The Complicité founder remembers his teacher’s wicked laughter, provocative demands and infinite generosity • Philippe Gaulier dies aged 82 Many speak of a teacher in their childhood who changed them, someone who reveals knowledge about the world they carry with them for the rest of their lives. I didn’t have one of those. It wasn’t until I was 24 and living in Paris, where I stumbled into Philippe’s class almost by accident, that this happened. Provocative, demanding, deliberately inappropriate and utterly hilarious, Philippe taught me not to carry anything. No baggage, no ideas; knowing nothing is all you need. Because we are all ridiculous. His mother was Spanish, and we would eat her meals with relish when she came to cook for him, or rather with him, in his appartement lined with his writings, many of which had “rêves” inscribed on the spine. He would refer to his father as “ce salaud bourgeois” (that bourgeois arsehole) and he delighted in telling me the story of being thrown out of school aged eight because he punched the gymnastics teacher who was trying to instil discipline into young boys by turning them into military martinets. Continue reading...

President warned prior to the vote that any Republican who voted against tariffs would ‘suffer the consequences’ Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours. We start with news that the House has voted to rescind tariffs that Donald Trump imposed on Canada last year, in what has been seen as a rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House’s trade policy. TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege. Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year. Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle. The US attorney general Pam Bondi attacked and insulted Democrats during a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday as she defended the justice department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats pounded Bondi with questions about the way the department has complied with a law last year mandating the complete release of the files with specific and limited room for redactions. The number of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped 30% in 2025 after the Trump administration left the federal labor watchdog powerless, according to an analysis released on Wednesday. The number of workers participating in union elections dropped by 59,000, a 42% decline compared with the year prior, according to the report from the Center for American Progress. The wife of an Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for five months - despite having a valid work permit – is pleading for help in instigating his release from the “dire conditions” he is facing in detention. “I just want him home where he belongs. I want us to be able to finish what we started,” Tiffany Smyth, wife of Seamus Culleton, said during a Wednesday press conference. Donald Trump has said that he is still seeking a deal with Iran to prevent it from seeking a nuclear weapon following a three-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in which the Israeli leader was expected to advocate for a more forceful intervention by the US military. Netanyahu’s sixth visit to the White House since Trump returned to office ended without any public remarks between the two leaders. Continue reading...

About 39% of separated parents say not sharing caring responsibilities contributed to breakdown of relationship UK politics live – latest updates More than one in three separated parents believe the UK’s “pitiful” paternity leave played a part in their breakup, research has suggested. The campaign groups, The Dad Shift and Movember, said hundreds of thousands of families were falling apart as a result of a parental leave system described by MPs as “one of the worst in the developed world”. Continue reading...

A report detailing how the careers of female presenters are curtailed should be a clarion call. The problem has endured for too long As the BBC closes in on a new director general, the possibility again arises that it could be a woman. The talk is of the former BBC One controller Jay Hunt, the former Channel 4 boss Alex Mahon or the former BBC chief content officer Charlotte Moore. At this point in the BBC’s history, almost everyone would applaud a woman at the top – but clearly the institution needs a lot more than a woman, however pioneering and accomplished, at the helm. We know from the excoriating report commissioned by the broadcaster itself that it has a grave problem with dwindling numbers of “older women” presenters. Trevor Phillips, 72, still shines at Sky, while David Aaronovitch, 71, is deservedly a fixture on Radio 4: they’re just older men, experienced journalists, doing their thing. Continue reading...

Twenty-seven entries shortlisted in 21 categories including website of the year and newspaper of the year The Guardian has been nominated for more than 20 honours at this year’s Press Awards, including for website of the year, daily newspaper of the year and newspaper of the year (daily and Sunday). Twenty-seven entries from the Guardian have been shortlisted across 21 different categories by the judges of the UK’s prestigious journalism awards. Continue reading...

