We’re away in our skiing, Switzerland up first. They set a combined time of 1:53.64, believed to be pretty decent, but let’s see how Chechia do; so far, they’re behind.
The opportunity to absorb into a whole new world of sport and competition, love and joy, is such a blessing. It’s nice and sunny today, and I’m looking forward to seeing who has the best big coat. Last time, Ghana were the winners and by far – click the arrow, third photo.
The LDP won 316 of the 465 seats in the country’s lower house – the first time a single party has secured two-thirds of the chamber since the establishment of Japan’s parliament in 1947.
Jacqui Smith defends prime minister following resignation of Morgan McSweeney amid Mandelson scandal
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has said that Keir Starmer should resign given his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington.
In an interview on the Today programme this morning, Badenoch said:
[Claiming] ‘I was badly advised’ is not a good excuse for a leader. Advisers advise, leaders decide. He made a bad decision, he should take responsibility for that … this man said that he was the chief prosecutor for the country, when did he start believing everything that people told him?
Peter Mandelson had been sacked twice for unethical behaviour. [Starmer] is allowing someone else to carry the can for a decision that he chose to make. But the real problem is that this country is not being governed.
I think that the prime minister absolutely is determined to [carry on]. He’s determined and has taken responsibility for the mistakes made in appointing Peter Mandelson.
British freestyle skier targeted on Instagram account
‘A lot of the messages have been awful – it’s insane’
British freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy says he has received death threats in the wake of a social media post that targeted ICE, the United States immigration and customs enforcement agency, last week.
Kenworthy, who was born in Chelmsford but has lived in the US for most of his life, posted an image on his Instagram account that showed the words “fuck ICE”, apparently urinated in the snow.
Need for greater military autonomy also accepted, says report for Munich Security Conference, which takes place this week
Europe has come to the painful realisation that it needs to be more assertive and more militarily independent from an authoritarian US administration that no longer shares a commitment to liberal democratic norms and values, a report prepared by the Munich Security Conference asserts.
The report sets the scene for an all-out ideological confrontation with the Trump White House at the high-level annual meeting of security policy specialists, which starts on Friday.
Both the leads are good value in Dan Kay’s movie in which Jessie and Spider hide conceal a corpse to avoid being separated in the care system
A fatally overdosed mother called Jacey is unceremoniously bundled into a trunk at the start of this southern US-set drama; the uncredited actor who plays her should probably have a word with her agent, as the role is surely in contention for a world record as the least likely to boost your career. Jacey is just one of the drug casualties littering director Dan Kay’s underpowered film about the US’s super-strength opioid crisis, as her two bereaved daughters desperately tread water in the aftermath.
While 11-year-old Jessie (Jojo Regina) steps up with loving words in the face of tragedy, 15-year-old Spider (Mckenna Grace) has a practised indifference. All too accustomed to dealing with her mother’s addiction, her attention is on what happens now – notifying the authorities of the death would mean the sisters would be separated by the care system. So she steps up to run the household and fend off Jacey’s junkie boyfriend Reece (Dacre Montgomery), while she tries to find a solution.
Tensions simmer when a struggling artist joins her wealthy friends for a hen week on an exotic Greek island
It is the summer of 2019, and Sophie Evans, the reckless protagonist of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s unsettling second novel, has arrived on an idyllic island in the Cyclades with her university friends Helena, Iris and Alessia to celebrate Helena’s forthcoming marriage. Helena doesn’t want it called her “hen … Like we’re dumpy little featherbrains going cluck, cluck, cluck”, but all the same, the men – including Sophie’s curator boyfriend of six years, Greg – will not arrive for another five days.
She may be on holiday but Sophie is not at ease in the villa’s atmosphere of “almost offensive” good taste, with luxurious meals, cocktails on tap and endless sunshine. In the 10 years that have passed since they first met as students, the differences between the women have become more pronounced: money has “made itself known”. Elegant, chilly Iris, whose parents have bought her a place in Peckham, works in publishing; the family of spoilt, patrician art dealer Alessia seem practically to own the island on which the women are holidaying; and Helena’s aspiration is to be a trophy wife with a house full of “nice things”.
Club’s record signing on adjusting to the north-east, Afcon pride, and learning from Patrick Vieira and Liam Rosenior
Vous or Tu? It says a lot about Habib Diarra that his joy at being promoted from Strasbourg’s Under-17s to the first team was tempered by anxiety over the two French words for “you.”
Would addressing new, senior teammates by using “tu” be regarded as disrespectful? Ultimately, the young midfielder played safe and opted for the more formal “vous”. Cue wholesale laughter from the older players who told him not to be so silly; he was one of them now.
