Wasdale mountain rescue team says ‘we struggle to understand when the rescued take advantage of hospitality’ A mountain rescue team has appealed for two rescued walkers to pay a hotel bill they owe, return head torches they took and collect a hospital crutch one of them used to climb Scafell Pike in treacherous conditions. “We avoid judging those we rescue,” said Wasdale mountain rescue team in a statement. “But we struggle to understand when the rescued take advantage of hospitality provided by our supporters in the valley.” Continue reading...

The comedian’s dad got him into Bob Marley, and Jamiroquai takes him to another dimension. But which girl band classic does he secretly love? The first single I bought Rollout (My Business) by Ludacris from HMV in Lewisham Shopping Centre. I played it over and over. The first song I fell in love with I grew up listening to a lot of reggae – my dad was a Rastafarian – so Get Up, Stand Up by Bob Marley was always playing in the house when my mum was dishing out the chores. It’s ironic that it’s a song about redemption when you’re being told to clean the house. Continue reading...

⚽ News, discussion and buildup before the day’s action ⚽ Jonathan Wilson’s column | Fixtures | Email us here Frank calls for ‘calm heads’ as Tottenham fans renew calls for his exit Thomas Frank has called for “calm heads” after Tottenham fans urged the club to dismiss him during their draw at relegation-threatened Burnley. The away end sang “You’re getting sacked in the morning” at full time, making their views clear to the hierarchy and head coach. Continue reading...

Updates from the evening session at Melbourne Park Alcaraz beats Paul | Follow us on Bluesky | Mail Katy First set: De Minaur* 1-1 Bublik (*next server) De Minaur is playing in the fourth round for the fifth consecutive year - a feat that not even Hewitt, Mark Philippoussis and Pat Rafter achieved at their home slam – but he’s never been past the quarter-finals. Which largely sums up his career: he’s so consistent in beating the players he’s expected to, but is underpowered against the very best. De Minaur does send a bullet of a backhand winner down the line to get to deuce on Bublik’s serve, though. But two errors then give the Kazakhstani the game. Continue reading...

Leicester cope remarkably after illness swept through their squad but Quins cannot bring Champions Cup form to the Prem English rugby long ago gave up trying to explain the phenomenon that is Harlequins. Quantum physicists would struggle. Two weeks ago here, we watched this same team put 60 past the hitherto unbeaten Stormers from South Africa on the way to qualifying from the Champions Cup, a competition for the best domestic sides in Europe and, as if that were not enough, South Africa, a land of frightening beasts and double World Cup-winners. This is the same team that won in La Rochelle only last weekend to clinch that home tie in the last 16. Ridiculously, it was Quins’ win against all odds on the west coast of France that afforded Leicester last-gasp entrance by default into that very same elite of the elite. Well, you would never have guessed it, had you been here to witness the latest capitulation at the Stoop, a 34-7 humiliation on Saturday. Continue reading...

EFL regulations mean guests at the Blackpool Football Club Stadium Hotel can’t watch the game – our writer checks in for a trip into the dark It seems perfectly reasonable that anyone booking a “Superior Room with Pitch View” at the Blackpool Football Club Stadium Hotel, located inside the Bloomfield Road Stadium, would expect a hotel room with a view of the pitch. And that is exactly the case except – bizarrely – when Blackpool are actually playing, with some hotel guests recently scuppered by the smallest of fine print when booking: “Due to the EFL rules and regulations, bedroom curtains have to be kept drawn throughout a match.” Failure to do so could result in a £2,500 fine. Ouch. Across the 14 years that I have worked for the Guardian, there have been a few occasions where I have been tempted, perhaps after a stressful shift, to go and lie down in a dark room. I just didn’t think that this could be an actual assignment. But off I go to Blackpool to investigate this special type of 3pm blackout, and shortly before kick-off between Blackpool and League One relegation rivals Northampton, I find myself pulling a very heavy curtain across a panoramic window facing the Bloomfield Road pitch and the Blackpool Tower beyond. That’s my daylight done for the day. Continue reading...

