As senior politicians gathered for a lavish celebration, mass killings underscored the country’s deepening security crisis
It has been described as Nigeria’s wedding of the year – and it is only February.
This month, five sons and five daughters of the junior defence minister Bello Matawalle married their spouses in an opulent six-day celebration in Abuja. The sheer scale of the extravaganza in the capital prompted one of the comperes to exclaim on Instagram: “First of its kind … @guinnessworldrecords check this out.”
The gains are trivial, given Ukraine’s size, amounting to 1,865 sq miles during 2025 (about 0.8% of the country) – so the idea touted by the Russians, sometimes accepted by a credulous White House, that Ukraine is suffering a slow-motion defeat, is not accurate. In reality, even allowing for the fact that hundreds of thousands of homes are without electricity, heating and water after Russian bombing, Ukraine is clarifying its strategy and pushing back with modest success.
Andrew Lownie spent years investigating the greed and excesses of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson for his book Entitled. Here, the writer reveals the barriers he faced in getting to the truth
The Saturday morning I meet Andrew Lownie, the author of “the most devastating royal biography ever written” (according to the Daily Mail), the front page of every newspaper carries the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Some have aerial shots of the police arriving to search his home, most including the now infamous photograph of his face in the back of the police car. He looks hunted, because he literally has been, but his expression is curiously blank, its most legible emotion grievance. One journalist, Lownie says, reported late on the night of Friday’s arrest that: “Andrew still can’t see what the problem is. He thinks he’s been hard done by. He’s obsessed with other details – whether he can take his horses up to Norfolk, who’s going to get the dogs, where he’s going to park his car. It’s a sort of disassociation.”
Lownie’s office, in his home a stone’s throw from parliament, is a monument to the success of his book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York (along with his other books: one on the Mountbattens, one on Guy Burgess, one to come on Prince Philip). One desk is piled high with books about Andrew and Sarah, some of them by Ferguson herself, others warts-and-all, kiss-and-tell accounts from confidants and clairvoyants. Lownie has stacks of rejected freedom of information requests, from UK Trade and Investment; the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; the Information Commissioner – “They sometimes took so long to respond that they haven’t even downloaded the request before it expires.” He approached 3,000 people from all the way through Mountbatten-Windsor’s life; only a tenth of them would speak to him, which to me feels quite unsurprising, and yet Lownie is indignant. “I wrote to ambassadors, and they said ‘not interested’. This was a matter of public interest. Others, very cheerily when I wrote to them a third time, said ‘nice try’, as if it was some sort of joke. These are the guys I want in the dock, in parliament, on oath. This is the thing that makes me upset. I, perhaps naively, expect standards in public life.”
We could never have imagined such tolerance of Putin’s criminal war. We normalise the horror just to survive
On a bright February day, over cups of coffee, my team gathers for a strategy meeting at our office in Lviv, 80km from the border with the EU. Our cultural and research institution – an NGO called Index – documents Ukrainians’ experiences of the war. The coffee is important: our charging station can power a coffee machine during electricity outages. A member of our board from Kyiv, which has suffered most from Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter, delights in this luxury. She is used to climbing 14 flights of stairs with water canisters and boiling coffee on a portable stove in her frozen apartment.
As we speak, our screens flash with an alert: a Russian ballistic missile is heading our way. “What shall we do?” a colleague wants to know. I want to finish both the coffee and the discussion. In a minute, we hear the sound of an explosion not far away. The missile has been intercepted. We resume our pondering about how to ensure long-term justice by sharing individuals’ stories of wartime Ukraine.
Sasha Dovzhyk is a writer, editor and cultural manager. She is head of INDEX, a Lviv-based cultural and research institute that documents experiences of the war.
I suffered with my mystery illness for decades before gaining a diagnosis. Could retraining my brain be the answer?
At the Croydon secondary school I attended in the late 1990s, the deputy headmistress was a stocky woman with a military haircut who patrolled the corridors in voluminous outfits patterned in shades of brown. The outfits were much discussed, not charitably, by the teenage girls in her charge – as was her voice, which made you think of a blunt knife being drawn across a rough surface. Thirty years later, I can still hear that terrible voice refer to my “mystery illness”. In truth, the deputy headmistress never actually spoke those words – they were included in a typed letter she sent to my parents concerning my prolonged absence from school. Still, the indicting force of five syllables is as distinct in my ear as if she were looming over me.
