Soldiers and civilians secretly report on the horrors they have witnessed. Plus: Danny Dyer takes charge of a caravan park. Here’s what to watch this evening 9pm, BBC Two The full extent of terror and horror experienced by people in Russia who oppose Putin’s war is detailed in a numbing documentary. All too aware of the risk of arrest – or an even worse punishment – soldiers and civilians give their testimonies in interviews secretly recorded last year. Two men explain the military torture, “meat storms” and summary executions they witnessed regularly on the frontline – with one recalling the moment he knew he had to escape, after being made an officer and ordered to send men to their deaths. Hollie Richardson Continue reading...

Exclusive: Documents show Andrea Jenkyns asked how she could help firm after major gas find in Lincolnshire Lincolnshire’s Reform party mayor, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has courted the head of an American oil and gas dynasty in the hope of bringing fracking to the county, the Guardian can reveal. Egdon Resources, a British subsidiary of the US fracker Heyco Energy, announced a major gas discovery in Lincolnshire’s Gainsborough Trough last year. Jenkyns, who became the first mayor of Greater Lincolnshire in May, reached out personally to the company asking how she “could help with your recent gas find in my county”, according to records released by the mayoral authority in response to a freedom of information request. Continue reading...

British Retail Consortium warns over ‘endemic’ violence towards shop workers and says theft is causing anxiety Criminal gangs are “systematically” targeting shops, retailers have warned, with 5.5m incidents of shoplifting detected last year, costing the industry an estimated £400m. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned over “endemic” violence towards shop workers – who faced an average 36 incidents of violence involving a weapon every day last year – and said high levels of theft was causing “anxiety” among retail staff. Continue reading...

A fuss-free, comforting supper to see you through the last days of winter This is everyday cooking, the kind that comes naturally in winter. Carrots are always around and often forgotten, but they give a lot when you treat them properly. The saffron brings warmth and colour, and always makes me think of home. February can feel quiet and grey, and this stew suits that mood. It is comforting without being heavy, made for evenings when you want something ready on the stove and bread on the table, eaten calmly and enjoyed without any fuss. Continue reading...

Wold Newton, East Yorkshire: On a dreary day in a nondescript field, I visit the site where a 4.56 billion-year-old bit of space rock came to Earth On a low rise, beyond a screen of trees, behind a small holiday park in the Yorkshire Wolds, a brick obelisk stands incongruously at the edge of an otherwise nondescript field. It bears a plaque inscribed as follows: “Here, on this spot, Decr. 13th, 1795 / fell from the Atmosphere AN EXTRAORDINARY STONE / In breadth 28 inches / In length 36 inches…” The words are carved in a variety of enthusiastic fonts, with the opening “Here” given particularly earnest flourish. The extraordinary, extraterrestrial stone in question is the Wold Cottage meteorite, the first from anywhere to be widely recognised as a rock from outer space. After a 4.56bn-year journey, it now rests in the Treasures Gallery of the Natural History Museum. Continue reading...

The actor killed himself, his family said in a statement that aimed to raise awareness of ‘his nearly two-decade battle with bipolar disorder’ Robert Carradine, a member of the famed acting family who was known for his roles in Revenge of the Nerds and Lizzie McGuire, has died aged 71. Carradine killed himself after years of living with bipolar disorder, his family said in a statement which they said they hoped would raise awareness. Continue reading...

For a long time fat was seen simply as an inert yellow substance wrapping around our bodies, but now that’s changing. Scientists are beginning to understand that our fat is actually intricate and dynamic, constantly in conversation with the rest of the body. It’s now even considered by some to be an organ in its own right. To find out more about the complex role fat plays in our health, Ian Sample hears from co-host Madeleine Finlay and from Declan O’Regan, professor of cardiovascular AI at Imperial College London Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...

