Dave Brubeck called her a great and Mary Lou Williams gave her advice. But the prodigy grew frustrated with jazz, quit and started dismantling her instrument. A superb new reissue showcases her findings

Flipping through the jazz section on a visit to his local record store a few years ago, artist Kye Potter found a battered tape by American pianist and composer Jessica Williams. It looked every bit the quintessential DIY release. “The labels had come off the tape,” he says. “It was home-dubbed, with photocopied notes, a little bit of highlighter to accentuate the artwork, and released on her own label, Ear Art.”

As a collector and occasional producer particularly interested in the American musical avant garde after John Cage, Potter was intrigued by a tape called Prepared Piano. Yet it seemed unusual from Williams, who was best known for making sparkling jazz in the straight-ahead tradition of Thelonious Monk and Errol Garner. If the west coast jazz circuit knew her as a musical experimenter – for her concerts, she requested pianos without the cover to make it easier to reach inside and strum the strings – it was a facet that rarely made it to her records.

An inviting combination of bright, warming flavours, all in a single tin

A brilliant, warming 30-minute traybake, all in one tin. I love the combination of roast sweet potatoes with crumbled feta and a bright, fresh pesto; adding butter beans to the mix brings another hit of protein, as well as getting more legumes into your diet – win-win! A jar or tin of chickpeas would work just as well, if that’s what you have in, and feel free to substitute the parsley for other soft herbs, should you wish.

It felt like a punishing endurance test, coming to a head countless times … and yet it’s not over. Where the Upside Down is concerned, it’s never over

We’ve all had a few days to sit with the Stranger Things finale now, and reaction has been mixed. For every hardcore fan who found themselves in floods of tears by the end, there was a disgruntled TikToker aggressively listing all the plot holes the episode left unfilled in its race to the finish line. In other words, how you felt about Stranger Things as a whole probably determined how you felt about the way it ended.

Which, despite any qualms you may have about the finale – and we’ll get to those soon – seems like the best way anyone could possibly wrap up a series. There was no tonal pivot; no bleak, Dinosaurs-style parable; no “it was all a dream” St Elsewhere-style cop-out; no Blake’s 7-style final bloodbath. Stranger Things died as it lived – full of spectacle and sentiment (and a chronically unwieldy mythology, and way too many characters).

Reaction to effectiveness of US operation contrasts with loss of key ally for Putin, whose priority remains Ukraine

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A surprise raid on the capital in the dead of night, ending with the capture of the country’s leader. By the following day, the invading power announces it will rule the nation for an indefinite period.

That was how Vladimir Putin envisaged his full-scale invasion of Ukraine playing out in February 2022. Instead, it was Donald Trump who pulled it off in Venezuela, in an operation condemned by many as illegal, whisking away the Kremlin’s historic ally Nicolás Maduro, who now faces trial in New York.

Calls to a clinic in Uganda are helping create a therapy algorithm that works in local languages, as specialists look to technology to address the global mental health crisis

When patients telephone Butabika hospital in Kampala, Uganda, seeking help with mental health problems, they are themselves assisting future patients by helping to create a therapy chatbot.

Calls to the clinic helpline are being used to train an AI algorithm that researchers hope will eventually power a chatbot offering therapy in local African languages.

John Harbaugh has spent nearly two decades leading Baltimore. But his failure to get the most out of his quarterback is a fireable failing

There are losses, and then there are those defeats that show us exactly who a team are. The Steelers’ 26-24 win over the Ravens on Sunday night was the latter. It wasn’t just a loss; it was a referendum. The game was vintage, grubby, beautiful AFC North football. A rivalry game with a playoff place on the line. Big plays. Dumb decisions. Cris Collinsworth making unintelligible noises on commentary. In the final three minutes, four plays swung the win probability by more than 40 percentage points.

The Steelers, missing DK Metcalf and Darnell Washington, scored on four of their five second-half drives, three of them touchdowns, with Aaron Rodgers finding Calvin Austin for a 26-yard score with 55 seconds left. Baltimore, by contrast, couldn’t get out of their own way until Lamar Jackson strapped on his cape, completing seven of his final nine passes, throwing two touchdowns and converting a ridiculously clutch fourth-down strike to Isaiah Likely with 21 seconds left and the season on the line.

England’s meek concession of the series is a waste of talent and this stroke sums up the structural failure

No doubt someone, somewhere, in some fevered corner of the internet will come up with a counter view. If the universe of cricketing hot takes really is infinite, then logically there must be a feed, a page, a platform where a voice is saying, Jamie Smith and The Shot: on second thoughts.

You might think this was a bad shot, perhaps even the Worst Shot. You might think all surviving footage of the shot should be pixelated in the interests of public safety, classified as a hate crime, scrubbed from the internet under the right to forget.

Leader of former Danish colony, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, condemns US ‘threats’ as Nordic neighbours offer support

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• Europe live – latest updates

Greenland has urged Donald Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” after the US president, fresh from his military operation in Venezuela, again threatened to take over the Arctic territory.

