The opening ceremony kicks off with hosts including GB’s most decorated Paralympian, Sarah Storey. Plus: Steve Backshall’s on Hippo Watch. Here’s what to watch this evening 6.30pm, Channel 4 The high drama of snowy sports isn’t over just yet! It’s now the turn of the Winter Paralympics, with its opening ceremony at the Arena di Verona. Look out for GB curler Jo Butterfield, who is hoping to be the first British athlete to win at the summer and winter games. This year, hosts Ade Adepitan, Billy Monger and Ed Jackson are joined by GB’s most decorated Paralympian, Sarah Storey, and multi-gold medallist swimming champion Alice Tai. Hollie Richardson Continue reading...

New European Code Against Cancer calls on politicians to phase out use of fossil fuels in homes Cutting air pollution should form part of government strategies to reduce cancer rates, the European Code Against Cancer has recommended. The code previously focused on advice to help people to reduce the air pollution that they breathe. But, for the first time since its launch in 1987, it has given clear direction to governments. Continue reading...

Seafarer tells of explosions in sky as thousands stuck on vessels after strait of Hormuz is effectively closed to shipping • Maritime and port workers: how is the Middle East conflict affecting you? Thousands of seafarers are trapped on tankers in the Gulf after the strait of Hormuz was effectively closed to shipping by the escalating war on Iran. The Guardian spoke to a crew member on one of the stranded tankers that typically ferries vast quantities of oil from the Middle East to ports around the world. Continue reading...

Adam Tickell, of University of Birmingham, says money is loaned to people who ‘are not really capable of graduating’ A leading vice-chancellor has questioned whether students without A-levels should be eligible for government-backed student loans, as part of an effort to solve England’s university funding crisis. Adam Tickell, vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, said universities face an “almost existential challenge” and falling public support that requires a radical review of higher education funding. Continue reading...

There’s a reason this 70s staple is never out of style. Take your cue from Margot Robbie and team flares with a structured jacket and smart accessories Continue reading...

The news that healthy life expectancy is in decline in Britain exposes a serious truth about the state we’re in My guess is you keep across the news. You know Andy Mountbatten-Windsor has just had the worst birthday ever; that tall hotels in Dubai don’t make for a great holiday right now; and that Keir Starmer’s engagements diary for 2027 will be remarkably clear. Still, there is one headline I’ll bet you haven’t seen, even though it directly affects your life. It’s about your life, and mine, and those of our families and friends and neighbours. I didn’t spot it either, until a few days ago when the Guardian ran a reader’s letter. Continue reading...

The 55 pilot whales, which had to be euthanised, had been following a female having a difficult birth, scientists believe The mass stranding and death of 55 whales on the Isle of Lewis in 2023 was caused by the mammals’ loyalty to their pod, a report has concluded. It had been thought that the unusually large incident on Tràigh Mhòr beach, Tolsta, could have been caused by trauma, disease or acoustic disturbance from military or industrially generated noise. Continue reading...

Head of government-commissioned review says adult social care is held together by ‘sticking plasters and glue’ England’s “creaking” adult social care system is confusing and impenetrable to the people that rely on it and held together with “sticking plasters and glue”, the head of a government-commissioned review has said in a withering critique. Louise Casey said the country faced a “moment of reckoning” over its failure to effectively and fairly meet the needs of Britain’s ageing population and rising numbers of people with chronic conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Continue reading...

Ministers urged to abandon plans to let tech firms use work of novelists, artists and writers without permission The UK’s creative industries must not be sacrificed in the pursuit of speculative gains in AI technology, a House of Lords committee has warned, as the government prepares to reveal the economic cost of proposals to change copyright rules. A report by peers has urged ministers to develop a licensing regime for the use of creative works in AI products and abandon proposals to let tech firms use the work of novelists, artists, writers and journalists without permission. Continue reading...

