‘Our producer was toasting sesame seeds in a pan. Coming from a working-class family, I’d never seen such a thing’ Ed and I had just come off a long tour of Europe and North America supporting Simple Minds and needed a break. I immersed myself in music-making with a synth, drum machine and a four-track Tascam Portastudio. I was very inspired by Brian Eno. I’d seen the words “found sounds” on his album credits. The notion that any sound could be included in a recording struck me as magical. I just held a mic out of my bedroom window. Black Man Ray started out as an ambient number with an intro featuring the sound of a boy I recorded singing in the street below. In the end, he actually featured in the opening bars of our song The Highest High. Continue reading...

York Theatre Royal In Catherine Dyson’s absorbing play, the audience become a class of year 9 pupils visiting a Holocaust exhibition with an emotional support animal Can we ever truly learn from history? This is the question hovering over Catherine Dyson’s The Last Picture – first shared in a rehearsed reading at York Theatre Royal as part of the RSC’s 37 Plays initiative in 2023 and now receiving a full production. It’s a piece that moves constantly between past and present, testing the empathic capacities and limits of theatre as an art form. There’s a touch of Tim Crouch to Dyson’s writing, which invites the audience into the imaginative act of bringing her words to life. This is a play about pictures in which not a single image is shown. Addressed in the second person, we are cast as audience members in a theatre as well as a class of year 9 students on a school trip to an exhibition about the Holocaust. As the unseen photographic evidence of genocide is described, the play flings us backwards into the scenes captured, placing us in the position of those being led to their murders – as well as that of the neighbours who looked the other way. Continue reading...

Charity says situation breaks Nice guidelines and is having devastating impact on couples struggling with infertility Millions of women in England are only able to access one round of IVF on the NHS because of health authority cutbacks and in contravention of official policy, research from a fertility charity has shown. Nearly 70% of local areas fund just one cycle for women under 40 who have been unable to conceive for two years, rather than the three full cycles they should be offered in line with official guidance, according to data collected by the Progress Educational Trust (PET). Continue reading...

We’ve picked the best non-naff pressies for partners and friends. Plus, the best boots and soup makers, tested • Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here You can be a Grinch about it or, as Jess Cartner-Morley wrote in her latest Filter edit, you can embrace it for the “daft festival of joy in the bleakest moment of the calendar” that it is. Valentine’s Day, if nothing else, is a reminder in the depths of unromantic February to cherish those you love. And let’s be honest, the world needs a bit more of that sentiment right now. But there are Valentine’s Day gifts, and there are Valentine’s Day gifts. In our guide, we decided to eschew the throwaway and unimaginative in favour of a selection of thoughtful, creative ideas that will last well beyond 14 February (we included flowers, because who doesn’t love flowers, but opted for longer-lasting stained-glass alternatives and subscriptions over a single bunch of blooms). The best flower delivery for every budget: eight favourites, freshly picked The best women’s lingerie: 22 favourites for every mood and budget Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones review: an ultra-light vacuum you’ll actually enjoy using I tried 75 low- and no-alcohol drinks: here are my favourite beers, wines and spirits The best treadmills for your home: up your indoor miles with our runner-approved picks 15 of the best men’s coats for winter – from puffer jackets to parkas to trenchcoats The best soup makers for healthy, thrifty meals – tested ‘Opened with a satisfying phwummp’: the best supermarket sauerkraut, tasted and rated Continue reading...

Shadowy urban terror gives way to airborne exuberance as the festival celebrates its 20th edition with a programme that disturbs and delights Suited dancers swing around a streetlight in Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau’s Horses but it’s not exactly Singin’ in the Rain. The mood is more like a stray dog has sidled up to that lamp-post and cocked its leg. The lamps multiply on these squalid, mean streets: uprooted, they become giant props for performers to illuminate and edit the action on a vast stage with its wings exposed and no artificial backdrop. A suspicious figure roams the outskirts with a torch; another drives a vehicle back and forth in the distance. One long-necked light snakes down from above like a tendril, its glow deepening the chiaroscuro. Bodies melt and morph. It is as if a film noir has caught fire in the projector, distorting each scene. Nederlands Dans Theater’s production, at the 20th edition of Holland Dance festival, confounds from its ragged beginnings to the final seconds, when even the curtain is not allowed to fall in peace. Horses starts with the house lights up and a solo with instinctive flinches and hoof-like hands suggesting hunter and hunted before a second dancer arrives nose-first, as if led by scent. The animality briefly evokes NDT’s Figures in Extinction but this is an acutely urban nightmare, with humans’ survival skills put to the test. Suddenly, the auditorium’s doors slam shut and we are plunged into darkness. Continue reading...