I was 11 and, after coming down with a normal-seeming virus, I simply hadn’t got better. Instead, my system seemed to have become stuck, sunk into some grey, unchanging state. I had a headache, a sore throat and swollen lymph nodes, body pains both dull and sharp, fatigue and weakness, plus something I later learned went by the name of “postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome”: a faintness and momentary blacking out upon sitting or standing up. When I list the symptoms in this way, as a collection of discrete and manageable items, it seems false. I wish things felt discrete and manageable. Instead, being ill felt – and still feels – more like a thick, obscuring cloud. When that cloud descends, my blood feels like old glue mixed with whatever you’d scrape off the bottom of a Swiffer. During bad episodes, I can’t quite locate my mind, or my personality. Reading is impossible. TV is abrasive. Breathing feels effortful, forming words is a strain.
Booking system freezes and screens crash amid rush of fans trying to secure tickets to 21 March free concert
Tickets for BTS’s comeback concert in central Seoul were snapped up almost immediately on Monday night, with authorities expecting an estimated 260,000 fans to descend for the K-pop group’s first full performance in nearly four years.
At one point, more than 100,000 people flooded the booking website when sales opened at 8pm for the free concert at Gwanghwamun square on 21 March, causing screens to crash and booking systems to freeze.
1st over: India 0-1 (Mandhana 0, Verma 0) Schutt almost has two! Verma tries to counterattack but mistimes a straight drive that is just out of reach of the bowler’s left hand in her follow through. Outstanding opening over from the experienced South Australian, who wasn’t selected in the original ODI squad, but has come in today with immediate effect, hooping the ball into the right-handers from over the wicket.
Schutt’s second delivery swings in from wide on the crease, hits a good line and length, and jags massively off the pitch, pinning Rawal on the crease. That looks very out. The Indian opener reviews but DRS does not save her. What a start for Australia!
Ever since news broke that 34 Australians were leaving Roj camp in north-east Syria to travel to Australia, their status and travel plans have been at the centre of a political maelstrom. The Albanese government has insisted there would be no repatriation of the 11 Australian women and their 23 children, whose journey was halted on 16 February when they were sent back to the detention camp.
The newly minted opposition under Angus Taylor has demanded answers to the level of assistance the Albanese government has provided to the group, including the issuing of passports, and the Coalition has now proposed new Australian laws to criminalise non-government financial and logistical support that helps the families return to Australia.
Standing in line at Ikea’s click and collect service to pick up a large plush orangutan, a wave of fatigue washes over me.
Not only because I have been in transit for almost 24 hours after a series of flight delays, and this is my last stop before collapsing in a heap on my living room floor, but also for the reason I, and so many others, have made this journey.
Preparations for the nation’s second appearance at the tournament have been impacted by the troubling events at home
This week, Iran’s women’s football team is expected to touch down in Australia to compete in their second Women’s Asian Cup. But exactly who will arrive, or what condition they will be in when they get here, is anyone’s guess.
Amid a backdrop of anti-government protests and subsequent violent crackdowns by the authorities over the past few months, Iran’s top women footballers have been struggling to prepare for one of the biggest tournaments of their lives.
One officer killed and two others wounded after blast at Savyolovsky railway station square in central Moscow
A man detonated an explosive device beside a police patrol car in central Moscow early on Tuesday, killing one officer and wounding two others, the Russian interior ministry said.
The blast occurred just after midnight at Savyolovsky railway station square, according to the ministry’s statement on Telegram. Savyolovsky station, in northern Moscow, is one of the capital’s main railway hubs.
After the US president tore up the global economic order in 2025, Japan was one among the countries scrambling to strike a deal. They pledged to dramatically increase investment in the US in exchange for lower US tariffs on Japanese exports.
Finnish thinktank calls for stricter sanctions enforcement while also finding Russian oil revenues have fallen amid discounting. What we know on day 1,462
Country follows Australia in saying it would support any UK government proposals to remove former prince after arrest
New Zealand has become the second Commonwealth country to back the removal of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the royal line of succession after his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, said on Tuesday: “If the UK government proposes to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the order of succession, New Zealand would support it.”
