Should you get a cat? Five expert tips for making life-changing decisions

Making choices can be difficult when options are not clearly better or worse than each other – how does one even begin to decide?

I love cats. I’d been idly keeping an eye out for a less allergenic breed, when bam – a kitten became available. Suddenly I had to decide whether to take the leap.

Even though I’d been considering cat ownership for a while, I felt anxious. I mulled over all the responsibilities: vet bills, stubborn allergies, years of commitment. One big sticking point was travel. Having a cat would be rewarding, but did I want it right now if it meant I couldn’t decide on a whim to book a cheap last minute flight to another city? Did I want to buy Fancy Feast, or stay fancy-free?

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:21 pm

Extreme heat lab: enduring the climate of the future

Graham Readfearn enters a simulation to investigate how heatwaves affect the human body

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:00 pm

Jesse Jackson showed us how love can always be a potent force in public life | Reverend William Barber

We can honor my mentor and the late civil rights icon by becoming the America we’ve never yet been

Before 5am on Tuesday, Jesse Jackson Jr called to tell me his father and my friend, the Rev Jesse Louis Jackson, had died at 84 years old. I shared a prayer with the family and listened to Jesse Jr talk about how he had heard his father breathe his last breath in the middle of the night. When he called his mother to the room, he told me, she reached toward his father and said: “A mighty lion has fallen.”

In Africa’s savannas, the lion is respected because he has a power that all the other animals recognize, even if they do not understand it. The responses to Jackson’s death have proven him to be a lion in this sense – remembered with respect by people from every walk of life, even those who did not understand him. Though Donald Trump has built a political career by opposing almost every policy Jackson worked for in public life, he recalled Jackson as a “force of nature”. Trump recognized his power, even if he didn’t understand it. Anyone who wants to help reconstruct the America that Jackson worked for should take time to understand the source of this mighty lion’s strength.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:40 pm

Pigs, punchups and a foaming red carpet: 10 amazing Baftas moments – ranked

Ahead of this Sunday’s awards night, we remember Joanna Lumley’s humourless stint at hosting, acrobats dressed as astronauts and the rage of Russell Crowe

Typically, the Baftas have fewer memorable moments than, say, the Oscars. This is partly because the ceremony isn’t broadcast live, so viewers are essentially treated to edited highlights. However, when Russell Crowe won for A Beautiful Mind in 2002, it was his speech that got edited out. That was because he decided to recite the Patrick Kavanagh poem Sanctity, and it went on and on. When Crowe realised what had happened, he tracked down the show’s director at the afterparty, pinned him against a wall, called him a “cunt” and then allegedly kicked three chairs across the room.

Published: February 19, 2026, 1:24 pm

Digital blackface flourishes under Trump and AI: ‘The state is bending reality’

From TikTok deepfakes to smears put out by the White House, fake videos modeled on Black archetypes are running rampant - putting Black users at risk

Late last year, as a US government shutdown cut off the Snap benefits that low-income families rely on for groceries, videos on social media cast the fallout in frantic scenes. “Imma keep it real with you,” a Black woman said in a viral TikTok post, “I get over $2,500 a month in stamps. I sell ’em, $2,000 worth, for about $1,200-$1,500 cash.” Another Black woman ranted about taxpayers’ responsibility to her seven children with seven men, and yet another melted down after her food stamps were rejected at a corn-dog counter.

Visible watermarks stamped some videos as AI-generated – apparently, too faintly for the racist commentators and hustlers more than happy to believe the frenzy was real. “You got people treating it like a side hustle, selling the stamps, abusing the system,” the conservative commentator Amir Odom whinged. Fox News reported on the Snap deepfakes as if they were authentic, before issuing a correction. Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt claimed people were using Snap “to get their nails done, to get their weaves and hair”. (Lost in the outrage was a basic fact: white Americans make up 37% of Snap’s 42 million beneficiaries.)

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:35 pm

‘We’re not hippies’: why these Iowa farmers swapped pigs for mushrooms

Faaborgs rail against oppressive industrial agricultural system with unexpected evolution into indie artisan food firm

As a sixth-generation Iowa farmer, Tanner Faaborg is all too aware that agricultural traditions are hard to shake. So when he set in motion plans to change his family’s farm from a livestock operation housing more than 8,000 pigs each year to one that grows lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms, he knew some of his peers might laugh at him. He just did not necessarily expect his brother to be chief among them.

“My older brother has worked with pigs his entire adult life, managing about 70,000 of them across five counties,” Faaborg says. “But we got to a point where he went from laughing at me to saying: well, I guess maybe I’ll quit my job and help you out.”

Published: February 19, 2026, 12:45 pm

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor released under investigation after arrest – live

Andrew pictured on Thursday evening as police say searches in Norfolk have ended

• Full report: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested

• Why has former prince Andrew been arrested – and what happens now?

Before the arrest was announced, the prime minister told BBC Breakfast “nobody is above the law” when asked about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Keir Starmer added:

Anybody who has any information should testify.

So whether it’s Andrew or anybody else, anybody who has got relevant information should come forward to whatever the relevant body is, in this particular case we’re talking about Epstein, but there are plenty of other cases.

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:54 pm

Iran deal prospects will be clear within 10 days, Trump says as military buildup grows

Second carrier strike group heads for region as US waits for Iran to respond after talks in Geneva

Donald Trump has said it will be clear within “probably 10 days” whether he can reach a nuclear deal with Iran, as the US military buildup in the Middle East intensifies with the impending arrival of a second carrier strike group.

The US president, speaking at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington DC, insisted Iran could not have a nuclear weapon and emphasised that “bad things will happen” if the country continued “to threaten regional stability”.

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:37 pm

Troops for Gaza and money top agenda as Trump’s Board of Peace meets

US president vows multinational force and billions of dollars as autocrats and rightwing allies gather in DC

The US has proposed commanding a multinational force in postwar Gaza with troops from Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Morocco, as Donald Trump unveiled his ad-hoc Board of Peace in Washington to heavy international scrutiny.

The US plan would require the full disarmament of Hamas and support from Israel, which has tempered expectations that the Trump-friendly committee stacked with autocrats and rightwing allies will be able to deliver on the vision of ending the conflict and rebuilding Gaza as a “riviera”.

Published: February 19, 2026, 6:29 pm

RSF siege of El Fasher in Sudan has ‘hallmarks of genocide’, UN mission finds

Report details harrowing 18-month occupation of North Darfur capital, showing destruction aimed at ethnic communities

The siege and capture of the Sudanese city of El Fasher by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group last October bore “the hallmarks of genocide”, a UN-mandated fact-finding mission has said.

In a report detailing the harrowing 18-month occupation of the capital of North Darfur, investigators concluded that the RSF and allied militias deliberately inflicted conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Zaghawa and Fur ethnic communities.

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:59 pm

Trump order seeks to protect weedkiller at center of barrage of lawsuits

President’s move, which also seeks ‘immunity’ for makers, faces backlash from health advocates and Maha coalition

Donald Trump has signed an executive order protecting production of glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, which some bodies and studies have linked to cancer and which are the subject of widespread US litigation.

The president’s move, which also seeks to provide “immunity” for makers of the herbicides, was strongly criticized by health and environmental advocates including some figures in the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) coalition.

This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:32 pm

Trump changed mind on Chagos deal ‘after UK blocked use of Diego Garcia for Iran strikes’

US president links deal with military strikes against Iran in connection with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions

Donald Trump changed his mind on supporting the Chagos Islands deal because the UK will not permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran, the Guardian has been told.

In his latest change of heart on the deal, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.

Published: February 19, 2026, 6:53 pm

Austrian mountaineer ‘endlessly sorry’ for girlfriend’s death but denies criminal wrongdoing

Thomas P gives evidence on first day of trial in case that could shape standards for mountain sports

An Austrian mountaineer has said he is “endlessly sorry” his girlfriend froze to death on a joint climb to the country’s highest peak, but denied criminal wrongdoing as his trial began in Innsbruck.

The 37-year-old defendant, identified only as Thomas P, gave evidence on the first day of the high-profile proceedings over the tragedy on Großglockner, in a case that could shape international standards for liability in mountain sports.

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:10 pm

US builds website that will allow Europeans to view blocked content

Freedom.gov appears to be administered by a branch of the Department of Homeland Security

The US has built a portal that will allow Europeans to view blocked content including alleged hate speech and terrorism, according to Reuters.

The portal, “freedom.gov”, will allow worldwide users to circumvent government controls on their content. The site features a graphic of a ghostly horse galloping above the Earth, and the motto: “Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.”

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:15 pm

Winter Olympics women’s ice hockey final: USA beat Canada 2-1 in overtime to win gold – live

• Email beau.dure@theguardian.com or hit him on BlueSky

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

USA 0-0 Canada, first period, 15:13 left: Poulin with the shot. Remember that she was out injured when these teams played earlier in these Games. The USA won’t want to let her have many touches.

