From the classic To Kill a Mockingbird to blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds, the Oscar-winning actor’s films spanned a remarkable range Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, MASH and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95.. “Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” wrote his wife, Luciana Duvall, in a message on Facebook. Continue reading...

Exclusive: First meeting to be held over domestic payments system aimed at reducing reliance on US networks UK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump’s ability to turn off US-owned payment systems. The meeting, chaired by Barclays’ UK chief executive, Vim Maru, will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur. Continue reading...

Shame, healing and personal growth are the order of the day in this humourless, self-adoring and vapid exploration of an artistic and narcissistic Cape Cod family Here is a quite unbearable curation of first-world problems starring Amy Adams from screenwriter Kata Wéber and her husband, director Kornél Mundruczó. They are film-makers who have given us challenging and interesting material in the past; now they pivot to a solemn, narcissistic tale, couched in self-forgiving, self-adoring rhetoric, all about upper-middle-class artistic folk in the US, yearning for wellness and recovery in their lovely Cape Cod home. It’s a movie which invites its audience to believe in the alleged talent and importance of its artistic characters, and also extend submissive empathy to their inter-generational psychic wounds. Adams plays Laura, the grownup daughter of a supposedly brilliant dance company director, now dead and remembered in epiphanic childhood memory-glimpses, a genius who had close-cropped grey hair, a black polo neck and functioning alcoholism. Laura inherited his dance passion and his boozing, and now runs his world-renowned company with an uncertain hand; she has just returned from rehab after drunk-driving and crashing while her young son Felix (Redding Munsell) was in the car. Thank heavens they weren’t hurt! You can spend the entire film expecting a flashback to this dramatic event which might show Laura in a bad light – or an interesting one. But no. Continue reading...

⚽ FA Cup fourth-round news from the 7.30pm GMT kick-off ⚽ Live scores | FA Cup fifth round draw | And mail Xaymaca Hello and welcome to a historic minute-by-minute. Tonight sixth-tier Macclesfield welcome Premier League Brentford to the Leasing.com Stadium in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Macc’s 2-1 victory against Crystal Palace in the last round was the biggest that the FA Cup has seen. Against all odds, they beat the FA Cup holders, a team 117 places ahead of them at the time. Macclesfield defender Luke Matheson, best known for his equaliser for Rochdale against Manchester United in 2019, summed up what tonight’s game means. He said: “It’s not necessarily [about saying] ‘we can do this’, it’s ‘we’ve done this’, so we want to go out there and prove it to ourselves again.” Continue reading...

Health professionals are having to find innovative ways to reach parents whose children have not had the MMR jab More than 60 children infected in north London measles outbreak For people living and working in Enfield, the current measles outbreak is a shock – but not a surprise. The borough has struggled with low vaccine uptake for years, fighting against vaccine hesitancy, online misinformation and health inequalities. Working closely with communities to persuade them to come forward for vaccinations is an “ongoing public health challenge”, which Enfield – like many boroughs – is grappling with, Enfield council’s director of public health, Dudu Sher-Arami said. Continue reading...

More than 170,000 seek compensation after UCL Covid settlement opens door to claims across university sector Dozens of universities are facing legal action from more than 170,000 students seeking compensation after their studies were moved online during Covid. Pre-action claim letters have been sent to 36 universities in England and Wales, including Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Cardiff, Leeds, Imperial College London, Liverpool and Warwick, on behalf of aggrieved students. Continue reading...

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Quentin Deranque, 23, who was on sidelines of a protest, died from a brain injury after attack that has fuelled political tensions French police have launched a murder inquiry after a far-right activist died in hospital having been beaten up in an attack that has fuelled political tensions in France. Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old mathematics student, died from a severe brain injury at the weekend. The Lyon prosecutor, Thierry Dran, said he was assaulted by at least six masked individuals. Police were working to identify suspects, and no arrests had been made, Dran said. Continue reading...

Referee Chris Kavanagh will not officiate this weekend VAR was not used in fourth round of FA Cup ties The referee Chris Kavanagh will not officiate in the next round of Premier League fixtures after a series of high-profile errors during the FA Cup tie between Aston Villa and Newcastle on Saturday. Kavanagh has been stood down by Professional Game Match Officials, alongside one of his two assistants at Villa Park, Nick Greenhalgh. The second, Gary Beswick, will run the line at Nottingham Forest v Liverpool on Sunday. Continue reading...