As senior politicians gathered for a lavish celebration, mass killings underscored the country’s deepening security crisis It has been described as Nigeria’s wedding of the year – and it is only February. This month, five sons and five daughters of the junior defence minister Bello Matawalle married their spouses in an opulent six-day celebration in Abuja. The sheer scale of the extravaganza in the capital prompted one of the comperes to exclaim on Instagram: “First of its kind … @guinnessworldrecords check this out.” Continue reading...

We could never have imagined such tolerance of Putin’s criminal war. We normalise the horror just to survive On a bright February day, over cups of coffee, my team gathers for a strategy meeting at our office in Lviv, 80km from the border with the EU. Our cultural and research institution – an NGO called Index – documents Ukrainians’ experiences of the war. The coffee is important: our charging station can power a coffee machine during electricity outages. A member of our board from Kyiv, which has suffered most from Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter, delights in this luxury. She is used to climbing 14 flights of stairs with water canisters and boiling coffee on a portable stove in her frozen apartment. As we speak, our screens flash with an alert: a Russian ballistic missile is heading our way. “What shall we do?” a colleague wants to know. I want to finish both the coffee and the discussion. In a minute, we hear the sound of an explosion not far away. The missile has been intercepted. We resume our pondering about how to ensure long-term justice by sharing individuals’ stories of wartime Ukraine. Sasha Dovzhyk is a writer, editor and cultural manager. She is head of INDEX, a Lviv-based cultural and research institute that documents experiences of the war. Continue reading...

With the Russian military performing poorly, Ukraine is clarifying strategy and pushing back with modest success Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now entering its fifth grim year, has already gone on longer than the entire fight on the eastern front in the second world war. The Soviets marched from the gates of Leningrad to Berlin in a little over 15 months in 1944-45; today the Russian rate of gain in Pokrovsk in Ukraine is 70 metres a day, in Kupiansk, 23 metres, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. The gains are trivial, given Ukraine’s size, amounting to 1,865 sq miles during 2025 (about 0.8% of the country) – so the idea touted by the Russians, sometimes accepted by a credulous White House, that Ukraine is suffering a slow-motion defeat, is not accurate. In reality, even allowing for the fact that hundreds of thousands of homes are without electricity, heating and water after Russian bombing, Ukraine is clarifying its strategy and pushing back with modest success. Continue reading...

Andrew Lownie spent years investigating the greed and excesses of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson for his book Entitled. Here, the writer reveals the barriers he faced in getting to the truth The Saturday morning I meet Andrew Lownie, the author of “the most devastating royal biography ever written” (according to the Daily Mail), the front page of every newspaper carries the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Some have aerial shots of the police arriving to search his home, most including the now infamous photograph of his face in the back of the police car. He looks hunted, because he literally has been, but his expression is curiously blank, its most legible emotion grievance. One journalist, Lownie says, reported late on the night of Friday’s arrest that: “Andrew still can’t see what the problem is. He thinks he’s been hard done by. He’s obsessed with other details – whether he can take his horses up to Norfolk, who’s going to get the dogs, where he’s going to park his car. It’s a sort of disassociation.” Lownie’s office, in his home a stone’s throw from parliament, is a monument to the success of his book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York (along with his other books: one on the Mountbattens, one on Guy Burgess, one to come on Prince Philip). One desk is piled high with books about Andrew and Sarah, some of them by Ferguson herself, others warts-and-all, kiss-and-tell accounts from confidants and clairvoyants. Lownie has stacks of rejected freedom of information requests, from UK Trade and Investment; the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; the Information Commissioner – “They sometimes took so long to respond that they haven’t even downloaded the request before it expires.” He approached 3,000 people from all the way through Mountbatten-Windsor’s life; only a tenth of them would speak to him, which to me feels quite unsurprising, and yet Lownie is indignant. “I wrote to ambassadors, and they said ‘not interested’. This was a matter of public interest. Others, very cheerily when I wrote to them a third time, said ‘nice try’, as if it was some sort of joke. These are the guys I want in the dock, in parliament, on oath. This is the thing that makes me upset. I, perhaps naively, expect standards in public life.” Continue reading...

