A raft of online videos show parents serving up dinner without a single plate in sight, to the amazement of their families Name: Dump dinners. Age: Horribly new. Continue reading...

3rd T20i: England, 128-9, bt Sri Lanka, 116, by 12 runs Bethell takes four wickets to help seal 3-0 series win It was a thriller on a Pallekele turner, the triumph going England’s way. Jacob Bethell’s part-timers turned lethal, his three-wicket over dismantling Sri Lanka’s tail to secure a 12-run win in the third and final Twenty20 international. The tourists defended just 128, their total mainly built by Sam Curran’s 48-ball 58. It proved enough on a worn surface as England’s raft of spinners went to work. And while Adil Rashid and Liam Dawson are the veteran frontliners, this night belonged to Bethell and Will Jacks. The left-armer finished with four for 11, the offie with three for 14 off a full allotment. Continue reading...

League’s star said to be unhappy over his club’s transfer dealings and Karim Benzema’s move. Now he could face his first backlash Jurassic Park sounded great given the spectacular beasts on display, but there was chaos after they started to do their own thing. When Cristiano Ronaldo, surely the T rex, and Karim Benzema, perhaps a velociraptor, are scoring in spectacular fashion there are headlines around the world, but the Saudi Pro League is finding out that when they start to flex their muscles off the pitch, there is even more interest and, it turns out, a real problem for the competition. What happened on a manic Monday in the SPL should have been about what unfolded on the pitch. Al-Hilal, in first, drew with third-placed Al-Ahli. Al-Nassr won, to stay second, closing to within a point of the leaders. If Brendan Rodgers, having a whale of a time with Al-Qadsiah, wins his game in hand then four points will separate the top four with just over a third of the season remaining. It is the kind of title race most leagues would love. Continue reading...

High street bank breaks traditional 95% limit, but experts say take-up will be limited by exclusions on flats and new builds One of Britain’s biggest banks has launched a mortgage that lets first-time buyers borrow up to 98% of the property’s value – but experts said the “very strict” rules would exclude many people and property types. Santander said this was the first time for years that a major high street bank had gone beyond the traditional 95% borrowing limit, and some mortgage brokers called it a “bold and significant” move that would help more first-time buyers achieve their home ownership dreams. Continue reading...

Team GB intent on ensuring athletes feel at home Exercise bikes and a Formula One simulator at the base Team GB’s athletes at the Winter Olympics will be fuelled by 130kg of Quaker porridge oats, 5,050 Aldi teabags – and a Formula One simulator. The Guardian was given rare access to the British team’s base at the Olympic Village in Milan, where 10 of their 55 athletes, including the star figure skaters Lewis Gibson and Lilah Fear, are staying. Continue reading...

Footballer suffers online racism after returning to France Abuse of Frenchman’s family led to him leaving Mexico The French club Lens have condemned the racist abuse aimed at new signing Allan Saint-Maximin after a previous racist incident involving the former Newcastle winger’s children ended his career in Mexico’s top flight. Saint-Maximin joined Lens on a six-month deal during the winter transfer window. He left Mexican side Club América, saying his children were the victims of racist abuse there. Continue reading...

The Oscar-winning actor will star in the Cameron Crowe-directed feature about the singer-songwriter’s life Meryl Streep is to play Joni Mitchell in a forthcoming biopic of the singer-songwriter directed by Cameron Crowe, according to record executive Clive Davis. Davis confirmed the rumours surrounding the casting at his pre-Grammys party on Saturday, reports Rolling Stone. Last year, Anya Taylor-Joy was linked to the project in the role of the younger Mitchell, as was Streep’s Mamma Mia! co-star Amanda Seyfried. Continue reading...

Cartoon lump of coal with giant eyes was spotlighted by US interior secretary in X post saying: ‘Mine, Baby, Mine!’ Donald Trump’s administration has turned to an unusual weapon in its attempt to resurrect coal mining – a cartoon lump of coal, complete with giant eyes and yellow mining garb, called ‘Coalie.’ The administration’s new mascot, kitted out with a helmet, boots and gloves, was introduced in a seemingly artificial intelligence-generated picture posted online by Doug Burgum, Trump’s interior secretary. “Mine, Baby, Mine!” Burgum wrote on X, adding that Coalie will act as a “spokesperson” for Trump’s “American Energy Dominance Agenda.” Continue reading...

Exclusive: Trump sent national intelligence director to Georgia raid last week in approval of Gabbard’s sweeping review Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, working separately from a justice department investigation even as she joined an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia last week. Her presence at the raid drew criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene of an FBI raid. Continue reading...