A generation of overexposed children are being used by their parents for social media clout. What happens when they start to speak out? A child is born. Before they even landed “Earthside”, in the language of Instagram, a scan of them as a foetus in utero was uploaded to a waiting audience. The room in which they will sleep – the pale pastel paintwork, the carefully curated nursery furniture – is all there, ready, waiting: an advertorial empty of its model. Then comes the photo of the baby being born, held aloft to their audience while still covered in vernix, eyes not yet open, their mother smiling, hair perfect. From now on, their every moment and milestone is documented for the camera and monetised. That first smile, first word, first step, all mediated by a device and sent to an audience of strangers, many of whom have formed a parasocial relationship with that mother, that father, that child. The child comes to know and understand the black mirror that is regularly put in front of them. There will be days when the child happily performs for the camera; others when they push it away, when they don’t want to be filmed. A natural feeling, but one they may well have learned to suppress. Because performing for the camera makes mummy and daddy happy, although they don’t call it performing. They call it authenticity. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

As sleep hygiene becomes received wisdom, growing numbers turning to one-to-one consultants for support Before he sought out an adult sleep coach, Thorsten had spent countless hours trawling online advice about sleep. “I devoured advice and implemented it all,” he said. “From the moment I got out of bed, virtually everything I did was tailored towards getting a good night’s sleep the following night.” Continue reading...

January is a prime time for people looking to get fit, so fraudsters create fake websites and apps A new year means a new start – it’s time to get fit and there are quite a few deals out there. On Facebook you see a local gym advertising a discount on membership if you sign up within the next few hours. There are limited spaces so you act quickly. It’s only after you pay that you realise the ad was a fraud: you’ve received no membership details and when you contact the gym it has no record of your payment. Continue reading...

Change your life – or just kick back and relax – by connecting with nature, trying a creative workshop, or taking a yoga course somewhere beautiful Playfulness is at the heart of the Art and Play holiday, based on a farm outside the Bay of Kotor. A family-friendly retreat designed to reignite joy and reconnect with the inner child, it’s one for solo travellers and couples as well as parents with kids. There are creative sessions on everything from dance to painting, as well as time to enjoy the farm – feeding the animals, collecting eggs or helping harvest vegetables for farm-fresh meals. Excursions include hikes to hidden beaches, kayaking and trips to Kotor and Budva, but there’s time to chill by the pool too; evenings are for board games, music and campfires. Accommodation ranges from camping and glamping to cabins, a treehouse and restored farmhouse. Seven days from £695, children 5-12 £350, under-fives free, includes brunch, dinner and snacks, 3 May and 23 August, responsibletravel.com Continue reading...

Cold feet? Not on our watch: our fashion expert picks the best boots for every occasion • How to dress in cold weather The season of the boot is officially upon us, with cold breezes and dreary downpours all around. Versatile, durable and effortlessly stylish, boots are a wardrobe staple, able to elevate an outfit instantly. Whether you prefer a wearable ankle cut, a pair fit for muddy walks or something that takes you from day to night, investing in quality is essential. Thoughtful choices can shield you from flimsy soles, cracked faux leather and the disappointment that comes around eventually with impulse buys. Continue reading...

Australian cycling star holds on to lead the hard way Kangaroo caused Vine and others to crash during final stage The Australian cycling star Jay Vine has survived a race crash caused by a kangaroo to win the Tour Down Under for the second time. Despite losing two more UAE Team Emirates colleagues on Sunday’s last stage, Vine’s commanding lead was enough of a buffer. He also won the event in 2023. Continue reading...

Will Francis Bourgeois fulfil his lifelong dream of becoming a rocket man? Plus, it’s Hiddleston v Laurie once again in The Night Manager. Here’s what to watch this evening 6.50pm, Channel 4 Continue reading...

