• Heavy US favorite falls twice in the free skate

• Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov claims shock title

For nearly two years, Ilia Malinin has made men’s figure skating feel predictable in the most spectacular of ways. On Friday night on the southern outskirts of Milan, the Olympic Games reminded the sport – and perhaps Malinin himself – that predictability is never guaranteed on its biggest stage.

The overwhelming favorite entering the free skate, the 21-year-old American instead saw the Olympic title slip away to Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov after an error-strewn performance that will rank among the biggest upsets in modern figure skating history.

Berlin film festival: Shahrbanoo Sadat is a charming presence in front of the camera and a skilled film-maker behind in this shrewd and contemporary tale

The Afghan film-maker Shahrbanoo Sadat is a warm and approachable presence as writer, director and star of No Good Men – a tale of Afghanistan’s women in 2021 as they are about to be surrendered to the Taliban with the withdrawal of US troops.

It’s an urgent tale, which incidentally closes with a fervent finale reminiscent of Casablanca – although the central turnaround in the male lead’s heart, gallantly disproving the title, is maybe a bit smooth.

No Good Men is screening at the Berlin film festival and will be released at a later date

Pedro Neto scored a superb hat-trick as Chelsea made light work of Championship promotion hopefuls Hull City to saunter into the FA Cup fifth round, as Liam Rosenior marked his return to his former club with a convincing victory.

This had all the makings of a potentially tricky evening for the Blues, with Hull nestled inside the Championship’s top six and pushing for a return to the Premier League under Sergej Jakirovic despite operating under restrictions in the last two transfer windows.

The men appeared in a photo lineup assembled by the southern district of New York and had no apparent connection to the late sex offender

Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative, read a list of six names on the House floor earlier this week and said they were “wealthy, powerful men that the DoJ hid” in the recently released files related to Jeffrey Epstein. After questions from the Guardian, the Department of Justice said that four of the men Khanna named have no apparent connection to Epstein whatsoever, but rather appeared in a photo lineup assembled by the southern district of New York (SDNY).

Khanna, along with Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican representative, pushed the justice department to unredact names in the files, arguing that some names were being unlawfully redacted. Massie claimed credit on X earlier this week for forcing the justice department to remove redactions on a file that listed 20 names, birthdays and photos, including those of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Khanna then read some of those names on the House floor.

Johnny Flynn and John C Reilly offer casting heft, but this moody, technically sound tale of an unfolding epidemic in 1870s Wisconsin lacks emotional substance

There is some very concerted image-making and mood-making in this technically accomplished yet unsatisfying drama from first-time, Norway-based director Dara Van Dusen. It is a sombre tale of the American old west, adapted by Dusen from the novel by Stewart O’Nan, and somehow has the feel of a short film indulgently taken to feature length. Its visual gestures and set pieces, although striking and often shocking, felt for me disconnected from any emotional truth – a truth that sustained, developed storytelling may have provided.

The setting is a frontier town in Wisconsin in 1870, and Jacob (Johnny Flynn) is both sheriff and pastor – although he wears neither badge nor religious garment. He has seen traumatising service in the civil war, in which he appears to have achieved high rank, although some in the town are suspicious of his Norwegian background. He is married to Marta (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and they have a young child.

Scotland have lost only two of the last eight clashes with England but Borthwick’s squad are unscarred by failure

In one of sport’s weirder coincidences, England are about to play must-win games against Scotland in both rugby and cricket on the same day. The forecast 3C temperatures for the Calcutta Cup encounter may be cooler than in Kolkata – appropriately the venue for the T20 World Cup group fixture – but a white-hot contest inside a chilly Murrayfield can be absolutely guaranteed.

Because this particular collision, the 144th since the sides first met at Raeburn Place in 1871, looks set to shape the Six Nations prospects of all involved. To say Scotland are under additional pressure following their defeat by Italy in round one is to state the obvious. And England, too, will take the field knowing the time has come to demonstrate whether or not they are the real deal.

• Skier hopes to return to US after latest procedure

• American crashed out of Olympic downhill run

• Bryan Graham: Crash a violent but honest ending

Lindsey Vonn will have another surgery on her broken left leg Saturday at the Italian hospital where she is being treated “and then I can potentially leave and go back home.”

