Resembling cigarette packet warnings, the ads highlight dangers and urge people to email MPs
Mumsnet has launched a campaign to introduce a ban on social media for under-16s featuring health warnings in the style of those on cigarette packets.
The deliberately provocative national advertising campaign calls for all social media to be banned for children under the age of 16. The images on billboards and social media make a number of stark statements related to health.
We follow one woman across decades of change in this deeply compassionate novel of independence and dreams
Indian Railways has been a source of patriotic pride, controversy, endless cover-ups, labyrinthine bureaucracy and death on an industrial scale since its founding in 1951. Rahul Bhattacharya’s Railsong, his first novel in 15 years since The Sly Company of People Who Care, explores its other major and fiercely contested impact on Indian society, as one of the country’s foremost employers of women and sources of female empowerment, especially in rural areas.
We follow the irrepressible, motherless Charu Chitol, from her childhood in 1960s smalltown Bihar with her rail employee father, a frustrated writer and frustrated socialist, through her dizzying encounters with rapidly modernising big-city Bombay, and on to a railways personnel department job, first office-bound, then as a roving welfare officer, investigating pensions claims, frauds and other abuses. The book ends in the early 1990s, all post-independence goodwill long spent.
This former industrial quartier is now getting noticed for its community-focused art spaces, lively local bars and inexpensive north African food
On a hill that rises up between Belleville’s Chinatown and Père-Lachaise cemetery, Ménilmontant was once a rural hamlet with vines and farms, before becoming more industrial in the 19th century. The quartier boasts a united, colourful community whose working-class Parisian roots have long been integrated with a strong north African diaspora. Bohemian, arty and socially committed, it remains off the tourist trail with no notable museums or monuments; it’s just a genuinely Parisian neighbourhood. The locals were bemused to learn that Time Out made Ménilmontant one of its World’s Coolest Neighbourhoods for 2025, though tourists who do venture here to discover a glimpse of a fast-disappearing Paris are sure of a warm welcome.
A comforting and rustic plate inspired by trip to a traditional Roman trattoria
The benefit of soaking and cooking (or, better still, pressure cooking) your own beans are many: less packaging; money saved (a 500g bag of dried beans costing £2.50 will yield 1.5kg cooked beans, while some 400g tins can cost more or less the same); the suspiciously coloured but flavourful and starchy bean cooking water; and some personal satisfaction that you actually remembered to soak the beans in the first place. The benefits – and joy – of tinned beans, however, are almost instantaneous. That is, just a ring-pull away – unless, of course, said ring-pull comes off prematurely, turning the tin into a door without a knob and leaving you two options: searching for the tin opener that is somewhere in the miscellaneous drawer (or among the picnic equipment, which is on top of the wardrobe), or puncturing the tin at exactly the right spot on the seam with a pointy parmesan knife, which is somewhere in the same drawer.
Fortunately, the ring pull didn’t come away prematurely on any of the three tins – two borlotti beans and one plum tomatoes – required for this week’s recipe, which came about thanks to a meal at Dal Cordaro, a hard-working and decent trattoria just behind Porta Portese, a 17th-century city gate (arch) in the Aurelian wall on the right bank of the river Tiber. Everything we ordered – whole braised artichokes, slow-cooked oxtail stew, flash-fried rags of beef (straccetti), pasta and chickpeas – was pleasing and could have made its way into this column. However, my plate of beans in a rich, orange-tinted tomato sauce with poached sausages and greens (escarole) stirred in at some point was the satisfying idea that came home with me.
Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?
Missing the Winter Olympics? Thanks to this week’s illustration by Anaïs Mims, here is your chance to discover whether you are gracefully landing a flawless triple axel under arena lights to the sound of your favourite tune, or merely skating on the thin ice of ignorance, arms windmilling gently as the cold reality of the answers draws closer. Fifteen questions on topical headlines, pop culture and general knowledge await. There are no prizes, but we always enjoy hearing how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!
A new mini power station and lithium extraction facility near Redruth are set to bolster green energy and create jobs
Just outside the perimeter fence stand the hulking remains of grand stone engine houses, a testament to Cornwall’s proud tin and copper mining history.
But inside is a shiny new mini power station and lithium extraction plant that is once again accessing rich underground resources in the far south-west of Britain.
