Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez says he opposes ‘repeating the mistakes of the past’
Sánchez says that Spain will leverage its position as an EU and Nato member state to demand a cessation of hostilities and a return to diplomatic talks.
He says “we must demand a firm resolution from the United States, Iran, and Israel to stop [this conflict] before it is too late.”
My family is in Tehran; I am in Abu Dhabi. Across the region, ordinary people are paying the price for these attacks
Since Saturday, my mind has been torn between the place I live, Abu Dhabi, and Tehran, which has been the focus of my work and research for more than 15 years, and where I still have family. When I saw that Israel and the US had attacked Iran, I started worrying for family, thinking about potential consequences. But I barely had time to consider that before Donald Trump announced that this was about regime change. At that moment, I knew this was going to be big – worse than last June – and that it would lead into a regional schism. Predictably, Iran’s response started shortly after: first against Israel, then against states across the Gulf region, including the United Arab Emirates. It all followed the worst-case escalation scenarios we had been outlining since June, and especially since January, when – in the midst of protests – Donald Trump said “help” was on its way.
I kept on trying to reach family when the internet there was working, which is, at best, for a few minutes a day. Each conversation is short, practical: are you OK? Is your area affected?
Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi is an associate fellow at the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa programme
Ryan Coogler’s artful action-horror offers superb performances, rich storytelling, historical detail – and a jook joint scene that tears the roof off
It’s a symptom of the modern entertainment landscape that movies are now either commercially successful or critically acclaimed, but rarely both. Look over the highest-grossing films of 2025 and it’s a familiar roll call of sequels and spin-offs; look over the critics’ favourites and they are mostly fine movies that not enough people watched – all hoping for a boost from awards season. But Sinners ticked both boxes: it was a smash hit (the seventh highest grossing picture in the US and virtually the only original movie in the top 20), and it was a critical triumph (97% on Rotten Tomatoes, 84% on Metacritic). And most importantly of all, Sinners was a true original, combining action-horror excitement with deep, rich, personal storytelling. There’s nothing more gratifying than seeing a film-maker swing for the fences and actually knock it out of the park; against expectations, 39-year-old Ryan Coogler did just that.
What’s more, Sinners contains what’s surely one of the most transcendently cinematic moments of the year: the scene when blues singer Preacher Boy (Miles Caton) performs his new song I Lied to You for a rowdy Mississippi jook joint, which is powerful enough to pierce “the veil between life and death, the past and the future”. As the song builds, reality breaks down. African tribal musicians, Chinese opera performers, modern-day turntablists, P-Funk-style electric guitarists: all join the swirling revelry. Coogler literally tears the roof off the joint: it catches fire from all this energy and we’re in another realm of space and time. Give the film an Oscar just for this!
Detainees accused of coming from the US with intent to sow chaos and attack military units on Communist-ruled island
Cuban prosecutors have formally charged six people with crimes of terrorism after a US-flagged speedboat was involved in a deadly shootout with Cuba’s coast guard last week.
The US-based Cuban defendants are accused of packing a boat with weapons and heading toward Cuba in hopes of destabilising the government in Havana.
“A few weeks ago, Sandra Jessen started for FC Köln against Essen,” notes James Vortkamp-Tong. “Is this the first time a player has contained the opposing side’s name in their own?”
It’s not actually the first time Sandra Jessen has played against Essen, as Alicia Butteriss points out. “From what I can tell she first started against Essen, for Bayer Leverkusen, on the last day of the 2018-19 Frauen Bundesliga,” writes Alicia. “It would be remiss of me not to add that she scored both of Köln’s goals when they beat Essen 2-1 near the start of this season.”
After ninth red card this season, Chelsea are running out of time to fix discipline issues and must turn things around at Aston Villa
It is natural for young people to feel they have all the time in the world. For Liam Rosenior, though, part of the challenge with Chelsea’s tyros is making them knuckle down. They have to realise the competition is about to heat up. The sun was shining at training this week and the warmer weather brings a greater sense of urgency. The yellow footballs have gone into storage, signalling that the business end of the season is approaching.
“Today it’s the first time we trained with the white balls,” Rosenior said. “That’s normally a sign we’re into that period. When those white balls come out, we can’t make those mistakes that we’re making. You’re running out of time – and that’s the message myself and my staff have given the players this morning.”
From the World Cup to the Women’s Asian Cup and the AFC Champions League, it is unclear what may happen next
A question about the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the head coach of the Iran women’s team before the Asian Cup was quickly, and unsurprisingly, shut down by officials in Australia. It is hard to know what Marziyeh Jafari could have said with events back home moving at an almost unimaginable pace. The former leader of Iran cast a large shadow over all walks of life and football was no different, though apparently he was not a fan.