António José Seguro scores resounding win despite André Ventura’s populist Chega party securing 33.2% of votes
The moderate socialist António José Seguro won a resounding victory in the second round of Portugal’s presidential election on Sunday, triumphing over his far-right opponent, André Ventura, whose Chega party still managed to take a record share of the vote.
Seguro won 66.8% of votes to Ventura’s 33.2% in the election, which went ahead despite weeks of disruption caused by deadly storms. The vote to elect a successor to the outgoing president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was marked by a cross-party push to head off the prospect of a Chega victory, with some senior rightwing figures throwing their weight behind the centre-left candidate to keep Ventura from entering the presidential palace.
Arne Slot was close to landing a coup against Pep Guardiola, the coach he admires most. Then came more of the individual errors that have ruined Liverpool’s title defence. Aching weaknesses within Slot’s squad were exposed again. Dominik Szoboszlai playing Bernardo Silva onside for Manchester City’s equaliser was an error midfielders playing full-back will make. Szoboszlai’s late red card was, though, foolish. Alisson’s foul on Matheus Nunes for Erling Haaland’s decisive penalty was another rush of blood. Liverpool’s huge summer spend was motivated by their executives’ belief in buying the best individuals to unlock the Premier League’s tactical cages. City’s key individuals showed such a policy can pay off, with Silva inspirational, Gianluigi Donnarumma making the save that sparked the game’s chaotic final scenes, Marc Guéhi looking an astute defensive signing and Haaland supplying Silva’s goal. City had been unconvincing but their mentality held, allowing them to eventually profit from Hugo Ekitiké’s misses and the waning of Mohamed Salah. John Brewin
Does a good trim really make your locks longer and thicker – or is it more complicated than that?
‘That’s not true,” says Desmond Tobin, professor of dermatological science at University College Dublin. Hair grows from follicles – tiny structures in the scalp sitting 2-4mm beneath the skin. Inside each follicle, the hair fibre is formed long before it becomes visible at the surface of the scalp. By the time it emerges, the hair that you’re cutting is dead, hardened tissue.
“Cutting what’s above the surface has no effect on what’s happening in the follicle below,” says Tobin.
Civil rights, women’s rights: little could have been achieved under the system now being considered by UK ministers. A bad situation could get worse
‘Lawful protest and free speech are fundamental rights, but we cannot allow them to be abused to spread hate or cause disorder. The law must be fit for purpose and consistently applied.” So said the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, last year on appointing Lord MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, to lead a review of public order and hate-crime legislation. He will soon report. For all who prize the historic right to protest, as have so many generations before us, the omens aren’t good.
Laws govern the right to protest, but one of the lessons I learned from my time as the solicitor for the family of Stephen Lawrence is that the law is not, as Mahmood put it, “consistently applied”: it does not listen to everyone in the same way. The law was available, for example, to Stephen’s parents in theory, but in practice it did not respond to them as equal citizens.
Imran Khan KC is a practising solicitor
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Austrian snowboarder delivered a tribute to his childhood hero, while there was a shocking moment in the downhill
Between the icy air and Olympic pressure, you might expect athletes to bundle up at the Milano Cortina Games – but not Benjamin Karl. The Austrian snowboarder, 40 years old and competing in his fifth Olympic Games, powered to victory in the men’s parallel giant slalom on Sunday, claiming his second consecutive gold medal.
And because no perfect Olympic moment is complete without a little flair, Karl’s celebration quickly became one of the standout images of the day. Moments after crossing the line, he ripped off his shirt, flexed to the cameras, dropped on to the snow face down and pumped his arms in triumph.
Championship risks becoming a two-tier affair as Ireland, Wales and Scotland all lose on the opening weekend
Few competitions in the world have the capacity to turn wine into water quicker than the Six Nations. Only a few days ago players, coaches and fans of Ireland, Scotland and Wales were poring over the championship fixture list with their customary annual relish. Now, after just one round, they are having to deal with the most sobering Celtic wake‑up call for more than a quarter of a century.
The global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste, UN secretary general António Guterres has warned.
Speaking to the Guardian after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres said humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” he said were driving the planet to the brink of disaster.
Rising GDP continues to mean more carbon emissions and wider damage to the planet. Can the two be decoupled?
During Cop30 negotiations in Brazil last year, delegates heard a familiar argument: rising emissions are unavoidable for countries pursuing growth.
Since the first Cop in the 1990s, developing nations have had looser reduction targets to reflect the economic gap between them and richer countries, which emitted millions of tonnes of CO2 as they pulled ahead. The concession comes from the idea that an inevitable cost of prosperity is environmental harm.
After a career in accountancy, Sally Goldner decided to get in the ring – as Zali Gold – and live out her childhood dreams
On the night of her 60th birthday, Sally Goldner climbed on to the top rope of the wrestling ring, to the roars of the crowd, and launched herself on to her competitors with a missile dropkick. The crowd roared. For a second, she was completely airborne, before landing on her opponents.
