• Manager has ‘no doubt’ he remains best person for job

• Newcastle travel to Spurs on Tuesday in 12th place

Eddie Howe has said he would offer Newcastle his resignation if he believed he was no longer the right man to lead the presently struggling club.

Howe’s team visit Tottenham on Tuesday night aiming to end the run of three straight Premier League defeats that has prompted their slide to 12th place. Victory would be their first in an away match since December but the 48-year-old manager remains confident he can navigate his fatigued side out of their

President criticises Puerto Rican musician’s half-time show as a ‘slap in the face’ in lengthy tirade on social media

Maine, the US’s whitest state, has been shaken by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, a crackdown that could threaten Republican control of the Senate in November’s crucial midterm elections.

Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents launched “Operation Catch of the Day” in the state on 21 January, targeting “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who have terrorized communities”, according to the administration.

Only two survivors rescued in tragedy off Libyan coast, UN migration agency says

The UN migration agency said 53 people had died or were missing after a boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast. Only two survivors were rescued.

The International Organization for Migration said the boat overturned north of Zuwara on Friday.

Screenwriter Paul Schrader talks the inspiration and legacy of Martin Scorsese’s incendiary New York nightmare

If Travis Bickle were real and alive today, he would not be a taxi driver but more likely be sitting in his parents’ basement, exploring the dark, misogynistic depths of the internet.

“We call them incels now,” reflects Paul Schrader, who wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver, released 50 years ago on Sunday. “‘Incels’ wasn’t a word at that time but it is these guys who are lonely, who see themselves unable to make contact with women, have a repressed backlog of anger and resentment and imagine some kind of glorious transcendent transformation through violence.”

Storm Marta sweeps Iberian peninsula just days after Storms Kristin and Leonardo brought deadly flooding and major damage

Spain and Portugal have endured another storm over the weekend, just days after the deadly flooding and major damage caused by Storm Kristin and Storm Leonardo last week. Storm Marta passed over the Iberian peninsula on Saturday, bringing fresh torrential rain and killing two people. Storm Kristin killed at least five people after it made landfall on 28 January with Storm Leonardo claiming another victim last Wednesday.

The outlook for this week is for more rain across Spain, Portugal and France, especially across north-west Portugal, where more than 100mm is possible during the first half of the week. Some of the heaviest of the rain will transfer to southern Italy and western parts of Greece and Turkey later in the week.

She hated water, attacked our Christmas tree, destroyed our wallpaper – but everyone who met her was won over

Mishka was about eight weeks old when we got her. It was 2004, we were living in Dibden, New Forest, and I was looking to buy some guinea pigs. I saw an ad for a raccoon on the secondhand site Preloved. My husband, Graham, and I lived in Florida in the 90s and had a raccoon that would come into the yard. It had a bad leg, and we nurtured it, so I was very interested in raccoons.

I met someone who bred them after researching on Google, and we ended up with three, one after the other – we bought two, Nigel and Casey, and later, Mishka was given to us.

The latest tranche of files expose how he was viewed as a sexual svengali – and an expert on dodging the #MeToo movement

A new tranche of Epstein files has blasted its way through the worlds of media, politics, tech, academia, finance and Hollywood. High-profile individuals have once again been forced to explain their relationship with the billionaire financier – and why exactly they sent that email, or what they were doing in that photo, in that place, at that time. There have been resignations in Norway, Slovakia, France, the UK and on Wall Street. Each individual scandal matters. But take the files as a whole and a new picture forms: of Jeffrey Epstein as a man who was seen to survive a sexual abuse scandal, and who was then feted as a sexual svengali and a valuable ally in navigating allegations of sexual abuse amid the #MeToo movement.

The 3.5m documents that have thus far been released to the public – out of a reported 6m documents pertaining to Epstein in the US justice department’s possession – paint Epstein as someone for whom elites, and particularly elite men, often felt a sense of camaraderie and affection, maintaining intimate and friendly relationships long after his 2008 conviction on child sexual abuse charges. And their content implies that, in some cases, this was not simply a case of them turning a blind eye to their friend’s sexual crimes: the powerful actively approached Epstein for sexual and romantic advice, and saw him as a thrower of “wild” parties and a listening ear in whom they could confide their anxieties about the excesses of the #MeToo movement.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Asa Butterfield leads a cast of freaks looking for acceptance and love in a harsh and uncaring world in this rather melancholy version of Guy Bass’s kid-lit series

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this middling Brit-populated, European-financed, Indian-manufactured animation is the radical change of career trajectory it represents for its pinballing director, Steve Hudson. Hudson broke through with 2006’s Loachian social drama True North, a migrant movie starring Peter Mullan – now, having witnessed how the other half lives while directing episodes of primetime TV’s Cranford, he pivots to pixels with a big-screen adaptation of Guy Bass’s kid-lit books. Stitch Head feels like a tentative first step into a heavily crowded field, sutured together from ideas and images previously encountered in far more confident and accomplished entertainments.

