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

• Australian government says it would support removing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from royal line of succession

• New Zealand would back removal of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from royal line of succession, says PM

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; Kyiv and other cities under Russian attack ahead of fresh Ukraine-US talks. What we know on day 1,464

Actor, who was diagnosed with MS in 2021, says taking her 15-year-old daughter to school has become her ‘favourite thing to do’

Christina Applegate has revealed that she is now largely confined to her bed, five years after she was diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis.

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

Exclusive: Former New Zealand PM ‘based out of Australia’, according to spokesperson, after rumours she was looking for houses in Sydney

The former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is living in Australia with her family, a spokesperson has confirmed.

“The family has been travelling for a few years now,” her office told the Guardian.

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.

Damning inquiry into services in England reveals falsification of medical records after ‘negligent’ care

• What is the national maternity and neonatal investigation and why was it launched?

• Cruel comments, racism and cover-ups: key findings from England’s maternity care report

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.

Agitator whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon was hosted by senior adviser at US state department

The far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been hosted by the Trump administration for a meeting at the state department in Washington.

Robinson, 43, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the state department.

Killing of Ruben Ray Martinez on 15 March 2025 in Texas was not disclosed by the department until media reported it

A grand jury on Wednesday rejected indictments over the fatal shooting last year of a US citizen by a federal immigration agent during a traffic encounter in Texas, prosecutors said.

The shooting of Ruben Ray Martinez on 15 March 2025 by a Homeland Security investigations agent wasn’t publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security until the Associated Press and other media outlets reported it last week.

• Haji Wright and Jack Rudoni seal 2-1 comeback win

• Millwall beat Birmingham to keep up promotion push

Coventry extended their lead at the top of the Championship to five points after coming from behind to win 2-1 at Sheffield United, while Millwall went third by beating Birmingham City 3-0 on Wednesday.

After a run of two wins in eight games caused Frank Lampard’s men to blow a comfortable advantage in the race for promotion to the Premier League, Coventry have bounced back with three consecutive wins.

Vinícius Júnior ran to the corner and danced again, just as he had done in Lisbon a week ago, but this time all around him there was celebration. There was also relief. With 10 minutes left on a nervous night at the Santiago Bernabéu, he had been set free to put the ball past Anatoliy Trubin and Real Madrid into the last 16 of the Champions League.

Victory was his, 2-1 here, 3-1 on aggregate and well beyond that too, so he set off and shook his hips before the flag the same way he had eight days earlier, fans released from their fears, applauding, a point proved and passage secured. “I’m happy for him: he deserved it,” the Real head coach, Álvaro Arbeloa, said.

Federal officials search district chief Alberto Carvalho’s home, but allegations being examined remain unclear

The FBI raided the headquarters of the Los Angeles unified school district, the second largest school district in the US, as well as the home of Alberto Carvalho, the district’s superintendent, federal officials confirmed on Wednesday.

An unnamed source familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities served warrants that were part of an “ongoing investigation”.

Chipmaker’s quarterly earnings surpassed Wall Street’s expectations every quarter for multiple years now

Nvidia released its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, with the chipmaker revealing higher than expected revenues and extending its yearslong streak of surpassing Wall Street’s sky-high expectations.

The company receives the vast majority of its revenue from its data center business, which has been buoyed by the tech industry’s immense investment into AI infrastructure. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported 75% year-over-year growth of this vertical to $62.3bn. The world’s most valuable publicly traded company, Nvidia has dominated the chip market as its processing units have become the backbone of the artificial intelligence boom. The company also posted an enormous total profit for the fiscal year: $120bn.

• Captain says controversy overshadows Olympic gold win

• Trump quipped about inviting US women to White House

• Knight says there is respect and support with men’s team

Hilary Knight, the captain of the US women’s ice hockey team, has responded to comments made by Donald Trump after the Americans won gold at the Winter Olympics, calling the president’s quip a “distasteful joke”.

After the US men’s ice hockey team won gold on Sunday, Trump called into the locker-room celebration and invited the players to be his guests at Tuesday’s State of the Union address.