Emerald Fennell’s lust-fuelled take on Emily Brontë’s novel has cued a hot flush of merchandise ranging from themed snacks to thongs. What exactly are they buying into? That appetite for Emerald Fennell’s bodice-ripping adaptation of Emily Brontë’s yarn of doomed romance is high is not in doubt. Whether it’s high enough to sustain sales for an official Wuthering Heights açai bowl seems less certain. Yet this is exactly what is on offer in food aisles across the US, with two bespoke bowls churned up for hungry film fans with the explanatory slogan: “This is what happens when you turn yearning into flavour.” Continue reading...

Milton Court, London Live on stage the Oscar-winning composer’s score is disorientating, ecstatic and strange. Its star, Amanda Seyfried’s pure voice is the anchor in a brief but absorbing set A few days ago, Amanda Seyfried was on the Graham Norton couch alongside Margot Robbie and Johannes Radebe from Strictly. Tonight, the star of Mean Girls, Les Misérables and Mamma Mia is seated among a rather different set of luminaries: key figures from London’s avant garde jazz scene. The link here is composer Daniel Blumberg. When he accepted an Oscar last year for his extraordinary score to The Brutalist, Blumberg namechecked Cafe Oto, the leftfield Dalston venue whose improvising musicians have long formed the bedrock of his work. While scoring The Testament of Ann Lee – a biopic starring Seyfried as the founder of the Shaker religious movement – Blumberg was struck by parallels between Shaker worship and free improvisation: a shared ascetic intensity, a cult-like devotion, and moments of wild, euphoric release. The speaking-in-tongues qualities of Shaker devotional singing, he realised, had uncanny echoes in the work of vocal improvisers such as Phil Minton and Maggie Nicols, both of whom feature in the film – and in this performance. Continue reading...

British skiier breaks down after making crucial mistakes ‘I’m obviously a bit sad – it’s a tough place to be, fourth’ Long after the finale of this compelling women’s freeski slopestyle competition, Kirsty Muir was still struggling to process the cruellest loss of her young career. “I’ll be proud of myself in a minute,” the 21-year-old Team GB star told one reporter, through the sobs and the pain. “But I’m in a bit of a hole right now.” Continue reading...

Nine members of police’s CRS division allegedly ‘repeatedly struck non-hostile demonstrators’ in Paris in 2018 Nine officers from the French riot police have gone on trial in Paris accused of beating peaceful protesters who were sheltering from teargas during the “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests) anti-government demonstrations in 2018. The case at Paris’s criminal court is one of the biggest trials over alleged police violence during the unrest in 2018 and 2019, when hundreds of thousands of protesters in fluorescent jackets took to the streets over rising fuel taxes in what morphed into broader anti-government protests against the president, Emmanuel Macron. Continue reading...

Son says Hong Kong media figure, 78, fears dying alone while legal team say Lai is now world’s highest profile political prisoner The UK, the UN, EE and rights groups have condemned the sentencing of the pro-democracy activist and publisher Jimmy Lai, a British citizen who has been jailed for 20 years in Hong Kong on national security convictions that critics say are politically motivated. Yvette Cooper, the UK foreign secretary, said: “For 78-year-old Jimmy Lai, 20 years is an effective life sentence, following a politically motivated prosecution under a law that was imposed to silence China’s critics. The Hong Kong authorities must end Jimmy Lai’s appalling ordeal and release him to be with his family.” Continue reading...

Trading social media for Pokémon battles and evolutions in Kanto on a Game Boy Advance has been surprisingly serene Cutting back on doomscrolling must be one of the hardest new year resolutions to keep. Instinctively tapping on the usual suspects on your phone’s home screen becomes a reflex, and vast quantities of money and user data have been specifically employed to keep you reaching for the phone, ingraining it into our work, leisure and social lives. You’ll get no shame from me if you love your phone and have a healthy relationship with your apps, but I’ve found myself struggling lately. This year, I’m attempting to cut back on screen time – sort of. I’m replacing the sleek oblong of my smartphone with something a little more fuzzy and nostalgic. In an attempt to dismantle my bad habit, I’m closing the feeds of instant updates and instead carrying around a Game Boy Advance. I’ve been playing Pokémon FireRed, a remake of the very first Pokémon games, which turn 30 this month. Even this refreshed version is more than two decades old. Continue reading...