Fury set to step back into the ring after 15 months out Joshua involved in fatal Nigeria car crash in December Tyson Fury has revealed the deaths of two of long-time rival Anthony Joshua’s friends in a car crash in December was the catalyst for his return to boxing. Fury will step back into the ring on 11 April after a 15-month absence to face Russian-born heavyweight Arslanbek Makhmudov in a bout at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium which will be broadcast live on Netflix. Continue reading...

Actor playing far-right activist shouted down and pelted with fruit during Catarina, or the Beauty of Killing Fascists An actor at a theatre in Germany was at the weekend shouted down, pelted with fruit and subjected to an attempted stage invasion as he delivered a final monologue in character as a far-right activist. The violent scenes came on Saturday during the German premiere of Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues’s work Catarina, or The Beauty of Killing Fascists in Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia. Continue reading...

Reform of this stealth tax is long overdue – and with it, a shake-up of the whole university system Never go to war with Martin Lewis. The one iron law of politics is that the financial guru who built moneysavingexpert.com has a quasi-godlike status in Britain, the man millions trust with their cash in a way they would never trust any politician. If he takes up a cause, he usually wins. So when Lewis joined the revolt against recent changes to the student loan system, urging young graduates to lobby their MPs in protest, trouble was never going to be far behind. And now apparently it’s here. Last week, the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, called for “a conversation about student debt forgiveness”, echoing a rallying cry among young Democrat voters at the last US election for loans to be written off faster (though he didn’t explain where he would find the billions that would cost). Shortly afterwards, five former education secretaries – including Labour’s David Blunkett – publicly backed a Sunday Times campaign for admittedly more modest reforms to student finance. It looks like the slow-burning anger of graduates who went to university in England and Wales between 2012 and 2023 – on a plan that walloped them with higher interest rates than those who went before or after – is finally starting to set Westminster alight. Continue reading...

Stunning ton by Pathum Nissanka seals hosts’ run chase Australia need Ireland to beat Zimbabwe on Tuesday Australia could be out of the T20 World Cup before they even play their final first round group match after a stunning fightback by Sri Lanka in Pallekele. Returning captain Mitch Marsh and a revived Travis Head looked to have set Australia on course for a victory that would have kept their tournament hopes alive as they smashed a century-plus opening stand at more than two-runs-a-ball. Continue reading...

Barack Obama caused frenzy after saying aliens were real on a podcast - and was forced to clarify he had not seen any evidence of them in a statement posted to Instagram over the weekend. There is a long-running conspiracy theory claiming that the US government is hiding extraterrestrials at Area 51, a highly classified air force site in Nevada. Lucy Hough speaks to host of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, Madeleine Finlay Continue reading...

⚽ FA Cup draw news, due to begin from after 6.30pm GMT ⚽ Live scores | FA Cup review | And you can email Niall 1 Liverpool 2 Fulham 3 Sunderland 4 Southampton 5 Wrexham 6 Arsenal 7 Chelsea 8 West Ham 9 Mansfield 10 Norwich 11 Port Vale or Bristol City 12 Wolves 13 Newcastle 14 Manchester City 15 Macclesfield or Brentford 16 Leeds Sixth-tier Macclesfield FC face Brentford after this draw, and the Silkmen bring a welcome touch of romance to proceedings following a fourth-round weekend short of surprises. Mansfield Town (who won at Burnley) and Port Vale (whose tie with Bristol City was postponed) are the other teams from outside the top two divisions to make it. Continue reading...

Yvette Cooper may think so, and use of epibatidine may seem exotic, but experts say that is not conclusive It was a very particular choice of weapon, but experts say it remains unclear whether the dart frog toxin used to kill the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was intended to convey a message. Known as epibatidine, the poison is produced by wild dart frogs native to parts of South America – meaning Navalny could not have accidentally taken the poison. Continue reading...

British No 1 beaten 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 by Croatia’s Antonia Ruzic World No 67 reels off six straight games to claim victory Emma Raducanu lost the final six games to fall to a 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 defeat to ‘lucky loser’ Antonia Ruzic in the opening round at the Dubai Tennis Championships. The British No 1, whose original opponent Elisabetta Cocciaretto withdrew at late notice due to fatigue, fought back in the second set to level the match and led 2-0 in the decider before losing all momentum. Continue reading...