Bass’s eponymous hero is rendered here as a boy with Bowie-esque heterochromatic eyes, a baseball-like head and the voice of Asa Butterfield; his home is a castle overlooking small town Grubbers Nubbin, where a mad professor (Rob Brydon) carries out Frankenstinian experiments. If the lead character design is solid – accompanying adults may wind up knitting replicas of Stitch Head’s onesie – the surrounding menagerie seems a bit too Pixar for comfort; Stitch’s furry cyclops pal Creature (Joel Fry) is conspicuously a hybrid of Monsters, Inc’s Mike and Sully. Once this pair abscond to join a travelling freak show, Stitch Head ventures a rather melancholy and misshapen showbiz story – that of a boy who, much like the film, just wants to be loved.

Members of an athletics club in Madagascar formed by rickshaw drivers are now beating elite athletes in international endurance events

It is a fiercely competitive market, and one of the toughest physical jobs in Madagascar’s Antsirabe, but over the past five years cycle rickshaw driver Haja Nirina has honed his athletic prowess alongside his business.

In this city, about 100 miles (160km) south of the capital, Antananarivo, there are more than 4,000 rickshaws for a population of 265,000, the cheapest transport available for people and goods. Some are pulled by cycles, others by hand. Each day, Nirina makes between 10 and 15 trips, making 10,000 to 15,000 ariary (£1.70 to £2.60). Unlike 99% of drivers, Nirina doesn’t lose 5,000 ariary of his income paying a daily rental fee for the rickshaw. For the past three years, he has owned his, thanks to a programme run by his local athletic club.

The chaotic streets of Antsirabe, where the rickshaw drivers vie for trade

Arsenal make the leaders pay, Sonia Bompastor is defiant and Manchester United’s squad is working in harmony

Andrée Jeglertz said Manchester City’s “decision-making wasn’t ideal all the time during the game” in their 1-0 loss to Arsenal at the Emirates stadium on Sunday. He’s right. City may have had 22 touches in the opposition box to Arsenal’s 19 but they had only had one shot on target to Arsenal’s four. To some extent though, they have a hall pass for that lack of solid decision-making because it’s just so rare. Despite the defeat, City are sitting pretty at the top of the WSL table, their lead still a hefty eight points ahead of Manchester United. Should Arsenal win their game in hand, City’s lead will still be seven points. In a 12-team league and 22-game season, it’s incredibly unlikely that that gap will be bridged. Their goal difference is also 10 better than United’s. This is City’s title to lose and with the talent they have at their disposal the likelihood of any rot setting in is extremely slim. They play bottom-placed Leicester next, then struggling Aston Villa, who suffered a third back-to-back defeat, and those teams should fear City’s frustration. Suzanne Wrack

Exclusive: Multimillion-pound contract raises concerns about controls designed to prevent firms unwittingly aiding destruction of Ukraine

The government has been urged to re-examine a British company’s contract to export hi-tech machinery to Armenia, after the Guardian uncovered links to the supply chain for Russia’s war machine.

Sanctions experts and the chair of the House of Commons business committee questioned the government’s decision to award an export licence to Cygnet Texkimp.

William and Kate ‘remain focused on victims’ in their first words on scandal involving Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

The Prince and Princess of Wales have been “deeply concerned” by the revelations from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal involving Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Kensington Palace has said.

It is the first time the views of William and Catherine have been known about the crisis, which has engulfed the monarchy and Westminster, and their thoughts “remain focused on the victims”.

The next entry in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their favourite comfort films is a journey back to 1998 with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman

The VHS of Practical Magic was kept at the back of the cabinet, where the not-quite-child-appropriate films lived. The cover transfixed me: the ethereal faces of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, surrounded by burning candles. At eight years old, I was instantly drawn to something I didn’t yet understand. One day, I’d be ready.

Despite opening at No 1 at the US box office, Practical Magic failed to recoup its budget and was dismissed as tonally confused. Variety called it “part comedy, part family drama, part romance, part special-effects mystery-adventure … a hodgepodge”.

Authors, a newsreader, a lawyer and an esteemed colleague: they’re all great – but I’m not married to any of them. Can we really depend on this technology?

Recently, the Rowsons accidentally invented a new game that anyone can play at home. I have yet to come up with a world-beating name for it, so for now let’s just call it “How bloody stupid is AI?” The playing of the game will change from player to player, depending on their circumstances – but essentially the rules remain the same. Ask AI a simple question about yourself, and see just how wrong it gets it.

In my case, all you need know is that while I, through the nature of my job, have a fairly large online presence, my partner (we married in 1987) has assiduously avoided having one at all. Which means that if you Google “Martin Rowson wife” in images, you may get a picture of me next to our then 14-year-old daughter or me with my friend and fellow cartoonist Steven Appleby, who happens to be trans but has kept her given first name.

The radical young poet’s backhanded tribute to the older writer is a stern judgment on his lapsed political idealism

To Wordsworth

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, —
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou should cease to be.

