Six Russians and four Belarusians set for Milano Cortina
All athletes will compete under their nation’s flags
Ukraine’s sports minister has condemned the decision to allow six Russians and four Belarusians to compete under their nation’s flags at next month’s Winter Paralympics as “disappointing and outrageous” and said Ukraine officials will not attend the opening ceremony or other official events as a result.
“The flags of Russia and Belarus have no place at international sporting events that stand for fairness, integrity, and respect,” said Matvii Bidnyi in response to the International Paralympic Committee’s decision on Monday. “These are the flags of regimes that have turned sport into a tool of war, lies and contempt. In Russia, Paralympic sport has been made a pillar for those whom Putin sent to Ukraine to kill – and who returned from Ukraine with injuries and disabilities,” he added.
Norwegian claims his fifth gold medal at Milano Cortina
USA have to settle for silver in cross-country battle
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo led Norway to victory in the men’s cross-country team sprint on Wednesday to claim his fifth win at Milano Cortina Olympics – and a record 10th Winter Olympic gold medal.
Alongside Einar Hedegart in the final, the Norway duo saw off the United States, clocking 18 minutes, 28.9 seconds. Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher were 1.4 seconds behind for the silver, while Italy’s Elia Barp and Federico Pellegrino took bronze, 3.3 seconds back.
Stephen Colbert said the network told him not to air an interview with a Texas Democrat running for Senate
A judge in Florida has set a trial date in US president Donald Trump’s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the BBC over a Panorama programme.
Court documents from the US District Court Southern District of Florida show judge Roy K Altman set a trial date of 15 February next year.
This matter is set for trial during the Court’s two-week trial calendar beginning February 15, 2027. Counsel for all parties shall also appear at a calendar call at 1:45 p.m. on February 9, 2027.
Unless instructed otherwise by subsequent order, the trial and all other proceedings in this case shall be conducted in Courtroom 12-4 at the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. U.S. Courthouse, 400 N. Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida 33128.
Lawsuit from health and environmental justice groups challenges the EPA’s rollback of the ‘endangerment finding’
More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.
Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.
Kimberly Prost and Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza vow US reprisals will not affect work of international criminal court
When the Canadian Kimberly Prost learned Donald Trump’s administration had imposed sanctions on her, it came as a shock.
For years, she has sat as a judge at the international criminal court, weighing accusations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity; now she is on the same list as terrorists and those involved in organised crime. “It really was a moment of a bit of disbelief,” she said.
Exclusive: 15 Congress members write to Marco Rubio about nine-month detention of Mohammed Ibrahim
Fifteen members of Congress have written to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, demanding to know what steps the United States has taken in response to the mistreatment of a Palestinian-American teenager who spent nine months in Israeli detention.
The letter, led by Senator Peter Welch and first seen by the Guardian, is centered around the case of Mohammed Ibrahim, a Florida resident who was 15 when Israeli soldiers arrested him during a raid on his family’s West Bank home in February 2025. He was charged with throwing objects at moving vehicles before being released on 27 November following a guilty plea and suspended sentence, and was taken directly to hospital upon his return.
With more than 200 possible symptoms, long Covid isn’t easy to treat and diagnose. Rolled-back federal funding has led longhaulers to ask: is this all in my head?
I am 30ft below the surface of the Blue Grotto, a crystalline diving hole in central Florida. Between the water’s embrace and the restriction of my wetsuit, my blood pressure finally stabilizes. The long, deep breaths I pull from my respirator keep my heart rate nice and low.
I feel lighter than I have since April 2022, when I first contracted long Covid. I feel childlike at the fact that I can do this at all – get scuba certified – when on land I’m often confined to a wheelchair or a walker.
Redditors are thrilled by the Co-op on Ecclesall Road, where a magnificent drone is reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ambient music. We take a visit to the back aisles
There’s a new sound gripping Sheffield. You won’t find it at one of the city’s eclectic jazz nights; nor in any of its clubs or live music venues. You’ll find it in the back aisle of a Co-op supermarket on Ecclesall Road.
