New EP Days of Ash features songs about Renee Good, Iranian protesters and other political topics, and precedes new ‘defiantly joyful’ album later in 2026
U2 have released their first collection of new music since 2017 – a politically charged EP entitled Days of Ash, which focuses on a series of high-profile global deaths including the killing of Renee Good by ICE agents.
Good, a mother of three children who was killed on 7 January while protesting against ICE activity in Minneapolis, is the subject of the opening song, American Obituary.
Russia is back in love with the Games and a return to athletes competing under their own flag at LA in two years’ time seems highly likely
First came the reverberating cheers. Then a deluge of soft toys lobbed from the stands. But across the face of the brilliant Russian skater Adeliia Petrosian there was only the faintest of smiles. For now.
So far at these Winter Olympics, a Russian is yet to win a medal. But there is a live possibility that could change on Thursday when the 18-year-old Petrosian, who sits in fifth after the short programme, steps on to the ice again shortly after 9pm.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy says ‘no agreement’ has been made during Ukraine-Russia peace talks taking place in Geneva. The US are brokering talks but expectations remain low - while Ukrainians continue to face Russian strikes amid subzero temperatures. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s foreign correspondent in Kyiv, Luke Harding.
The idea of the former PM being driven by delusions of grandeur runs through Channel 4’s new documentary. Still, there is fun in seeing the world as it was
There’s a funny moment towards the end of The Tony Blair Story, Channel 4’s three-part documentary about the former prime minister, in which Blair is asked to introspect about his own personality. For the previous three hours or so we have enjoyed a series of talking heads picking over his premiership. Now he breaks the fourth wall and, with something like incredulity, says what’s the point of asking him to identify his own weaknesses when all he’ll give is a “politician’s answer”. Reminded he’s no longer a politician, Blair replies as honestly as at any point in the encounter: “You’re always a politician.”
It is one of the more satisfying exchanges in Michael Waldman’s series, which, depending on your view, is either a futile exercise in confirming one’s existing prejudices about Blair, or more than three hours of great telly. I’m inclined towards the latter, partly for the enjoyment it offers of being yanked back to the memory of all those old horribles. Nothing dates quicker than an out of office politician and it’s a particular nostalgia that’s triggered by footage of Robin Cook at John Smith’s funeral, or Max Hastings describing Blair’s henchmen as “absolutely ruthless bastards”, or Jack Straw being interviewed in a black velvet jacket like something from Death on the Nile.
Hard disks and magnetic tape have a limited lifespan, but glass storage developed by Microsoft could last millennia
Some cultures used stone, others used parchment. Some even, for a time, used floppy disks. Now scientists have come up with a new way to keep archived data safe that, they say, could endure for millennia: laser-writing in glass.
From personal photos that are kept for a lifetime to business documents, medical information, data for scientific research, national records and heritage data, there is no shortage of information that needs to be preserved for very long periods of time.
Economic uncertainty drives customers to snap up 22-carat gold bars and coins or sell off unworn jewellery
“With everything that’s going on in the economy and Donald Trump banging his chest against the world, we’re finding there’s no trust in the banks because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Sandeep Kanda says.
Kanda is the owner of Sunny Jewellers, situated along a stretch of Leicester known as the Golden Mile, and is a beneficiary of consumers seeking alternative investments amid the uncertainty.
Xalet del Catllaràs contains elements of architect’s naturalistic style, expressed in works such as Park Güell and Sagrada Família
An elegant modernist building in the mountains north of Barcelona, originally constructed to house engineers establishing a nearby mine, has been confirmed as a work of Antoni Gaudí, Catalonia’s most celebrated and distinctive architect.
The Xalet del Catllaràs, about 80 miles from Barcelona in the county of Berguedà, was built in 1905 and commissioned by Eusebi Güell, Gaudí’s lifelong patron. Güell was the owner of a cement company with mines in the region and he needed somewhere to house the engineers, many of them British, who would help extract the coal for his factories.
As her nightmarish turn as orange-wigged child-catcher Aunt Gladys takes her to Oscars night, the actor talks about surviving ‘brutal’ Hollywood, the fury that almost drove her from the US – and still being homeless after the wildfires
It’s a full-time gig being an Oscar nominee, what with the luncheons and fittings, the interviews and photocalls. It’s a wonder anyone ever gets any actual work done. “I’m tired,” says Amy Madigan, grinning crookedly on a video call. It’s noon in Los Angeles but the living room curtains behind her are shut tight. I worry she may have just pulled an all-nighter.