From One Battle to Another to Marty Supreme, supermarket magnates, professors and special agents have been stealing scenes on screen Striving for realism, Timothée Chalamet knew what the scene required. “I’m really getting in the guy’s face and I’m really trying to get him angry with me,” the lead actor recalled recently about the making of Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. “I was saying to Josh, ‘He’s not getting angry with me, he’s not getting angry with me.’” But it turned out the unnamed extra had been paying attention. Chalamet added: “I did another take, and then the guy said, ‘I was just in jail for 30 years. You really don’t want to fuck with me. You don’t want to see me angry.’ I said to Josh, ‘Holy shit, who do you have me opposite, man?’” Continue reading...

Club’s former manager says Spurs reluctant to take risks Spending and wage structure holding them back, he feels Ange Postecoglou has described “curious” Tottenham as “not a big club” after their sacking of Thomas Frank. Frank succeeded Postecoglou last summer but was unable to reverse their fortunes in the Premier League and was shown the door on Wednesday with Spurs 16th. “Having been in that position now twice in the last six months, it’s tough,” Postecoglou told The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast. “You know that he can’t be the only issue at the club. It’s a curious club, Tottenham. It’s made a major pivot at the end of last year, not just with me but with [the executive chair] Daniel [Levy] leaving as well, and you’ve created this whole sort of environment of uncertainty. Continue reading...

Marineland Antibes, the French government and animal welfare groups all agree on the need to rehome the listless killer whales but no one can agree where In a sprawling aquarium complex in south-eastern France that once drew half a million visitors a year, only a few dozen people now move between pools that contain the last remaining marine mammals of Marineland Antibes. Weeds grow on walkways, the stands are empty and algae grows in the pools, giving the water a greenish hue. It is here that Wikie and Keijo, a mother and son pair of orcas, are floating. They were born in these pools, and for decades they performed in shows for crowds. But since the park’s closure in January 2025, they no longer have an audience. When they are alone, they “log”, or float at the water’s surface, according to a court-ordered report released last April. Continue reading...

Andreas Graf lived without screens and no idea of the date or time. The conditions were often brutal – but he found kindness and friendship as he rode In April 2022, Andreas Graf set off on his bike from his home in Norway. His dream was to cycle to India. A week later, having reached Sweden, it was already becoming more of a nightmare. “It was pouring with rain and I was lying in my tent in my half-wet sleeping bag and I was like, I could be in my very cosy Oslo apartment,” he says. “I had this good life, a career, a partner, and I had left everything behind.” He was 31. Friends were settling down. Graf had a well-paid job in industrial engineering, but was still renting in a houseshare. “I had started to think about whether to make a financially reasonable and sensible decision, or do something else. I went for option two.” Continue reading...

Before the Post’s sweeping layoffs and Lewis’s abrupt resignation, his tenure was marked by controversy and clashes with staff Standing on the seventh floor in the center of the Washington Post’s open newsroom on the morning of 3 June 2024, publisher Will Lewis decided to deliver some tough love to a news organization he had taken charge of five months earlier. Lewis, a veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, had replaced Fred Ryan, a former Ronald Reagan aide who had presided over some of the Post’s profitable years – during the first Trump administration – but lost the confidence of some staffers after clashing with employees during a late 2022 town hall. Continue reading...

Teenager also accused of possession of a knife and allegedly spraying an unnamed substance at a third child A 13-year-old boy has been charged with attempted murder after two pupils were stabbed at a secondary school in north-west London. The teenager, who has not been named because of his age, is due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on Thursday, the Metropolitan police said. Continue reading...

British asset management group’s deal with Nuveen will create one of world’s biggest fund managers Schroders has agreed a £9.9bn takeover by a US investor, ending two centuries of family ownership of the historic British asset management group. Chicago-based Nuveen will buy the City firm, it said on Thursday, in a deal that will create one of the world’s biggest fund managers, controlling about $2.5tn (£1.8tn) of assets. Continue reading...

Justice minister says ‘man who moved to Monaco to save tax is now lecturing us about immigration’ Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has joined those criticising Jim Ratcliffe over his claim that the UK is being “colonised” by immigrants. Burnham said in a statement: These comments go against everything for which Manchester has traditionally stood: a place where people of all races, faiths and none have pulled together over centuries to build our city and our institutions, including Manchester United FC. Calling for curbs on levels of immigration is one thing; portraying those who come here as a hostile invading force is quite another. Continue reading...

