Prior of hermitage says digital technologies are designed to be addictive and present ‘challenge for monastic life’ The prior of a hermitage in Tuscany has urged monks living in the secluded retreat to avoid the use of social media and streaming services, arguing that their rooms are sacred places for prayer and “not for Netflix or other platforms”. Father Matteo Ferrari, the prior general of the Camaldolese congregation and of the Camaldoli monastery and hermitage in Arezzo, Tuscany, said such digital technologies were “specifically designed to create addiction” and “should absolutely be avoided”. Continue reading...

Calafiori latest player to pull up before kick-off ‘It’s happened four times this year … we have to learn’ Mikel Arteta has said he is looking at Arsenal’s warm-up routines “big time” as he seeks an explanation for why his title-chasing players keep pulling up before matches. Riccardo Calafiori dropped out of the lineup for the FA Cup tie against Wigan last Sunday after sustaining an injury in the warm-up, the second time it has happened to the player, and the fourth time in the season overall. Arteta said he was confident the Italian would be available against Wolves on Wednesday but said the club were “looking into” their pre-match habits. Continue reading...

He can sack who he wants to protect himself, but all roads currently lead back to the prime minister In late 2023, Labour Together was ascendant. Under Keir Starmer, the group’s anointed torchbearer, Labour had a double-digit lead in the polls. Morgan McSweeney, the man who built Labour Together, was preparing Starmer for government with great hopes of cleaning up politics. Now McSweeney is out of a job, Labour Together is mired in controversy and Starmer faces urgent questions about what he knew and when. Stories began appearing about Labour Together’s funding around November 2023. The most damaging, in a detailed report by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, showed how, between 2017 and 2020, McSweeney had failed to declare £730,000 in political donations to the organisation. The group attributed this to administrative error. Peter Geoghegan runs the investigative website Democracy for Sale Continue reading...

Opposition councillor says 20,000-home development in Adlington put forward with ‘no consultation, no scrutiny’ A Cheshire council leader is being urged to resign after it emerged he had written a letter backing a new town of 20,000 homes for the area, which led to it being listed on the government’s list of proposed sites and has since sparked a huge backlash. Residents said they were blindsided when Adlington appeared on the government’s list of 12 proposed sites for new towns across England, with work on at least three due to start this parliament. Continue reading...

After Guardian writers shared their picks for big screen love stories people may not have seen, readers have responded with some alternative options It’s a long time since I saw it, and it’s one of those films I’ve been unable to rewatch after a first viewing in case it disappoints. The way they keep upping the ante as the movie progresses struck me as completely perfect at the time. CreatureAdam Continue reading...

Interim manager: ‘There is no time to find excuses’ ‘The position of the club is one that nobody can accept’ Igor Tudor says there is “no time to find excuses” as he attempts to halt Tottenham’s Premier League slide. The 47-year-old former Juventus manager, brought in last week as the sacked Thomas Frank’s replacement until the end of the season, believes instilling the players with confidence is his most important task. “The team need, I believe, first of all, to get some confidence, to get some courage, but also, in same way, the concrete things in the pitch,” Tudor told Spursplay. “Of course, I’m coming here knowing that situation is not easy. There is no time to find excuses. What I said from the first day here, each of us need to give something something more, something extra.” Continue reading...

‘He trusts my work, I trust his personality’ Coach and owner have worked previously together Vítor Pereira believes the trust he has with Nottingham Forest’s owner, Evangelos Marinakis, means he can survive the poisoned chalice of the City Ground job. The Portuguese has become Forest’s fourth manager of the season after Sean Dyche followed Nuno Espírito Santo and Ange Postecoglou out of the door last week as Marinakis acted in an attempt to avoid Premier League relegation. Continue reading...

Civil rights leader, politician, campaigner; the Rev Jackson was a phenomenal orator, and a brilliant organiser. Writers reflect on his impact around the world Jesse Jackson – a life in pictures Continue reading...

Host says lawyers barred him from discussing decision to drop Texas Democrat segment amid FCC rules scrutiny The talkshow host Stephen Colbert has accused the Trump administration of censoring critics after CBS pulled his interview with a Texas Democrat on Monday, apparently at the behest of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Colbert told viewers of the Late Show that network lawyers told him he was also prohibited from talking about their refusal to air his interview with James Talarico, a Texas state representative seeking his party’s nomination to challenge the Republican incumbent, John Cornyn, for a senate seat in November. Continue reading...