The last time Madigan was nominated was in 1985. She played Gene Hackman’s brittle daughter in a blue-collar drama called Twice in a Lifetime (the title now feels apt). Awards season, she points out, was shorter and sweeter back then. “Now it’s a big unruly beast. ‘We want to speak to Amy!’ I’ve been doing this since November. Do you not think people are sick of talking about us and seeing our faces? Haven’t you people seen enough?”
US ambassador accused of interference after labelling inquiry into suspected illegal circumcisions ‘antisemitic’
A diplomatic row is escalating between Belgium and the US, with Donald Trump’s ambassador refusing to apologise for accusing his host country of antisemitism and reportedly threatening to bar a socialist politician from travelling to the US.
Bill White, a staunch ally of the president like many US ambassadors, on Monday demanded Belgium drop a “ridiculous” and “antisemitic” investigation into three Jewish men suspected of performing circumcisions without medical qualifications.
County has highest number of reinstated elections following decision not to delay them for 30 English councils
Labour figures in the county with the highest number of reinstated council elections, following the government’s recent U-turn, have said they fear the party will be “annihilated” when voters go to the polls in May.
The polls had expected to be postponed pending a reorganisation of local government in the county and a move to unitary authorities, but earlier this week the local government secretary, Steve Reed, scrapped plans to delay the elections, after Reform UK threatened a legal challenge.
An Italian word that roughly translates to the grit and fierce determination upon which Juventus have historically based their relentless, never-say-die attitude, “grinta” was fairly conspicuous by its absence in Istanbul on Tuesday night. Instead it was replaced by a collective performance that had all the structural integrity of a soggy cannolo. Having come from a goal down to lead at half-time courtesy of two Teun Koopmeiners goals, Juve did show a modicum of resilience in their Bigger Cup shellacking at the hands of Galatasaray, but only before a second-half collapse so preposterous it suggested their half-time refreshments had been spiked with LSD or magic mushrooms. While there was always a decent chance an ensemble cast of Galatasaray Expendables featuring Davinson Sánchez, Lucas Torreira, Victor Osimhen, Leroy Sané, Mauro Icardi and Ilkay Gündogan would give their Italian visitors a good run for their money over two legs, few could have foreseen them spanking five goals past the Bianconeri in the first one.
Re: yesterday’s Football Daily tour of refereeing nightmares across Europe, I’d like to wave an assistant referee’s flag for England. Darren England’s immaculate reffing of the Macclesfield v Brentford FA Cup tie showed it can be done, and done very well, without VAR” – John French.
Re: the question in yesterday’s Football Daily: ‘Who wants to be a referee?’ Well, I do. I love football. I am a very weak player. If I do not referee games, those games may not get played. The only thing worse than a game with several refereeing errors is a game where no referees are present and players try to make calls themselves. I have been part of that, too. What would help is more excellent former players who choose to referee” – George Affeldt.
Dare I make a suggestion from across the pond to help remedy football’s terrible implementation of VAR? Virtually none of America’s conduct is praiseworthy these days, but the one thing we have done well is the way video reviews have been implemented. The key has been the challenge system, rather than reviewing almost every important call, as in the Premier League. Managers/coaches are given a very limited number of challenges to on-field decisions, and they need to decide whether or not to challenge almost immediately. If their challenge is correct, the call is overturned and they get another to use later. If they are wrong, they lose the ability to challenge any important ref howlers that might be just around the corner. The video booth can’t intrude with some piece of minutiae that no one on the field noticed, and we don’t typically have 1,057 controversies per game. There is one downside for fans: highly entertaining manager meltdowns are now a rarity here. If you really believe a call is wrong, you challenge it, and if you don’t have a challenge because you were wrong in your last one, you eat some humble pie, something the former-player pundits of the Premier League should consider adding to their diets” – Steve Plever.
Driven by fine performances from Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall, Lance Hammer’s comeback is unbearable in its tragic candour and essential in its moral questioning
This inexpressibly painful and sad story – featuring angry, complex, brilliant late-career performances from Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall – is about dementia, the endgame of care and the decisions that need to be made when the spouse-carer is as vulnerable as the patient (and whose right it is to take those decisions). It is about the nature of intimacy between the two; and about the moment this becomes a problem for the grownup children with a conflicting sense of their own responsibilities.
Queen at Sea is directed by indie US film-maker Lance Hammer, absent since his 2008 Sundance winner, Ballast. This is an almighty comeback, a lacerating movie bearing comparison with Michael Haneke’s Amour or Gaspar Noé’s Vortex. It concludes with a heartbreakingly ironic and enigmatic final sequence refusing the traditional final cadence; a diptych of love, contrasting the pleasures and expectations of intimacy across the generations.