“Anyone noticed how nice the freezers sound in the eccy road co-op?” someone wrote on the Sheffield Reddit page in January. “It’s like all the fans have been carefully tuned to the calmest droning chord ever, it’s like being in an electrical gong bath.”
Exclusive: Research uncovers programme to make centuries-old records legible to detect people’s ancestry
Large numbers of paper restorers and bookbinders were recruited by the Nazis and “contributed directly to genocide” during the second world war, according to research.
A British historian has uncovered a Europe-wide programme in the 1930s and 1940s in which restorers repaired and cleaned historic church and civil records, making them legible so that the Nazis could detect anyone with Jewish ancestry.
A tense return to the disaster foregrounds the heroism of the ‘Fukushima 50’ while raising questions about corporate secrecy and nuclear safety
The terrifying story of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011, caused by a cataclysmic tsunami, is retold by British film-maker James Jones and Japanese co-director Megumi Inman. It was a natural and human-made disaster that left 20,000 dead and a further 164,000 displaced from the area, some with no prospect of return. The earthquake damaged the cooling systems that prevent meltdowns and caused three near-apocalyptic explosions, bringing the nation close to a catastrophe that would have threatened its very existence. Incredibly, the ultimate calamity was finally staved off by nothing more hi-tech than a committed fire brigade spraying thousands of tons of water on the exposed fuel rods.
The film plunges us into the awful story moment-by-moment, accompanied by interviews with the chief players of the time – prominently nuclear plant employee Ikuo Izawa, a shift supervisor and de facto leader of the “Fukushima 50” (actually 69 people) who became legendary in Japan and beyond for their self-sacrificial courage, staying in a nightmarish reactor when everyone else had been evacuated.
Cognitive shuffling is apparently the remedy for a spinning mind at 3am. But it made me question all my choices
A doctor has gone viral – which sounds like the beginning of a dad joke, but isn’t – with a hack for getting back to sleep if you wake at 3am. Cognitive shuffling is apparently the remedy for a spinning mind in the middle of the night. “Work, money, kids, planning, scheduling, problem solving. Your brain is too active to let you sleep – in fact the stress of all these thoughts tells the brain that it’s not safe to sleep, you have to stay on high alert,” says Bradford GP Amir Khan.
Cognitive shuffling interrupts this process, and invites your brain to go into sleep mode. Khan says to do it, choose a random word – like “bed”, or “dream” – then think of objects starting with each letter of it, while picturing them in your head. “Bed begins with b, so maybe bat, binoculars, baseball, banana,” he adds, helpfully, “Once I’ve exhausted the letter b I move on to e – emu, elephant, eyes. And so on.”
Death of Briton along with Polish citizen near La Grave comes four days after fatal avalanche at Val d’Isère
A third British man has been killed in an avalanche in the French Alps.
The man had been skiing with a group of four others when the avalanche struck near the resort town of La Grave on Tuesday morning, local media reported.
CEO of UK’s biggest defence company says delay is holding back investment as BAE posts record sales
The boss of Britain’s biggest defence company has urged ministers to publish a long-delayed blueprint for military spending as soon as possible, as it posted record sales driven by a global increase in demand after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Charles Woodburn, the chief executive of BAE Systems, said companies want clarity on how the money would be spent, adding that the defence investment plan (DIP) – due in late 2025 – was holding back investment.
Airline statement will reassure Britons abroad anxious about new immigration rules coming into effect next week
British dual nationals may be able to board Ryanair flights in Europe to the UK even if they do not have a current British passportwhen new immigration rules come into force next week, the airline has said.
The clarification comes as Abta, the trade organisation for tour operators and travel agents in the UK, called on the government to introduce a grace period during which British citizens with dual nationality can board flights back to the UK with alternative proof of being British.
On Saturday January 24, Duncan Ferguson walked into the Winslow Hotel pub on Goodison Road and handed licensee Dave Bond £1,000 to put behind the bar. Ferguson, the former Everton centre-forward, was there because the Winslow, 140 years old and standing in the shadow of Goodison Park’s towering Main Stand, was closing. Eight months after Everton’s men left Goodison, this was another farewell party and Ferguson had turned up to say goodbye. “It was a brilliant gesture,” said Bond.
