Deputy PM reportedly warned Starmer not to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador because of his links to Jeffrey Epstein

Speaking to Sky News this morning, Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart said:

This administration under Keir Starmer has failed. It has U-turned, I think, what, 14 or 15 times now.

It has had two resets in the past five months, and it is now caught up in the worst political scandal of my lifetime.

He was lied to by someone who was known to be a serial liar. There’s no excuse for the fact that he made the wrong judgment.

He was in possession of enough facts to have not made that appointment and he did anyway and I am afraid, Laura, he now has to take responsibility for that …

With the Omnivore’s Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan transformed our understanding of food and drugs. Can he do the same for our sense of self?

Several years ago, Michael Pollan had a disturbing encounter. The relentlessly curious journalist and author was at a conference on plant behaviour in Vancouver. There, he’d learned that when plants are damaged, they produce an anaesthetising chemical, ethylene. Was this a form of self-soothing, like the release of endorphins after an injury in humans? He asked František Baluška, a cell biologist, if it meant that plants might feel pain. Baluška paused, before answering: “Yes, they should feel pain. If you don’t feel pain, you ignore danger and you don’t survive.”

I imagine that Pollan gulped at that point. I certainly did when I read his account of the meeting in his latest book, A World Appears. Where does it leave our efforts at ethical consumption, if literally everybody hurts – including vegetables?

Animals, insects, flora and fauna – the world photographed in close-up in the annual competition dedicated to micro and macro photography. Cupoty 7 was won by underwater photographer Ross Gudgeon, triumphing over 12,000 entries from 63 countries

Francesca Lollobrigida brought the house down at the Milano Ice Park and then searched out her son to share her joy

Even before the final pairing of the women’s 3,000m speed skating had finished, two-year-old Tommaso was being hurried towards the middle of the track, where his mother had just broken the Olympic record and was on the verge of winning gold on her 35th birthday. When the final pairing of Joy Beune and Isabelle Weidemann had failed to beat Francesca Lollobrigida’s phenomenal time, the Italian sprinted through the bowels of the stadium to fetch her son.

Still basking in the glow of an excellent opening ceremony and the thrill of two medalists in the men’s downhill skiing earlier in the day, the hosts celebrated a new star. Lollobrigida, the silver medalist from Beijing in 2022, struck gold for the first time in her fourth Olympics. She brought the house down at the Milano Ice Park as she crossed the line in a time of 54.28sec, knocking two and a half seconds off Irene Schouten’s record from 2022.

Small town club’s Serie B adventure captivated football and inspired a famous book. That spirit remains and is being passed to their successors

The WhatsApp group flickers into life at about 6am every day. It is the manager who goes first because, when you are 79, old habits die hard. “Good morning,” Osvaldo Jaconi hails his former players and staff before, little by little, the salutations roll in from across Italy. Maybe it is someone’s birthday or another special occasion; the conversation may be accelerated by an in-joke that recalls why, three decades ago, they were brought together in the first place. Just in case anyone could forget, the group’s title says: “Serie B.”

This is how miracles stay alive. Perhaps it is the point of what Castel di Sangro achieved in 1995-96. A rag-tag bunch from this backwater in mountainous Abruzzo had risen from local amateur leagues and then, in a crowning triumph with little precedent, made it to the second tier. “It’s like 30 years haven’t passed,” says Angelo Petrarca, who was nominally the masseur but often resembled a one-man backroom. “It shows how much love everybody has for each other, and did back then. As if everybody is still right here.”

Art is helping to revitalise Sicily’s ghost towns and deserted urban spaces, with the earthquake-hit town of Gibellina becoming Italy’s first Capital of Contemporary Art

From the ostentatious baroque square of Quattro Canti all the way up to the Teatro Massimo, Palermo’s Via Maqueda is thick with tourists. Pomegranate juice sellers are setting up pyramids of fruit on their carts at gaps in the crowd and waiters are trying to reel in passersby with happy hour prices for Aperol spritzes. Amid the noise and movement, it’s easy to walk straight past number 206, whose arched doorway features a stone cross stained black with dirt – a clue to the building’s former use.