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

Peter Mandelson helped Morgan McSweeney privilege Labour’s reactionary forces in a Faustian pact to sustain the PM. What they sowed, we’ll reap A chicken that loses its head can still, for a short period, run around and flap its wings: the illusion of life sustained by residual nerve impulses. After the downfall of Morgan McSweeney – our de-facto prime minister – this is the phase Britain’s government has now entered. Those who have worked closely with Keir Starmer emphasise his lack of politics, while his own aides privately boast that he is merely their frontman. McSweeney was the head, and the head has gone. There will be some flapping about in every direction. Starmer’s director of communications, Tim Allan has stepped down, the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, is calling for Starmer’s resignation and the question of whether and when he will go is still open. But this political project is all over. This was not supposed to happen, at least according to conventional political wisdom. Before his collision with real power, Starmer was sold as competence incarnate: a figure committed to public service, presiding over a team of adults in the room who would spare us from the psychodramas of the Tory era. They had, we were told, discovered an electoral elixir. Ruling out significant tax rises on wealthy elites, attacking the welfare state and bashing migrants placed them in the fabled centre ground and would appeal to mainstream public opinion. Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

It has rained in parts of the country every day of the year so far and downpours are expected to continue this week In a “miserable and relentlessly wet” start to the year, rain has fallen in parts of the UK every day for weeks without fail. With more than 100 flood warnings active across the country and downpours expected to continue this week, scientists say the forces behind Britain’s constant drizzle are the same ones bringing devastation to Spain and Portugal. Continue reading...

The NFL appeared keen to welcome the sport’s non-Maga contingent back into the tent. But the theater and violence of capitalism was still there Roger Federer smiling wolfishly to the crowd: a return to woke? Adam Sandler hangdog in the Levi’s Stadium stands, Jon Bon Jovi mooching on the sideline like a retired dentist on a cruise, Billie Joe Armstrong belting out American Idiot during the pregame show under his motionless meringue of fogey-blond hair: were they a sign? A New England Patriots team who were neither favored to win nor widely reviled, then promptly repaid a grateful public by losing: was this the Super Bowl which proved that history really can move on, that America is not fated to remain hostage to the tremors and hatreds of the past? Well, yes and no. A year after Donald Trump made American football’s showpiece all about him, Sunday’s game in Santa Clara always promised a sort of correction – a cooling of the mood, perhaps even an end to the manipulation of sport for political ends. As always the best way to gauge the success of this mission was as the gods intended: through a TV screen. Trump – saddled with historically low approval ratings, facing a massacre in this year’s midterms, and no doubt wary of risking a public appearance in the deep blue sea of the Bay Area – was absent on this occasion, and he kept the F-22 fighter jets that were scheduled to be part of the pre-game flyover away from Levi’s Stadium too. (Unspecified “operational assignments” were the reason offered for the jets’ withdrawal, which means there’s probably a low-ranking member of the Trump administration putting big money on a US military strike somewhere in Latin America as we speak.) And yet, the absent autocrat still weighed on proceedings, his curdling influence turning every moment and gesture on Sunday into a referendum on the prospects for a post-Trumpian sporting future. Could football be normal again? Continue reading...

Newly released documents detail convicted sex offender’s early backing of bitcoin and Coinbase Millions of files related to Jeffrey Epstein have brought to light his ties to the highest echelons of the cryptocurrency industry. Documents published last week by the US Department of Justice reveal Epstein bankrolled the “principal home and funding source” for bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, during its nascent stages; he also invested $3m in Coinbase in 2014, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and cut a check that same year to Blockstream, a prominent bitcoin-focused technology firm. Both crypto startups accepted Epstein’s investments in 2014 – six years after his 2008 conviction in Florida for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Continue reading...

Push to restart uranium mining in Patagonia has sparked fears about the environmental impact and loss of sovereignty over key resources On an outcrop above the Chubut River, one of the few to cut across the arid Patagonian steppe of southern Argentina, Sergio Pichiñán points across a wide swath of scrubland to colourful rock formations on a distant hillside. “That’s where they dug for uranium before, and when the miners left, they left the mountain destroyed, the houses abandoned, and nobody ever studied the water,” he says, citing suspicions arising from cases of cancer and skin diseases in his community. “If they want to open this back up, we’re all pretty worried around here.” Continue reading...

