With the rhetoric not matching the reality, future Olympics hosts need to forge clearer sustainable standards

By the end of the 21st century, only eight of the 21 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics are projected to be cold enough to reliably host the Games due to climate change. Challenges faced by Milano Cortina 2026 organisers such as producing artificial snow, establishing transport links between remote locations and building new infrastructure are likely to become more omnipresent at future editions.

In response to a petition asking the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to prevent fossil fuel companies from sponsoring winter sports, the IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, said the governing body is “having conversations in order to be better” in its approach to climate change. A New Weather Institute report estimated that the fossil fuel giant Eni, carmaker Stellantis and ITA Airways sponsoring Milano Cortina 2026 will induce an additional 40% to the Games’ carbon footprint, enough to melt 3.2 square km of snow cover and 20 million tonnes of glacier ice.

Manager has already undergone a tactical evolution but needs further progress if his side seek highest honours

At first glance, Anthony Gordon appears to have little in common with Sir Keir Starmer but, like the prime minister, the Newcastle forward looks infinitely more surefooted on foreign soil than domestic battlegrounds.

In the Champions League, Gordon has scored 10 goals in nine games. In the Premier League, meanwhile, he has managed a modest three in 21 appearances, two of which were penalties. Whether deployed wide on the left or, following a recent positional shift, at centre-forward, Gordon seems emblematic of a wider Newcastle paradox. Just like Eddie Howe’s team, he is irrepressible one match and ineffective the next.

In the last of the series, the writer returns to three passed-over places where he used to live – Harrow, Clitheroe and Princetown in Devon

• Where tourists seldom tread, parts 1-19

The last in this series of underexplored, overlooked, bypassed towns revisits three places loosely linked to somewhere I’ve lived at different stages of my life. Relocating is grand-scale vacationing, as there are a few months when the new place feels like a holiday destination – fresh, strange, not filtered and tainted by habit or prejudice. Going back years later is part-pilgrimage, part-funeral.

Mistaken identity, dementia, family dysfunction and a murky past entwine in this Spanish horror involving a spritely octogenarian with a penchant for torture

Understandably, we tend to think of elderly women as among the most vulnerable in society, and so that means they make excellent nemeses in horror films because no one thinks that an old dear could do much damage. Unless, that is, she’s got a fire poker, a house full of useful clutter, dementia and a violent streak, as is the case with Alicia, played here by the wonderful Carmen Maura, once the lead in Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Now 80 years old, still spry as a whippet and clearly up for movie mischief, Maura gives Alicia a dirty glint in her eye as she confuses her daughter’s ex-boyfriend Pedro (Daniel Hendler, showing great comic chops) with her late husband Cesar. He apparently turned Alicia on to some BDSM fun and games in their youth, and may have assisted Alicia in covering up a murder or two. Unless she’s just making that part up – it’s hard to tell what’s true or false given her murky memory.

On a dark and stormy night, Pedro arrives at the insistence of his ex Laura (Agustina Liendo) to check on Alicia in the decrepit mansion where she lives alone. Laura is on a road trip with her young daughter (Emma Cetrángolo), but she’s sensed that something’s up, especially since when she called Alicia’s carer, Alicia herself answered the phone. Pedro’s unfortunate resemblance to Cesar gets him lashed to an armchair in chains and duct tape while Alicia quizzes him on their history, with gory results.

The film-maker’s passionate and richly textured new short Papillon (Butterfly) tells the heartbreaking story of French-Jewish swimmer Alfred Nakache, who was stripped of his citizenship in Vichy France

“My father would’ve loved me to swim competitively. I was in a club when I was young, but I always set off a little bit late in races – and so I had no chance of winning.” French animation director Florence Miailhe chuckles about her swimming career being over before it began. Happily, the same isn’t true of film-making. At 70, she may have left it late for her first Oscar nomination, in the animated short category; but the work in question – the passionate and richly textured Papillon (Butterfly), about world-record-holding French-Jewish swimmer Alfred Nakache – gives her every chance of taking the prize.

Miailhe isn’t sure why Nakache – whom her parents met while they were in the resistance – came to mind again in the mid-2010s. “Frankly, I don’t know why my memory was working like that. Maybe because I was thinking of my father,” Miailhe says. Memory is what runs through Papillon, which is swept away on surging tides of reminiscences as Nakache bathes for the final time at Cerbère on the Spanish border (where he died of a heart attack in 1983).

US photographer Jeff Mermelstein has been likened to the winged insect due to his passion for flitting from one attractive subject to the next, as shown in his new book of work

Detectives say tools supplied by Palantir were integral to convictions of a criminal gang that stole £800,000

It was fraud on a grand scale. The “Fuck the Police” criminal gang based in Luton and Romania stole £800,000 in more than 3,000 withdrawals from cash machines in dozens of locations throughout 2024.

The police investigation matched the crime in its complexity. When detectives in Bedfordshire seized the suspects’ two dozen smartphones, they were faced with a mountain of potential digital evidence – 1.4 terabytes of information, according to the authorities, connecting co-conspirators across eastern England and the Bacau region of Romania.

Dark magic, fascism and romance in blitz-stricken London: this exuberant novel is a popcorny delight

When I teach creative writing, I often find myself insisting upon the essential importance of fun: that while the process of writing can and should be challenging, there’s no benefit to be had in martyrdom, and actually a level of relish is neither an indulgence or a distraction, but pretty compelling evidence of an author having found her proper form and subject. It’s what keeps you coming back. If you aren’t bent gigglingly over your manuscript, like a stock photo model alone with her salad, then what’s the point of any of it? There’s a stable of classics I draw on to evidence this claim, great novels where a big part of the appeal is feeling as though you’ve stumbled into a very interesting person’s exact idea of a very good time: Woolf’s Orlando, Nabokov’s Pnin, Poor Things by Alasdair Gray, The Pisces by Melissa Broder. A lot of Austen, but maybe most of all Emma. And from now on, I’ll be adding Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch to the list.