But like many dictators he understood and was wary of the power of the country’s most popular sport, and the passions it provoked, especially when thousands of people came together. When times were tense, games were played behind closed doors. The heroes of Melbourne, who came from behind to win a playoff in Australia to qualify for the 1998 World Cup, were told not to come straight home to Tehran as the city celebrated. At that tournament there was more public joy after the famous 2-1 win against USAbut Khamenei’s statement was not the most sporting. “Tonight again the strong and arrogant opponents felt the bitter taste of defeat at your hands,” he told the team. “Be happy that you have made the Iranian nation happy.”
A new exhibition at Kunsthaus Zurich revisits the Belgian artist whose wild women of the demimonde scandalised the belle epoque – and still shock audiences today
During an oppressively hot week in Paris in 1878, the bohemian Belgian artist Félicien Rops painted a picture of a woman walking her pet pig. In it, the woman is blindfolded and naked – bar some stockings, long black gloves and a jaunty feathered hat – and the pig has a cute, pink curlicue of a tail. Pornocrates – which roughly translates as “the ruler of fornication” – is an eye worm. Once seen, it’s hard to forget.
Rops recalled composing his most famous work “in an overheated apartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever conducive towards production or even towards reproduction”. As viewers of Laboratory of Lust, a new exhibition on Rops at Kunsthaus Zurich, will discover to their amazement, or perhaps indignation, mating and painting were indelibly linked in Rops’ psyche.
Thirty-five years on from his debut collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Self takes aim at London’s chattering classes in an excoriating vision of moral decline
In Will Self’s 1991 debut collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity, an art therapist named Misha Gurney finds himself involuntarily sectioned in the psychiatric hospital where he is employed. In the title story, Misha’s father is revealed as a friend and early associate of the hospital’s chief psychiatrist Zack Busner, a recurring character in Self’s fiction until the present day.
In his first incarnation, Busner is engaged in testing the titular theory, by whose metric “the surface of the collective psyche was like the worn, stripy ticking of an old mattress. If you punched into its coiled hide at any point, another part would spring up – there was no action without reaction, no laughter without tears, no normality without its pissing accompanist.”
Will it be the players’ fault if a slightly cobbled together England goes down in Roman flames after a selection that suggests the head coach’s patience snapped?
The temperatures are rising, the daffodils are out and, within the England camp, the time has come for a major spring clean. Steve Borthwick has certainly snapped on his marigolds with rare vigour in his bid to banish his side’s February blues, with most areas of his team sheet either hosed down or completely flushed away after the less‑than‑fragrant performance against Ireland.
A grand total of 12 changes, three of them positional, is almost approaching Thames Water-levels of murky discharge. Not since the infamous tombola days of the 1960s and 70s, when England’s selectors sometimes called up any old Tom, Dick or Harrovian, has a red rose head coach deviated more strikingly from the strong and stable gospel of devil‑you‑know cohesion.
A mesmerising new exhibition showcases the work of the Italian colour pioneer whose landscapes, motorways and swimming pools often seem more like abstract paintings
As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is on track to lose $14bn this year. Its market share is collapsing, and its own CEO, Sam Altman, has admitted it “screwed up” an element of the product. All it takes to accelerate that decline is 10 seconds of your time.
A grassroots boycott called QuitGPT has been spreading across the US and beyond, asking people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions. More than a million people have answered the call. Mark Ruffalo and Katy Perry have thrown their weight behind it. It is one of the most significant consumer boycotts in recent memory, and I believe it’s time for Europeans to join.
On the Ecuador-Peru border the Siekopai people fight to protect the Amazon from the oil industry and other threats – and women are at the forefront of the resistance
In June 2025, I accompanied a group of Siekopai women along the Aguarico River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mothers, daughters, cousins and granddaughters had reunited to participate in the Binational Ceramics Gathering in Siekoya Remolino, a community that has remained free from oil extraction, mining and African palm monocultures.
They were welcomed by the Keñao Productive Women’s Association, which was founded in 2022 by 26 Siekopai female artisans to promote Indigenous women’s participation and economic autonomy.
A basement-bound thriller begins with a grisly jolt of invention before succumbing to diminishing returns
As Carlos Goitia’s low-budget horror movie opens, we begin in medias res as a woman (Paula Brasca) wakes up in a standard murder basement: muted decor, very little natural light, a sturdy workbench with an impressive array of rusty tools, various masks made of skin. She immediately realises she is lying in a pile of corpses – all mutilated women. She herself is badly injured. Not a happy awakening for the character, but it’s not a bad jumping-off point for a horror movie.
In short order, the killer (Damian Castillo) heaves into view. Naturally, he’s an absolutely massive man in a Texas Chain Saw Massacre-type get-up – and our heroine very sensibly plays dead. This is a creepy and interesting conceit – how long is she going to be able to keep up the pretence? What happens once he rumbles the ruse? Unfortunately, Goitia can’t quite assemble enough material to keep the “what if you had to pretend to be dead?” idea in play for a whole feature film, and proceedings start to feel thin and stretched at a point where there is still plenty of movie left to play out.