“‘Wow, I’m doing this,’” she thought. “Exhilarating. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing on my birthday.” She had seized her moment in an Alpha Pro battle royal, a multi-competitor elimination match. As her opponents – all men – threw her out of the ring, they wished her a happy birthday.
Club culture is notoriously hard to capture on film. Oscar-tipped director Oliver Laxe explains why he had to organise his own music festival in the Moroccan desert to find deeper meaning in dance-floor ecstasy
In the opening scene of Oliver Laxe’s existential mystery thriller Sirāt, a crowd of partygoers stack up a sound system for a rave in the southern Moroccan desert, where the paths of the film’s protagonists cross for the first time. Crucially, Laxe explains, the revellers were no ordinary extras. Most of them were committed, lifelong ravers who had travelled to the makeshift festival from across Europe. One of the DJs who played, Sebastian Vaughan AKA 69db, was a core member of Spiral Tribe, the pioneering British “free party” collective of the 1990s.
“In film, reality is usually made to adapt to the rules of cinema,” the French-born Spanish director tells me when we meet in Berlin. “But we do the opposite: we adapt cinema to reality.” When negotiating with the ravers how to best represent them in the film, he recalls, “they told us that the music cannot stop for three days. And we were really pleased with this idea”.
Ergonomic shape, quality materials and satisfying clicks, now with novel haptic feedback and repairable design
Logitech’s latest productivity power-house updates one of the greatest mice of all time with smoother materials, a repair-friendly design and a haptic motor for phone-like vibrations on your desktop.
The MX Master 4 is the latest evolution in a line of pioneering mice that dates back more than 20 years and has long been the mouse to beat for everything but hardcore PC gaming. Having given it a magnetic free-spinning scroll wheel, plenty of buttons and precise tracking, now Logitech is trying something different for its seven-generation: the ability to tap back at you.
Documentary following Laurence Philomène captures the vibrant palette of their work – and the shadows cast over it by prejudice
For non-binary trans photographer Laurence Philomène, art, life and identity are intimately entwined. Though drawing from art history, their photographs strike a distinctive note with their pastel colours; capturing queer subjects, including Philomène themself, in restful poses, these portraits bloom in soft hues of pink, purple, blue – the full rainbow. This style seems to seep into Catherine Legault’s intimate documentary, which captures not only the artist’s creative process but also their daily life with vibrancy.
Philomène’s home, just like their work, bursts with colour. As they prepare their first book, Puberty, which documents their transition, their home doubles as a photography studio. Philomène takes pictures of ordinary rituals, from taking their daily hormone shots to a gentle cuddle with their partner in bed. At a time when non-conforming gender expression is being policed, censored and even banned, these tableaux of trans life are more radical than ever. In contrast to conservative rhetoric demonising trans people, Philomène chooses to focus on moments of joy, love and respite.
Alison Spittle and Fern Brady’s hugely entertaining new show sees them tackle any topic they like. Plus, an amusingly personal take on how generative AI will affect the future of employment
“It’s clear that the theme of this podcast is us trying to talk about a topic and getting immediately sidetracked.” So say comedians Alison Spittle and Fern Brady about their new show. It’s a hugely entertaining ramble through subjects including Lily Allen’s “breakup album for narcissists” West End Girl, sex (“there’s more frigid people in England than Ireland”) and the length of pig orgasms (up to 90 minutes!). Lots of fun. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly, from Tue
A new biography reveals Brown to be a man of exceptional vision and probity – what a contrast with today’s politics
For a while, during the 13 years when Gordon Brown was at the apex of British politics, it became fashionable, and then a cliche, to depict him as a Shakespearean protagonist. He was the Scot who would be king, consumed by vaulting ambition for the throne, or else the powerful man of action, devoured by envy of his onetime friend. But in an illuminating new biography by the political journalist James Macintyre, Brown emerges as something closer to the hero of a Victorian novel: a man who leads an epic life shaped by early misfortune and later tragedy, driven onward by a moral purpose that burns to the very end.
His is a compelling story. Bill Clinton was once described as the most psychologically complex occupant of the Oval Office since Richard Nixon; the same is surely true if you substitute Brown, Downing Street and Winston Churchill. Macintyre hails him as a “titan”, brimming with both intellectual firepower and the urge, rooted in Christian faith, to do good. (When the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was asked to identify who in the current era most closely incarnates the values of the pastor and legendary anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he answered: “Gordon Brown.”) But Macintyre also describes his subject as “famously flawed”, with a volcanic temper, a talent for grudges – he stops speaking to Robin Cook and can barely remember why – a tendency towards “needless suspicion towards his perceived opponents” and a willingness to rely on a phalanx of “sometimes thuggish spin doctors”, expert in the blackest arts.