Jamaat e-Islami, oppressed under Sheikh Hasina’s rule, could take unprecedented share of the vote on Thursday

As the clock hit midnight, the women held their flame torches aloft and marched into the Dhaka night. “The people have given their blood, now we want equality,” they shouted above the roar of the traffic.

For many in Bangladesh, the past few weeks have been a cause for jubilation. The first free and fair elections in 17 years have been promised for Thursday, after the toppling of the regime of Sheikh Hasina in a bloody student-led uprising in August 2024 in which more than 1,000 people died.

Ernest Zacharevic alleges the carrier has repeatedly used his art in its external corporate branding without consent

A Malaysia-based artist has filed a lawsuit against the low-cost airline carrier AirAsia and its parent company Capital A Berhad for allegedly using his art on a plane without permission.

Ernest Zacharevic, a Lithuanian-born artist based in Penang, alleged AirAsia used his 2012 street mural, Children on a Bicycle, on an aircraft between October and November 2024.

Defence secretary John Healey says Russian president is ‘rapidly re-establishing military presence in the region, including reopening old cold war bases’. What we know on day 1,449

Music publisher Primary Wave said to have bought rights to pop star’s music, including Toxic and Baby One More Time

Britney Spears has sold the rights to her music catalog, which includes hits such as Toxic, Baby One More Time and Gimme More, according to media reports.

The music publisher Primary Wave is said to have purchased the pop star’s music rights on 30 December, TMZ reported on Tuesday, citing legal documents. An unnamed source “familiar with the deal” confirmed the sale to the New York Times.

Police have been searching for Belgian tourist, 31, since she went missing near Cradle Mountain in June 2023

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Investigators are closer to uncovering the mystery of what happened to missing Belgian tourist Celine Cremer after a major discovery in the wilderness.

Five bones, teeth and a Honda car key were found by Tasmania police after a two-day search of the Arthur River area, where Cremer is believed to have disappeared.

Community Security Trust, which provides security to British Jews, recorded total 3,700 incidents in 2025

Antisemitic incidents increased sharply in the UK after the deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue on the holiest day of the Jewish year, according to an organisation that provides security to British Jews.

Two people died and three were seriously injured at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation on 2 October last year, in the first fatal antisemitic terror attack since the Community Security Trust (CST) began recording incidents in 1984.

National Portrait Gallery, London
Freud was a master painter, but his drawings ranged from ordinary to awful. Guess which aspect of his work this show focuses on?

If painting is a fast car, drawing is more like taking the bus. At least that’s how it felt to me, puttering along on the 27 to Paddington that is the National Portrait Gallery’s trawl through Lucian Freud’s sketches, engravings and even childhood crayonings, daydreaming until my stop, with the occasional flash of colour and flare when one of the exhibition’s “carefully selected group of important paintings” rolled past.

This is a sad review to write. Freud seemed an unquestionable genius in his lifetime and I still stand in awe of the great modern paintings with which he won that crown. One of his 1990s portraits of “Benefits Supervisor” Sue Tilley towers here, in every sense, her face slumped into her hand as she sleeps vertical in an armchair, while Freud eagerly inspects every pore and blemish on her big naked body and translates her into an ecstasy of oily greys, whites, purples, ridged, pockmarked, magnificent.

Three-year-old black coat female, known as BEY03F, crossed into LA county around 6am on 7 February

A gray wolf wandered into Los Angeles county for the first time in more than a century on Saturday morning.

“This is the most southern verified record of a gray wolf in modern times,” Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California department of fish and wildlife, said.

• Tomas Magnusson scores in 88th minute to seal win

• Jambos now have a six-point lead at the top of the table

Tomas Magnusson scored a late winner as the Scottish Premiership leaders Hearts defeated Hibernian 1-0 in a tense Edinburgh derby to tighten their grip on top spot.

Magnusson, on as a substitute, popped up with the game’s decisive moment in the 88th minute to spark jubilant scenes inside Tynecastle.