Descendants of Jewish brothers forced to sell company to Nazis say appropriation by German far right is ‘repulsive’ The Jewish descendants of a German motorbike manufacturer that was forced by the Nazis to be relinquished have voiced their repulsion at the appropriation of the vehicle by far-right populists. Members of the family, whose ancestors were forced to flee Germany in the 1930s, say they consider the use of the bike’s name by the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as a “mockery of our history”. Continue reading...

The Canadian performer visited hospices, mystics and cemeteries to research Age Is a Feeling. And the line about white pubic hair – which has now been performed in 10 languages – always gets a laugh It is the summer of 2024 and Haley McGee is performing Age Is a Feeling at a festival in Toronto. Her show is in good shape, having already raked in five-star reviews at the Edinburgh fringe. But this performance is different. As she launches into her poignant monologue about life, death and the business of getting old, she hears a baby cry. The newborn sleeps through the rest of the show, but the performer, who is newly pregnant herself, feels as though she is speaking directly to this child and its young family. “It framed the whole show as a conversation with this baby,” McGee says: “This is my message for you about your adult life.” Continue reading...

Whether it’s paraben-free detergent, refillable deodorant or sustainable toothbrush heads, try these simple swaps for a cleaner home and body • 33 easy plastic-free kitchen swaps When it comes to cleaning products, both for our bodies and our homes, convenience is a bit of a dirty word. While you may have a sparkling loo, the environment won’t thank you for multiple single-use plastic bottles of cleaning fluid and ingredients that go down the sink despite the small print warning of the harm to marine life. UK households use 13bn plastic bottles every year, which take at least 450 years to decompose, while more than 212m toothbrush heads or manual toothbrushes are thrown away across the country annually. Continue reading...

Marco Rubio arrived at the Munich security conference with a disturbing message for European governments: empire is great Fresh from toppling the president of Venezuela and taking control of the world’s largest oil reserves, the Trump administration’s top diplomat arrived at the Munich security conference on Saturday with a rather new and very disturbing message for European governments. Empire is great. Empire is back. Empire is American. Mehdi Hasan is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo Continue reading...

London Coliseum Jamie Manton’s new production for English National Opera is sparky and substantial. Danielle de Niese brings star quality to tarty Jenny, and the chorus are consistently superb What’s the worst crime in Mahagonny, the spider-web city built by three cons in order to extract a living out of sucker tourists? Not having any cash. ENO knows all too well how that particular predicament feels. Somehow, though, Jamie Manton’s new production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera manages to make a virtue of thriftiness, yet still feels substantial. For a start, it’s big. In Brechtian style, the whole breadth and depth of the Coliseum stage is open: it feels almost as if this should be an immersive production, with the audience up there in the performers’ midst. Milla Clarke’s set, centred on a huge container, reuses elements that ENO regulars will recognise from productions long past, and the costumes look like the spoils from a charity-shop sweep – which fits the trashy aesthetic. Continue reading...

Inspired by the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising that gripped Iran in 2022, two film students created a documentary, Memories of a Window, about onlookers who anonymously record footage as proof of state violence Footage that went viral from Iran in late 2022 showed a woman being shot by security forces while capturing a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests on her phone. The victim’s last words were: “Film it!” Mehraneh Salimian graduated from art school the same day, and that final wish guided her and her partner, Amin Pakparvar, to make their documentary short premiering at the Berlin film festival on Tuesday. Memories of a Window is dedicated to the slain woman, Shirin Alizadeh, and the role of amateur videos in recording and emboldening dissent in Iran. Continue reading...

Check out the best images from day 11 of the Games as snowstorms delayed a number of events Continue reading...

Leader says move should end claims of one-man band and shows party is ‘creating a machine for government’ Nigel Farage has unveiled the first part of Reform UK’s frontbench team, saying it shows that the party is no longer reliant entirely on him – while also warning that he will not tolerate any dissent from his colleagues. Two of the four appointees are recent defectors from the Conservatives: Robert Jenrick, who takes on the Treasury brief, and Suella Braverman, whom Farage has put in charge of education, skills and equalities. Continue reading...