Convento dei Crociferi was abandoned for 30 years, until Sicilian power couple Andrea Bartoli and Florinda Saievi took over and transformed it into Palermo’s newest arts space, the Museum of World Cities, due to open at the end of February. Inside, a cloister with high, scalloped porticoes frames a verdant courtyard filled with palms and banana trees. Bartoli comes to meet me and enthusiastically pumps my hand before leading me up to the grand, marble-floored rooms on the first floor, which have been given over to a rather self-referential exhibition on urban change.

When Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac became club guardians in 2021 the Premier League was a dream. Now it’s a target

Two Chewbaccas handed out flyers to passersby. No one making their way towards the Turf batted an eyelid, but then again, for five years now, a touch of Hollywood has become pretty much the norm in Wrexham.

Ninety minutes before kick-off the city’s most famous public house was heaving. Lying in the shadow of the Racecourse Ground, it is the watering hole of choice for locals, and, thanks to landlord Wayne Jones’s prominent role in Welcome to Wrexham, the hit documentary following the club’s many fortunes, a tourist attraction.

Whether you want everyday comfort or a special set for Valentine’s Day, our fashion writer rounds up the styles that’ll have you hooked – from skimpy to supportive, recycled to racy

• The best Valentine’s Day gifts for 2026

Lingerie isn’t about dressing for someone else. The best lingerie will feel comfortable, supportive and genuinely good to wear, whether that’s an everyday staple or an investment piece.

The design of lingerie has never been better, with a wide variety of brands focusing on comfortable materials, breathability and support, as well as style. From ultra-soft lace that moves with the body to wireless bras that actually stay up, sometimes the best lingerie is all about subtle design details rather than extra frills.

Greenland and its people were thrust into the global spotlight last year when Trump revived his demand that the US take control of the island for national security and to access its abundant mineral resources. For the Inuit people, who have lived here for centuries, no one owns the Arctic land

Scam message claims points will expire in days so click through to claim your prize – just pay the postage

You get a text message with some good news: your mobile provider has been operating a rewards programme and you have earned almost 13,000 points.

You haven’t heard of the scheme before but since so many of the operators have rewards plans, you assume you must just have missed it. When you click on the link, you arrive at a site branded with your operator’s logo and find you can cash in your points for a new massage chair or a high-end vacuum cleaner, among other items. All you have to do is pay the postage.

Exclusive: Ministers to act after last year’s legislation ‘outwitted’ by failing firms paying millions to executives

The government is to close loopholes which allow bosses of failing water companies to continue to receive large bonuses despite a ban passed last year, it can be revealed.

Bosses of companies that illegally dumped sewage into England’s rivers and seas and presided over water shortages which left thousands of people in misery have still been paid millions in bonuses despite the ban.

Grocery delivery firm will begin picking up broken tech across the UK and charging consumers to recycle items

A UK dairy delivery business is to begin collecting unwanted or broken toys, mobile phones and laptops while dropping off milk, orange juice and butter in its latest attempt to expand.

The Modern Milkman was founded by entrepreneur Simon Mellin in Burnley, north-west England, in 2019 and delivers groceries to more than 100,000 households across the UK.

Punchy cocktails and roaringly traditional Greek food in the heart of Birmingham

Cylla, a classy Greek restaurant on Newhall Street, Birmingham, draws inspiration, it says, from Scylla, the legendary Greek man-eating sea monster that lives close to the whirlpools of Charybdis. She’s a beautiful woman, but has six dog heads, all grumpy and snarling, as well as a serpent’s tail.

