Exclusive: Figures said to reflect increased Russian military targeting of cities and infrastructure
Civilian casualties in Ukraine caused by bombing soared by 26% during 2025, reflecting increased Russian targeting of cities and infrastructure in the country, according a global conflict monitoring group.
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said 2,248 civilians were reported killed and 12,493 injured by explosive violence in Ukraine according to English-language reports – with the number of casualties an incident rising significantly.
The Shepherd and the Bear is part of a new breed of films with a sympathy for country matters that has moved on from othering folk-horror
One of the best horror scenes this year arrives in a documentary about French pastoralism. It’s pitch-black out on a Pyrenean mountainside. Wagnerian lightning illuminates the ridges and the rain sheeting down. Bells clank in darkness as the sheep flee en masse to the other side of the col. Yves, the shepherd in charge, faces down this bewilderment, trying to perceive the threat: “Are those eyes?”
The Shepherd and the Bear, directed by Max Keegan, is part of a new breed of films with a heightened sympathy for country matters. Surveying the wind-ruffled pastures, lingering in battered cabins, it’s a highly cinematic depiction of the conflict in the Pyrenees provoked by the reintroduction of the brown bear. Much past rural cinema made hay from insisting we beware of the locals: Deliverance’s vicious hicks, The Wicker Man’s wily pagans, Hot Fuzz’s Barbour-jacketed cabal for the “greater good”. But the new school rides with the locals like Keegan’s film taps their knowledge and tells us what they’ve known all along: that it’s nature that’s truly scary.
Who is his constituency now? Not the left or the right – and not the centre any more. That’s why there’s been a nosedive in the polls
After a tumultuous few weeks, we are once again in “reset” territory. Keir Starmer has bought some more time, there is a modest bounce in his polling, and he has had the well-timed fortune of the Munich security conference. His call there for the “remaking” of western alliances and taking the initiative on European defence cooperation has fumigated the air a little of the sense of imminent demise that has been swirling around him. But it will probably be a temporary hiatus. He is in a hole that is too deep to climb out of. The prime minister’s persistent unpopularity is best understood as the result of abundance: there is simply, in Starmer, something for everyone to deplore.
In policy, he has taken stances that have established him in the minds of many people as devoid of principle and compassion. On Gaza, Starmer got it wrong from the start. From his early assertion that Israel had the right to cut off water and power, to refusing calls for a ceasefire and then cracking down on protest (a move now judged as unlawful by the high court), the prime minister positioned himself against a huge domestic swell of distress. Add to that the cuts to disability benefits that made him appear callous after so many years of austerity, and what you have – whatever U-turns or watering down followed – is an impression of a politician whose instincts are those of a state apparatchik; someone whose default is enforcing pre-existing conventional wisdoms in foreign policy and economics, no matter how damaging or unpopular they are.
Crackdown on undocumented people could lead to home raids, surveillance and racial profiling, 75 organisations say
More than 70 rights organisations have called on the EU to reject a proposal aimed at increasing the deportation of undocumented people, warning that it risks turning everyday spaces, public services and community interactions into tools of ICE-style immigration enforcement.
Last March, the European Commission laid out its proposal to increase deportations of people with no legal right to stay in the EU, including potentially sending them to offshore centres in non-EU countries.
This extraordinary diner is the final wonder of the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who dreamt it up at the age of 103. And it’s a great place for a sunset kombucha and gin
Perched among old brick buildings in an industrial neighbourhood of Leipzig in eastern Germany, a giant white sphere appears to hover over the corner of a former boiler house. Is it a giant’s golf ball? An alien spacecraft? A fallen planet?
Twelve metres in diameter, the Niemeyer Sphere is the final design of world-famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and probably the most surprising creation by a visionary who valued the sensation of newness in art above all else, the result being mesmerising buildings that seem both space age and out of this world. The Sphere is like a vision from the future, dropped among used-car dealerships and construction equipment rental outlets, in a working-class neighbourhood that few tourists would ever pass through by design.
Once a whites-only enclave, the grand McMillan Memorial library is one of three in the Kenyan capital that have been transformed for the community
Down a steep, narrow staircase, the basement of the McMillan Memorial Library in Nairobi holds more than 100 enormous, dust-covered bound volumes of newspapers. Here too are the minutes of council meetings and photographic negatives going back more than a century.
“Here lie some of the minute-by-minute recorded debates from the time British colonial powers ruled Nairobi, when it was a segregated city,” says Angela Wachuka, a publisher. Seconds later, a power cut plunges the room into darkness. “We still have a great deal of work to do,” she adds.
