. It is almost worth it to watch a sensitive and surprising director, so attuned to inner turmoil and unreality, wrangle anything substantial out of razor-thin characters and a boilerplate set-up.

Chasing Summer is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Tottenham eased into the last 16 and the midfielder trusts their uplift will provide ‘a big jump’ in the Premier League

It was a question most assuredly in keeping with the overall craziness of the situation. Tottenham: 14th in the Premier League, with two wins out of 14 in the competition, some of their fans beginning to fret about relegation. Also out of both domestic cups. Tottenham: the fourth best team in Europe after the conclusion of the league phase of the Champions League. On a fast-track to the last 16.

So, of course, it was put to João Palhinha as he left the stadium after Spurs’s convincing 2-0 win at Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday night. Can Spurs win the Champions League? The midfielder’s response was to chuckle. And then laugh a little more. “I know what you want to hear from me,” he said.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Turkey hosts urgent mediation as Trump’s threats mount and Tehran weighs painful compromises to avoid conflict

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, will travel to Ankara for talks aimed at preventing a US attack, as Turkish diplomats seek to convince Tehran it must offer concessions over its nuclear programme if it is to avert a potentially devastating conflict.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, proposed a video conference between Donald Trump and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian – the kind of high-wire diplomacy that may appeal to the US leader, but would be anathema to circumspect Iranian diplomats. No formal direct talks have been held between the two countries for a decade.

Previously popular ‘woman, life, freedom’ slogan ignored as son of former shah becomes focus of desperation for change

As the nightly protests that recently gripped Iran got under way, familiar shouts of “death to the dictator” and “death to [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei”, Iran’s most powerful cleric and political figure, filled the air in Karaj, a city 30 miles to the west of Tehran.

But when female participants tried to add another recent popular rallying cry, “woman, life, freedom”, the slogan found few takers – despite having proved an inspirational call to solidarity in demonstrations that swept the country in 2022 after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained for allegedly flouting Islamic dress codes.

Border czar Tom Homan in Minneapolis says ‘no agency is perfect’ and acknowledges improvements that need to be made to federal immigration enforcement

• ‘Nothing has changed’: Minneapolis on edge despite Trump’s de-escalation vow

“I do not want to hear that “everything that’s been done here has been perfect”, Homan said, without referring specifically to the fatal shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Homan noted that while no “agency is perfect” he did not come to Minneapolis to create “headlines”. The federal immigration enforcement surge is “going to improve because of changes we’re making”, he said.

Giving passengers right to additional carry-on baggage would be ‘terrible for the consumer’, warns airline’s CEO

EasyJet said proposals to enforce free additional cabin bags on planes across Europe are a “lunatic idea”, warning of fare rises and flight delays if legislation goes through.

The European parliament last week voted overwhelmingly to give all passengers the right to carry on a small case, as well as the free underseat bags currently permitted.

Paul Patterson, who represented firm at Horizon inquiry, will become non-executive chair of UK business

• Business live – latest updates

The European boss of Fujitsu, the company behind the Horizon software at the heart of the Post Office IT scandal, is to step down from his role in March.

Paul Patterson, who is the chief executive of the European division of the company, will become non-executive chair of Fujitsu’s UK business, where he will “continue managing the company’s response” to the inquiry into the scandal.

A unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will join a US delegation to the Winter Olympics in Italy, sparking confusion and uproar in the country.

Guardian reporter Jakub Krupa looks at what role the agency, which is embroiled in a violent US immigration crackdown, might have at the Milan-Cortina Games.

ICE said agents would 'vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organisations' but not run enforcement operations.

Milan’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said the the agents would be unwelcome in the city. 'This is a militia that kills,' he said

From sending fewer text messages to being selective with your gardening, this is how Guardian Australia readers are making life a little easier

• Read more summer essentials

At the beginning of the year, we asked experts on how we can go easier on ourselves. They gave us 52 ways to do less in life, from day-to-day tasks to longer-term planning.

We also wanted to know what you’ll be doing less of in 2026. Here, nine readers share their strategies.