A fine, tender crumb and a soft, creamy, lemon-spiked mascarpone make this the perfect bake for Mother’s Day This is both simple and celebratory, which in my book makes it just right for Mother’s Day next weekend. It has a fine, tender crumb, which pairs beautifully with the soft, creamy tang of lemon mascarpone, and I use lemon curd in the batter (shop-bought for ease) to bring a particular smoothness and depth of lemon flavour. Finished with a little extra curd and a scattering of edible flowers, it is pretty and unfussy and will hopefully make your own mother’s day. Continue reading...

Most recorded visits are for smaller debts, data from England and Wales suggests, though method of recovery is a postcode lottery Tens of thousands of people a year have bailiffs sent to their homes by water companies in England and Wales, data shows. Many thousands of these visits by debt collectors were for sums worth under £1,000, according to the data released by the House of Commons environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee. Bailiffs are debt collectors instructed by a court, who can seize items from those in debt, including electrical items, jewellery or vehicles. Continue reading...

Cairngorms: Conservation efforts to help them are working – numbers are still small, but I’ve seen signs in the late winter snow It is always interesting to see how overnight snow reveals what goes on under the cover of night. Around the granny pines, I see the smaller fore and larger hind prints of a red squirrel. Across the fields and along pinewood paths, there is evidence of hares and badgers, pine martens and deer, before they veered off, back into the heather and blaeberry understorey. On a recent walk, I came across some less familiar animal tracks around the edges of the pinewoods and I was convinced they were those of a wildcat. After going to a talk by the Saving Wildcats project I’m even more certain. The project was launched in 2015 after conservationists feared the wild population was facing extinction in Britain. It involves captive breeding followed by careful release and monitoring – and so far it has been a success. Continue reading...

Some areas that recorded temperatures close to 50C in January received more rain in one week in February than all of last year Want to get more charts in your inbox every fortnight? Sign up for The Crunch here Dozens of heat and rain records were broken across south-east Australia over the past two months as the nation experienced its wettest summer in a decade, and one of the hottest ever – 1.1C above the 1961-1990 average. Some areas that recorded temperatures approaching 50C in January heatwaves received more rain in one week in February than all of last year. Continue reading...

Footballers sing and salute anthem days after standing silent at Asian Cup Matildas victory leaves Iran on brink of tournament exit and return home The Australian government has been urged to allow the Iran women’s national team players to remain in Australia after a state-aligned conservative commentator in Iran described them as “wartime traitors” and said they must be “dealt with more severely”. The Iran players are currently competing in the Women’s Asian Cup, and lost 4-0 to the Matildas on the Gold Coast in their second group-stage match on Thursday. Continue reading...

One afternoon, I set up my kit and taped a drumstick to my amputated arm The transformer exploded a few feet from where I was standing. One moment I was on the roof of a restaurant kitchen in Atlanta, cleaning exhaust vents. The next, I was on the ground, my body seizing and burned. Before that day, music had been the centre of my life. My father was a well-known guitarist in Australia and I grew up watching him play. When I was 14 my parents bought me a drum kit for Christmas. I fell in love immediately. By 22, I was playing in two bands – one metal, one reggae – and preparing to audition for the Atlanta Institute of Music. Then I was electrocuted. Continue reading...

A drama about a president at the end of his career, La Grazia is the director’s finest film since The Great Beauty. As he reunites with his longtime collaborator, the pair discuss ageing, loyalty and the mysterious energy that has bound them for more than two decades ‘They like to smoke,” says the publicist ahead of my interview with Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo. That’s why the table and chairs have been hastily dragged outside. That’s why today’s audience will be conducted alfresco. We’re on the cramped sixth-floor balcony of a Venice hotel, overlooking the sea, beneath a tumult of dark clouds. The publicist points down at my recording device and asks: “Will it pick up what they say, or just the noise of the wind?” They like to smoke – of course they do. The Italian film-maker and his muse are both men of old Europe: rigid and courtly and serenely unreconstructed; dignified at the core and a little rackety around the edges. They’ve made seven pictures together and dearly hope they’ll make an eighth. But who can predict? Even the best-laid plans can come a cropper. Sorrentino and Servillo know that time is finite and that the reassuring old order is slipping into the past. They’ve barely whipped out their cigars before the rain comes in sideways. We survive two minutes on the balcony and trundle back to the table indoors. Continue reading...