I suffered with my mystery illness for decades before gaining a diagnosis. Could retraining my brain be the answer? At the Croydon secondary school I attended in the late 1990s, the deputy headmistress was a stocky woman with a military haircut who patrolled the corridors in voluminous outfits patterned in shades of brown. The outfits were much discussed, not charitably, by the teenage girls in her charge – as was her voice, which made you think of a blunt knife being drawn across a rough surface. Thirty years later, I can still hear that terrible voice refer to my “mystery illness”. In truth, the deputy headmistress never actually spoke those words – they were included in a typed letter she sent to my parents concerning my prolonged absence from school. Still, the indicting force of five syllables is as distinct in my ear as if she were looming over me. I was 11 and, after coming down with a normal-seeming virus, I simply hadn’t got better. Instead, my system seemed to have become stuck, sunk into some grey, unchanging state. I had a headache, a sore throat and swollen lymph nodes, body pains both dull and sharp, fatigue and weakness, plus something I later learned went by the name of “postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome”: a faintness and momentary blacking out upon sitting or standing up. When I list the symptoms in this way, as a collection of discrete and manageable items, it seems false. I wish things felt discrete and manageable. Instead, being ill felt – and still feels – more like a thick, obscuring cloud. When that cloud descends, my blood feels like old glue mixed with whatever you’d scrape off the bottom of a Swiffer. During bad episodes, I can’t quite locate my mind, or my personality. Reading is impossible. TV is abrasive. Breathing feels effortful, forming words is a strain. Continue reading...

Booking system freezes and screens crash amid rush of fans trying to secure tickets to 21 March free concert Tickets for BTS’s comeback concert in central Seoul were snapped up almost immediately on Monday night, with authorities expecting an estimated 260,000 fans to descend for the K-pop group’s first full performance in nearly four years. At one point, more than 100,000 people flooded the booking website when sales opened at 8pm for the free concert at Gwanghwamun square on 21 March, causing screens to crash and booking systems to freeze. Continue reading...

If the circumstances of those from Roj camp become even more perilous, the Albanese government may be forced to intervene Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Ever since news broke that 34 Australians were leaving Roj camp in north-east Syria to travel to Australia, their status and travel plans have been at the centre of a political maelstrom. The Albanese government has insisted there would be no repatriation of the 11 Australian women and their 23 children, whose journey was halted on 16 February when they were sent back to the detention camp. The newly minted opposition under Angus Taylor has demanded answers to the level of assistance the Albanese government has provided to the group, including the issuing of passports, and the Coalition has now proposed new Australian laws to criminalise non-government financial and logistical support that helps the families return to Australia. Continue reading...

Punch may look sweet with his plushie – but anthropomorphism can’t tell us what a wild animal is truly experiencing Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Standing in line at Ikea’s click and collect service to pick up a large plush orangutan, a wave of fatigue washes over me. Not only because I have been in transit for almost 24 hours after a series of flight delays, and this is my last stop before collapsing in a heap on my living room floor, but also for the reason I, and so many others, have made this journey. Continue reading...

A DJ turned soldier explains how life has changed for Ukraine’s men while Tracey McVeigh and Shaun Walker report on the impact of the conflict and what could happen next In the early hours of 24 February 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine was at war with Russia – and put the country into a state of martial law. Tracey McVeigh, editor of the Guardian’s global development desk, tells Annie Kelly what happened next. “Immediately if you were a male aged between 18 and 60 you were not allowed to leave the country. So there were all these hard choices going on behind closed doors in every family. If you were married and maybe had young children. Did your partner take the kids and leave? And all those incredibly difficult conversations were happening in a very short space of time. And I’m not sure you’re ever prepared for that kind of conversation within a family.” Continue reading...