In a floor speech, Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative, revealed identities of six men after seeing unredacted files

Ro Khanna, the US congressman, publicly revealed the names of six men whose identities were redacted from the Jeffrey Epstein files, including Leslie Wexner, a billionaire retail magnate, whom the FBI appeared to have labeled as a co-conspirator.

The Democratic representative of California disclosed the names during a floor speech on Tuesday, following a visit to the Department of Justice, where he and Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, spent two hours reviewing unredacted documents.

Boy, 13, held on suspicion of attempted murder after pupils aged 12 and 13 stabbed at Kingsbury high school

A police counter-terrorism unit was on Tuesday night leading the inquiry into the stabbing of two boys aged 13 and 12 at a school in north-west London.

Police were called to Kingsbury high school in Brent on Tuesday afternoon after reports that a 13-year-old boy had been stabbed. When they arrived at the scene, officers found a 12-year-old boy who had also been stabbed.

Stop all the clippers, don’t cut off the barnet: United’s winning run is over. Frank Ilett, the man who pledged never to visit a barber again until Manchester United won five matches in a row, may have been denied a viral haircut, but United’s resilience came to the fore here to deny the Hammers what would have been a deserved victory deep into added time.

A studded finish from the fan favourite Tomas Soucek was cancelled out by an impressive, instinctive strike from Benjamin Sesko to leave this match honours even. United lacked energy and snap, West Ham saw two precious points fall away at the last; both sides will leave frustrated but not disconsolate. The Hammers remain in 18th place, United stay in fourth, their contrasting objectives remain in play.

Climate groups vow to fight rollback of 2009 finding determining CO₂ and other greenhouse gases harm health

In what is set to be its most audacious anti-environment move yet, the Trump administration on Thursday will roll back the mechanism allowing the government to regulate planet-heating pollution, the White House press secretary has told reporters.

“President Trump will be joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the recession of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference on Tuesday. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history.”

To his extensive list of problems at Tottenham, Thomas Frank can add another. The manager is dealing with a ghost from the club’s more successful recent past. There were 49 minutes on the clock when the South Stand choir took up the song. “He’s magic, you know. Mauricio Poch-e-ttino.” The message was clear. They want their former idol back. They cannot persist any longer with Frank.

The only wonder here was that Newcastle, who had arrived on the back of three successive Premier League defeats and with numerous issues of their own, were not out of sight at the interval. If they were bright in the first half, Spurs were impossibly awful. Frank’s injury list numbered 10 players and he lost another one – Wilson Odobert – in the 34th minute. The captain, Cristian Romero, is suspended, of course. Nobody wants to hear excuses.

Head of army says potential ‘peacemakers’ being trained, in what would be first outside force in Gaza since 1967

Indonesia has said it is preparing to send up to 8,000 troops to Gaza to be part of a peacekeeping force under Donald Trump’s Middle East plan.

The announcement by the army chief of staff, Gen Maruli Simanjuntak, makes Indonesia the first country to deliver a specific commitment to the international stabilisation force (ISF) envisaged as part of the second phase of the Trump plan.

A luxury Chinese sedan gifted to Fiji is the latest in a string of vehicles donated by foreign countries to deepen partnerships and seek influence in the region

At a ceremony in January, a shiny black luxury sedan rolled into the leafy, rain-soaked ground of Fiji’s state house. It was a gift from China to the Pacific nation’s president, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, who thanked Beijing for the “beautiful limousine”.

The vehicle given was a Hongqi or “Red Flag” car, the same brand used by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, during military parades.

Chelsea’s habit of squandering leads did not leave with Enzo Maresca. The lapses in concentration have piled up and there was another to add to the list after Stamford Bridge witnessed an inexplicable collapse against Leeds, who took another step towards staying up fighting back from 2-0 down to keep themselves six points above the bottom three.