Iraq emerges as key front in new and often clandestine confrontation after launching dozens of attacks Iran-backed militias around the Middle East are intensifying attacks against Israel, the US and their allies, in retaliation for the ongoing joint US-Israeli offensive against Tehran as the war draws in new armed actors, threatening wider chaos and violence. Israel and the US have targeted Iran’s network of militant groups, with Iraq emerging as a key front in this new and often clandestine confrontation. Continue reading...

As the Spanish PM decries the war in Iran, other politicians are unable – or unwilling – to speak against the US president On Wednesday morning, Pedro Sánchez delivered a 10-minute televised address with the rather bland title: “An institutional declaration by the prime minister to assess recent international events.” The speech’s words, however, were anything but beige. Hours after Donald Trump had threatened to cut off trade with Spain over its government’s refusal to allow two jointly operated bases in Andalucía to be used to strike Iran, Sánchez set out his thinking. Continue reading...

With elections next year, Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders are trying to secure institutions against the National Rally threat European governments have quietly begun adapting their policies for the hitherto unthinkable prospect that France, a founder member of the EU, may elect a far-right nationalist president next year. Germany may be Europe’s biggest economy and most populous state, but nuclear-armed France is the pivotal military power. More than a year before the French choose a successor to Emmanuel Macron, the possibility of a rightwing populist government in France led by Marine Le Pen or her protege, Jordan Bardella, is keeping policymakers awake in Brussels, Berlin and Kyiv. While European leaders regard Macron with respect (and occasional irritation) as an experienced peer, they are gazing with growing anxiety over his shoulder to see who may follow him in May 2027 and what problems that could pose for the bloc, Nato and Ukraine. Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

Yes, there are plenty of big-budget visual effects of prehistoric creatures in Steven Spielberg’s natural history show. But the voiceover is the real draw It’s difficult these days to make a nature documentary that isn’t like all the others. Spectacular landscapes, crisp closeup photography, tales of predation and survival, birth and death: whether you go for Pixar cuteness, crimson claws or environmental crisis, it’s been done 100 times before. Watching The Dinosaurs, it’s hard not to sense the same problem starting to affect factual shows about the animal kingdom as it was millions of years ago. Impressive as it is that big-money dino documentaries boast visual effects that look similar to footage of Earth today, we are getting used to it. Before the opening titles roll, cliches from two genres have been cross-bred. From regular animal shows, there’s the one where a lone male tries to muscle in on a family unit, forcing the existing patriarch to fight for his status against a younger, stronger rival. Our friend who looks as if he’s about to be fatally pushed aside is a pachycephalosaurus, but the dynamic is the same. Then the two males’ head-smashing battle is interrupted by a familiar sight from dinosaur documentaries: the animal posing a threat is suddenly bitten in two by a Tyrannosaurus rex, leaping unbidden through the undergrowth with a camp flourish. The pachycephalosaurus clan, led by their relieved dad, scurry happily away to the sound of the interloper’s cracking skull. Continue reading...

Updates from the day-night Test at the Waca in Perth Play starts at 1.20pm local/4.20pm AEDT/10.50am IST Any thoughts? Email Tanya Hello! Welcome to the first day of this one-off pink ball Test at the Waca, the last hurrah of the Australia-India series, and a grand four-day farewell to Australia captain Alyssa Healy, who prepares to un-velcro her pads one final time, aged 35, and leave a glorious career billowing behind her. This will be Healy’s 299th match for Australia, but only her eleventh Test, such is the scarcity of women’s Test cricket – something else to mull over during the next four days. She’s never made a Test hundred, but if her blazing 158 in her final ODI is anything to go by, you wouldn’t bet against her ticking one last box on her way out. Continue reading...