Manchester United co-owner, who lives in Monaco, faces growing backlash for using ‘far-right narratives’ The Monaco-based billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has been accused of hypocrisy and using “far-right narratives”, as a backlash grew over his claims that the UK was being “colonised” by immigrants. Fans called the Manchester United co-owner’s comments “disgraceful and deeply divisive”, while Keir Starmer said his claim was “offensive and wrong”, and called on the Ineos chief executive to “apologise immediately”. Continue reading...

Head coach’s deal was due to finish after World Cup Tuchel keen to lead team at Euros co-hosted by England Thomas Tuchel has signed an extension to his England contract that will keep him in charge of the national team until after Euro 2028. The fresh deal means Tuchel, who took over in January 2025, will remain manager regardless of England’s fate at the World Cup this summer. He originally signed an 18-month deal but will now be at the helm for a home European Championship in two and a half years’ time. Continue reading...

Suddenly, venerable figures presumed immune to sordid compromise have been exposed – although some have shown that moral courage is possible In 2016, the French luxury fashion house Hermès decided to pull an item it had donated to a charity auction after it appeared to have been bought by Jeffrey Epstein. In an email made public in this month’s tranche of Epstein files, Epstein’s assistant says someone at the auction platform had relayed to them that Hermès was “not comfortable” with Epstein as a donor and that he would be refunded. It’s a reminder that institutions – and the people at their helms – can, when they wish, still recognise a line they will not cross. No sermon, no press release: just a quiet act of moral housekeeping that now reads like a lesson in basic civic hygiene. France is discovering how rare that reflex proved to be at home. The latest cache of Epstein files – emails, memos and legal documents released by the US Department of Justice – does not reveal a hidden French paedophile ring. So far, the only confirmed French sexual connection to Epstein remains Jean‑Luc Brunel, the modelling agent who died in police custody in 2022 while being investigated on suspicion of trafficking women to Epstein. Instead, the new files trace how Epstein ingratiated himself into parts of the country’s political and cultural elite, providing private jets, introductions and offshore structures to people long accustomed to thinking of themselves as beyond reproach. Agnès Poirier is a political commentator, writer and critic for the British, American and European press Continue reading...

Amy Berg’s arresting documentary delves into the early life and untimely death of the 90s singer-songwriter, with extensive contributions from his mother and girlfriends Some moths are drawn to the flame and some butterflies to the wheel. The exquisitely beautiful, mercurial and prodigiously talented 90s singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley was drawn to the music business. And this contractually demanded endless touring and a multi-album commitment when he’d already poured his twentysomething-year-old life and soul into the first one, Grace, a hipster-critical smash whose commercial underperformance in the US caused execs to push him ever harder for a follow-up to recoup their investment. The business also created a world where he got to meet his heroes (such as Paul McCartney and Robert Plant), whose extravagant, good-natured praise for him sent this already highly strung young soul over the edge. He was as handsome as Jim Morrison in his sleek prime as well as – to my eye – Adam Ant with a touch of Neil Innes. Amy Berg’s arresting documentary of a death foretold explains how young Jeff and his mother were abandoned when he was an infant by his father, Tim Buckley, a singer and counterculture figure who was to die of a heroin overdose in his late 20s. Jeff was to die at about the same age, in an accidental drowning in Wolf River Harbor, Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997, when he was just 30. Continue reading...

A portrait of the company whose ‘toymaker philosophy’ stands in contrast to the tech giants that rule our lives What is the highest-grossing entertainment franchise of all time? You might be tempted to think of Star Wars, or perhaps the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Maybe even Harry Potter? But no: it’s Pokémon – the others don’t come close. The Japanese “pocket monsters”, which star in video games, TV series and tradable playing cards, have made an estimated $115bn since 1996. Is this a sign of the lamentable infantilisation of postmodern society? Not a bit of it, argues Keza MacDonald, the Guardian’s video games editor, in her winsomely enthusiastic biography of Nintendo, the company that had become an eponym for electronic entertainment long before anyone had heard the words “PlayStation” or “Xbox”. Yes, Pokémon is mostly a children’s pursuit, but a sophisticated one: “Like Harry Potter, the Famous Five and Narnia,” she observes, “it offers a powerful fantasy of self-determination, set in a world almost totally free of adult supervision.” And in its complicated scoring system, “it got millions of kids voluntarily doing a kind of algebra”. Continue reading...