USA 0-0 Canada, first period, 15:57 left: To underscore the point, NBC commentator AJ Mleczko, fresh from calling part of yesterday’s men’s game with Snoop Dogg, recalls a year in which her US team lost once – in the Olympic final.

Published: February 19, 2026, 9:01 pm

White House grants ICE power to detain refugees for aggressive ‘rescreening’

A new DHS memo details plan to allow federal immigration officers to detain legal refugees in the US indefinitely

The Trump administration is moving to arrest thousands of people already legally admitted to the US as refugees and detain them indefinitely for aggressive “rescreening”, a report published on Thursday said.

Under the new policy, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that federal immigration officers can and should arrest anyone who has not yet obtained the right to permanent residence, a so-called green card, and subject them to interviews to assess their refugee claims while they are in custody, as first reported by the Washington Post.

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:01 pm

US military ready for possible Iran strikes but Trump yet to make decision, reports say

Reports say move could come this weekend as White House urges Iran to ‘make a deal’ with Trump on nuclear program

The US military is ready for possible strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend, multiple news outlets reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources.

However, the reports said, Donald Trump has yet to make a final decision on whether to carry out an attack. The president has repeatedly demanded Iran cease its nuclear program, and has warned he intends to use force if no deal is reached.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:53 am

Experts warn NIH director now leading CDC will push ‘RFK Jr’s agenda’

RFK Jr ally Jay Bhattacharya was named acting director of the CDC and will be fourth leader in a year to head agency

Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was named the acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday, making him the fourth leader in a year at the embattled agency in an unprecedented move that further consolidates power among a small group of men at the helm of US health agencies.

He’s been an ineffectual health leader whose attention will be further fractured, and as a close ally to Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime vaccine critic. Bhattacharya may sign off on further changes to the vaccine schedule, observers said.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘DEI is dead, equality isn’t’: experts chart path forward amid Trump’s culture war

Two law professors outline strategies for equality’s survival in a Trumpian post-DEI era in new book How Equality Wins

The Trump administration’s “war on woke” seems to have claimed its biggest victim in DEI. Not so long ago, diversity, equity and inclusion was the favorite term of Fortune 500 CEOs and the political elite. More recently, it has been blamed for everything from the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and the deadly Los Angeles wildfires to the crash between a regional jet and a helicopter in Washington DC.

“DEI means people DIE,” Elon Musk wrote last year.

Published: February 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

How the anxiety over AI could fuel a new workers’ movement

New technology has workers spooked, but experts say it’s creating an opening for a resurgence in worker power

In 2026, it’s a scary time to work for a living.

Gone are the days of quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and the highly visible union-organizing battles that began the decade and signaled that perhaps worker power was on the rise again in the US. Instead, much of that momentum is being crowded out of our minds by anxieties: a worsening affordability crisis, geopolitical instability and the specter of artificial intelligence looming over the workplace.

Published: February 19, 2026, 1:00 pm

Andrew arrested: is this the end for the royal family? | The Latest

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office by police investigating his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein. Six unmarked police cars and plainclothes officers arrived at the Sandringham estate while the former prince was celebrating his 66th birthday. Officers searched the Norfolk property as well as Mountbatten-Windsor's former home in the Royal Lodge in Great Windsor Park. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian journalist David Pegg

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:14 pm

‘They pushed so many lies about recycling’: the fight to stop big oil pumping billions more into plastics

Plastic production has doubled over the last 20 years – and will likely double again. For author Beth Gardiner, metal water bottles and canvas tote bags are not the solution. So what is?

Like many of us who are mindful of our plastic consumption, Beth Gardiner would take her own bags to the supermarket and be annoyed whenever she forgot to do so. Out without her refillable bottle, she would avoid buying bottled water. “Here I am, in my own little life, worrying about that and trying to use less plastic,” she says. Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (£130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. “It was a kick in the teeth,” says Gardiner. “You’re telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions …” She looks appalled. “It was just such a shock.”

Two months before that piece was published, a photograph of a seahorse clinging to a plastic cotton bud had gone viral; two years before that England followed Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and introduced a charge for carrier bags. “I was one of so many people who were trying to use less plastic – and it just felt like such a moment of revelation: these companies are, on the contrary, increasing production and wanting to push [plastic use] up and up.” Then, says Gardiner, as she started researching her book Plastic Inc: Big Oil, Big Money and the Plan to Trash our Future, “it only becomes more shocking.”

Published: February 19, 2026, 10:00 am

This 18-year-old is protecting his California farm community – and his own mother – from ICE

Cesar Vasquez, who has supported families of undocumented immigrants since age 14, has become a community lifeline – and a known ICE target

While most 18-year-olds worry about college papers and spring break plans, Cesar Vasquez drives through coastal California farm towns scanning for unmarked SUVs before dawn. He flips down his driver’s seat visor to look at a taped list of license plates he has already identified as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles, and jots down a few new ones he suspects could be. His phone buzzes constantly – tips from neighbors, text chains from volunteers alerting to ICE activity – all in an attempt to keep his community safe from being swept up in federal agents’ widening dragnet.

This is what organizing looks like for this son of undocumented immigrants. In his home town of Santa Maria, a small farming town on California’s central coast where over 80% of farm workers are undocumented, Vasquez has become both a crucial community lifeline and a known target of federal immigration enforcement.

Published: February 19, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘Be the lion, feel the lion’: the gruelling life of lunar new year lion dancers

Sydney’s Qing Fong dance troupe undergoes intensive training for their busiest period of the year when they will perform more than 100 times and earn ‘lots of pats’ from the crowd

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Drums and cymbals echo across Mingyue Lay temple’s sun-baked concrete car park. Lion heads made out of papier-mache are dotted around the lot and pairs of kids are jumping on to poles, tables or each other’s shoulders – all while connected at the hip.

It’s a sticky night in Sydney’s west, but the 33C heat doesn’t faze these lion dancers, who are gearing up for their busiest period: lunar new year. The festivities continue well past the day itself, with more than 100 performances across three weeks. On the eve of lunar new year, the studio will start their performance at the temple in Bonnyrigg at 9pm and finish well past midnight.

Above: Team instructor Jenny Cao and Long Huynh outside the hall
Below: Costumes wait to be put on for dance rehearsals

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:00 pm

‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science

As Trump slashes science funding, young researchers flee abroad. Without solid innovation, the US could cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world

In April 2025, less than three months after Donald Trump returned to the White House, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put out its latest public health alert on so-called “superbugs”, strains of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

These drug-resistant germs, the CDC warned, are responsible for more than 3m infections in the US each year, claiming the lives of up to 48,000 Americans.

Published: February 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘A queer true crime story’: inside a shocking he-said-he-said murder

A gay couple both have entirely different accounts of a gory murder, a fascinating story unravelled in a new HBO documentary

Everyone in Old Louisville knows about the couple who killed someone. In this neighborhood of elaborate Victorian architecture and genteel walking courts, the story of Jeffrey Mundt and Joey Banis and the murder on 4th Street is a local legend that won’t go away, gossiped about at happy hours and garishly re-enacted on true crime shows like Oxygen’s Snapped: Killer Couples, which ran an episode on the case two years ago.

In some ways it’s easy to see why Mundt and Banis have become a 21st-century Leopold and Loeb, the famous gay lovers who inspired Hitchcock’s Rope. Their 2009 trial hit almost every square on the true-crime bingo card, involving meth-fueled group sex, pathological lies forming webs of deceit, intense BDSM, and a body left to rot in the basement of a haunted former sanatorium.

Published: February 19, 2026, 1:13 pm

Inside voice: what can our thoughts reveal about the nature of consciousness?

Scientists and philosophers studying the mind have discovered how little we know about our inner experiences

What was I thinking? This is not as easy or straightforward a question as I would have thought. As soon as you try to record and categorise the contents of your consciousness – the sense impressions, feelings, words, images, daydreams, mind-​wanderings, ruminations, deliberations, observations, opinions, intuitions and occasional insights – you encounter far more questions than answers, and more than a few surprises. I’d always assumed that my stream of consciousness consisted mainly of an interior monologue, maybe sometimes a dialogue, but was surely composed of words; I’m a writer, after all. But it turns out that a lot of my so-called thoughts – a flattering term for these gossamer traces of mental activity – are preverbal, often showing up as images, sensations, or concepts, with words trailing behind as a kind of afterthought, belated attempts to translate these elusive wisps of meaning into something more substantial and shareable.

I discovered this because I’ve been going around with a beeper wired to an earpiece that sends a sudden sharp note into my left ear at random times of the day. This is my cue to recall and jot down whatever was going on in my head immediately before I registered the beep. The idea is to capture a snapshot of the contents of consciousness at a specific moment in time by dipping a ladle into the onrushing stream.