The hit podcaster, author and former GP says a failure to regulate big tech is ‘failing a generation of children’. He explains why he quit the NHS and why he wants a ban on screen-based homework
A 16-year-old boy and his mum went to see their GP, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, on a busy Monday afternoon. That weekend, the boy had been at A&E after an attempt at self-harm, and in his notes the hospital doctor had recommended the teenager be prescribed antidepressants. “I thought: ‘Wait a minute, I can’t just start a 16-year-old on antidepressants,’” says Chatterjee. He wanted to understand what was going on in the boy’s life.
They talked for a while, and Chatterjee asked him about his screen use, which turned out to be high. “I said: ‘I think your screen use, particularly in the evenings, might be impacting your mental wellbeing.’” Chatterjee helped the boy and his mother set up a routine where digital devices and social media went off an hour before bed, gradually extending the screen-free period over six weeks. After two months, he says the boy stopped needing to see him. A few months after that, his mother wrote Chatterjee a note to say her son had been transformed – he was engaging with his friends and trying new activities. He was, she said, like a different boy from the one who had ended up in hospital.
Former US president clarifies ‘they’re real’ answer that he gave during quick-fire interview round
Hours after Barack Obama caused a frenzy by saying aliens were real on a podcast, the former US president has posted a statement clarifying that he has not seen any evidence of them.
In a conversation with the American podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen over the weekend, Obama appeared to confirm the apparent existence of aliens during a speed round of questioning where the host asks guests quick questions and the guests respond with brief answers.
Leader vows to repay the ‘young martyrs’ who died as North Korea intensifies propaganda glorifying troops deployed to fight for Russia
North Korea has said it completed a new housing district in Pyongyang for families of North Korean soldiers killed while fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, the latest effort by leader Kim Jong-un to honour the war dead.
State media photos showed Kim walking through the new street – called Saeppyol Street – and visiting the homes of some of the families with his increasingly prominent daughter, believed to be named Kim Ju-ae, as he pledged to repay the “young martyrs” who “sacrificed all to their motherland”.
Emerald Fennell’s divisive film is the year’s biggest opening so far, having recouped its entire estimated production budget over the opening weekend
Wuthering Heights has ravished the global box office in its opening weekend, with the new Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie adaptation taking US$76.8m (£56m, A$108m).
Emerald Fennell’s reimagining of Emily Brontë’s novel made US$34.8m in the North American box office from 3,682 locations, making it the year’s biggest opening so far.
Gus, short for August, went missing on 27 September 2025 from his family’s remote sheep station, sparking one of the biggest and most intense searches in South Australia’s history.
Facilities damaged at Taman port while power and water disrupted in Odesa as new round of trilateral talks to begin on Tuesday. What we know on day 1,454
A Ukrainian drone strike ignited fires at one of Russia’s Black Sea ports, officials said on Sunday, ahead of fresh talks aimed at ending the war. Two people were wounded in the attack on the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, which damaged an oil storage tank, warehouse and terminals, according to regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev. Falling debris from Russian drones, meanwhile, damaged civilian and transport infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials said, disrupting power and water supplies. The attacks came ahead of another round of US-brokered talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday in Geneva, days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
Ukraine has agreed with European allies on “specific packages” of new energy and military support for Kyiv by 24 February, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. He had said earlier after a meeting of the so-called Berlin Format of about a dozen European leaders in Munich that he had hoped for new support, including air-defence missiles. “I am grateful to our partners for their readiness to help, and we count on all deliveries arriving promptly,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Russia had launched about 1,300 attack drones, 1,200 guided aerial bombs and dozens of ballistic missiles at Ukraine over the past week alone.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russia was hoping to win diplomatically what it had failed to achieve on the battlefield, and was banking on the US to deliver concessions at the negotiating table. But Kallas told the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Sunday that key Russian demands – including the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of assets – were decisions for Europe. “If we want a sustainable peace then we need concessions also from the Russian side.”
Zelenskyy suggested at the Munich conference earlier that there were still questions remaining over future security guarantees for his country. He also questioned how the concept of a free trade zone – proposed by the US – would work in the Donbas region, which Russia insists Kyiv must give up for peace. He told the conference the Americans wanted peace as quickly as possible and that the US team wanted to sign all the agreements on Ukraine at the same time, whereas Ukraine wanted guarantees for the country’s future security signed first.
Russia will not end the militarisation of its economy after fighting in Ukraine ends, the head of Latvia’s intelligence agency said. “The potential aggressiveness of Russia when the Ukraine war stops will depend of many factors: how the war ends, if it’s frozen or not, and if the sanctions remain,” Egils Zviedris, director of the Latvian intelligence service SAB, told Agence France-Presse on the sidelines of the Munich conference, which ended on Sunday. He said lifting current sanctions “would allow Russia to develop its military capacities” more quickly.
Slovak prime minister Robert Fico accused Ukraine of delaying the restart of a pipeline carrying Russian oil to eastern Europe via Ukraine in order to pressure Hungary to drop its opposition to Ukraine’s future membership of the European Union. “We have information that [the pipeline] should have been fixed,” he said after meeting US secretary of state Marco Rubio in Bratislava on Sunday.