The answer to today’s peaky poser Earlier today I set you this logic puzzle. Here is is again with the solution. (If you found it too simple. Here’s a harder version.) Continue reading...

Property where abuse took place purchased for $13.4m in 2023 by Texas businessman Donald Huffines’ family The family of a self-identified “Trump Republican” running for office in Texas bought Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch where the sex trafficker abused teenage girls and young women, according to new documents. A spokesperson for Donald Huffines, a Texas businessman and former GOP state senator now running for comptroller, confirmed the purchase to the Santa Fe New Mexican, a local media outlet. Continue reading...

It’s awkward, nobody seems to know what is going on, and the president’s thumb is at half-mast. It’s almost a metaphor for diplomatic relations between the US and the UK When Liz Truss tweeted a photo of herself standing next to Donald Trump, she captioned it “right about everything”. All that effort, all that security clearance and long-haul travel and whatnot, to reach the pinnacle of proximity to your spiritual leader, and that’s the best she could come up with? It was bafflingly lame. And yet the least confusing thing about this scene were the words. What exactly is going on in this photo? Truss clearly knows where she is, because she’s grinning with a kind of victorious serenity, as if she’s finally achieved the plaudit she knew all along was hers. At the same time – not wishing to be unsisterly – she doesn’t appear to have brushed her hair, so it doesn’t feel like this photo opportunity was in anyone’s diary. It looks like a selfie you’d catch when you run into your favourite contestant from The Traitors on your way through an airport. No time to worry about your grooming; it’s the chance of a lifetime, every second counts. Continue reading...

Readers respond to an article by Gary Nunn who says learning Spanish has never been cooler Gary Nunn misses the point of language learning in seeing it as a numbers game (Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push British children to learn French?, 10 February). Evaluating a language by its usefulness is reductive – about as soul-destroying as telling a passionate mathematician that they don’t need to bother learning complex theorems because a computer could do it. I did two language A-levels (German and Japanese) and went on to do a Japanese degree at university. Despite Japanese being less “useful” than Spanish in terms of the number of speakers, it has enriched my life in countless ways. Continue reading...

Readers respond to the barring of a Ukrainian athlete after he insisted on wearing a helmet featuring photos of athletes and children killed during Russia’s war on his country Lizzy Yarnold says the ban on the Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych centres on this rule in the Olympic charter: “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas” (Olympic chiefs have got it badly wrong over Heraskevych ban and owe him an apology, 13 February). However, I’m not sure how the International Olympic Committee can say Heraskevych is presenting “political propaganda” when he simply has the images of deceased athletes on his helmet – there was no statement nor overt symbolism that is anti-Russia, and no mention of the war or nationalism etc. Continue reading...

Retired headteacher Andrew Marsh says good teachers and a positive culture are more important than the number of pupils in a class As a recently retired head of a small school, I feel compelled to respond to your editorial and letters on class sizes (9 February). As your editorial states, we need to be careful not to view smaller classes as a solution to all the problems with education. During my tenure, we suffered because of the perception that larger classes were inherently worse for children. As our school grew in popularity, we experienced families moving away in search of smaller classes, which placed significant demands on our budget. Those parents did not grasp that the quality of teaching is infinitely more important than class size. If you have good teachers and a positive culture, it is possible to have high-quality interactions that support all children in a class of 30. Continue reading...

George Papachristou and Gigih Yudhistira offer some hope in response to a report on how the Taliban’s ban on birth control is affecting Afghan women The suffering described in your article (Taliban birth control ban: women ‘broken’ by lethal pregnancies and untreated miscarriages, 29 January) is real and deeply concerning. Afghan women face severe constraints on mobility, decision-making and access to healthcare, particularly in rural and remote areas where services and trained providers are scarce. But it is also important to recognise that the picture is not uniformly bleak. Despite the restrictions, DKT Afghanistan, a locally registered private-sector pharmaceutical organisation, has been able to sustain and even expand access to family planning and maternal health services by working within cultural and religious norms. In Afghanistan, family planning is often delivered as “birth spacing”, an approach that aligns with community expectations and Islamic principles. Continue reading...

Check out the best images from day 10 of the Games, from alpine skiing to medal-biting celebrations Continue reading...