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:00 am

Dear Kristi Noem: you’re tracking down ICE critics? I’m one of them | Robert Reich

The homeland security department is reportedly seeking information on critical social media accounts. Look no further

The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security has sent Google, Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) and other media corporations subpoenas for the names on accounts that criticize ICE enforcement. The department wants to identify Americans who oppose what it’s doing.

I’ll save them time.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now

Published: February 19, 2026, 1:00 pm

Ben Jennings on the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – cartoon

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Published: February 19, 2026, 6:24 pm

Trump’s bid to name Penn Station after himself looks like a presidential shakedown | Mohamad Bazzi

The US president’s relentless self-aggrandizement spree continues amid hypocrisy and shifting explanations

As a real estate developer, Donald Trump built his empire on ostentatious displays of wealth, substantial tax breaks – and lots of free publicity. As president, he has deployed the power of the state to expand his personal brand, adding his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, a class of new navy warships, and even investment accounts for millions of children.

Trump is now eyeing yet more grandiose targets in his self-aggrandizement spree. He wants Congress to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles international airport in his honor. But there’s a catch: Trump reportedly told Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, that he would unfreeze billions of dollars in federal funding for a major infrastructure project in the north-east – if Schumer supported renaming the two sites.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

Published: February 19, 2026, 11:00 am

Stripped of finery, detained by police as an ordinary citizen: now Andrew enters a new era – and Britain too | Simon Jenkins

What happens next hardly matters: the mystique and awe surrounding the royals had been shattered. The former prince’s arrest must change everything

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is a seismic moment for the royal family as well as for himself. On one hand, it is hard to believe any greater harm can befall the family after weeks of drip-feed from the US Department of Justice’s Epstein files. On the other, a royal arrest of this sort is unprecedented. Enough is already in the public domain to indicate that police believe that there must be a case to answer to the charge of misconduct in public office.

King Charles, who apparently was not warned in advance that his brother was to be arrested, has been scrupulous in his response. “The law must take its course,” he said, offering prosecutors “full and wholehearted support and cooperation”. Whatever happens now, a line has been crossed in the life of the nation. A once exalted royal, facing serious judicial investigation by authorities acting on behalf of the citizenry. Stripped of status and finery, he faces the spotlight as would any other inhabitant of these isles. One cannot know the outcome, but just this arrest feels like a pivotal moment.

Published: February 19, 2026, 1:56 pm

The US is dragging Europe back to the days of white supremacism. Our leaders are playing along | Shada Islam

People like me were targets of the Islamophobia that gripped the west after the US-led ‘war on terror’. Now I fear a chilling sequel is on the way

Twenty-five years ago, George W Bush persuaded European leaders to back his “war on terror”. That disastrous project cost millions of lives and caused mass displacement of people from across the Middle East. It normalised racism and hatred for Muslims, refugees and racialised minorities in the US and Europe. I fear Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, with its calls to defend white, western, Christian civilisation against supposedly contaminating racialised migrants – and the standing ovation he received from European elites – may mark a chilling sequel.

Rubio’s language of a shared and superior American and European civilisation differs from that of his bosses, Donald Trump and JD Vance. His tone is more emollient but his outreach is conspiratorial. Rubio talks of migration and identity and civilisational anxiety, rather than terrorism and hard security threats as Bush once did. In his Munich speech, Rubio flattered Europeans about the continent’s colonial past. He denied preaching a message of xenophobia or hate, and instead framed his call to defend national borders as entirely respectable, dutiful and a “fundamental act of sovereignty”.

Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons Project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:00 am

The Guardian view on the royals and the law: no more managed disgrace | Editorial

The police investigation into the king’s brother forces Britain to confront whether privilege can coexist with democratic scrutiny and the rule of law

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor the king’s brother, should be the moment deference ends and accountability begins – a correction long overdue. For more than 15 years, allegations surrounding Mr Mountbatten-Windsor were managed away by silence, an out-of-court settlement and his withdrawal from royal duties. In short, his behaviour was viewed as an image problem to be handled privately. That era now looks to be over.

That the eighth in line to the throne was sitting in a police cell on his 66th birthday shows how far he has fallen. The formal investigation means that the question is no longer about protecting the monarchy but one of what happened, and who might be responsible for unlawful acts. Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s descent into ignominy has unfolded slowly but inexorably. His stupidity and arrogance led him to believe that he could talk his way out of his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, he faces a legal and constitutional reckoning.

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:06 pm

The Guardian view on Merz and Meloni: an emerging Berlin-Rome axis is threatening the EU’s green deal

The deregulation agenda being pushed by Germany’s chancellor and Italy’s prime minister is economically and ethically flawed

When the European Union launched its green deal in 2019, putting into law the goal of climate neutrality by the middle of the century, it showed strategic foresight as well as global leadership. Russia’s war in Ukraine has starkly underlined the extent to which the continent’s energy security – and its future prosperity – is dependent on the transition away from fossil fuels. Lately, however, EU leaders’ environmental approach appears to be echoing the youthful St Augustine’s plea on chastity: make us greener, but not yet.

The recent European Industry Summit in Antwerp made unusually big headlines thanks to Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s xenophobic outburst over immigration. But it was also notable for fierce attacks on one of the most important pillars of EU environmental policy. The bloc’s emissions trading system (ETS) – which makes polluters pay for the C02 they emit – has achieved dramatic results in driving down overall emissions since 2005 and encouraging green innovation. Worryingly, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, appeared to sympathise with demands from Sir Jim and other CEOs for a radical relaxation of the rules.

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:05 pm

Jordan Stolz’s bid for four speed-skating golds crumbles in 1500m as Ning Zhongyan shines

• American had been hoping for clean sweep in Milan

• Chinese skater sets Olympic record in shock win

On an afternoon when the Olympic record kept falling, Jordan Stolz skated fast enough to win the gold at any other Winter Games. Just not this one.

The 21-year-old American was foiled in his bid for a third gold medal in eight days on Thursday, winning silver in the 1500m in a time of 1:42.75 after lowering the Olympic marks in the 1000m last Wednesday and the 500m on Saturday and threatening to become only the second American to win more than two golds in any sport at a single Winter Games.

Published: February 19, 2026, 6:21 pm

Winter Olympics 2026: GB men in curling semi-final, figure skating and more – live

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

• Follow us over on Bluesky | And you can email Daniel

The cross-country bit gets going at 1pm, and I’m looking forward to that. It’s a scientific fact that here’s no kind of race a human can devise that is uncompelling.

In the Nordic, teams of two both have a go at ski jumping, and Germany have just leapt into the lead; they’ll start the cross-country portion with no time penalty, because Austria have just completed this part of things, and only landed far enough for fifth. Norway are second, Japan third and Finland fourth.

Published: February 19, 2026, 9:00 pm

Mikaela Shiffrin overcame grief, crashes and her own self-doubt to win slalom gold again

The greatest American skier of all time won her first Olympic medal in 2014. The 12 years in between have been marked by brutal ups and downs

A lot can happen in 12 years. If you’re Mikaela Shiffrin, as a teenager you can become the youngest ever person to win the Olympic slalom, stack a couple more medals at the next Olympics, become the most successful World Cup skier of all time with a record 108 victories, go 10 more Olympic races in a row over three Winter Games without reaching the podium, overcome the two biggest crashes of your career and subsequent battles with self-doubt and post-traumatic stress disorder and eroding trust in your own skiing, and then bring it all back home with a second Olympic slalom gold.

You can also lose your dad.

Published: February 18, 2026, 9:18 pm

‘An Olympic miracle’: twist in Conan Doyle’s skimo tale as Russian snares silver

• Nikita Filippov wins silver as neutral in sport’s debut

• Switzerland’s Marianne Fatton wins women’s sprint

We can partly thank Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for popularising the Winter Olympics’ newest sport, which made its debut amid an unrelenting snowstorm, a touch of mayhem and no little controversy in Bormio.

In 1894, the year after he had killed off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, Conan Doyle wrote about his own perilous 15-mile journey across the 8,000-feet high Maienfelder Furka Pass one that involved skiing and mountaineering.

Published: February 19, 2026, 6:14 pm

Indiana approves plan to lure Bears away from Chicago

• Team have been in Chicago since 1921

• Indiana committed to helping build new stadium

The Chicago Bears’ potential move to Indiana took another step forward on Thursday when a key committee approved a plan to create an agency that would help get a stadium built.

The Indiana House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee passed a bill establishing a Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority to finance, construct and lease a stadium by a 24-0 margin. The Bears are looking at a tract of land near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana.

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:51 pm

Is the World Cup bump real? MLS is going to find out

MLS stakeholders want to turn the interest in this summer’s North American World Cup into ‘rocket fuel’ for the league. Are those realistic expectations?

In 1988, a full eight years before Major League Soccer debuted, it got its first “World Cup bump”.