If Scylla herself were ever to turn up at Cylla, dogs’ heads barking and tail flapping, they’d have to seat her in one of the gorgeous private booths at the front as you enter the room. These are the spots to grab if you want a little privacy, which is why we eschewed the long, prettily lit cocktail bar and headed straight to this cosy hidey-hole for a round of Poseidon’s Wrath. “It’s a bit like a dirty martini,” explained our server, who was one of those warm, bright, commanding, knowledgable souls who, in a hospitality setting, is worth her weight in drachma. This invigorating, mega-bitter tipple of vodka and vermouth laced with piney, herbaceous mastiha, seaweed and kalamata olive brine is the cocktail equivalent of being rescued by the RNLI: salty, breathtaking and head-spinning. Fret not, sweetness seekers, because they also offer a dozen other honey-, peach- and even meringue-based cocktails, if those are your thing, and all with equally dramatic, Greek myth-related names. Aphrodite’s Bloom, anyone? It’s a sensuous ode to the golden hour, the menu says.

You need to check where you stand legally, but I fear you’re being taken advantage of and will have to ask her to leave

In spring 2022, my husband and I were lucky enough to sell our house for a profit and, with help from my parents, bought a much bigger home. At the time, my friend was going through a tough time, so I asked if she would like to move in with us and our two children. There was no written agreement, but the plan was that she would either quit her job and retrain, or save for her own place and move out in six months to a year. She pays us £350 a month, which goes towards energy bills, bar a three-month period when she wasn’t working. I also gave her money towards taking a course.

She hasn’t retrained, got a new job or saved for a new place. And she doesn’t have the money to move out. I feel trapped and resent all I have to do as a working mum while she’s here, but that’s compounded by guilt as I know I’m very privileged to have a big house and a well-paid job. I hate that she sees me at my worst (rowing with my husband/sorting out arguments between the kids) and I feel as if I’m constantly keeping my emotions in check around her. Our friendship feels warped into a parent-child dynamic.

Jeff Bezos’s axing of more than 300 jobs at the storied newspaper has renewed fears about the resilience of America’s democracy to withstand Trump’s attacks

The email landed in Lizzie Johnson’s in-tray in Ukraine just before 4pm local time. It came at a tough time for the reporter: Russia had been repeatedly striking the country’s power grid, and just days before she had been forced to work out of her car without heat, power or running water, writing in pencil because pen ink freezes too readily.

“Difficult news,” was the subject line. The body text said: “Your position is eliminated as part of today’s organizational changes,” explaining that it was necessary to get rid of her to meet the “evolving needs of our business”.

Black Panther made him a megastar, but in private the actor and his wife Simone Ledward Boseman were dealing with his terminal cancer diagnosis. In a rare interview, she talks about the shock of losing him, and how a revival of one of his plays has helped her heal

Simone Ledward Boseman is reflecting on the five years that have passed since the death of her husband, actor and writer Chadwick Boseman. “The edges of grief get less sharp over time,” she says. “Five years definitely feels like a marker. I’ve had to gradually figure out how I talk about Chad. What do I want to share, and what do I feel comfortable sharing? Can I find something that I might want to share in the midst of something I don’t want to share?” We meet on a video call across time zones – it’s 9am in California, where she lives. “Except for my mom, I’m not talking to anybody before 10am,” she laughs. She’s made an exception to give a rare interview ahead of the UK premiere of her late husband’s play Deep Azure, which is currently in previews in London at Shakespeare’s Globe.

When Boseman’s death was announced at the end of August 2020, the shock reverberated across the globe. He was devastatingly young – only 43 – and the world was just getting to know him. The release of the movie Black Panther two years earlier, in which he played the eponymous character also known as T’Challa, had skyrocketed his fame. Before then, he had been a successful Hollywood actor. Now? He was a global megastar – the first Black superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The news was doubly shocking because the family had not previously revealed that he had been suffering with colorectal cancer.

It’s chilling to watch as Trump and Netanyahu adopt the methods of regimes their countries once condemned

• Janine di Giovanni is a war correspondent and the executive director of The Reckoning Project, a war crimes unit in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza

In Syria, where I worked during the years of Bashar al-Assad’s terror, people were often taken away to torture cells before dawn by masked men. The timing was deliberate. It disoriented them at their most vulnerable, ensuring the torture to come would be even more agonising. The testimonies I recorded from survivors almost always contained the same phrase: “The morning they came for me.” One young woman, shattered by rape and violence, later told me that her life had split in two – before and after the masked men came for her.