Atmospheric machine-gun has fired storm after deadly storm at the region this year, leaving a trail of widespread destruction
For Andrés Sánchez Barea, in Spain, it was the fear that arose when water started to spurt from plug sockets. For Nelson Duarte, in Portugal, it was the helplessness that hit as violent winds smacked down trees and tore tiles from roofs. For Amal Essuide, in Morocco, it was the reality that dawned when a corpse was pulled onboard a boat in the flooded medina.
Each moment of horror is a fragment of the destruction wrought by an atmospheric machine-gun that in recent weeks has fired storm after storm at the western Mediterranean. Scientists do not know if climate breakdown helped pull the trigger, but research suggests it loaded the chamber with bigger bullets.
Are influencers really the biggest problem facing waiting staff? Not compared with the customer who demanded I pick up her dog’s poo ...
Influencers have had a bad time of it at restaurants recently. There they are, just trying to record a quick video and take a few pictures of their lunch, and restaurateur Jeremy King (of the Ivy and the Wolseley in London) goes and writes an article saying they’re ruining the dining experience of “bona fide guests” – something he says staff are “desperately trying to stop”. I’ve read pieces calling TikTok the end of the London restaurant scene. Friends’ parents have even said they would get up and leave if they were sitting next to anyone filming their meal.
This surprises me. I have worked as a waitress in restaurants for more than five years, a job I love, and the joys of which most often come from the customers I serve. Of course, for every 10 great customers, you’re bound to get one that’s not so great – I’ve come across my fair share of those.
Centuries-old wells restored to provide drinking water as parts of the country head towards “day zero” when no water will be available
A loud cheer and sounds of clapping reverberated around Bansilalpet, a neighbourhood in Hyderabad, when the first trickle of clean water dribbled out of the ground. After an 18-month effort to clear out 3,000 tonnes of rubbish and restore the stone walls and adjacent area, the 17th-century Bansilalpet stepwell had become a source of clean drinking water for the first time in four decades.
“It was such a joyous moment to see water collecting into the stepwell after clearing 40 years of garbage,” says Hajira Adeeb, a 45-year-old resident of Bansilalpet, who grew up seeing the well become transformed from the community’s water source to a dumping ground. “I visit almost every day. The area is clean and lit up in the evenings. I enjoy sitting there.”
Fans of the hit noughties series will be delighted to see the original cast back at Sacred Heart hospital. But this reboot isn’t afraid to move with the times
Bill Lawrence is on a tear. This is the man who gave us Ted Lasso and Shrinking, and who is days away from launching Rooster, the Steve Carell sitcom that HBO already sees as the anchor to its comedy output. At this stage in his career, Lawrence could blow his nose and the contents of his tissue would become a beloved heartwarming comedy series.
So it’s interesting that, of all his available options, Lawrence has instead decided to revive Scrubs. It’s a show with a big footprint – when Friends ended, you could argue that it became the biggest sitcom on Earth – but it still felt very much of its time. It was a medical comedy that not only derived a lot of its laughs from Family Guy-style cutaway skits, back when they counted as new and exciting, but also had more than one character who specialised in baroque cruelty, which doesn’t seem particularly on-brand for Lawrence any more. Ted Lasso would never.
To even be talking about this drastic deportation policy is a sign the far right is winning. In Italy, it’s more than just talk
Meeting Tommy Robinson earlier this month, the French anti-immigration politician Éric Zemmour bluntly summed up his mission: “Politics needs to defeat demographics.”Given rising numbers of Muslims, he said, there was perhaps “10 to 20 years” left to save Europe from “disappearing”. Both men placed their hopes in one policy to reverse the “invasion”: remigration.
At root, remigration means using mass deportations in order to curtail minority – especially Muslim – populations. In France’s 2022 presidential election, Zemmour pledged the creation of a “ministry of remigration” meant to remove “1 million” people, targeting undocumented and dual-national criminals. In practice, supporters of the idea often blur distinctions between criminals and non-criminals, longer-standing citizens and recent migrants, the undocumented and those with settled status.
David Broder is the author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism In Contemporary Italy
After a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped and taken from Spain to Bolivia, authorities feared the worst. They found her in the rainforest nine months later – but that wasn’t the end of her ordeal
On 27 August 2013, a tall, spirited nine-year-old girl with long, well-brushed hair boarded an overnight coach in Barcelona. Nada Itrab was bright and observant. At school, she regularly came top of her class. Even now, she carried a notebook, eager to record the things she would discover on this trip. She had been given a camera, too – a cheap, lilac-coloured digital model which, since she was unused to luxuries, seemed to her like a treasure.