Fifa had just awarded the 1994 World Cup to the United States, but there was a stipulation. The US could host the tournament, but only if there was a competitive club league in place by the time it rolled around, something that hadn’t been true since the North American Soccer League collapsed in 1985. Tournament organisers missed that 1994 deadline, but two years later, MLS became a reality. Thirty years on, it is still here.

Published: February 19, 2026, 11:00 am

MLBPA replaces chief Tony Clark after inappropriate relationship with sister-in-law

• Bruce Meyer promoted to interim executive director

• New labor deal negotiations with owners looming

Bruce Meyer was promoted to interim executive director of the baseball players’ association on Wednesday, a day after Tony Clark’s forced resignation. It was a move for continuity ahead of the likely start in April of what figures to be contentious collective bargaining with team owners.

Clark is a former All-Star first baseman who had headed the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) since 2013. He resigned on Tuesday, just months ahead of the expected start of bargaining for a new labor contract. The current deal expires on 1 December.

Published: February 19, 2026, 12:56 pm

Irate Wolff dimisses swirl around Mercedes’ fuel problem as ‘nonsense’

• Mercedes chief attacks backlash over engine loophole

• Vote on legality of power plant ‘a storm in a teacup’

Toto Wolff, the Mercedes principal, has snapped back at “utter bullshit” about a potential fuel problem a day after the FIA proposed a mid-season rule change over the team’s controversial engine.

It was announced on Wednesday that a vote will take place over whether a regulation change should be implemented from August onwards over the legality of Mercedes’ engine, after they were adjudged to have found a loophole that allowed them to deliver a higher limit when their engine is at operating temperature.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:01 pm

I went back to my alma mater and saw how women’s sports have changed

There’s a basketball renaissance emerging at Columbia, and Megan Griffith’s women are leading it

I’ve been going to Columbia basketball games since I was an undergraduate in the 1960s. As a junior, I did some play-by-play for WKCR, the student-run radio station. There was a time long ago when I went to almost every Lions home game. I’m talking about the men. There wasn’t a women’s basketball team until 1984. For the past few decades, I’ve watched the men play once a year.

When I enrolled at Columbia in September 1963, the Lions’ home games were played in University Hall – an antiquated gym with structural columns that impeded fans’ views and looked as though it had been built during the Age of Pericles. Columbia had suffered through six straight losing seasons. Two more followed.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. The audio version of his memoir – My Mother And Me – was recently released. The reading is by Hauser’s good friend, Jim Lampley. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Published: February 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Football Daily | Arsenal don’t just drop points, they perform theatrical acts of self-sabotage

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Top of the league, Wembley trip booked, sweeping through Europe, and blessed with a cushty FA Cup draw – it’s fair to say the Arsenal garden is in full, radiant bloom. At least, it was until they travelled to a wet and windy Molineux to play a match the Premier League surreptitiously slipped into the schedule like a worm tablet hidden in a dog’s dinner. In Wolves, Mikel Arteta’s side were facing a team who are not only the worst in the top flight by some distance, but one who have only recently begun battling to avoid going down as the most awful of all time. Having taken a two-goal lead, the only logical question centred around how many more Arsenal would spank past their hapless hosts. Instead, logic gave way to the objective hilarity of a collective on and off-field meltdown as the Gunners managed to turn what should have been a stroll into an inexplicable 2-2 draw.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Published: February 19, 2026, 4:56 pm

Very good dog invades course but falls short of medal glory at Winter Olympics

• Nazgul makes unexpected entry in team sprint

• Owner says two-year old looking for company

A local dog has missed out on a historic cross-country medal at the Winter Olympics despite a lung-bursting surge in the homestretch.

Nazgul, who according to NPR lives at a nearby hotel in Tesero, broke on to the course on Wednesday morning and sprinted for the line behind Croatia’s Tena Hadzic as she came to the end of the qualifying race for the women’s team cross-country sprint. Even if he had completed the entire race, Nazgul’s time would not have counted as he is male. And a dog.

Published: February 18, 2026, 3:02 pm

Chelsea’s Rosenior calls for life bans from football for those found guilty of racism

• ‘When you see a player upset, normally it’s for a reason’

• Head coach reacts to Vinícius Júnior’s racism claims

Liam Rosenior has called for players and coaches found guilty of racism to be banned from football for life and said experiencing abuse on a football pitch “is the worst feeling you can ever possibly imagine”.

The Real Madrid forward Vinícius Júnior left the pitch after alleging that Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni racially abused him during their Champions League match on Tuesday. Prestianni has denied racist abuse and Benfica have said he was a “victim” of a “smear campaign”. The Argentinian faces a 10-game ban if found guilty by Uefa.

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:30 pm

Champions League review: Bodø shock again, PSG escape and Mourinho’s dismal comments

Racism allegations in Portugal overshadowed another fine result in the Arctic and the holders being pushed by their Ligue 1 rivals

Nothing should divert attention away from what happened after Vinícius Júnior’s goal for Real Madrid in their 1-0 victory at Benfica on Tuesday. It would be frivolous to do so. The Brazilian scored one of the finest goals of a career marked by spectacular strikes, but this week’s Champions League action will be remembered for the regrettable flashpoint that followed.

Published: February 19, 2026, 1:43 pm

More than 1,000 Kenyans lured to fight for Russia in Ukraine war, report says

Intelligence findings read to parliament say ‘rogue’ agencies and individuals recruiting Kenyan nationals to frontline

More than 1,000 Kenyans have been lured to fight for Russia in its war with Ukraine, according to an intelligence report to the Kenyan parliament that highlights the scale of a Russian operation taking African men to the frontline.

The majority leader of Kenya’s national assembly, Kimani Ichung’wah, said “rogue recruitment agencies and individuals in Kenya” were continuing to send Kenyan nationals to fight in the conflict, as he read MPs the summary of an investigation by Kenya’s National Intelligence Service.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:39 pm

CDC vaccine panel meeting postponed amid RFK Jr bid to reshape policy

Postponement of ACIP meeting this month comes as US pediatricians challenge committee’s legitimacy in court

A meeting of the US vaccine advisory panel that had been planned for later this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reportedly been postponed amid legal challenges the panel is facing over its validity.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which provides guidance on who should receive specific vaccines, had originally been set to convene from 25 to 27 February, according to the CDC’s website.

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:57 pm

Avalanche risks remain high in California after deaths of skiers

Forecasters predict more snow in Sierra Nevada mountains as climate crisis increases threat of dangerous conditions

Avalanche risks remain high in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California this week, following the deadliest snowslide the region has seen in modern times.

The climate crisis has set the stage for more dangerous conditions, with sharper swings between dry periods and severe storms, according to experts, who have long warned that extremes will amplify as the world warms.

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:39 pm

Wastewater testing reveals high levels of cocaine in Nantucket, Massachusetts

Up to three times national average of metabolite produced by human use of drug was found in town’s wastewater

Tests on wastewater in an upscale Massachusetts ocean resort town have revealed unexpectedly high levels of cocaine – up to three times the national average.

Officials in the town of Nantucket on the eponymous island off Cape Cod began testing its wastewater last summer “to monitor high-risk substances and opioids in the community”.

Published: February 19, 2026, 4:14 pm

Simulations shed light on how snowman-shaped body in Kuiper belt may have formed

Research adds weight to theory Arrokoth’s two lobes produced by gravitational collapse – and reveals process

It is the most distant and primitive object ever visited by a spacecraft from Earth: now researchers say they have fresh insights into how the ultra-red, 4bn-year-old body known as Arrokoth came to have its distinctive snowman-like shape.

Arrokoth sits in the Kuiper belt, a vast, thick ring of icy objects that lies beyond the orbit of Neptune. This region of space is home to most of the known dwarf planets as well as comets and small, solid rubble heaps called planetesimals – the building blocks of planets.

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:00 pm

Dozens of Palestinian journalists beaten, starved or raped, report alleges

Israeli prison service and IDF reject allegations after research by Committee to Protect Journalists

Almost 60 Palestinian journalists detained in Israeli prisons since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack have been beaten, starved and subjected to sexual violence, including rape, a report alleges.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reviewed dozens of testimonies, photographs and medical records documenting what it describes as serious abuses by Israeli soldiers and prison guards against Palestinian reporters. The report draws on in-depth interviews from 59 Palestinian journalists. Of those interviewed, 58 reported being subjected to what they described as torture while in Israeli custody.

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:00 pm

The unbearable experience of walking in a heatwave from the future – video

Around the world, global heating is already causing more frequent heatwaves that last longer and bring more heat. Guardian Australia's Graham Readfearn has put his body to the test in an experiment see what effects the heatwaves of the future will have on humans. At the University of Sydney, he steps into a climate chamber that simulates the increased temperatures and humidity predicted in a rapidly warming climate. 'The sweat is stinging my eyes,' he says. 'It's 43C and the air is sticky and humid. It's getting hard to breath.'