Ferguson was not the only ex-Evertonian present. Former captain Alan Stubbs, 1995 FA Cup winners Graham Stuart and Joe Parkinson, and 1987 League champion Ian Snodin each had a turn on the mic. Kevin Sheedy, one of the heroes of Howard Kendall’s great mid-1980s team, made an appearance too.
Women’s aerials: the qualifying rounds of accelerating down a ramp and flying through the air. Hanna Huskova, gold medallist in 2018, does a triple somersault, or the “the kiss arse blaster” in the commentator’s words, but it is only enough to leave her seventh.
Women’s curling: Back to the brushes, where Rebecca Morrison posts the final stone of the sixth end into perfect position, Team GB take two and go into a 4-3 lead against the USA with four ends left.
The Wicked star plays all 23 characters in a hi-tech London staging of Bram Stoker’s novel by Kip Williams. Here’s a bite-sized look at the critics’ verdicts
Dracula, the Ur-vampire and ultimate outsider of the literary canon, is played by Cynthia Erivo, along with every other character, in this deliciously wicked tale of the blood-sucking count. Except it’s not deliciously wicked in adapter-director Kip Williams’ stage reinvention. Williams has proven himself a Midas-touched spinner of old stories to new. His one-woman version of The Picture of Dorian Gray was deliriously original. His take on Jean Genet’s The Maids was punk inspired. What has happened here?
As in the Australian director’s hit adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray (immaculately interpreted by the Succession star Sarah Snook), the stage is sometimes so crowded with camera operators and stage crew that it’s not always easy to see Erivo. The shallow rake in the stalls makes this theatre a less than ideal setting for Marg Horwell’s handsome scenic design: I spent at least half the evening watching the action on the large screen hanging overhead. Yet it becomes a hallucinatory experience all the same.
Erivo dons wigs and skirts and recalibrates her voice to play Harker’s fiancee Mina and her friend Lucy; then spectacles to play psychiatrist Dr Seward and comic Saruman tresses for a guttural Van Helsing. It’s to her credit, and Williams’, that one sometimes loses track of which character is being broadcast live and which is recorded. The integration is mostly seamless. Personifications of Irish and American characters are knowingly ridiculous, but Dracula always had a vein of camp.
It’s refreshing to see Erivo get to own her queerness on stage, licking her lips lasciviously as a lace-decked Lucy who’s in sexual thrall to an androgynous Dracula – or strutting confidently in a masculine vest with silver chains (a welcome escape from her feminine get-ups in Wicked). She unleashes her ethereal voice to haunting, vulpine effect in the final scenes, where she finally gets to embody Dracula’s power on a bare stage, unobscured by tech and crowds.
The multi-faceted approach speaks to the way that Stoker cut between first-person perspectives using a document-sharing and epistolary form. Equally, Williams’ boundary-breaking artistic toolkit brings out the thematic heart of the matter; it emphasises the way in which the predatory count stokes fears but also embodies deep-rooted desires.
Erivo seems ill at ease with the material. There’s a hesitancy about her performance, as if she were wrong-footed by the technology that surrounds her. A scattering of arch, self-conscious moments and sly humour are part of the deal in Williams’ interpretation, but nothing feels truly felt and, as she switches between characters, the individual voices are not always properly differentiated. The overall effect is slightly ramshackle, sluggish and, in the end, frustratingly short on dash and drama.
Erivo’s range is remarkable – alternately placid, pert, prowling and predatory. A Tony award-winning star of musical theatre in The Color Purple, she despatches one melancholy torch song by Clemence Williams with wistful nonchalance. Otherwise, her athletic efforts are magnified by a filmic soundtrack encompassing Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Chopin, Björk and even a bit of electro-trance music. For truly this is a mind-bogglingly complex show, which goes beyond the kitchen sink in its attempts to create an audio-visual hallucination.