In a bracingly direct statement, the Greenlandic prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric, declaring: “Enough is enough.”

• Head coach goes after outburst at Leeds game

• Oversaw worst Premier League finish of 15th

• Live reaction and updates after Amorim sacked

Ruben Amorim has been sacked by Manchester United after 14 months as their head coach. He leaves after a power struggle with the hierarchy over transfer policy, with Amorim demanding his colleagues in the recruitment department “do their job” after Sunday’s draw at Leeds.

Amorim believed United were prepared to back him in the January window should a major signing become available but then said last Friday: “We have no conversation to have any change in the squad.”

Teacher and publicist among those convicted of maliciously posting or sharing false claims French first lady is a man

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A Paris court has found 10 people guilty of online harassment of the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, by posting or reposting malicious comments on social media that claimed falsely that she was a man.

Eight men and two women, aged 41 to 60, including a school sports teacher, an art gallery owner and a publicist, were on Monday given sentences ranging from a compulsory course in understanding online harassment to an eight-month suspended prison sentence. One man, a property developer, who was absent from the trial hearings, was given a six-month prison sentence.

• Amorim sacked after losing power struggle over transfers

• Darren Fletcher to take charge for game at Burnley

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1. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (2018-2021) – 54% win rate

The Norwegian started off as a caretaker and his impact was so great that United granted him the full-time job. Undoubtedly the best football of the post-Ferguson era was played under Solskjaer, who preferred his side to counter-attack at speed and enjoyed a sensational record against Manchester City and Pep Guardiola, beating them three times at the Etihad. Came second in the league in 2020-201 but was denied an elusive trophy by the agonising 2021 Europa League final defeat to Villarreal on penalties.

We are often so busy and yet when the opportunity arises to do nothing, we can find it uncomfortable. Here’s how to lean into boredom – and unlock the imagination

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On a rainy afternoon last weekend, plans got cancelled and I found myself at a loose end. Given that I’m someone who likes to have backup plans for my backup plans, my initial response was panic. Now what? I wandered aimlessly from room to room, grumpily tidying away random items.

Noticing for the first time in weeks that most of my houseplants were critically ill, I decided to give them a spa day. I moved the worst cases to a south-facing windowsill and painstakingly removed the (many) dead leaves. For good measure, I organised a triage box containing plant food, a mister and a watering can. I might have got carried away and ordered a “beautifying leaf shine” too.

Detainees being held under controversial scheme say Home Office has caused them ‘severe psychological harm’

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Eighty asylum seekers detained in preparation for being returned to France under the UK government’s controversial “one in, one out” scheme have called on UN bodies to investigate their treatment. claiming they have suffered “fear, humiliation, and psychological distress” at the hands of the Home Office since arriving in the UK in small boats.

The detainees have compiled a document, “Report on conditions and treatment at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre”, which claims they have been treated unjustly by the Home Office since arriving in the UK on small boats. Harmondsworth is one of two detention centres close to Heathrow airport in London.

Escalating protests sparked by economic chaos have seen at least 20 people killed and nearly 1,000 arrested, say human rights groups

At least three children are reported to have been killed and more than 40 minors arrested after eight days of the ongoing protests across Iran, as human rights groups accuse the regime’s security forces of “indiscriminate targeting of civilians”.

The nationwide uprising sparked by the collapse of the country’s currency and rising living costs has spread to at least 78 cities and 222 locations, with demonstrators calling for the end of the regime, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI).

Opposition to a controversial graphite mine in Quebec strengthened once the Pentagon became involved

The Outaouais region on the western edge of Quebec is home to thousands of lakes, vast forests and extensive wetlands. It is also the setting of a swathe of wooded land known as La Petite-Nation, which, although not far from the cities of Montreal and Ottawa, remains relatively untouched.

That, however, is to change with the arrival of a controversial graphite mine with financing from the Pentagon.

The first 2026 entry in our ongoing series of writers calling attention to their comfort films is David Fincher’s thriller

It begins with a murder, and then another. A woman is killed, a man grievously injured, and a letter is sent to the news media. The killer gives himself a name – this is the Zodiac speaking – and provides a message written in code. So we start with three mysteries: the man, his motives and his message. The third is quickly cracked; the first hypothesized, but never definitively proven. But it’s the why of it all – why a man would kill at least five seemingly random people, and why we as a culture still care – that will require more significant investigation.

When it was first released more than 18 years ago, David Fincher’s Zodiac was considered a bit of an also-ran. Over two and a half hours long, it depicts the search for the Zodiac killer, who spent the late 60s terrorizing California’s Bay Area, as a series of bad leads and dead-ends, and concludes without definitively proving anything. It flopped at the box office and was not nominated for even a single Oscar.

A faultless lyric from 1887 mourns what seems to be repressed gay love

Renegade

To Arthur Chamberlain

Shop owners report fewer travellers while bars and wineries hope for legal clarity on alcohol sale

Abu Ali spent the first hours after the toppling of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad boxing up his merchandise. Old-regime bumper stickers, mugs with Assad’s face, T-shirts on which Russian and Syrian flags faded into each other – it all had to go.