Preparations for the nation’s second appearance at the tournament has been impacted by the troubling events at home This week, Iran’s women’s football team is expected to touch down in Australia to compete in their second Women’s Asian Cup. But exactly who will arrive, or what condition they will be in when they get here, is anyone’s guess. Amid a backdrop of anti-government protests and subsequent violent crackdowns by the authorities over the past few months, Iran’s top women footballers have been struggling to prepare for one of the biggest tournaments of their lives. Continue reading...

One officer killed and two others wounded after blast at Savyolovsky railway station square in central Moscow A man detonated an explosive device beside a police patrol car in central Moscow early on Tuesday, killing one officer and wounding two others, the Russian interior ministry said. The blast occurred just after midnight at Savyolovsky railway station square, according to the ministry’s statement on Telegram. Savyolovsky station, in northern Moscow, is one of the capital’s main railway hubs. Continue reading...

Firm does not specify amount but seeks reimbursement after supreme court ruled against president last week FedEx sued the US government on Monday, seeking a refund for the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump that were deemed illegal by the US supreme court last week. The lawsuit marks the first attempt by a major company to receive reimbursement of their share of an estimated $175bn in levies after the highest court found Trump had overstepped his authority in issuing the tariffs. Other companies are expected to follow. Continue reading...

Country follows Australia in saying it would support any UK government proposals to remove former prince after arrest New Zealand has become the second Commonwealth country to back the removal of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the royal line of succession after his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office. A spokesperson for New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, said on Tuesday: “If the UK government proposes to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the order of succession, New Zealand would support it.” Continue reading...

China has opposed the ‘smearing of its nuclear policy’ while insisting Beijing would not ‘engage in any nuclear arms race’ The US has accused China of dramatically expanding its nuclear arsenal, while doubling down on claims that Beijing had conducted secret nuclear tests. Washington said the lapsing of New Start – the last treaty between top nuclear powers the US and Russia – earlier this month presented the possibility of striking a “better agreement” that included Beijing. Continue reading...

Vulnerable young people, partners of drug users and victims of sexual violence also among those afflicted in world’s fastest growing HIV epidemic The night her baby’s heart stopped, Clare* blamed herself. Had she taken her out in the cold too much? Had she damaged her lungs by drinking iced water when she was pregnant? She fixated on Andi’s tiny chest, willing it to suck in air, rushing her to hospital in Fiji for the second time in as many days. All through the early hours Andi* clung to life. Doctors performed CPR several times, puncturing the month-old baby’s chest to insert a drain, removing fluid from around her lungs. “She was really, really sick and they didn’t know what was going on … she was getting weaker and weaker,” Clare says. She sat by her daughter’s bedside. She prayed. Continue reading...

Details of offer not immediately available as Paramount looks to beat rival Netflix for control of Warner Bros Paramount Skydance has increased its bid for Warner Bros Discovery, Reuters reported on Monday, raising the stakes in the bidding war for the historic studio and its broadcast and cable TV assets in an effort to beat out rival suitor Netflix. It could not immediately be determined how the bid was revised. Warner Bros and Paramount declined to comment, while Netflix could not immediately be reached. Continue reading...

Aileen Cannon denounces ‘brazen’ special counsel for compiling report after she had dismissed case in 2024 A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump permanently barred the justice department on Monday from releasing the former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the president’s mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club after his first term. The ruling by US district judge Aileen Cannon marked the latest effort to stop the report from being sent to Congress or otherwise becoming publicly available. Continue reading...

Dominic Ethan Stewart was among 19 killed when vehicle veered off road and plunged down mountainside Tributes have been paid to a young British hiker who was among 19 people killed when a packed passenger bus veered off a treacherous stretch of road and plunged 200 metres down a steep mountainside in Nepal. Twenty-five others were injured in the pre-dawn crash in the Himalayan foothills on Monday. The bus was carrying 44 people, including a number of tourists. Continue reading...