The effects, with Craig Wilkinson as video designer, are impressive: a vampire flying by, Dracula crawling down the wall. The camera operators, wig providers, stage managers and props assistants are all assiduous and wonderfully efficient. Marg Horwell’s design is effectively flexible, Nick Schlieper’s lighting and the sound design by Jessica Dunn suitably dramatic, though Clemence Williams’ score becomes increasingly over-emphatic.
Despite stumbling over the odd line, Erivo is charismatic, game, and essentially does her best as a cog in Williams’ elaborate machine. But if you agree to tie your big comeback to a very specific directorial vision, there’s not much even a superstar actor can do if that vision is faulty.
Unresolved ‘sensitive’ issues in peace talks are fate of occupied territories in east Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
The peace talks ended abruptly today after about two hours, according to reports, in contrast with yesterday’s negotiations that apparently took place over six hours.
Neither side have offered any public sign of progress, but instead said the talks were “difficult” with Russian news agencies quoting sources describing the negotiations as “very tense”.
Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s Treasury spokersperson, is giving his speech now.
He has announced, or confirmed, three measures to cut welfare spending.
The number claiming disability benefits for an attention disorder has more than doubled since Covid. We all know a significant number of these claims are spurious …
We will stop those with mild anxiety, depression, and similar conditions from claiming disability benefits and instead encourage them into the dignity of work.
We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme, where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow, and paid for by working people who can’t afford them themselves.
We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme, where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow, and paid for by working people who can’t afford them themselves.
A new exhibition brings together new dye-transfer prints of the classically American photographer’s work
As a small child, Winston Eggleston was only vaguely aware that his father, William Eggleston, was a famous photographer. For all he knew other children also had parents who were friends with Dennis Hopper, or who spent hours tinkering on a piano between occasional, fevered photography sprees, or who had taken the world’s most iconic picture of a red ceiling.
“It’s all normal to you, because you don’t know anything different,” Winston recently recalled. “Looking back, I was lucky.”
The Canadians began the Milano Cortina Games with a cheating scandal and a gold drought. In the second week of action, it’s woe Canada no more
Through the first 10 days of the Olympics, Canada had more memes than medals. More gaffes than golds. More “oh no” than “O Canada.”
Canada didn’t win their first gold medal of the Games until the ninth day of full competition. Meanwhile, the narrative centered on the Great Curling Kerfuffle of 2026 and its accompanying viral online content.
Rio de Janeiro’s carnival is full of contrasts: wealth brushes up against poverty, joyful abandon unfolds alongside hard labour. Its visual expression also explores notions of power. In a country with the largest Catholic population in the world, racy nun costumes are everywhere during the festival. Along with revellers dressing up in sexy police costumes, the Catholic cosplay reveals an element of carnival’s underlying subversive nature: authority figures softened, flipped, and reconsidered through street theatre and play
Mandelson, Trump, Send, political leadership: all need explanation with thought and clarity. We must end this obsession with ‘hot takes’
Roger Mosey is a former head of BBC TV News
Almost everybody, including Keir Starmer, can see that the Peter Mandelson affair provoked a genuine political crisis. The media were right to make it headline news. But it also shows the febrile atmosphere in which politicians and the media conspire to turn every incident into an issue of confidence in leadership, and we are becoming a country where it is impossible to focus on the long term. Hyped-up hot takes are far more loved in Westminster than bringing the nation the sustained change that it needs.
There is nothing new in the obsession with political process. I was guilty of it myself when I was editor of the Today programme during John Major’s attempt to ratify the Maastricht treaty in the 1990s. We gleefully put on air rebels and loyalists as the government battled for survival, and our listeners had a far better briefing on the meltdown within the Conservative party than they did on what was in the treaty. This was part of a pattern in which, for decades, EU affairs were seen through a British party prism rather than explaining what was going on in Europe.
Five countries responsible for 75% of world’s coffee supply record average of 57 extra days of coffee-harming heat a year
In Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, more than 4m households rely on coffee as their primary source of income. It contributes almost a third of the country’s export earnings, but for how much longer is uncertain.
“Coffee farmers in Ethiopia are already seeing the impact of extreme heat,” said Dejene Dadi, the general manager of Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperatives Union (OCFCU), a smallholder cooperative.
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