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:15 pm

‘There has to be glitter’: can the Rio carnival give up its love of beach-polluting microplastics?

A bill banning the sale and use of plastic and metallic glitter has yet to go through in Brazil as the capital’s sandy shores bear cost of carnival’s shine

Whether it is embellishing elaborate costumes, delicately applied as eye makeup, or smeared across bare skin, glitter is everywhere at Rio de Janeiro’s carnival in Brazil. The world’s largest party, which ended on Wednesday, leaves a trail of sparkles in its wake.

At one bloco last weekend, a huge sound truck and dancers in leopard print led thousands of revellers down the promenade at Flamengo beach. Among them was Bruno Fernandes, who had jazzed up an otherwise minimalist outfit of navy swimming briefs by smearing silver glitter over his body.

Published: February 19, 2026, 12:01 pm

Environmental group Extinction Rebellion says it is under FBI investigation

Activist group says some members have been visited by agents, including by agency’s terrorism taskforce

Environmental group Extinction Rebellion said on Wednesday it was under federal US investigation and that some of its members had been visited by FBI agents, including from the agency’s taskforce on extremism, in the last year.

Asked for comment, the FBI said it could neither confirm nor deny conducting specific investigations, citing justice department policy.

Published: February 18, 2026, 11:58 pm

Environmental groups sue Trump’s EPA over repeal of landmark climate finding

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 (EPA) 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.

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:27 pm

French prosecutor seeks murder charges over killing of far-right activist

Political tensions rise after fatal attack at protest in Lyon as Emmanuel Macron hits out over remarks by Italian PM

A French prosecutor is seeking murder charges against seven suspects in the fatal beating of a far-right activist that has fuelled political anger beyond France’s borders, prompting Emmanuel Macron to tell Italy’s Giorgia Meloni to keep out of French affairs.

Quentin Deranque, 23, died from head injuries after being attacked by at least six people on the sidelines of a far-right protest in Lyon on 12 February. Most of the 11 suspects who have been detained are from far-left movements.

Published: February 19, 2026, 6:37 pm

Bill Gates cancels keynote speech in India amid questions over Epstein ties

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder pulls out of India’s AI Impact Summit to ‘ensure the focus’ remains on event’s ‘key priorities’

Bill Gates has pulled out of a keynote address at the AI Impact Summit in India as he continues to face questions over his relationship with the deceased child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The billionaire Microsoft co-founder travelled to India, where his foundation works with the government on delivering AI for social good, earlier this week and was advertised as speaking at the international summit shortly after the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:27 am

Bernie Sanders rails against billionaire ‘greed’ amid California tax battle

In a fiery speech in Los Angeles, the Vermont senator criticizes ‘grotesque’ levels of economic inequality

Billionaires are “treading on very, very thin ice,” Bernie Sanders warned on Wednesday during a fiery speech in Los Angeles, imploring California voters to fight “grotesque” levels of economic inequality by approving a proposed tax on the state’s richest residents.

The independent Vermont senator railed against the “greed”, “arrogance” and “moral turpitude” of the nation’s “ruling class”, calling it “fairly disgusting” that some ultra-wealthy tech leaders have fled California – or are threatening to do so, if the proposed wealth tax becomes law.

Published: February 19, 2026, 6:17 am

Horse meat set to be banned in Italy amid draft equine bill

Law defines animals including horses, donkeys and mules as pets and is backed by opposition parties

Italy could soon ban horse meat as part of a law that would define equine animals including horses, donkeys and mules as pets, making it illegal to kill them.

The bill has been drafted by Michela Vittoria Brambilla, a politician with Noi Moderati, a member of Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition, and is backed by opposition parties.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:08 pm

What’s next for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson?

Former duchess has stood by the former prince through waves of allegations and has yet to comment on his arrest

While the spotlight has been on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, his arrest has prompted questions about what is next for his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

Ferguson, known by the tabloids as Fergie, married the then prince Andrew in 1986 and was divorced from him 10 years later after an alleged affair with an American financial adviser. It was one of multiple scandals in the 1990s and 2000s involving the former duchess, who was widely considered an embarrassment to the royal family.

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:39 pm

Leftist who defended child marriage elected as Peru’s interim president

José María Balcázar, who argued for marriage at 14 and above, replaces José Jerí who was voted out after a scandal

Peru’s congress has elected José María Balcázar, an octogenarian leftist lawmaker who has defended child marriage, as the country’s interim president ahead of general elections in April.

Balcázar is Peru’s ninth president since 2016. The surprise election, in which Balcázar beat the favourite, María del Carmen Alva, a conservative, came after lawmakers voted to remove José Jerí as president on Tuesday after just four months in office, due to a scandal over secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:57 pm

Mitski: Nothing’s About to Happen to Me review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Dead Oceans)
Whether retreating from fame or heartbreak, the US musician writes gorgeous songs about the appeal of disconnection, flecked with horror and humour

Last month, Mitski released Where’s My Phone?, the first single from her eighth album Nothing’s About to Happen to Me. Its raging alt-rock is a more robust take on the lo-fi fuzz of her third album Bury Me at Makeout Creek, while UK listeners might detect a certain Britpoppy swing about its rhythm, and it ends with a guitar solo so jarringly distorted it sounds as if something is wrong with the stream. It was accompanied by a video that featured the singer as a headscarf-sporting rural mother, trying to protect her family from the attentions of the outside world with increasing violence: a milkman gets attacked, her daughter’s potential suitor is beaten bloody. It’s both funny and unsettling: there are references to Rapunzel, Grey Gardens, Grant Wood’s American Gothic and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle – a litany of the wilfully isolated.

The visuals set the tone for the rest of Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, an album on which you’re never far from its author expressing a longing to disappear; to be, as she puts it on Instead of Here, “where nobody can reach”. On opener In a Lake, she extols moving to the city from a small town, not in search of bright lights and excitement, but obscurity, a means of obliterating your own history: “Some days you just go the long way to stay off memory lane.” On I’ll Change for You, she hymns bars – “such magic places” – precisely because of their anonymity: “You can be with other people without having anyone at all.” And on Rules, she’ll “get a new haircut … be somebody else”. All this is set to beautifully crafted music that splits the difference between alt-rock, country-infused acoustic lamentation and grander ambition: the brilliance of Rules lies in the disparity between the hopelessness of its lyric and the thickly orchestrated, perky, early 70s easy listening backing.

Published: February 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

Musician and film-maker Flying Lotus: ‘The whole lo-fi beats thing has become like Starbucks music’

Ahead of a new EP, the creative polymath answers your questions on Thom Yorke, Kendrick Lamar and how a sci-fi epic ate up his whole life

You have to produce an album for one rapper, no guest spots, just you and them in the studio. Who are you picking? ShermanMLight
Kendrick Lamar. He’s one of the few people I’ve worked with in the hip-hop world who is an actual genius. He doesn’t get enough credit for being a producer as well – because he has such a clear perspective on what he wants in his music, he knows where every sound is supposed to be. Not every artist has that approach – most are more hands off. Working closely with Kendrick would make me a better producer. That would be a great meeting of the minds, as it was when we did our couple of tracks together.

How was the experience of working with the great, late David Lynch [on the track Fire is Coming]? Stephenw1979
A dream come true – someone who inspired my whole artistic path. He was exactly who I hoped he would be. I got to go over to his studio and hang a couple times, and it was really special. And he never seemed to get old. Twin Peaks: The Return was one of his best works, and it was the last thing he did.

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘Balding, rawhide-lean, just under six feet tall’: the real life soldier behind Robert Duvall’s Apocalypse Now role

‘Air cavalry’ commander John B Stockton was the inspiration behind Duvall’s napalm-sniffing Lt Col Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic

The actor Robert Duvall, who died this week, is known for many memorable movie roles, but none so much as his cameo as the Stetson-wearing Lt Col Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. In Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic Duvall plays the commander of a helicopter squadron who flies into battle with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries blaring from loudspeakers and utters the immortal line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Duvall’s scene-stealing portrayal earned him Bafta and Golden Globe awards for best supporting actor as well as an Oscar nomination in that category. What is less well known is that his character was based on a real officer who fought in Vietnam. Lt Col John B Stockton was hard to miss. Like Duvall in the movie, he wore a black Stetson and spurs on his boots. He carried his papers in leather saddlebags and even had his unit’s mascot, a mule called Maggie, smuggled into Vietnam despite a strict “no pets” policy. And he really did play Wagner from side-mounted speakers fixed to his helicopter when going into action.

Published: February 19, 2026, 11:34 am

Colbert on RFK Jr’s Maha workout video: ‘Senior softcore that feels like dropping acid’

Late-night host discussed the health secretary’s bizarre clip and a poll saying 47% of Americans think Trump is racist

Stephen Colbert was feeling under the weather on Wednesday night but didn’t pull his punches, despite being “on enough steroids to be named the secretary of health and human services”.