Russian army chief Valery Gerasimov visited Moscow’s troops in Ukraine and said the Kremlin’s forces seized a dozen eastern villages in February, the defence ministry said. The claims could not be independently verified.
Researchers say limited eating approaches such as 5:2 diet not a ‘miracle solution’ amid surge in their popularity
Intermittent fasting is no better for shedding the pounds than conventional diets and is barely more effective than doing nothing, according to a major review of the scientific evidence.
Researchers analysed data from 22 global studies and found people who are overweight or living with obesity lost as much weight by following traditional dietary advice as when they tried fasting regimes such as the 5:2 diet popularised by the late Michael Mosley.
Gathering of world leaders in Germany has disbanded for another year, but many of the issues remain unresolved
The Munich Security Conference has been a news-making forum for decades – a place where world leaders meet other politicians, as well as journalists and civil society groups, to discuss the biggest issues facing the planet.
Year of the horse signals optimism and opportunity, with authorities keen that the extra day of holiday this year provides an economic boost
Chinese officials are hoping that this year’s extra long lunar new year holiday will provide a boost to the country’s economy, where increasing domestic spending has been identified as a key priority for the year ahead.
The government expects a record 9.5 billion passenger trips to be made across China during the 40-day spring festival period, up from 9 billion trips last year. Hundreds of millions of people will be crisscrossing the country to make what is often their only trip home to see their families for the Chinese new year celebrations.
Police have called on Sydneysiders to report any “not normal activity” as they search for 85-year-old Chris Baghsarian, who investigators say was abducted by mistake in a botched underworld kidnapping.
Baghsarian was alone in his North Ryde home when he was taken and bundled into a dark-coloured SUV on Friday morning.
The accused Bondi beach terrorist Naveed Akram has spoken briefly during his first court appearance in Sydney.
The 24-year-old appeared via video link in the Downing Centre local court on Monday morning on 59 charges, including murder and terrorism offences, over the Bondi beach shooting.
Australian produces some fine tennis to win Rotterdam Open
First indoor title comes after 6-3, 6-2 win over Felix Auger-Aliassime
Alex de Minaur sealed a landmark week by delivering a masterful performance to defeat the red-hot Felix Auger-Aliassime and finally land one of the biggest titles of his career at the Rotterdam Open.
The Australian produced some of his finest tennis on Sunday (Monday AEDT) to crush the Canadian world No 6, who had won the Montpellier Open just a week earlier and whose service had been seemingly unbreakable.
Shipwreck hunter found Lac La Belle steamer, one of ‘most sought-after missing ships’, after nearly 60-year search
Searchers recently discovered the wreck of one of the “most sought-after missing ships” in Lake Michigan, that had sunk to the bottom of the lake over 150 years ago.
A shipwreck hunter and scuba diver named Paul Ehorn made the discovery after having searched for the Lac La Belle passenger steamer for nearly 60 years. Shipwreck World, a group that works to locate shipwrecks around the globe, announced on Friday that the team led by Ehorn found the wreck about 20 miles (32km) offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Starmer to announce ‘crackdown on vile illegal content created by AI’ after scandal involving Elon Musk’s Grok tool
Makers of AI chatbots that put children at risk will face massive fines or even see their services blocked in the UK under law changes to be announced by Keir Starmer on Monday.
‘It’s football, you’ve got to keep grafting every day’
James Trafford has admitted he did not expect Manchester City to sign Gianluigi Donnarumma after his transfer from Burnley last summer, with the deputy goalkeeper potentially leaving this summer.
Trafford returned to City after two years at Turf Moor on 31 July in a deal worth £31m before Pep Guardiola informed the club executive that the manager also wanted Donnarumma. The Italian joined on 2 September from Paris Saint-Germain for £26m and became Guardiola’s first choice.
Canada’s Tom Wilson shunned tradition on Sunday, deciding to fight during his team’s victory over France in their Olympic ice hockey game.
While fighting is a regular – and tacitly accepted – part of professional ice hockey, it rarely occurs on the Olympic stage. But Wilson dropped the gloves late in Canada’s 10-2 rout of France on Sunday, tangling with Pierre Crinon, who had delivered a forearm to the head of teammate Nathan MacKinnon minutes earlier.
Britain win mixed snowboard cross then mixed skeleton
Eve Muirhead lauds ‘just incredible’ performance
Team GB chiefs have hailed Britain’s greatest day at a Winter Olympics after celebrating two gold medals, in the mixed snowboard cross and mixed team skeleton in Milano Cortina.
Super Sunday started with Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale storming to a surprise victory in Livigno, with Bankes dramatically overtaking the French team with four turns remaining to take mixed snowboard cross gold.
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