World No 1 claims 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 victory over 19th seed Alcaraz recovers from slow start to navigate first real test at tournament Carlos Alcaraz continued to build momentum in his pursuit of the career grand slam as he navigated a slow start and pushed through his first test at the Australian Open to reach the quarter-finals with a 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 win over the 19th seed Tommy Paul. Alcaraz, the world No 1, has now reached the quarter-finals at Melbourne Park for three consecutive years and this is his first time doing so without dropping a set. Having already won each of the three other grand slam tournaments twice, he will be attempting to break new ground by reaching the semi-finals of the Australian Open for the first time in his career. Things were far from easy for Alcaraz, who has played many tough matches with Paul over the past four years, losing to the American twice in their seven meetings. Continue reading...

Queensland government says pack linked to 19-year-old’s death pose ‘unacceptable public safety risk’ as Indigenous traditional owners say they were not consulted The dingo pack linked to the death of Canadian tourist Piper James on Australian island K’gari will be destroyed, the Queensland government has announced. Environment minister Andrew Powell said on Sunday that an entire pack of 10 animals would be euthanised. Continue reading...

Amelia, created to deter young people from extremism, has been subverted and is breaking out of niche online silos In certain corners of the internet, on niche news feeds and algorithms, an AI-generated British schoolgirl has emerged as something of a cultural phenomenon. Her name is Amelia, a purple-haired “goth girl” who proudly carries a mini union flag everywhere she goes and appears to have a penchant for racism. Continue reading...

In the search for stability, some western nations are turning to a country that many in Washington see as an existential threat If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland’s good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland’s leader, Micheál Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China’s president, Xi Jinping, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s. “It was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us but there you are,” Martin told reporters in Beijing. Continue reading...

I sat there in my pyjamas, headset against my ear, and knew I was not doing the right thing I’m not psychic. During the six months I spent working as a telephone psychic, my only supernatural gift was the ability to sound fascinated by a stranger’s love life at 2.17am. Yet for hundreds of billable hours, I sat on my living room floor wearing plaid pyjamas and a telemarketing headset, charging callers by the minute for insights into their lives. Perhaps this made me a con artist, but I wasn’t a dangerous one. When it started, I’d recently quit my job as an editor at a publishing company to write a novel while doing telemarketing shifts from my kitchen table. Instead of knocking off a bestseller, I found myself cold-calling strangers about energy bills while gripped by writer’s block and an inconvenient yearning to have a baby. Continue reading...

It was life-affirming to meet the residents of Rainbow Way in Minehead. But so much still stands in the way of Labour’s vision for social housing I met Carole Guscott, a retired former carer, on a clear winter’s morning in the Somerset town of Minehead. She was walking her whippet, Gracie, on the way back to her new flat, past the local Premier Inn and on to a cul de sac called Rainbow Way. “I knew as soon as I saw it,” she told me. “I just thought: ‘I can make this place my home.’” Up until recently, she was living in a private rented place near the centre of town and paying £780 a month in rent. For four years she had known that Rainbow Way was being built. She also knew that its houses and flats were an example of something that is vanishingly rare in post-Thatcher Britain: new council housing, which meant security for the people chosen to be the tenants but also intense competition for places. Continue reading...