His fourth work of fiction in a genre-spanning oeuvre, Nonesuch is a historical fantasy set during the second world war, every paragraph of which is packed with authorial zest. The novel opens in London, August 1939: war has been declared, but hasn’t yet made its reality felt in the city’s streets, and Iris Hawkins, an ambitious office clerk, makes her way through the sun-baked West End in a slinky dress. One half of a disastrous date later, she’s being whisked away to a DIY surrealist film club in bohemian Bloomsbury – not her scene at all – and two extremely fateful introductions: the first to Geoffrey Hale, a sweetly apprehensive BBC television engineer; and the second to the object of Geoffrey’s guileless infatuation, one Lady Lalage Cunningham, an icy aristocratic beauty with amazing hair and worrisome political sympathies. Cue chaos. Nonesuch follows the bolshy Iris from her seedy summer’s night through a regrettable Hampstead hook-up, and, eventually, neck-deep into a time-travelling plot by “magical fascist lunatics” to assassinate Winston Churchill. The novel is a pleasing pasticcio of romance, occultism, non-Euclidean geometry and airborne adventure across the blitz-stricken rooftops of London. It is difficult to imagine it would hold together quite so well in other hands than Spufford’s.

In Japan to announce her switch to Uniqlo, the British No 1 says frustrations only fuel the fire as she looks to Indian Wells and beyond

Emma Raducanu has no immediate plans to appoint a new coach as she attempts to kickstart a frustrating season in the US next month. The British No 1 will play at Indian Wells and in the Miami Open in March without a full-time replacement for Francisco Roig – her ninth coach since she turned professional – with whom she parted company after her second-round exit at the Australian Open in January.

“Right now I wouldn’t say I’m actively looking for a coach,” Raducanu says in Tokyo, where on Tuesday she was unveiled as a global brand ambassador for the Japanese clothes retailer Uniqlo after ending her association with Nike.

Exclusive: Documents show Andrea Jenkyns asked how she could help firm after major gas find in Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire’s Reform party mayor, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has courted the head of an American oil and gas dynasty in the hope of bringing fracking to the county, the Guardian can reveal.

Egdon Resources, a British subsidiary of the US fracker Heyco Energy, announced a major gas discovery in Lincolnshire’s Gainsborough Trough last year. Jenkyns, who became the first mayor of Greater Lincolnshire in May, reached out personally to the company asking how she “could help with your recent gas find in my county”, according to records released by the mayoral authority in response to a freedom of information request.

British Retail Consortium warns over ‘endemic’ violence towards shop workers and says theft is causing anxiety

Criminal gangs are “systematically” targeting shops, retailers have warned, with 5.5m incidents of shoplifting detected last year, costing the industry an estimated £400m.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned over “endemic” violence towards shop workers – who faced an average 36 incidents of violence involving a weapon every day last year – and said high levels of theft was causing “anxiety” among retail staff.

On the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion, we look back on some of the powerful photojournalism documenting the conflict

A fuss-free, comforting supper to see you through the last days of winter

This is everyday cooking, the kind that comes naturally in winter. Carrots are always around and often forgotten, but they give a lot when you treat them properly. The saffron brings warmth and colour, and always makes me think of home. February can feel quiet and grey, and this stew suits that mood. It is comforting without being heavy, made for evenings when you want something ready on the stove and bread on the table, eaten calmly and enjoyed without any fuss.

Firm does not specify amount but seeks reimbursement after supreme court ruled against president last week

FedEx sued the US government on Monday, seeking a refund for the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump that were deemed illegal by the US supreme court last week.

The lawsuit marks the first attempt by a major company to receive reimbursement of their share of an estimated $175bn in levies after the highest court found Trump had overstepped his authority in issuing the tariffs. Other companies are expected to follow.

Charles Kushner, father of president’s son-in-law Jared, had been summoned to explain US comments relating to death of far-right activist

Donald Trump’s ambassador to France has been banned from meeting French government ministers after failing to show up for a meeting at the foreign ministry to explain US comments about the killing of a far-right activist.

Charles Kushner, whose son Jared is married to the US president’s oldest daughter, Ivanka, was summoned to the 7pm meeting by the foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, after the US embassy in Paris reposted state department comments about the case.

Controversial doctor steps down as contributor after Epstein files reveal communication between the two men

Controversial longevity expert Dr Peter Attia has resigned from his post as a CBS News contributor after correspondence between Attia and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was made public.

The Hollywood Reporter first broke the news of Attia’s departure.

The actor killed himself, his family said in a statement that aimed to raise awareness of ‘his nearly two-decade battle with bipolar disorder’

Robert Carradine, a member of the famed acting family who was known for his roles in Revenge of the Nerds and Lizzie McGuire, has died aged 71.

Carradine killed himself after years of living with bipolar disorder, his family said in a statement which they said they hoped would raise awareness.

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.”

With the Russian military performing poorly, Ukraine is clarifying strategy and pushing back with modest success

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now entering its fifth grim year, has already gone on longer than the entire fight on the eastern front in the second world war. The Soviets marched from the gates of Leningrad to Berlin in a little over 15 months in 1944-45; today the Russian rate of gain in Pokrovsk in Ukraine is 70 metres a day, in Kupiansk, 23 metres, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

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.

• Updates from the opening ODI at Allan Border Field

• Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email

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!