For people who love the middle seat, the attractions are many, from a taste of humility to ethical entitlement to the armrests to ‘strangermaxxing’ Embracing friction and inconvenience in our lives is a 2026 trend, but the New York Times has drawn my attention to individuals who are frictionmaxxing further than most of us might be able to fathom: travellers who choose the awkward, inconvenient middle seat on planes. Airlines expect us to pay extra to choose our seat now, and refusing means becoming the filling in a stranger sandwich, but actively embracing that seems perverse. Some, I learned, claim middle seats offer the best of both worlds – you can see out of the window but enjoy a relatively easy escape – and you’re “ethically entitled to both arm rests” (good luck explaining that to your neighbours). Others treat it as an exercise in Zen humility. I suppose relinquishing main-character energy could make travel less painful? “Be grateful that you’re flying and that’s it,” as James Cashen, a middle seater, explained his philosophy on TikTok. Continue reading...

Green Streets failed to turn up for last game of season Team stayed up on goal difference, rivals relegated There is uproar in the Dhiraagu Dhivehi Premier League, the leading football competition of the Maldives, after it was alleged one of the tropical archipelago’s leading clubs sought to escape relegation by failing to turn up for a match. The Premier League side Green Streets beat the drop last Thursday after failing to turn up for their final league match of the season against New Radiant. Continue reading...

Taylor, who did for Ghanaian music what his friend Fela Kuti did for Nigeria, has been called the greatest rhythm guitarist in history Ghanaian musician Ebo Taylor, a definitive force behind the highlife genre, has died age 90. His son Kweku Taylor announced the news on Sunday: “The world has lost a giant. A colossus of African music. Ebo Taylor passed away yesterday; a day after the launch of Ebo Taylor music festival and exactly a month after his 90th birthday, leaving behind an unmatched artistry legacy. Dad, your light will never fade.” Continue reading...

Gilston in Hertfordshire aims to be rebuke to cookie-cutter estates with network of 10,000 new homes within country parks and woodland After two decades of legal wrangling and planning bottlenecks, the first bricks will finally be laid on a project being hailed by developers as the blueprint for the future of community building in Britain. Gilston in east Hertfordshire will be transformed into a network of seven interconnected villages, comprising 10,000 new homes nestled within a sprawling 660-hectare (1,630-acre) landscape of country parks and woodland. Continue reading...

Sarwar said to be furious Starmer’s repeated mistakes have heavily damaged Scottish support before May elections UK politics live – latest updates Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is to call on Keir Starmer to stand down as prime minister and Labour leader at a hastily arranged press conference in Glasgow. Sarwar is said to be furious that the prime minister’s repeated mistakes have heavily damaged support for Scottish Labour in the run-up to crucial Scottish parliament elections in May. Continue reading...

The technologies include facial recognition tools used on Uyghurs in western China, say experts Iran’s architecture of internet control is built on technologies from China, according to an analysis published by a British human rights organisation. The report by Article 19 says the technologies include facial recognition tools used on Uyghurs in western China and a Chinese alternative to the US-based GPS system, BeiDou. Continue reading...

Yield on government debt up as investors weigh up prime minister’s survival chances Business live – latest updates UK politics live – latest updates UK borrowing costs rose on Monday as investors watched for signs of jitters in the markets over Keir Starmer’s future. The yield, or interest rate, on UK benchmark bonds increased as traders reacted to Sunday’s resignation of the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, over the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. Continue reading...

Win against Stuttgart was a reminder that unity remains St Pauli’s greatest strength in defying the odds again It had begun to look like a lost cause. In a season where the Bundesliga’s relegation battle increasingly promises a richness that the title race may lack (with all due respect to Borussia Dortmund’s efforts to stalk Bayern Munich at closer quarters in recent weeks), it has felt like St Pauli were, like fellow minnows Heidenheim, ready to be cut away. The Hamburg club’s best-ever start to a top-flight season, two wins and a draw from their first three games, felt like an age ago. Nine successive defeats will do that to you. Yet these masters of the unusual and the unexpected had another surprise up their sleeve this weekend; not least, one suspects, to themselves. Stuttgart travelled north on a fine run of form, sitting pretty in a Champions League spot and fresh from a week of qualifying for the DFB Pokal semi-finals, a trophy which they have every hope of retaining. With one league win against largely hopeless Heidenheim since that golden start for their hosts, who are also harbouring an injury list as long as one of Scottie Pippen’s arms (to paraphrase Jay-Z), it looked straightforward for Sebastian Hoeness and his men. Continue reading...