This all-day Essex cafe next to a garden centre is a scone-fuelled delight A tipoff to try the Tin Roof Cafe in Maldon came with prior warning: I wouldn’t get a table easily as this all-day spot serving brunch, lunches and sweet stuff from the in-house bakery is constant, scone-fuelled bedlam. Red brick walls, greenery throughout, alfresco spaces, allotments growing fresh veg and herbs. Capacious, family-run, dog-welcoming, pocket-friendly. There’s bubble and squeak with hand-cut ham, Korean-style chicken burgers and a vegan burger called, rather brilliantly, “Peter Egan” after, I’m guessing, the animal-loving actor who played Paul in Ever Decreasing Circles. Could this place be any more adorable? No, but still, brace yourself. “It’s one in, one out,” I was told. “There’s a seated holding pen at the front where you wait for a table. Stand your ground in there. There’s loads of sharp-elbowed garden-centre folk. I think they’re there for the Basque cheesecake.” Ah, yes, the equally vast Claremont garden centre, just a few steps away. Cake, as we all know, is catnip to gardeners. Sends them daft. Come for 20 litres of alkaline topsoil and a terracotta trough, stay for the seasonal pavlova and thick wodges of billionaire’s shortbread. That’s millionaire’s shortbread with an extra layer of caramel decadence. Clearly real billionaires would never eat this shortbread, as they’re all on longevity hunts fuelled by OMAD (one meal a day), that meal being a posh spin on Trill budgie food. Continue reading...

Maxwell Alejandro Frost says attacker ‘told me Trump was going to deport me’ as police say suspect arrested The Florida congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost said he was assaulted by a man who said Donald Trump would deport him at a party during the Sundance film festival in Utah. “Last night, I was assaulted by a man at Sundance Festival who told me that Trump was going to deport me before he punched me in the face,” Frost said in a Saturday post on X. “He was heard screaming racist remarks as he drunkenly ran off. The individual was arrested and I am okay.” Continue reading...

The town is awash now with rumour and innuendo, by the warped logic that actions so brutal must have been necessitated by an unforgivable slight Warning: This article contains references to Indigenous Australians who have died Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Sophie Quinn was sitting in a car with her partner, John Harris, outside a house in Lake Cargelligo on Thursday afternoon when a ute approached from the opposite direction. From the driver’s side window, at least three shots were fired, killing her and Harris. Quinn was seven months pregnant with a boy her family say she planned to name Troy. Continue reading...

Announcement comes as anger toward DHS – which oversees ICE – intensifies after Alex Pretti fatally shot In the wake of another fatal shooting of a US citizen in Minnesota by a federal officer, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said his party would block a funding package next week if it includes money for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The announcement, which dramatically escalates the potential for another partial government shutdown, comes as anger towards homeland security, which oversees ICE, intensifies among the party after a group of federal agents violently restrained and then fatally shot 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Continue reading...

Pair testify that Pretti did not hold weapon and was trying to help woman federal agents had shoved to the ground Two witnesses to the killing of Alex Pretti have said in sworn testimony that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting a claim made by Trump administration officials as they sought to cast the shooting of a prone man as an act of self-defense. Their accounts came in sworn affidavits that were filed in federal court in Minnesota late Saturday, just hours after Pretti’s killing, as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against Kristi Noem and other homeland security officials directing the immigration crackdown in the city. Continue reading...

Sundance film festival: taut and emotionally intelligent drama follows the aftermath of an eight-year-old witnessing a horrifying sexual assault Josephine, the titular character of Beth de Araújo’s stunning second feature, is eight years old. Played by equally remarkable newcomer Mason Reeves, Josephine likes playing soccer with her dad Damien (a phenomenal Channing Tatum), with whom she is close – the film’s crisp, near wordless opening minutes, which shift seamlessly from Josephine’s perspective to third party co-conspirator, running with the pair through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, swiftly convey a tender, playful bond: supportive, teasing father and innocent child. That’s about all we know of Josephine – all we need to know, really – before seeing the incident that ruptures her youth. Having run ahead of her father at the park, Josephine alone witnesses the brutal rape of a female jogger by a man in a distinctive aqua polo. Much to the audible shock of viewers at the Sundance premiere, de Araújo rejects the ellipsis now de rigueur in movies handling sexual assault, how much of post-MeToo cinema – Promising Young Woman, She Said, Women Talking, last year’s Sundance standout Sorry, Baby – have skipped over or elided the actual assault, de-emphasizing violence and allowing viewers to fill in the blanks. Josephine is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution Continue reading...