The host focused on Robert F Kennedy Jr and Maha in his monologue, particularly a surreal workout video that the health secretary released with Kid Rock this week, which Colbert described as “senior softcore”.

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:52 pm

From Stranger Things to Killing Eve: why TV shows should only be one season long

Furious fans, bloated storylines and television seemingly made only to sell merch … it’s time to stop dragging series out. Most of them deserve no more than one outing

Though it aired almost two months ago, fans are still angry about the Stranger Things finale.

So disappointing was the wrap to the five-season sci-fi that its cast are still having to deny that there is an upcoming secret final episode. I was not remotely disappointed, however. I thought the show ended perfectly: when I stopped watching it after season one, episode eight.

Published: February 19, 2026, 10:54 am

Sinners star Miles Caton: ‘I didn’t know how much I would be in the film … it might have scared me’

The actor and musician’s first film role was the musical prodigy in the surprise hit horror. Now he’s up for a Bafta and about to perform live at the Oscars – and it’s all still sinking in

It’s lunchtime in New York City, and Miles Caton is still in bed. That morning, the 20-year-old star of Sinners set his alarm for 8.30am so he could watch the Oscar nominations live. “As soon as I woke up, I went straight to YouTube,” he says, where he learned Sinners had been nominated for 16 Academy Awards, more than any other film in Oscars history. Unsurprisingly, his phone has been blowing up: he’s been so busy responding to messages, he’s yet to get out of bed.

A southern gothic horror musical set in the 1930s, about the bloodsucking of Black culture, Sinners was the unexpected box office smash of 2025, earning $368m in ticket sales globally. The film co-stars Michael B Jordan and comes from the imagination of Ryan Coogler, the writer-director behind Marvel’s Black Panther franchise and the Rocky reboot, Creed. “I watched Black Panther for the first time when I was 12 years old,” says Caton, who remembers going to the cinema to see the director’s Afrofuturist superhero movie with his whole family. “It was ‘Wakanda Forever!’ We was putting our fist up!” he says, motioning a Black power fist at the screen. “To me, a Ryan Coogler film was culture,” he says.

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:00 am

Johann Ludwig Bach: The Leipzig Cantatas album review – this distant cousin’s music is a remarkable discovery

Capella Sollertia/Soller
(Ricercar)
This is the premiere recording of sacred cantatas by JL Bach: works preserved due to his distant cousin, JS Bach, copying them for performance. Conductor Johanna Soller brings them to sensitive and vivid life

We’ll probably never know why Johann Sebastian Bach broke off his prodigious flow of sacred cantatas in 1726 to instead perform a set of 18 by a distant third cousin, but as this revelatory four-disc set demonstrates, we should be glad he did.

Johann Ludwig Bach, born near Eisenach in 1677, became cantor and later kapellmeister in Meiningen, dying there in 1731. His music shows an inspirational gift for melody, a sensitivity to text and a knack for turning Lutheran doctrinal poetry into first-rate music drama. How JSB got his hands on JLB’s music is unclear – there’s no evidence the two ever met – but JSB’s meticulous copying out of his relative’s work has preserved a treasure trove of music that might otherwise have been lost to the sands of time.

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:05 pm

U2: Days of Ash review – six new tracks reaffirm the band as a vital political voice

(Island)
On their first collection of new songs since 2017, the quartet have a crispness that has been lacking in their 21st-century material, as they nimbly react to shocking news stories

• News: Bono lambasts ICE, Putin, Netanyahu and more as U2 release first collection of new songs since 2017

It’s nearly nine years since U2 released a collection of original material, 2017’s Songs of Experience. They’ve hardly been idle since: two tours, two films, a 40-date residency at the Las Vegas Sphere, nearly three hours of stripped-down re-recordings of old material on Songs of Surrender, plus Bono’s autobiography, which spawned a solo tour, a stint on Broadway and another film. An impressive workload by any standards.

Still, you could take the gap between original albums – the longest in U2’s history – as evidence of a problem that’s bedevilled the band for nearly 20 years: where do U2 fit into the current musical landscape?

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:00 pm

Old Songs by Amy Jeffs and Gwen Burns review – ancient tales of murder, maidens and magic

These interconnected short stories of love and death, inspired by traditional ballads from the British Isles, are narrated with immediacy and warmth

In the old Scottish ballad, Tam Lin, a girl named Janet is warned by her family not to go near the well at Carterhaugh. There lurks an elfin knight who will take the virginity of any golden-haired maiden who passes through. The next day Janet, who is possessed of golden hair and a rebellious spirit, sets off for Carterhaugh. At the well, she picks a double rose which summons Tam Lin. Janet visits him daily and she learns how he was stolen by the Fairy Queen who cursed him to remain in Elfland as her vassal. Months later she realises she is with child. Refusing to forsake her lover, she hatches a bold and dangerous plan to free him from the curse.

This is just one of the ancient tales featured in Old Songs, a treasure trove of short stories inspired by traditional ballads from the British Isles. Stretching from the Classical period and the early 20th century, these richly imagined stories feature sibling murder, infanticide, kidnapping, abandonment and a man who is turned into a worm by a witch. “Not all the stories are happy and that is the way of the world,” notes author Amy Jeffs in the foreword.

Published: February 19, 2026, 3:00 pm

The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara review – into Tibet’s ‘Forbidden Kingdom’

The follow-up to Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line explores the history of colonial exploration through a perilous 19th-century odyssey

With her peripatetic and philosophical second novel, Deepa Anappara travels into uncharted territory. Her dazzling 2020 debut, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was part caper and part social satire, set in an Indian shantytown. In The Last of Earth, she points her writerly compass towards the mountains of mid-19th-century Tibet – a region then closed off to European imperialists – to meditate on the chequered history of colonial exploration, cartography and the impermanence of human existence.

“It’s in the nature of white men to believe they own the world, that no door should be shut to them.” For years, the British train, coax and bribe Indians to cross over, conducting surveying expeditions on their behalf; they also venture into the “Forbidden Kingdom of Tibet” in thinly veiled disguises. Intricately researched and meticulously plotted, this immersive novel is told through the alternating perspectives of two protagonists. Balram is an Indian schoolteacher and surveyor-spy who plays guide to an English captain, clumsily dressed as a monk and intent on being the first man to personally chart the route of the revered river Tsangpo and discover where it meets the sea. Meanwhile Katherine, of part Indian heritage, is on a mission to become the first European woman to reach Lhasa and set eyes on the Potala Palace after being denied membership of the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London.

The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara is published by Oneworld (£14.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:00 am

Trip to the Moon by John Yorke review – a storytelling handbook in dire need of an edit

A producer shares his tips for tight storylines, but they’re marred by verbal incontinence and hyperbole

Creative writing handbooks are almost an industry in themselves: the fledgling author, dramatist or screenwriter can choose from hundreds of titles, all offering to unlock the secrets of storytelling. These books are of limited utility for literary fiction, where plot is secondary, but if you’re writing for the screen or stage, or working on genre fiction, they can be helpful. Commercial, plot-driven storytelling is, this is an inherently formulaic business, and a working knowledge of narrative structure is a crucial foundation for an aspiring writer.

In his bestselling 2014 treatise on the mechanics of narrative, Into the Woods, John Yorke demonstrated the uncanny prevalence of five-act structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement) in many popular movies, plays and television dramas. He reprises this theme in his new book, which starts with a lengthy disquisition on plot architecture. The five-act framework, Yorke explains, is elegantly conducive to an emotionally compelling journey, with the protagonist typically undergoing a transformative revelation at the story’s mid-point. He illustrates this with reference to hit TV programmes such as I May Destroy You, and films including Star Wars and Terminator 2.

Published: February 19, 2026, 9:00 am

The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova review – a poetic exploration of Russian guilt

Written from exile after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this autofictional blend of memory and fable tracks a changing sense of self

M, a 50-year-old novelist living in an idyllic place by a lake, is travelling to a literary festival to give a talk. A sequence of events, mostly beyond her control, leaves her stranded in an unfamiliar town. It’s dead quiet, except for a travelling circus camped on the outskirts. M checks into a hotel, ignores her phone and wanders around, reminiscing about books read, films watched, museums visited. Some of these recollections are grounded in fable; others are vividly realistic. Among the latter are memories of her childhood and youth, spent in a “country that no longer exists apart from on old maps and in history books”.

M describes the country she comes from as a “beast” waging war against its neighbour. We can guess her meaning without turning to the author’s biographical note. Maria Stepanova – whose masterly In Memory of Memory combined family memoir, essay and fiction – left her native Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. We might also wonder how closely The Disappearing Act tracks her own life. But the novelist M is not here to discuss autofiction – she has more important things to reflect on.