In eight hours, Nada would be at Barajas airport in the Spanish capital, Madrid. She would take her first flight, heading for Bolivia’s largest city, Santa Cruz de la Sierra. To her, the trip was an adventure, like something from the storybooks that she read at her local library in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, a city just south of Barcelona. The daughter of undocumented immigrants from Morocco, Nada had lived there since she was four.
Despite being stripped of his royal titles, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor could still technically become the king: he's eighth in line to the throne. While there's a growing push within the UK parliament to remove him from the line of succession — a move which Australia and New Zealand are supporting — actually doing so is far more complicated than it might seem. Matilda Boseley explains what would have to happen in order for Mountbatten-Windsor to his lose his spot in the line of succession
Appellate court quashes convictions linked to lease violations but Lai may still spend rest of his life in prison
A Hong Kong appellate court on Thursday overturned fraud convictions against the media mogul Jimmy Lai, a rare victory in the prominent pro-democracy activist’s legal battles.
Lai, 78, an outspoken critic of China’s ruling Communist party who founded the now defunct Apple Daily, will stay in prison because weeks ago he was sentenced to 20 years after being convicted in another case brought under a China-imposed national security law.
Group says case far from over after being found liable for defamation and other claims brought by energy firm
A North Dakota judge has said he will order Greenpeace to pay damages expected to total $345m in connection with protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline from nearly a decade ago, a figure the environmental group contends it cannot pay.
In court papers filed Tuesday, Judge James Gion said he would sign an order requiring several Greenpeace entities to pay the judgment to pipeline company Energy Transfer. He set that amount at $345m last year in a decision that reduced a jury’s damages by about half, but his latest filing did not specify a final amount.
Investigation under way after man was dropped off five miles from home but family wasn’t notified, officials say
A nearly blind Burmese refugee who was abandoned by border patrol agents has been found dead in Buffalo, New York, city officials confirmed.
Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, had been missing since 19 February, when he was dropped off by border patrol following his release from Erie county holding center, according to the Investigative Post.
Wu-Tang members pay tribute to Grant with GZA saying ‘His passing is a profound loss’ and Method Man posting ‘I am not okay’
Oliver “Power” Grant, a close affiliate and early backer of the hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan who had a hand in many of the group’s albums and business ventures, has died aged 52.
The death was confirmed by Wu-Tang Clan. “Rest in power, Power,” the collective wrote on social media. A cause of death was not revealed.
Defence minister says goal is to cover 4,000km of roads this year; 23 wounded in Russian attacks on cities before new Ukraine-US talks. What we know on day 1,464
In an interview with People magazine before the release of her memoir, the 54-year-old actor said she spends a lot of her days in bed due to the pain that comes with movement.
The Guardian will run an extract from Christina Applegate’s memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, on 28 February
Vice-president makes announcement with Mehmet Oz, who says other states will be next after Minnesota
JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, escalating Donald Trump’s newly announced “war on fraud”.
Vance said the action was to ensure Minnesota was “a good steward of the American people’s tax money”, part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of the Somali community in Minneapolis, which prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens and widespread protests.
Hospitals that cause harm and injury to women and babies during childbirth often resort to a “cover-up” of their mistakes, falsify medical records and deny bereaved parents answers, a damning report has found.
“Negligent” care has devastating emotional and psychological consequences for families, disputes between maternity staff have a “disastrous” impact on mothers, and ethnic minority and poorer women have worse outcomes because of racism and discrimination, Lady Amos said.
Banning families from being involved in investigations into the mistakes they encountered.
Conducting inquiries into errors which families think are poor quality and do not properly reflect what occurred.
Driving distressed families to instigate legal action as a way of getting at the truth after they were “denied openness and honesty in the aftermath of harm and bereavement”.
Failing to treat families who have lost a baby with compassion.
Supa Nova by Chanté Timothy, a graphic novel about a young Black girl with a love for science, won the children’s fiction category and inaugural children’s choice prize
Six female authors have been crowned winners of the 2026 Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) awards.
The literacy charity’s prizes celebrate the best UK-published inclusive titles for children aged one to nine. This year marks the second time that all the winners have been women since the prizes were launched in 2023.
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