Met Office issues fresh yellow warning for rain as parts of England are still recovering from extensive flooding

More than 200 flood alerts were active across the UK on Sunday as parts of England and Wales braced for more downpours after the Met Office issued a fresh yellow warning for rain.

The warning spans noon to midnight on Monday, covering parts of southern Wales as well as south-east and south-west England. The Met Office said that “10-15mm of rain is likely fairly widely with 20-30mm in some places exposed to the strong south to south-easterly winds”.

• Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results | Briefing

• Team GB dream of Magic Monday | And email Daniel

Which of these events is most terrifying? This a question that reminds me of when a teacher asked five-year-old me which hand I wanted to be caned on, and I kept saying neither – yes, a real man would’ve said either or both – except the other way around, the answer being all of them. But for the less lily-livered, there must be an answer.

The slalom section of this competition is tomorrow, which is to say the downhillers go today, then the times of the two team members are added together, with the quickest taking gold. Germany now lead, having gone faster than Switzerland.

Prime minister’s Liberal Democratic party to be pressed on promised tax cuts and fiscal stimulus plans

• Business live – latest updates

Japan’s stock market has hit a record high after Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic party (LDP) secured a comprehensive victory in Sunday’s election.

The LDP won 316 of the 465 seats in the country’s lower house – the first time a single party has secured two-thirds of the chamber since the establishment of Japan’s parliament in 1947.

Director of communications at Downing St steps down a day after resignation of prime minister’s chief of staff

Tim Allan said he was standing down to allow Keir Starmer the opportunity to build a new team.

In a statement, he said:

I have decided to stand down to allow a new No 10 team to be built.

I wish the PM and his team every success.

• British freestyle skier targeted on Instagram account

• ‘A lot of the messages have been awful – it’s insane’

British freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy says he has received death threats and messages hoping that he breaks his neck after posting an image apparently showing him urinating the words “fuck ICE” in the snow last week.

Kenworthy, who will compete for Team GB at the Winter Olympics but has lived in America for most of his life, also doubled down on his criticisms of the US immigration and customs enforcement agency calling them “absolutely evil and awful and terrifying”.

Need for greater military autonomy also accepted, says report for Munich Security Conference, which takes place this week

Europe has come to the painful realisation that it needs to be more assertive and more militarily independent from an authoritarian US administration that no longer shares a commitment to liberal democratic norms and values, a report prepared by the Munich Security Conference asserts.

The report sets the scene for an all-out ideological confrontation with the Trump White House at the high-level annual meeting of security policy specialists, which starts on Friday.

Both the leads are good value in Dan Kay’s movie in which Jessie and Spider hide conceal a corpse to avoid being separated in the care system

A fatally overdosed mother called Jacey is unceremoniously bundled into a trunk at the start of this southern US-set drama; the uncredited actor who plays her should probably have a word with her agent, as the role is surely in contention for a world record as the least likely to boost your career. Jacey is just one of the drug casualties littering director Dan Kay’s underpowered film about the US’s super-strength opioid crisis, as her two bereaved daughters desperately tread water in the aftermath.

While 11-year-old Jessie (Jojo Regina) steps up with loving words in the face of tragedy, 15-year-old Spider (Mckenna Grace) has a practised indifference. All too accustomed to dealing with her mother’s addiction, her attention is on what happens now – notifying the authorities of the death would mean the sisters would be separated by the care system. So she steps up to run the household and fend off Jacey’s junkie boyfriend Reece (Dacre Montgomery), while she tries to find a solution.

Tensions simmer when a struggling artist joins her wealthy friends for a hen week on an exotic Greek island

It is the summer of 2019, and Sophie Evans, the reckless protagonist of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s unsettling second novel, has arrived on an idyllic island in the Cyclades with her university friends Helena, Iris and Alessia to celebrate Helena’s forthcoming marriage. Helena doesn’t want it called her “hen … Like we’re dumpy little featherbrains going cluck, cluck, cluck”, but all the same, the men – including Sophie’s curator boyfriend of six years, Greg – will not arrive for another five days.

She may be on holiday but Sophie is not at ease in the villa’s atmosphere of “almost offensive” good taste, with luxurious meals, cocktails on tap and endless sunshine. In the 10 years that have passed since they first met as students, the differences between the women have become more pronounced: money has “made itself known”. Elegant, chilly Iris, whose parents have bought her a place in Peckham, works in publishing; the family of spoilt, patrician art dealer Alessia seem practically to own the island on which the women are holidaying; and Helena’s aspiration is to be a trophy wife with a house full of “nice things”.

Club’s record signing on adjusting to the north-east, Afcon pride, and learning from Patrick Vieira and Liam Rosenior

Vous or Tu? It says a lot about Habib Diarra that his joy at being promoted from Strasbourg’s Under-17s to the first team was tempered by anxiety over the two French words for “you.”

Would addressing new, senior teammates by using “tu” be regarded as disrespectful? Ultimately, the young midfielder played safe and opted for the more formal “vous”. Cue wholesale laughter from the older players who told him not to be so silly; he was one of them now.