Published: February 18, 2026, 9:00 am

Mario Tennis Fever review – serving up banana peel-laced multiplayer chaos

Nintendo Switch 2; Nintendo
This ruthlessly competitive game will have everyone from your granny to semi-pros trying to set fire to their opponent’s side of the court with powered-up ‘fever rackets’

Tennis has been a regular hobby of Mario’s for the past 30 years, beginning with the headache-inducing Mario’s Tennis on the Virtual Boy and most recently resurfacing as the surprisingly complex Mario Tennis Aces on the Switch. Now he’s back in his whites (and reds) with a charming new take on the sport that dials back the difficulty level and adds lots of fun modes and features, aiming to appease complete newcomers and Djokovic-esque veterans.

At first, the range of options is almost bewildering. You can opt to play in one-off matches with up to three other players or NPCs, or enter a more structured tournament of singles or doubles play. Then there’s the extremely fun Mix It Up, which offers a range of fun tennis derivatives. These include Forest Court where piranha plants appear and gobble any balls that get close, and Pinball where bumpers and barriers pop up as you play. Trial Towers, meanwhile, presents a tower of increasingly tough tennis challenges which all have to be completed to open the next two buildings; fail more than three times and you’re sent back to the beginning – yes, it’s Mario Tennis: The Roguelike.

Published: February 19, 2026, 10:00 am

​T​he ​Winter Olympics ​feel like a 90s ​snowboarding ​game​, and I’m here for it

Milano Cortina​ has cutting‑edge replays, chase‑cam drones and exuberant commentary ​bringing a wave of unexpected nostalgia for anyone who grew up on 90s extreme‑sports games

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As someone whose childhood holidays consisted of narrowboating along the Grand Union canal or wandering the harbour-side at Whitby looking for vampires, I have never been on a skiing break. The idea of plummeting down a hill on anything but a plastic sledge is totally alien to me. And yet, my wife and I have been gripped by the Winter Olympics, especially the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events. And I think I know why. Those events are really channelling the look and feel of the wintery sports sims I’ve always loved – especially those that arrived during a golden period in the mid-1990s.

This was the era in which snowboarding was exploding in popularity, especially among twentysomethings with disposable incomes and no responsibilities – which coincidentally was the games industry’s target market at the time. Perhaps the first title to take advantage of this trend was Namco’s 1996 arcade game Alpine Surfer, which challenged players to stand on a snowboard-shaped controller and swoop as quickly as possible down a mountainside – it was one of the most physically exhausting coin-ops I ever played. Later that year came the self-consciously hip PlayStation sim Cool Boarders, and then in 1998, my absolute favourite, 1080° Snowboarding on the N64, with it’s intuitive analog controls and incredibly authentic sound effects of boards cutting through deep, crisp snow.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:40 pm

‘People are in awe’: exhibition unveils ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead

A rare gilded and complete Book of the Dead, used by ancient Egyptians to help them to the afterlife, is now on display in Brooklyn

In the ancient world, travel to eternal bliss was not easy. For the Greeks, you’d have to hitch a ride with Charon across the River Styx and hope you were one of the few fortunate souls to make it to Elysium. If you were lived among the ancient Aztecs, your journey to Mictlan involved numerous struggles, including climbing a mountain made of obsidian and crossing a desert where there was no gravity and you were blown around by enormous winds.

For the ancient Egyptians, the journey to the afterlife included a danger-filled journey where your wits were tested at every turn – those fortunate enough to make it through would then sit before the god Osirus and 42 other deities while their heart was weighed against a single feather. If things went sideways, your soul would be devoured by a fearsome goddess named Ammit, composed of a lion, hippopotamus and crocodile (the three creatures most likely to eat ancient Egyptians).

Published: February 19, 2026, 10:01 am

‘Can I come over and take your picture?’: a decade-long archive captures cross-cultural womanhood

Through more than 300 photos, the New York City artist Clémence Polès Farhang captures the immigrant story and unconventional womanhood

Clémence Polès Farhang started Passerby magazine around the time she immigrated to New York City. She says she wanted to explore womanhood as she navigated her own, and used publishing as a way to “deconstruct the internalized misogyny” from her own education. Polès Farhang’s mother, who left Iran during the revolution, believed women should have the right to choose what to do with their bodies, “yet would dismiss any woman who didn’t conform to conventional expectations”, says Polès Farhang, such as those didn’t dress “in a way she considered put together, or didn’t marry into heteronormative relationships within the right social class”.

“I remember being scolded in my early 20s for embarrassing her by leaving the house barefaced,” she says.

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:07 pm

Sardinia’s ancient masked rite of mamuthones and issohadores – in pictures

From mid-January until the end of carnival, mamuthones and issohadores take to the streets of Mamoiada, in the mountainous heartland of Sardinia. This is a time when herders and farmers across the Mediterranean turn to the power of masks to cast off winter and foster the coming of spring

Published: February 19, 2026, 7:00 am

‘Bored by all the sex and violins’: readers on Wuthering Heights film

Reaction to Emerald Fennell’s movie adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi

My group of six English teachers – aged from 30 to 54 – saw the film on Friday. We are still processing our thoughts in a group chat. We agreed that the visuals were often delightfully shocking. We talked about the contrasts between the lavish costumes and the moor landscape, which we thought Fennell got right. We talked about the Charli xcx music and how well it evoked the landscape and the spirit of the book.

Published: February 18, 2026, 3:03 pm

Say goodbye to the sex drought! What the Danes can teach us about making more love

While other countries are deep in a sex recession, the Danish drive shows no signs of stalling. How do they stay so frisky?

Copenhagen on the Thursday before Valentine’s Day is intoxicatingly romantic. That’s not hyperbole – you could breathe in and be drunk on it. The canals have frozen over, which only happens about once every 13 years, and couples are skating on them. You can see cosy bars from miles away because they’re strung with fairy lights – apparently not just a Christmas thing here. Everyone is beautiful.

But none of that comes close to explaining why young Danes in Denmark, unlike gen Z across the developed world, are still having sex. Winter isn’t even their frisky season. “You feel the atmosphere in the springtime,” says Ben, 35, half-British, half Danish. His friend Anna, also 35, originally Hungarian, says: “Post-hibernation fever, you can feel the sexual energy. Everyone is on. Everyone swims in the canals, a lot of the women will be topless – they’re like herrings.” (Which is to say: they are typically Danish, they love the water and they don’t wear clothes … I think.) Ben and Anna are millennials, of course, rather than gen Z: they provide the outsiders’ perspective.

Published: February 19, 2026, 5:00 am

I’m panicking about my new relationship. After my husband’s affair, how can I commit again?

It is reasonable to avoid hurt after such a big betrayal, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but don’t mistake isolation for safety

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I was in a relationship for 26 years, married for 17, and my husband had an affair. It was hidden, long term and denied until discovery. I divorced him but that was delayed and I had to live with him for a further two years. I spent a year alone in my new house with my now adult sons. Now I am a little over a year into a new relationship and suddenly panicking about it. I’m scared to go forward. I’m not sure I can commit to long term again, and if I see him looking at other women (we work together in a predominantly female workplace), I panic! I’m older than him by nine years and I feel like I want to end things to prevent getting hurt. But then I feel I’m being cowardly. How can I stop going down this road in my head?

Eleanor says: On behalf of everyone everywhere, let me say: what a schmuck thing for your husband to do. That is such a big betrayal. And the cruelty you’re living through now is that as well as teaching you to be mistrustful of others, betrayal on that magnitude teaches you to be unsure of yourself. If I misread things once …

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:00 pm

Dry, tight, itchy? We asked three dermatologists for their winter skincare routines

The essential cleansers, moisturizers and serums that dermatologists use to stay hydrated in dry indoor air and the windy outdoors

• The best lip balms in the US for 2026

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The word “moist” is one of the most reviled in the English language. Some researchers even found that up to 20% of people squirm at the sound of it. The New Yorker once voted it its readers’ “least favorite word.” People magazine once called it the “most cringe-worthy word” and even rounded up a passel of Sexiest Men Alive to try – and fail – to rehabilitate it.

According to our dermatologist experts, however, moist is one of the most important words, especially in winter. Dry, heated indoor air and the whipping winds outdoors tend to slurp all the moisture out of your skin. The result: chapped lips, ashy or itchy skin, rough hands and cracked feet.

For facial cleanser:
La Roche-Posay Toleriane Moisturizing Milky Facial Cleanser

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:15 pm

Long Covid is still here. I know – my life came to a stop because of it

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.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

You be the judge: should my best friend stop wearing the same perfume as me?

Marta wants her scent to be unique, but Elsa thinks copying her friend is just sharing the joy. Do you smell a rat?