The turnaround was not on the cards when Cole Palmer, who had earlier collected his first assist in the Premier League this season, extended Chelsea’s advantage by scoring from the spot for the third time in two games. By the end, though, Liam Rosenior was ­watching the prospect of an eighth win in 10 games slip away. The implosion was staggering. Lukas Nmecha and Noah Okafor had capitalised on dreadful defending to make it 2-2 and, while Chelsea rallied, their hopes of a late winner ended when Palmer produced a contender for miss of the season.

• Veteran sustains serious injury during Winter Olympics training

• Athlete in good spirits says chef de mission Alisa Camplin

Australia’s Olympic team has been rocked with Cam Bolton airlifted to Milan after breaking his neck in training, ending the veteran snowboarder’s Winter Games campaign.

Competing at his fourth Olympics, the 35-year-old suffered a crash on Monday while training for the snowboard cross event but woke up with worsening pain in his neck the following day.

Hill Dickinson Stadium is no place like home for Everton. Not yet, anyway. Sixth place and momentum in the push for European qualification was the tantalising prize for beating Bournemouth but, not for the first time at their plush new stadium, David Moyes’s team let it slip through their grasp.

Andoni Iraola’s visitors extended their unbeaten Premier League run to six games courtesy of second-half headers from Rayan, the 19-year-old Brazilian who could well be their latest gem, and Amine Adli. Bournemouth’s goals and a red card for the Everton defender Jake O’Brien arrived in an eight-minute spell in which the hosts imploded to leave themselves without a home win since 6 December. Moyes’s side have collected 17 points from their last eight away games but only eight from the last nine at home. Their quest for Europe is floundering on home soil.

• Acting director Todd Lyons called ICE ‘key’ to security

• 2026 World Cup takes place this summer in 11 US cities

The acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told a congressional committee on Tuesday that his agency is a “key part of the overall security apparatus for the World Cup” and refused to commit to pausing operations near games at this summer’s tournament.

The 2026 World Cup will be hosted this summer by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, with 78 of the 104 games taking place in the US. Various entities have estimated that up to 10 million people could visit the 11 US host cities for the quadrennial tournament. However, ICE’s role in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown – including an extended and widespread operation in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metropolitan area in which two people were killed by federal agents – has raised serious concerns among fans.

Health secretary poised to make leadership bid after May local elections to pre-empt a potential challenge from rival Rayner, MPs close to him say

Allies of Wes Streeting expect him to try to challenge Keir Starmer’s leadership within weeks, despite the health secretary insisting he backs the prime minister and is not intending to move against him, the Guardian has been told.

Starmer attempted to regain authority over his party on Tuesday after a tumultuous day in Westminster during which he was denounced by the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and lost his director of communications.

Teenagers routinely see content promoting weight-loss drugs, steroids and skin-whitening creams, research finds

Children are being “bombarded” with harmful products online, including weight-loss drugs, steroids and skin-whitening chemicals, a study has found.

Research conducted for the children’s commissioner for England found that teenagers were routinely exposed to harmful products on social media, video games and apps.

Arsenal and Manchester United face familiar opponents in a revamped competition that has so far proven more competitive

The next phase of the new Women’s Champions League format gets under way on Wednesday and Thursday, when the four playoff first legs take place. Arsenal and Manchester United are among eight teams vying to join Barcelona, Lyon, Chelsea and Bayern Munich, who automatically qualified for the quarter-finals as the top four in the league phase.

As in the men’s competition, a switch from a group stage to the league format has been made. However, with the UWCL group stage having been introduced only for the 2021-22 season, there was scepticism about a change coming so soon, with the group stage viewed as a big step forward and in its relative infancy.

Former Doctor Who star is also facing allegations of exposure and sexual assault by touching

The actor Noel Clarke has been arrested over an attempted rape, which allegedly took place in 2007.

The former Doctor Who star is also facing allegations of exposure and sexual assault by touching.