She said kissing me was like licking an ashtray, and I knew I had to quit smoking. But with a 40-a-day habit, it was no easy task ...
In 1970, as an 18-year-old college freshman in Boston, living away from home for the first time, I started to smoke cigarettes. A pack a day grew in short order to two packs a day, or a cigarette about every 30 minutes.
I choreographed my life around my smokes, puffing away after every meal, taking a drag with a drink and blowing smoke rings as I wrote, usually late into the night. I needed no pretext for smoking, but found plenty; every occasion fit the bill.
South Korea’s Kospi leads market sell-off across Asia and Middle East, despite Trump’s suggestion US Navy could protect vessels moving through vital waterway
Global markets tumbled further on Wednesday despite Donald Trump’s offer to have the US navy escort tankers through the strait of Hormuz and the US military’s claim that there is “not a single Iranian ship underway” in the crucial waterway.
The Middle East conflict has crippled the strait, which was in effect closed by Iran after strikes by the US and Israel this weekend, raising fears of a sustained energy supply crisis that reverberated around the world.
This documentary can’t help but be moving as it follows the Cam On group in Kolkata, who are creating a drama based on their experiences – even if it could do with more depth
Cam On is a film-making collective comprising some of the estimated 500 sex workers and their children who live in Boro Goli, the red light district in Kalighat, a desperately poor area on the southern edge of Kolkata. “The street holds many stories,” says Rabin, the son of a Nepalese woman who was sold by her uncle into sex work at 12. “Love and threat at every turn.” He is the director of the film the collective is making, Nupur: The Story of Two Sisters. It’s a fictionalised amalgam of many of the members’ real experiences and tells the tale of an older sister who hopes to escape the fate that seems set for her and a younger one who lacks hope that it is possible.
Redlight to Limelight is the documentary – part of the BBC’s award-winning Storyville strand – by Bipuljit Basu that follows them as they make their film, building art out of suffering, creating something worthwhile in an environment that seems hellbent on allowing nothing.
‘This has happened to us so many times this season’
Arne Slot described Liverpool’s defeat at Wolves as an episode that “sums up our season” and warned his squad they must address their shortcomings. André’s 94th-minute strike, deflected in via Joe Gomez, represented the fifth winning goal Liverpool have conceded in stoppage time this season and Slot bemoaned a familiar theme as his team struggled to create chances from open play.
Liverpool looked to have rescued a point through Mohamed Salah, the Egyptian cancelling out Rodrigo Gomes’s opener in the 83rd minute, but in added time André seized on a clearance by Alisson to compound Liverpool’s frustrations. Liverpool return to Molineux on Friday in the FA Cup fifth round.
Shabana Mahmood says UK’s generosity abused as visas halted for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan
The government has imposed an emergency brake on visas for the first time on nationals from four countries, as Shabana Mahmood accused them of exploiting Britain’s generosity to claim asylum.
Study visas for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan have been halted, in addition to work visas for Afghans.
United manager admits a lot of wins would be needed
Carrick: ‘You can’t rule anything out in football’
Michael Carrick has refused to rule out Manchester United catching Arsenal and challenging for the title, though the interim manager admitted a lot of wins would be needed.
United recorded a sixth victory under Carrick when defeating Crystal Palace 2-1 at Old Trafford on Sunday, making it 19 points from 21 since he took over. Their form is the best in the Premier League over that period but United trail Arsenal by 13 points with a game in hand and have 10 matches to play. Carrick was asked before United’s game at Newcastle on Wednesday whether he would rule out catching Mikel Arteta’s team.
Religious freedom group says 200 troops sent complaints of superiors using extremist Christian rhetoric to justify war
US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the marines, air force and space force.
It took months for the Bush administration’s falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to come to light, after an invasion, regime change, an investigation, and then, finally, the truth. For the Trump administration’s warnings of an imminent threat from Iran, it took an afternoon.
Donald Trump said his biggest fear in the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran would be regime change that brought in leadership “as bad as the previous person”.
At an Oval Office news conference with the visiting German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, the US president was asked by a reporter about the “worst-case scenario” of the risky operation that led to the assassination on Saturday of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
With much of the world’s oil supplies out of action, Russia could step in to meet demand in China and India
A prolonged energy crisis triggered by the widening war in the Middle East could offer an economic lifeline to Russia’s war machine at a moment when it was beginning to show signs of strain.
The sharp weakening and possible collapse of the regime in Iran would deprive the Kremlin of one of its closest regional partners. But that setback could be outweighed by an economic windfall if disruption pushes buyers toward Russian energy, alongside a possible slowdown in western arms supplies to Ukraine.
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