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

My individuality is very important to me and I like to keep my style and my scent unique

I’m not trying to copy her whole identity. Friends having similar tastes is just sharing the joy

Published: February 19, 2026, 8:00 am

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: brighten the winter gloom with accessories that add personality

This is the season when dressing is dictated by logistics – safety first and function-led. But don’t let that put you off adding the odd flourish

My very first girlcrush is still my ultimate winter style icon. Miss Bianca, star of the 1977 film The Rescuers, is Disney’s most underrated princess. As the Hungarian delegate to the Rescue Aid Society, an international humanitarian organisation run by mice with a secret headquarters in the walls of the UN building in New York City, Miss Bianca travels the world rescuing children in peril, and never allows being a mouse to stop her either from feats of bravery – commanding meetings of international delegates, rescuing children from flooded caves – or from rocking a look. She has a nice line in shawl-collar trapeze-line coats (think mid-century Balenciaga), but her real style signature is her glamorous scarves and hats. In a violet pillbox hat with a matching scarf tied in a bow, or dashing shades of mustard, Bianca makes cosy winter dressing look delicious. She might be a mouse, but she is never, ever mousey.

A cartoon mouse is an unusual place to begin an article about winter accessories. It is also an unusual point from which to draw a line to a former first lady of the US, but while pairing a tiny animated rodent with Michelle Obama as co-style icons is a mismatch on paper, it is not so in spirit. At the 2009 inauguration, Obama wore a lemongrass coat and dress by Isabel Toledo, offset by olive-green leather gloves. Her daughters, Malia and Sasha, were chicly bundled in scarf-and-glove sets chosen to contrast with their coats. Their clothes were elegant, but it was the accessories that made the look memorable. The family looked comfortable, relatable, and quietly joyful: no small feat on a freezing day dense with symbolism and expectation.

Published: February 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘I don’t want to micromanage my body’: how the adjustable waistband became a way to regain control

Given the average British woman may change dress size more than 30 times in adult life, flexibility is one route to feeling at home in a fluctuating body. But that’s not all it’s good for

I always think that the most stylish woman in a room is the one who looks the most comfortable. She might be nonchalant in a pair of wide trousers and a loose white shirt, or stroll in casually wearing the butter-soft leather loafers she’s had for years. It was a longing to be more like one of those women, as opposed to one who fell over regularly in public because I couldn’t balance in platforms, which made me give up wearing heels for good in 2012. So it was a natural progression, a decade later, to shunning another wardrobe constraint that was making me fidget in social situations: the waistband.

I’m about to turn 49 and in the past eight years I’ve been fluctuating between sizes 10 and 14, which is hardly surprising when you consider that the average British woman may change dress size a whopping 31 times in her adult life. I attribute my own yo-yo-ing partly to the hormonal changes that a body in its 40s inevitably goes through, but I should also acknowledge that during lockdown, I developed a taste for the elasticated tracksuit bottoms that working from home allowed, as well as a macaroni cheese, or two, each week.

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:00 am

Year of the fire horse - explained: the Chinese zodiac sign that’s all about intensity

Lunar new year has ushered in a rare zodiac symbol with a reputation for energy and independence

As the lunar new year begins, the focus has turned to the Chinese zodiac and the arrival of the year of the fire horse – a rare pairing in the 60-year lunar cycle.

Drawing on Chinese metaphysics, the fire horse blends the horse’s reputation for energy and independence with the intensity of the fire element, giving it a distinct place in the zodiac tradition.

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:48 am

The brutal hunt for low-paid work: ‘It’s like The Hunger Games – but for a job folding clothes’

It used to be fairly easy to get work that paid at or around the minimum wage. But with a shrinking number of positions come ever more hoops to jump through, from personality tests, to trial shifts, to towers constructed of marshmallows

It is 10.30am, and Zahra is sitting in a business centre in Preston, attaching marshmallows to sticks of uncooked spaghetti. There are 30 interview candidates in the grey-carpeted room, split into groups of five, competing to build food towers. Already today they have had to solve anagrams, complete quizzes and rank the importance of various kitchen items. Just to be shortlisted for this two-hour interview round, Zahra had to write an online application consisting of 10 paragraphs about her work experience. As she builds her spaghetti and marshmallow tower, she thinks: “What am I actually doing here? This doesn’t relate to the job at all.”

The job in question is not what Zahra, 20, plans to do for ever. It is as a crew member for Wingstop, a chicken shop chain, with a salary of £10.80 an hour – 80p an hour above minimum wage for her age range. During the interview, she says, “a woman with a notepad was staring at us, and all the shift managers were watching. It was so awkward.” A week or so later, Zahra received a short rejection email. “It felt like a waste of time,” she says. “What a joke.”

Published: February 18, 2026, 10:00 am

‘A mission of mine’: during Ramadan, Sudanese food is a reminder of what is at stake in a time of war

The loss of sacred spaces during the period of observance and the ongoing conflict reminds us of the importance of cherishing food

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Today starts the first week of Ramadan, and I have the great pleasure of digging into The Sudanese Kitchen by Omer Al Tijani. The war in Sudan has been going on for almost three years now, and Ramadan is a month that arrives with heightened feelings for those fasting in the middle of conflict and displacement. The cookbook, a first-of-its-kind collection of Sudanese recipes, is both a celebration of Sudan and a reminder of all that is at stake.

Al Tijani first realised he needed to learn how to make his own Sudanese food while he was a student at the University of Manchester in the early 2010s. The packages of treats his mother prepared never lasted long enough; he grew sick of student food and began looking for recipes, but there were few resources. Over 15 years, his passion for tracing and documenting Sudanese recipes took him all over Sudan, and his work became, as he told me, “bound” in Sudan’s political story. He gathered recipes and food culture on the ground during the revolution that overthrew president Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator of 30 years.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:34 pm

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for chocolate and rosemary panna cotta | A kitchen in Rome

A decadent, velvety and chocolatey set cream dessert infused with aromatic rosemary

The pungent and lingering aromas of familiar kitchen herbs – oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, bay, lavender, mint – seem purposely made to donate their landmark volatiles to our everyday lives and food. In fact, their design is not for domestic calm and onion basket or fridge drawer neglect, but for uncultivated wilds. In particular the limestone terrain of the Mediterranean, where their defining smells are hardcore chemical defences, with every small, tough leaf or needle loaded with enough volatiles to deter both predators and competitors.

Rosemary is particularly kick-arse in this respect, with those volatiles (mostly organic compounds called terpenoids) synthesised and stored in minuscule glands that project from the surface of each dark green needle, which breaks when brushed against or bitten, releasing an intense, hot, bitter shot. It’s the evergreen equivalent of carrying personal defence spray. The needles also mark territory. By leaking their volatiles into the nearby soil, they inhibit the seeds of other plants (maybe even their own) from taking root and, in turn, taking space, water and precious minerals in a challenging environment.

Published: February 19, 2026, 6:00 am

‘I am somebody’: the cultural magnitude of Jesse Jackson’s Sesame Street episode

His 1972 appearance showed Americans what a beloved community could look like, integrated and full of promise

In a 1972 episode of Sesame Street, Jesse Jackson, then 31, is standing against a stoop on the soundstage modelled after an urban neighborhood block. He’s wearing a purple, white and black striped shirt, accented with a gold medallion featuring Martin Luther King Jr’s profile. The camera cuts to reveal a group of kids, the embodiment of Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition – children under the age of 10 from every ethnicity and racial group. He leads them in a call-and-response of his famous liberatory chant: “I am somebody.”

The adorable, cherub-cheeked kids light up the camera with their enthusiasm as they repeat the same words back to him. They are fidgety, giggly and powerful when they respond to Jackson in a cacophonous and slightly out-of-sync roar: I am somebody. The call-and-response is a wall of activating, energetic sound.

Published: February 18, 2026, 2:23 pm

The bogus four-day workweek that AI supposedly ‘frees up’

Business leaders tout AI as a path to shorter weeks and better balance. But without power, workers are unlikely to share the gains

The front-page headline in a recent Washington Post was breathless: “These companies say AI is key to their four-day workweeks.” The subhead was euphoric: “Some companies are giving workers back more time as artificial intelligence takes over more tasks.”

As the Post explained: “more companies may move toward a shortened workweek, several executives and researchers predict, as workers, especially those in younger generations, continue to push for better work-life balance.”

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:00 pm

Tell us: have you ever used AI to navigate everyday life and social relationships?

We’d like to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to assist with your social life or important life decisions

Lots of people now use chatbots as personal assistants, not just for work but in everyday life and social interactions. We want to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to navigate your social life or significant life decisions.

Have you ever drafted a breakup text using AI? Or crafted a message to delicately cancel plans? Have you consulted AI on whether to take, or quit, a job? Or sought advice from a chatbot on a tricky friendship or relationship?

Published: February 19, 2026, 4:20 pm

Nepali bagpipers and a canoe marathon: photos of the day – Thursday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Published: February 19, 2026, 2:36 pm