Vonn posted a video message on Instagram on Friday after her horrific crash in the Olympic downhill race at the Milan Cortina Games.

A skier from France is also killed with manslaughter investigation to be carried out by mountain rescue police

Two Britons are among three skiers to have been killed in an avalanche in the French Alps.

The pair were part of a group of five people, accompanied by an instructor, off-piste skiing in Val d’Isère, in south-east France. A French national, who was skiing alone, was also killed.

Nikhil Gupta faces up to 40 years over alleged India-backed attempt to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun

The Indian man who US prosecutors accused of plotting to kill a prominent US-based activist after being recruited by an agent of the Indian government has pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, according to a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Nikhil Gupta faces a maximum 40 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money-laundering charges in connection to the failed attempt to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US resident who is an advocate for a sovereign Sikh state in
northern India.

Lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving an impasse over much-criticized agency’s funding

• US politics live – latest updates

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is on course for an official shutdown at midnight after lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving an impasse over the much-criticized agency’s funding.

A range of services, including domestic flights and the US Coastguard, could be vulnerable to disruption after the Senate failed on Thursday to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the DHS appropriations bill. Democrats blocked the funding in protest over violent tactics used in the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

EU’s head of foreign policy claims ‘Board of Peace’ is vehicle for Trump with no accountability to Palestinians or UN

A bitter dispute between Europe and the US over the future of Gaza has broken out into the open, with the EU’s head of foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, warning that Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” was a personal vehicle for the US president that removed any accountability to Palestinians or the United Nations.

Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, also accused Trump of trying to bypass the original UN mandate for the board, and said Europe, one of the chief funders of the Palestinian Authority, had been excluded from the process.

Chris Nanos was accused of bypassing federal analysts as search for Today show host’s mother nears two weeks

The Arizona sheriff investigating the abduction of NBC Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother pushed back Friday on an accusation he had withheld crucial forensic evidence from the FBI, as the search for the missing 84-year-old reached close to two weeks.

Chris Nanos, the Pima county sheriff leading the investigation in Tucson, has been accused of bypassing federal analysts, according to an unnamed source at the FBI who spoke to Reuters.

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Hull have been a considerable talent school in recent years: Harry Maguire, Jarrod Bowen, Andy Robertson and lately Keane Lewis-Potter have all carved decent careers in the Premier League. Tom Cairney, too.

Liam Rosenior has FA Cup heritage, and played in this Wembley final classic in 2014. City were unlucky in this game, very unlucky.

Wuthering Heights is the latest film to turn heads over anachronistic costumes, but it’s not by any means the first

Emerald Fennell’s retelling of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights finally hits cinema screens this weekend. Ever since the first set of photos were released, the anachronisms of the costumes have been central to the conversation.

As fashion industry watchdog Diet Prada put it: “The costume design for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights scandalised audiences with its freaky mix of Oktoberfest corseting meets 1950’s ballgowns meets futuristic liquid organza meets … Barbie?”

Protests in Buenos Aires, Lindsey Vonn crashes at the Winter Olympics and Bad Bunny performs at Super Bowl LX – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

At a moment of stagnation and political drift, Andy Burnham’s push for a new plan suggests the centre-left debate has moved beyond Downing Street

Once a political leader’s net favourability sinks deep into negative territory, recovery is the exception, not the rule. It usually takes an economic rebound, a dramatic political reset or an opposition implosion to reverse the slide. Sir Keir Starmer’s personal ratings are in a danger zone from which few escape.

Yet the prime minister, like the Bourbons, has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. He made a speech this week after coming close to being ousted suggesting he would “fight” on. He doubled down in parliament despite glaring errors in judgment. He forced out his cabinet secretary while his own failures remain unaddressed. He seemed to blame everyone but himself. When support slips and a leader answers with defiance, voters don’t see strength – they see denial.

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With just seven weeks before its funding runs out, the UK’s greatest cultural asset and most trusted international news organisation must be supported

“The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good,” said the then BBC director general John Reith, when he launched its Empire Service in December 1932. Nearly a century later, the BBC World Service, as it is now known, broadcasts in 43 languages, reaches 313 million people a week and is one of the UK’s most influential cultural assets. It is also a lifeline for millions. “Perhaps Britain’s greatest gift to the world” in the 20th century, as Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, once put it.