A year later, the weathered tourist shop on the boardwalk of the Syrian coastal city of Tartous has entirely new products. The shelves are lined with the new three-star Syrian flag, mother-of-pearl jewellery boxes engraved with revolutionary slogans, and pictures of rebel fighters killed during the country’s 14-year civil war.

Subzero temperatures, heavy snowfall and powerful gusts mark a harsh start to 2026 for many

It has been a cold start to the year across much of Europe, particularly in central regions, where temperatures dropped to double-digit negatives. Heavy snowfall hit parts of eastern and central Europe on New Year’s Eve, notably in Poland and Ukraine, with similar conditions across the Alps on the first few days of the year.

The cold is likely to continue this week as an Arctic air mass sinks south across Europe, pulling temperatures well below the seasonal average outside south-east Europe. Temperatures are expected to fall widely by about 5C (41F) below average, with some areas – such as parts of central and north-eastern Europe – up to 10C lower than the norm. When wind chill is taken into account, it will feel even colder.

From territorial overreach to deportations, the current president is not as much of an anomaly as he might seem

‘Almost everyone is a little bit in love with the USA,” declares Edward Stourton in his introduction to Made in America. And why not? It is the land of razzle-dazzle and high ideals, of jazz music, Bogart and Bacall, Harriet Tubman and Hamilton, a nation that was anti-colonialist and pro-liberty from its conception, whose Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal”. Why, then, does this same country so often produce clown-show politics, racism at home and abroad, and imperial ambitions, latterly in Greenland and Canada? Why does it regularly show contempt for the world order it helped create? Why did it once again elect Donald Trump?

These contradictions have kept an army of journalists, White House-watchers and soothsayers in business for generations. Alistair Cooke, perhaps the greatest British exponent of the genre, interpreted the country via the minutiae of everyday life, observing people at the beach, say, or riding the subway. Stourton, another BBC veteran, who first reported from Washington in the Reagan years, takes almost the opposite approach. He looks at Trump and Trumpism through the run of history, arguing in a series of insightful essays that the 47th Potus is not an American aberration but a continuation, an echo of dark and often neglected aspects of the country’s past. Trump, he concludes, is “as American as apple pie”.

Exclusive: data reveals hundreds of UK nests have been raided in the past decade amid growing appetite to own prized birds for racing and breeding

In the echoing exhibition halls of Abu Dhabi’s International Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition, hundreds of falcons sit on perches under bright lights. Decorated hoods fit snugly over their heads, blocking their vision to keep them calm.

In a small glass room marked Elite Falcons Hall, four young birds belonging to an undisclosed Emirati sheikh are displayed like expensive jewels. Entry to the room, with its polished glass, controlled lighting and plush seating, is restricted to authorised visitors only.

Today’s fluff is here to neither manage nor coach

Not content with appointing a new head coach in the coming days, Chelsea are plotting a massive £135m move for Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior. The Brazilian is not too happy in the Spanish capital, by all accounts, and is yet to agree an extension to his contract which runs until June 2027. This trifling situation could open up the possibility of a sale, to avoid losing the winger for nothing in 18 months.

Adam Wharton would not be short of suitors if Crystal Palace allowed him to leave in the summer, especially if he makes an appearance at the World Cup. Real Madrid have an interest in the England midfielder, boosted by the potential Vinícius Jr loot, but they would face competition Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United. The latter three clubs would mean the 21-year-old could return to his native north-west.

• Fifth Ashes Test; day two: England 384. Australia 166-2

• Root makes 160 but hosts reduce lead to 218

The Richies were out in force on an eventful second day here, an entire block of supporters decked out in either cream, bone, white, off-white, ivory or beige. Bathed in sunshine, flags fluttering over the two heritage-listed pavilions, the backdrop for Joe Root’s 41st Test hundred was absolutely marvellous.

This has not been the case for Root here over the years. In 2014, the SCG witnessed the only time he has been dropped by England. In 2018, he made scores of 83 and 58 not out here but ended up on a drip due to extreme heat, his side having crumbled to a 4-0 series defeat. Four years later, came a duck and 24, England saving the Test to dodge the whitewash, but his captaincy long since sunk.

These inventions trigger rage, but also optimism. Maybe they will make people think more critically about debate and democracy

It was my blue shirt, a present from my sister-in-law, that gave it all away. It made me think of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, the lowly bureaucrat in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella The Double, a disconcerting study of the fragmented self within a vast, impersonal feudal system.

It all started with a message from an esteemed colleague congratulating me on a video talk on some geopolitical theme. When I clicked on the attached YouTube link to recall what I had said, I began to worry that my memory is not what it used to be. When did I record said video? A couple of minutes in, I knew there was something wrong. Not because I found fault in what I was saying, but because I realised that the video showed me sitting at my Athens office desk wearing that blue shirt, which had never left my island home. It was, as it turned out, a video featuring some deepfake AI doppelganger of me.