In the Marvel films he was unassailable, but in real life the actor says he’s more like the anxious thief he plays in Crime 101. He and its writer/director Bart Layton talk midlife angst, imposter syndrome – and Alzheimer’s ‘It’s like a therapy couch,” says Chris Hemsworth, as he takes a seat on a chaise longue in the London hotel room where we’re meeting. He laughs, but it quickly becomes clear the Australian actor is more than ready to examine his life and the image he has long presented to the world. As Thor, the God of Thunder, Hemsworth has come to embody a certain idea of masculinity: invulnerable, assured, unshakeable. The role, which spanned nine films, put him up among the world’s highest paid actors and made him a global pin-up. Yet the confidence was, in part, a construction. “The character you see in interviews,” he says, easing into the chaise longue, “and the presentation of myself over the last two decades working in Hollywood, it’s me – but it’s a creation too. It’s what I thought people wanted to see.” Continue reading...

Known as ‘white gold’, lithium is among the most important mined elements on the planet – ideal for the rechargeable batteries used in tech products. Can Europe’s largest deposit bring prosperity to the local community? It looks more like the past than the future. A vast chasm scooped out of a scarred landscape, this is a Cornwall the summer holidaymakers don’t see: a former china clay pit near St Austell called Trelavour. I’m standing at the edge of the pit looking down with the man who says his plans for it will help the UK’s transition to renewable energy and bring back year-round jobs and prosperity to a part of the country that badly needs both. “And if I manage to make some money in the process, fantastic,” he says. “Though that is not what it’s about.” We’ll return to him shortly. But first to the past, when this story begins, about 275-280m years ago. “There was a continental collision at the time,” Frances Wall, professor of applied mineralogy at the Camborne School of Mines at the University of Exeter, explained to me before my visit. This collision caused the bottom of the Earth’s crust to melt, with the molten material rising higher in the crust and forming granite. “There are lots of different types of granite that intrude at different times, more than 10m years or so,” she says. “The rock is made of minerals and, if you’ve got the right composition in the original material and the right conditions, then within those minerals there are some called mica. Some of those micas contain lithium.” Continue reading...

The organization claims the report, which finds Israel’s denial of the right of return is a crime against humanity, is ‘paused pending further analysis and research’ Two Human Rights Watch (HRW) employees who make up the organization’s entire Israel and Palestine team are stepping down from their positions after leadership blocked a report that deems Israel’s denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return a “crime against humanity”. In separate resignation letters obtained by Jewish Currents and the Guardian, Omar Shakir, who has headed the team for nearly the last decade, and Milena Ansari, the team’s assistant researcher, said leadership’s decision to pull the report broke from HRW’s customary approval processes and was evidence that the organization was putting fear of political backlash over a commitment to international law. Continue reading...

President claims idea to ‘nationalize’ elections in 15 states ahead of midterms is to prevent rare noncitizen voting Donald Trump suggested on a conservative podcast released on Monday that Republican state officials “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office. Trump framed the issue as a means to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting. Claims that noncitizens are voting in numbers that can affect an election are a lie. But it raises concerns about potential efforts by the president to rig the November midterm elections. Continue reading...

Suffering from a connective tissue disorder and enduring endless calls to try and get benefits, the poet and novelist turned to painting – resulting in work that could change perceptions of disabled people Daisy Lafarge was lying on the floor in excruciating pain when she started her latest paintings. A severe injury, coupled with a sudden worsening of her health, had left her unable to sit upright, while brain fog and fatigue made reading and writing impossible. So the award-winning novelist and poet fell back on her art school training, using the energy and materials she had to hand to create impressionistic paintings of her surroundings – her cat Uisce, her boyfriend’s PlayStation controller – alongside unsettling imagery of enclosed gardens and flowers decaying. “Making the paintings was a way of coexisting with pain,” says the 34-year-old. “I was on my living room floor in agony for a few hours, but I wanted to get something out of that time. I’ve always been fascinated by artists and writers who turn limitations into formal constraints. I see the paintings as my attempt at that.” Continue reading...

Editor of groundbreaking Channel 4 show says he was shocked not to be invited to participate in new season The editor of a groundbreaking Channel 4 show claims the BFI has frozen him out of an upcoming season on multicultural television and is presenting a skewed vision of the programme. Tariq Ali was part of the creative team that produced the global current affairs Bandung File for Channel 4 in the 1980s. The current affairs programme spotlighted everything from the realities of apartheid South Africa to the fallout from the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Continue reading...

Unbroken: In Pursuit of Freedom for Palestine is a collection of writings by the Palestinian political leader, who has been held in Israeli prisons since 2002 A collection of writings by the imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti will be published in November, bringing together prison letters, interviews, personal material and documents from the last three decades of Barghouti’s political life and incarceration. As deadly attacks on Gaza continue despite a nominal ceasefire, the 66-year-old is seen by many as the best hope for a leader of any future Palestinian state. Continue reading...