Detectives have found what they believe are human remains on Sydney’s outskirts as they search for the missing 85-year-old Chris Baghsarian.
New South Wales police said on Tuesday that detectives investigating the mistaken kidnapping of Baghsarian had discovered remains near a golf club in Pitt Town about 8am on Tuesday. They said investigations into the man’s disappearance continued.
China has opposed the ‘smearing of its nuclear policy’ while insisting Beijing would not ‘engage in any nuclear arms race’
The US has accused China of dramatically expanding its nuclear arsenal, while doubling down on claims that Beijing had conducted secret nuclear tests.
Washington said the lapsing of New Start – the last treaty between top nuclear powers the US and Russia – earlier this month presented the possibility of striking a “better agreement” that included Beijing.
Vulnerable young people, partners of drug users and victims of sexual violence also among those afflicted in world’s fastest growing HIV epidemic
The night her baby’s heart stopped, Clare* blamed herself. Had she taken her out in the cold too much? Had she damaged her lungs by drinking iced water when she was pregnant? She fixated on Andi’s tiny chest, willing it to suck in air, rushing her to hospital in Fiji for the second time in as many days.
All through the early hours Andi* clung to life. Doctors performed CPR several times, puncturing the month-old baby’s chest to insert a drain, removing fluid from around her lungs. “She was really, really sick and they didn’t know what was going on … she was getting weaker and weaker,” Clare says. She sat by her daughter’s bedside. She prayed.
Details of offer not immediately available as Paramount looks to beat rival Netflix for control of Warner Bros
Paramount Skydance has increased its bid for Warner Bros Discovery, Reuters reported on Monday, raising the stakes in the bidding war for the historic studio and its broadcast and cable TV assets in an effort to beat out rival suitor Netflix.
It could not immediately be determined how the bid was revised. Warner Bros and Paramount declined to comment, while Netflix could not immediately be reached.
Dominic Ethan Stewart was among 19 killed when vehicle veered off road and plunged down mountainside
Tributes have been paid to a young British hiker who was among 19 people killed when a packed passenger bus veered off a treacherous stretch of road and plunged 200 metres down a steep mountainside in Nepal.
Twenty-five others were injured in the pre-dawn crash in the Himalayan foothills on Monday. The bus was carrying 44 people, including a number of tourists.
One of Australia’s best-known and loved drag queens, Sydney’s Maxi Shield, has died after being diagnosed with throat cancer, prompting tributes from around the world.
Kristopher Elliot, who performed drag under the name Maxi Shield, was 51. Shield was a mainstay of the Sydney drag scene and brought Australian drag to the world as contestant in season one of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under.
Collins ‘honoured and ecstatic’ to play Hepburn, in film charting the dramatic making of the 1961 romantic comedy
Lily Collins, the star of Netflix hit Emily in Paris, has been cast to play Audrey Hepburn in a new film about the making of her 1961 romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
The as-yet-untitled film will be based on Sam Wasson’s nonfiction book Fifth Avenue, 5 AM: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, with a script written by Alena Smith, creator of the Apple TV series Dickinson. No director has been announced yet.
Written by Mem Fox with illustrations by Judy Horacek, Green Sheep was recently voted third-best Australian picture book of all time by Guardian readers
When Judy Horacek drew a little green sheep and posted it to her website, she never could have imagined what would come of it. The drawing caught the eye of acclaimed children’s author Mem Fox; fast-forward 20-odd years, their picture book collaboration Where Is the Green Sheep? has since been published in 11 countries, sold more than 2.5m copies, and, just last month, was voted the third-best Australian picture book of all time by thousands of Guardian readers.
Among other things, the picture book has spawned plush toys, a set of postage stamps, a commemorative 20¢ coin – and now a stage show. Horacek has joined forces with Monkey Baa theatre company, one of Australia’s leading professional theatre companies for young audiences, to bring a stage adaptation of the Green Sheep to 80 venues across Australia throughout 2026 and 2027.
It’s apparently the first “agentic AI dating app”. An AI personality named “Fate” interviews users, runs data matches on their hopes and dreams, then suggests five potential matches based on the hard data of observable complementary language patterning, “No swiping involved!”.
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