Decision marks end of years-long legal saga for 78-year-old critic of Chinese Communist party Jimmy Lai, the prominent pro-democracy activist who was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong, has said he will not appeal his conviction. The decision marks the end of a years-long legal saga for the 78-year-old critic of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), and opens the door for political negotiations to his release. Continue reading...

Though she lives with constant pain, Stanthorpe’s Kerrie Stratford still has what it takes to claim her 22nd harvest festival title Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Outside a marquee, across from the clock tower, a crowd is gathering for the Stanthorpe apple and grape harvest festival’s apple peeling contest. Well, contest might be an exaggeration. Kerrie Stratford, 65, is the undisputed champion of apple peeling. There is no competition. She has won 21 titles at the Queensland town’s biannual festival, claiming a shelf full of trophies including one tasteful prize that is a rock with a peeler on top of it. Continue reading...

US president again suggests Zelenskyy needs to compromise; Ukraine president says US is seeking its drone expertise for the Middle East. What we know on day 1,472 US president Donald Trump on Thursday again urged Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to strike a deal with Russia, claiming that Russian president Vladimir Putin was prepared to reach an agreement. “Zelenskyy, he has to get on the ball, and he has to get a deal done,” Trump said in an interview with Politico. Trump, returning to language he used during a tense White House meeting a year ago where he and vice-president JD Vance publicly berated Zelenskyy, suggested the Ukrainian president was in a weak position and needed to make compromises, saying “Now he’s got even less cards” and repeated his insistence that “Putin is ready to make a deal”, without providing evidence. Trump has long said that US support for Ukraine is wasteful to the US and has spoken admirably in the past about Putin, whom he invited to Alaska in August 2025. Zelenskyy said the US and its allies in the Middle East are seeking Ukraine’s expertise in countering Iran’s Shahed drones. The Ukrainian president said various countries, including the US, have approached Ukraine for help in defending against Iranian drones. He said he had spoken in recent days to the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait about possible cooperation. Russia has fired tens of thousands of Shaheds at Ukraine since it invaded its neighbor just over four years ago. Iran has responded with the same type of drones to joint US-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets. Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha accused Hungary early on Friday of detaining seven employees of Ukraine’s state savings bank while they were transporting cash from Austria back to Ukraine. Sybiha was writing on X after Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Budapest would force Ukraine with “political and financial tools” to reopen the Druzhba pipeline carrying Russian oil to Hungarian refineries. Hungary is one of the few European countries to maintain close ties with Russia since its Ukraine offensive. “In fact, we are talking about Hungary taking hostages and stealing money,” Sybiha wrote. “If this is the ‘force’ announced earlier today by Mr Orban, then this is a force of a criminal gang. This is state terrorism and racketeering.” Repair crews have restored an external line to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine nearly a month after it was taken out of operation, the head of Russia’s nuclear energy corporation said. Alexei Likhachev, director general of Rosatom, said in a statement that repairs to the Ferosplavna-1 line connecting the plant to the power grid were completed late on Thursday afternoon. Europe’s largest nuclear plant, with six reactors, was seized by Russia soon after Moscow’s troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022. A downed Ukrainian drone fell next to a five-storey apartment building in the port of Sevastopol in Russian-held Crimea, injuring nine people and causing considerable damage, the Russian-appointed governor said early on Friday. Mikhail Razvozhayev said the drone was filled with metal pieces and explosives fell next to the building, badly damaging it. Sevastopol hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. Continue reading...

US issues 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to buy Russian oil; IDF says it is striking Dahiya neighborhood in southern suburbs of Beirut Tell us: how have you been affected by the latest events in the Middle East? Continue reading...