Heraskevych ignored last-ditch plea from IOC Decision announced 20 minutes before competition The Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych has been kicked out of the Winter Olympics after he refused to back down from wearing a “helmet of memory” in honour of Ukraine’s war dead. The decision was announced by the International Olympic Committee just 21 minutes before the first round of the men’s skeleton competition in Cortina on Thursday after last-ditch talks between the IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, and Heraskevych failed to find a breakthrough. Continue reading...

Local officials say strikes were part of widespread attacks across the country targeting energy infrastructure Good morning, Taz Ali here to bring you the latest news for our Europe Live blog. Hundreds of thousands of people have been left without power or water supply in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa after Russia launched a large-scale overnight drone strike, according to local officials. Nearly 300,000 people have been affected by the power outage, while one person has been reported injured. Continue reading...

Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results | Briefing Follow us over on Bluesky | And get in touch: mail Tanya Per the Associated Press: International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry was waiting for Heraskevych at the top of the track when he arrived at around 8.15am Thursday, or roughly 75 minutes before the start of the men’s skeleton race. Continue reading...

Doyne Farmer says a super-simulator of the global economy would accelerate the transition to a green, clean world It’s a mind-blowing idea: an economic model of the world in which every company is individually represented, making realistic decisions that change as the economy changes. From this astonishing complexity would emerge forecasts of unprecedented clarity. These would be transformative: no more flying blind into global financial crashes, no more climate policies that fail to shift the dial. This super simulator could be built for what Prof Doyne Farmer calls the bargain price of $100m, thanks to advances in complexity science and computing power. Continue reading...

Kevin thinks wardrobes are there for a reason, but Mabel says hangers are a hassle for a woman in a rush. You decide who deserves a dressing down • Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror Mabel’s clothes mountain gets in the way and sets a bad example for our sons. I call it the ‘Monster’ Kevin is exaggerating the size of the pile. I like living in organised chaos and he should accept that Continue reading...

As ‘the pressure of the haircut’ enters the game’s lexicon, the extent to which football revolves around winning and losing games appears to be fading “I don’t care about his haircut at all,” Matheus Cunha said this week. “I don’t really look at other people if they need to go to the hairdresser or not,” Bruno Fernandes said at the weekend. Michael Carrick, for his part, said he was aware of the haircut issue. But the Manchester United coach insisted it would not factor into his team’s preparations for their game against West Ham on Tuesday night. And so, here we are. Many games of football end up being remembered for reasons far outstripping their original significance: the 1914 Christmas Truce, the 1962 Battle of Santiago, the 2020 pandemic curtain‑raiser between Liverpool and Atlético Madrid. To these we can add the Haircut Game: a mildly arresting 1-1 Premier League draw at the London Stadium that posterity will nevertheless recall as the game when a man did not get his hair cut at the end. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The first four Grade One favourites at the festival are British horses but the Irish battalions are ready for battle The first four Grade One favourites at Cheltenham next month are stabled in British yards. So are three of the top six names in the Gold Cup betting. From a safe distance on the British side of the water, it is possible to imagine a festival when, for the first time in a decade, the home team heads to the west country with a spring in its step. But make no mistake, the green tide is coming. Across the length and breadth of the country, from the biggest yards with dozens of festival runners to 10-horse operations with a single stable star, there has been the unmistakeable sense of a confident, well-drilled army mobilising for action at pre-festival media events in Ireland this week. Ireland’s rugby team took a beating in Paris last week and the footballers are struggling to reach even a 48-team World Cup, but its horses, trainers and jockeys are not about to surrender their dominance in National Hunt racing. Continue reading...