What made the Manchester United co-owner’s anti-immigrant screed so revolting was his brazen willingness to say it all out loud. Remind you of anyone?
Did British petrochemicals billionaire and Manchester United’s controlling minority owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, really mean it when he proclaimed to Sky News that “the UK is being colonized by immigrants”?
Is Ratcliffe simply a gutter racist or actually making a cynical political play that may redound to his benefit down the line when Britain faces down yet another period of political upheaval as the country’s old factions continue to fracture? There’s reasonable debate to be had there.
‘I’m more connected to this car for sure,’ he says
Lewis Hamilton believes he is in the “best place” he has been at Ferrari, with a new car that carries his “DNA”.
The seven-time champion failed to take a podium place for the first time and finished sixth in the drivers’ championship, behind his teammate Charles Leclerc in fifth in his debut season. By the end, he was clearly disenchanted, describing his first year at Ferrari as a “nightmare”.
A local dog has missed out on a historic cross-country medal at the Winter Olympics despite a lung-bursting surge in the homestretch.
Nazgul, who according to NPR lives at a nearby hotel in Tesero, broke on to the course on Wednesday morning and sprinted for the line behind Croatia’s Tena Hadzic as she came to the end of the qualifying race for the women’s team cross-country sprint. Even if he had completed the entire race, Nazgul’s time would not have counted as he is male. And a dog.
I was detained for co-writing a op-ed about Gaza as a student at Tufts. My experience has only made me feel more connected to others facing oppression
It started off as a normal Tuesday. On 25 March 2025 I reviewed applications from university students applying for a summer research position at my lab. I told friends I would bring pastries from Harvard Square for the Friday dinner we were planning. I finalized my schedule for an upcoming child development conference. I worked on my dissertation proposal.
The day was busy but not unusual – until I left home after quickly dressing for an iftar dinner at the interfaith center. What followed was my first personal encounter with human-made trauma through state violence.
By repealing the EPA’s determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health, the president is denying reality itself
The climate crisis is killing people. These deaths are measurable, documented and ongoing. Concluding otherwise is just playing pretend. Studies explain the mechanics, but lived experience supplies the truth. The people who suffer the consequences see the fire rising and water closing in. They need their government’s help.
Despite that, the president of the United States stood at a microphone last Thursday and abdicated his duty to them. “It has nothing to do with public health,” he claimed about the climate crisis while announcing that the federal government would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding”, a determination that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. “This is all a scam, a giant scam.”
‘The Peugeot 103 is iconic in Morocco: a symbol of social mobility. But my rider, a living sculpture, is so overstimulated he can’t choose which way to go – and ends up going nowhere’
This image, Parabomobile, shows a living sculpture I created. A man is riding through the desert on a road near Marrakech that is still partly under construction. He rides a Peugeot 103 motorcycle and carries 21 satellite dishes – each pointing in a different direction. But the person driving the motorbike is so overstimulated, he cannot choose which way to go – and ends up going nowhere.
It is part of a wider multidisciplinary project, Paraboles, that is an inquiry into Moroccan people’s identity, our imagination and the way we see the world. It can feel to Moroccans – and those in other postcolonial countries – that their minds have been colonised as well as their land.
From fight scenes lasting for one punch to plots resolved in 45 seconds, smartphone-friendly vertical dramas are growing by 8,000% year on year. Here’s a guide to the wild new medium
If you haven’t heard of vertical dramas, chances are you will soon. These quick, grabby series – usually split into minute-long episodes – have risen unstoppably over the past couple of years, and now Hollywood is taking an interest.
Last year, the former Showtime executive Jana Winograde announced MicroCo, a studio devoted to vertical drama, and claimed that she was shocked by the amount of top-tier talent that has approached her. Two months before, former Miramax boss Bill Block launched GammaTime, which promises original microdramas by CSI creator Anthony E Zuiker.
Latest round of US-mediated peace negotiations come to close in Geneva with war set to enter its fifth year next week
The latest round of US-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Geneva on Wednesday ended without a major breakthrough, as fighting continues in a war that will enter its fifth year next week.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no agreement had been reached on the thorniest questions at the negotiations in Switzerland, accusing Moscow of “trying to drag out” the process.
Film-maker Scott Cooper describes how his small role in a civil war drama starring Duvall led to a happy, lifelong friendship with the great actor, who died earlier this week
I first met Robert Duvall in a muddy field in Maryland in 2001, on the set of Gods and Generals. It was a Warner Bros civil war epic, the kind of production where the scale alone made you feel small. I was playing a low-ranking Confederate aide-de-camp to General Stonewall Jackson. I was young, unsure of myself, and painfully aware of exactly where I stood in the hierarchy of things.
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