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

PM says action is looking at potential criminal liability in order to protect children and end ‘impunity’ of online platforms The Spanish government will ask prosecutors to investigate the social media companies X, Meta and TikTok to determine whether they have committed criminal offences by allegedly allowing their AI to generate and disseminate child sexual abuse material. Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said his government had taken the decision in order to protect “the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters” and to end the “impunity” of huge social media platforms. Continue reading...

Some say they may stop visiting or even renounce their British citizenship owing to stricter requirements British dual nationals living abroad have told of their disgust, fury and distress over new UK border rules that mean they could risk be denied boarding on a flight, ferry or train. The new rules, which come into force on 25 February, have caught many by surprise and require British dual nationals to present a British passport or a “certificate of entitlement”, which costs £589, to visit the UK on their non-British passport. Continue reading...

Civil rights icon, who died Tuesday, shifted Black politics and leftist coalition-building from the sidecar of the Democratic party to the driver’s seat By the early 1980s, the Democratic party was facing a crossroads. The 1980 landslide election of Ronald Reagan, who clenched the presidency with a whopping 489 electoral college votes against Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, swiftly pulled the Democratic party to the right in the political and cultural wave of the “Reagan Revolution”. For those Democratic constituents left behind, however, a challenge was mounting, mostly within US industrial cities whose economies were ransacked by Reagan’s “trickle-down” economics. Record tax cuts for the wealthy had come at the expense of a contracted social safety net, thus exacerbating inequality and collapsing much of the working class into the poor. Grassroots resistance campaigns spawned across the country in response to this dire urban crisis that had disproportionately devastated African Americans, and between 1982 and 1984 they had registered 2 million new Black voters – the largest gain in registered Black voters since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Continue reading...

Many are hopeful moment will be a turning point away from repression and unrest and a chance to revive economy Bangladesh’s new prime minister has been sworn in, sealing a dramatic political comeback for the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) and formally closing the turbulent chapter that toppled Sheikh Hasina in 2024. The swearing-in of Tarique Rahman restored an elected government after 18 months of caretaker rule led by Nobel peace prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. Continue reading...

American fractured tibia in downhill last week Vonn was initially treated in Italy for injuries Lindsey Vonn is back home in the US to continue treatment after she broke her leg during the Winter Olympic downhill. “Haven’t stood on my feet in over a week… been in a hospital bed immobile since my race. And although I’m not yet able to stand, being back on home soil feels amazing,” Vonn posted on X with an American flag emoji. “Huge thank you to everyone in Italy for taking good care of me.” The 41-year-old suffered a complex tibia fracture after she crashed early in her downhill run on 8 February. She was initially treated in hospital in Italy and underwent several surgeries on her injured leg. She has said she will need further surgery in the US. Nine days before her fall in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Vonn ruptured the ACL in her left knee in another crash in Switzerland. Even before then, she had been the focus of attention heading into the Olympics for her comeback after nearly six years of retirement. Continue reading...

The East German-born artist, who has died aged 41, came of age in a deeply dysfunctional landscape, using furniture to reveal schisms masked by unification Mourning has many colours and many layers. One mourns people. But one can also mourn a state, a system, an ideology – even those that were deeply flawed. In 2019, the artist Henrike Naumann built an East German living room and rotated it by 90 degrees. The sofa, chairs and coffee table – all in the unmistakable aesthetic of the 1990s – climbed the wall. The carpet became vertical. Cabinets hovered near the floor alongside a CD rack, baseball badges and a flag bearing a slogan in Sütterlin script: “Beware of storm and wind and East Germans who are enraged.” The installation – titled Ostalgie (a portmanteau of the German words for “east” and “nostalgia”) – made physical what many had felt but struggled to articulate: the collapse of the GDR and its aftermath for those who had lived through it and felt it on some level as a loss. That rupture was not abstract. It tilted the room. It unsettled the ground beneath your feet. Continue reading...

High court judge rules in favour of police force’s decision to compel staff to declare membership of organisation Freemasons have failed in their attempt to bring a legal challenge against Britain’s biggest police force over its decision to compel staff to declare whether they are or have been members. Mr Justice Chamberlain said on Tuesday that the Metropolitan police’s decision “serves a legitimate aim, maintaining and enhancing public trust in policing, and is proportionate”. Continue reading...