But this week Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, announced that the World Service will run out of funding in just seven weeks. Most of its £400m budget comes from the licence fee, although the Foreign Office – which funded it entirely until 2014 – contributed £137m in the last year. The funding arrangement with the Foreign Office finishes at the end of March. There is no plan for what happens next.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Mentions of reading in Tinder bios are up 29% in the last year. But is searching for a fellow fan of one’s favourite author really a shortcut to compatibility?

‘One of my Hinge prompts is: ‘What’s the best book you read this year?’ and I swipe left on anyone who says a book I don’t like,” says 29-year-old Ayo*. “Someone once replied with a book by Jordan Peterson, which was a massive ick.”

It’s a blunt approach to romance, but Ayo is far from alone. Books have long functioned as cultural shorthand for personality – signals of taste and worldview – but dating apps have accelerated and intensified that process. In an attention economy that rewards speed, these signifiers have to be legible at a glance.

Benoît Richaud is working on the ice with 13 countries, with uniform changes to match, and Korean skiers are having nightmares on wax

Domen Prevc set a men’s ski jump world record of 254.5m on the Planica flying hill in Slovenia last March, known for its steepness and long jumps. Germany’s Philipp Raimund sat it out – he suffers from vertigo. “From time to time, I have the issue that my body is reacting without me controlling it,” he said. “It’s like I am just observing myself while something has a tight grip on me.”

Grant Gee’s film thoroughly inhabits the creative and personal torment experienced by the American pianist – with a terrific supporting Bill Pullman turn

This elusive, ruminative and very absorbing movie presents its successive scenes like a sequence of unresolved chords carrying the listener on a journey without a destination – and is, incidentally, one of those rare films featuring a wonderful supporting turn that does not undermine or upstage the rest. It’s a film about music. Particularly, about what remains when a musician cannot play and is left to consider the terrible sacrifices made, without conscious consent, to this all-consuming vocation that creates family pain and jealousy almost as a toxic byproduct. It’s a drama to put you in mind of Glenn Gould and Hilary du Pré, sister of Jacqueline.

Screenwriter Mark O’Halloran has adapted the 2013 novel Intermission by Owen Martell about renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans. It focuses on a period of emotional devastation for Evans, when no music was possible – perhaps a restorative intermission, perhaps the start of a calamitous new aridity – when his close friend and bassist Scott LaFaro was killed in a car crash in his 20s.

The Puerto Rican star’s album Debí Tirar Más Fotos jumps to No 2, while the song DTMF rises to No 4

Despite being one of the most streamed musicians in the world, Bad Bunny had never had a solo UK Top 10 hit – until now.

The Puerto Rican musician has attracted a huge number of curious new fans – and jubilant preexisting ones – after last week’s Super Bowl, where he performed in a half-time show described by many people as one of the greatest in NFL history.

Images confirm xAI is continuing to defy EPA regulations in Mississippi to power its flagship datacenters

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its datacenters with unpermitted gas turbines, an investigation by the Floodlight newsroom shows. Thermal footage captured by Floodlight via drone shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Mississippi, despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.

State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. However, the EPA has long maintained that such pollution sources require permits under the Clean Air Act.

Discipline committee decides to terminate Miles Kwan from studies because of ‘multiple acts of misconduct’

A Hong Kong university student who had called for accountability over a deadly fire at an apartment complex in the city has been expelled by the school for disciplinary offences.

Miles Kwan, a politics student, was detained for two nights by the city’s national security police last year for “seditious intent” after handing out flyers calling for an independent investigation into a fire that killed 168 people in November.

• Scotland boast strong recent Calcutta Cup record

• England have not won at Murrayfield since 2020

Maro Itoje has called on England to be “bulletproof” as they seek to clinch a first win at Murrayfield in six years on Saturday. England can keep their grand slam pursuit alive by successfully defending the Calcutta Cup and Itoje has urged his side to create their own history despite their recent wretched form in Edinburgh.

With England on a 12-match winning streak and Scotland suffering a shock defeat by Italy last week, Steve Borthwick’s side are clear favourites. Their only victory at Murrayfield since Eddie Jones’s first game in charge in 2016 came in miserable weather in 2020, however, with Scotland securing victories in 2022 and last time out in 2024.