In Iraq, those who spoke against Saddam Hussein – even abroad, even casually – were punished in cruel ways by a vengeful leader determined to crush any hint of dissent.

Janine di Giovanni is a war correspondent and the executive director of The Reckoning Project, a war crimes unit in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza. She is the author of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria.

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Thousands of women with life-changing complications still in limbo two years after call for financial redress

The government’s failure to respond to calls for a compensation scheme for women harmed by pelvic mesh has been described as “morally unacceptable” by campaigners.

Thousands of women were left with life-changing complications after receiving transvaginal mesh implants, with some unable to walk or work again.

Laws to be introduced this week include up to two years in prison for distributing, displaying or reciting prohibited phrases to harass or offend

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Queensland could become the first state in Australia to outlaw the phrase “from the river to the sea”, under sweeping new hate speech reforms announced by the state government.

The premier, David Crisafulli, announced the proposed laws on Sunday, ahead of their introduction to parliament on Tuesday, describing them as a direct response to the Bondi terror attack, in which 15 people were killed during a Hanukah celebration.

England did not play all that well in thrashing Wales and it is hard to see how the visitors pull themselves out of the rut

England really didn’t play that well. Certainly, if the number of points left out there is any guide. There were times in the first half, that part of the game when both teams are meant to be still in it, when it seemed as if scoring a try just required the hosts to string enough passes together.

Fair enough, they did score four in the first half alone, but two of them, the second and third, came when Wales were down to 13. So, yeah, string enough passes together …

Pep Guardiola has led the way with his tactics for a decade but he has changed course and Arsenal have taken advantage

Great rivalries are always more about feel than about numbers. There have been only four Premier League seasons in which Manchester City and Liverpool have finished in the top two positions in the table (and one of those occasions was 2013-14 when the managers were Manuel Pellegrini and Brendan Rodgers, which is not a duel anybody is writing books or making documentaries about).

Yet for most of the decade that Pep Guardiola has been at City, it has felt that English football was defined by his struggle with Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool, and by a form of the game that developed as each learned from the other.

What could be more warming than a tangy soup? Here are some excellent options, whether you’re using up leftover veg or exploring unexpected new flavours

Technically, many soups are spiced in some way, even if it’s just with pepper. But we all know what is meant by a spiced soup: something with a jolt to it, and a bit of heat to warm up a winter evening. When it comes to soup, spice is the ultimate companion to a main ingredient that may otherwise be considered boring or bland. In this sense, the spices are the most important component: they are what the soup will taste of.

But which spices go with which ingredients, and how? Here are 17 different recipes to help you figure that out.

The People’s party, which is pledging structural changes to Thailand’s political and economic system, is not expected to win outright majority

Polling stations opened in Thailand on Sunday for an election that pits a youthful pro-democracy party against rivals that are offering a mix of nationalism and populist policies.

The People’s party, which is pledging structural changes to Thailand’s political and economic system, has led opinion polls before Sunday’s vote, fuelled by support from younger voters. However, the party, led by 38-year-old former software engineer Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, is not expected to secure an outright majority, and may struggle to build a coalition. Its candidates are also facing a looming legal battle.

The real risk for American broadcasters is not that dissent will be visible. It is that audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden

The modern Olympics sell themselves on a simple premise: the whole world, watching the same moment, at the same time. On Friday night in Milan, that illusion fractured in real time.

When Team USA entered the San Siro during the parade of nations, the speed skater Erin Jackson led the delegation into a wall of cheers. Moments later, when cameras cut to US vice-president JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance, large sections of the crowd responded with boos. Not subtle ones, but audible and sustained ones. Canadian viewers heard them. Journalists seated in the press tribunes in the upper deck, myself included, clearly heard them. But as I quickly realized from a groupchat with friends back home, American viewers watching NBC did not.