Chelsea offer for Jennifer Echegini rejected by PSG Leicester looking at loan for Chelsea’s Lexi Potter Everton are working on a deal to sign the Slovenia midfielder Zara Kramzar from Roma on a relatively quiet-looking Women’s Super League transfer deadline day. The 20-year-old is in Merseyside hoping to finalise a loan for the remainder of the season to Everton, who have made two other loan signings during the window, the experienced Manchester United full-back Hannah Blundell and the young Arsenal midfielder Laila Harbert. Continue reading...

A dozen Palestinian returnees were allowed into Gaza from Egypt late on Monday night after the long-awaited reopening of the Rafah border crossing was marred by delays. Their arrival came hours after a small group of medical evacuees was ferried into Egypt. The reopening of the crossing is a key step in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire but mostly a symbolic one, with few people allowed to travel and no goods allowed to pass through Sick and wounded Palestinians enter Egypt after Israel reopens Rafah crossing Continue reading...

Bush theatre, London Farah Najib’s play tells the story of an isolated woman who dies at home and considers the community’s responsibility The opening quote to Farah Najib’s drama tells us that “living well and dying well is a community affair”. What are the implications for a community when a woman lies dead in her home for more than a year without being discovered? All the signs are there, from the slowly seeping stench in the hallway to the maggots emerging in the homes of her neighbours. Questions of responsibility and culpability, both individual and systemic, are raised in Najib’s play. Its central, sad scenario is not as far-fetched as it may sound: the deceased, Shirley, is fictional but the play takes inspiration from the real, lonely deaths of several women listed at the beginning of the script, including Sheila Seleoane who lay dead for more than two years before she was discovered. At Bush theatre, London, until 28 February Continue reading...

Conservationists find dunlin chicks thriving in boggy habitat created in collaboration with landowners Deep in the Cumbrian Pennines, walkers might be lucky enough to spot small birds with spindly legs, long beaks and bodies like feathered balls hopping through the peat bogs. These are endangered dunlins – at risk in England because their favoured soggy landscapes are drained and burned for farming and grouse shooting. Continue reading...

Vonn confident despite ACL rupture before Olympics Will decide after testing knee at race speeds soon fast Olympic downhill scheduled for Sunday at Cortina Lindsey Vonn said she is “confident” she can compete at the Milano Cortina Winter Games despite revealing she has been managing a ruptured ACL, maintaining that her Olympic comeback remains on track after a crash last week raised fresh doubts over her participation. Speaking on Tuesday, the 41-year-old American said she was approaching the final decision cautiously but remained focused on lining up for the downhill in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where the Olympic women’s alpine programme opens Sunday. Continue reading...

The funding round valued the Alphabet subsidiary at $126bn as company aims to expand more cities worldwide Self-driving car company Waymo on Monday said it raised $16bn in a funding round that valued the Alphabet subsidiary at $126bn. Waymo co-chief executives Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov touted the massive investment as a sign that the age of large-scale autonomous mobility has arrived. Continue reading...

Trump administration is accusing protesters of ‘domestic terrorism’ but this brazen tactic is as old as the country itself When federal immigration agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on 23 January, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, wasted no time claiming to the press, without credible evidence, that Pretti had been engaged in “domestic terrorism”. Though the administration seems to be trying to soften that initial response after fierce backlash, it’s an accusation that members of the Trump administration have been leveling at wide swaths of people beyond Pretti – including Renee Nicole Good, another Minnesotan killed by ICE agents two and a half weeks prior, and Marimar Martinez, who survived being shot by ICE agents in Chicago in October – as part of an ongoing strategy to criminalize dissent. It’s a claim Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents themselves have started to make directly in confrontations with citizens, seemingly to try and intimidate legal observers, sometimes known as ICE watchers. In one recent video from Portland, Maine, an ICE officer told an observer to stop recording him on her phone, and when she wouldn’t, he took her information down and said, “We have a nice little database … and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” Continue reading...

Letter comes after FBI executed criminal search warrant to seize almost 700 boxes of 2020 election documentation Georgia’s Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, this morning, inquiring into the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, at the scene last week of an FBI seizure of Fulton county election records from 2020. The letter from Senator Raphael Warnock and representatives Lucy McBath and Nikema Williams asks “whether the Trump administration is investigating a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus, which would legally require immediate congressional briefing”. The group requested a briefing from the Department of Justice “concerning this activity and its related investigation by February 13, 2026”. Continue reading...

Tonali linked to Arsenal on last day of transfer window ‘Almighty challenge’ to reach Carabao Cup final Eddie Howe has admitted he is “not in control” of Sandro Tonali’s future, but Newcastle’s manager believes the Italy midfielder remains happy on Tyneside. A quiet transfer deadline day at St James’ Park featured swiftly crushed suggestions that Arsenal were poised to bid for Tonali. There were fears it could be a precursor to a possibly agent-led initiative to move the midfielder this summer. Howe, perhaps fearing a repeat of the debilitating saga that led to Alexander Isak’s departure for Liverpool in the summer, held talks on Monday with his £55m signing. Continue reading...