General news

• Freezing temperatures and snow over Easter weekend

  27-03-2018 16:56
  Anyone wishing to avoid Easter traffic should stay off the roads on Good Friday - during an unsettled bank holiday weekend with below average temperatures.Likely hotspots include the M25 between Gatwick Airport and the M1, the M3 southwest of London, the A303 at Stonehenge, the M55 between Preston and Blackpool, and the M53 between Liverpool and Chester.Around 99% of motorways and major A-roads will be roadworks-free, Highways England said.
  
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• Macron swipes at Trump tariffs and Greenland threats in call for a stronger EU – Munich Security Conference live

  13-02-2026 20:42 via theguardian.com
  The French president said Europe must show “unwavering commitment” to defending its interestsIf you need a primer on what’s on the agenda for the next three days, I spoke with the MSC’s head of policy Nicole Koenig, the author of the European part of their security report published ahead of the meeting.I asked her what is most likely to be the focus of this year’s forum, will Rubio deliver a “JD Vance 2.0” speech or say something more (nomen omen) diplom
  
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• Hull City v Chelsea: FA Cup fourth round – live

  13-02-2026 20:42 via theguardian.com
  ⚽ FA Cup fourth-round updates, 7.45pm (GMT) kick-off
  ⚽ Live scoreboard | Follow us on Bluesky | Email JohnHull have been a considerable talent school in recent years: Harry Maguire, Jarrod Bowen, Andy Robertson and lately Keane Lewis-Potter have all carved decent careers in the Premier League. Tom Cairney, too.Liam Rosenior has FA Cup heritage, and played in this Wembley final classic in 2014. City were unlucky in this game, very unlucky. Continue reading...
  
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• Winter Olympics: Ilia Malinin goes for second figure-skating gold – live

  13-02-2026 20:41 via theguardian.com
  ‘Quad God’ leads contenders in men’s free skateEmail Beau or get in touch on BlueskyMedal table | Live scores and schedule | Results | BriefingSlovakia’s Adam Hagara attempts a quad toeloop, but it’s obvious as he takes off that he won’t be able to land it. He rebounds with a triple axel-double toeloop, but he falls on a triple axel.Can he land a planned triple-double axel-double axel? Indeed he can. It doesn’t seem too fluid but gets a positive grade of
  
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• Winter Olympics 2026: Weston chases skeleton gold for GB, Heraskevych’s appeal rejected by Cas – live

  13-02-2026 20:40 via theguardian.com
  • Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results | Briefing
  • Follow us over on Bluesky | Get in touch: mail JamesItalian biathlete Rebecca Passler will be able to participate in the Winter Olympics despite failing a doping test, the Italian skiing federation (Fisi) said on Friday. Italy’s anti-doping body (Nado) upheld her appeal against a provisional suspension that followed a positive test for the banned substance Letrozole on 26 January.Nado’s Court of Appeal acknowle
  
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• ICE plans to spend $38.3bn converting warehouses to detention centers, documents show, as DHS shutdown looms – US politics live

  13-02-2026 20:40 via theguardian.com
  Centers would have capacity for tens of thousands of people to be held; talks over funding bill stall hours before shutdownThe annual rate of US inflation eased in January, according to the latest data consumer price index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Over the last 12 months, the cost of goods has increased by 2.4% – down from 2.7% in last month’s report.Lawmakers in the House and Senate left Washington on Thursday as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS
  
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• ‘It’s not a documentary’: costume designers on ditching accuracy for spectacle

  13-02-2026 20:13 via theguardian.com
  Wuthering Heights is the latest film to turn heads over anachronistic costumes, but it’s not by any means the first Emerald Fennell’s retelling of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights finally hits cinema screens this weekend. Ever since the first set of photos were released, the anachronisms of the costumes have been central to the conversation.As fashion industry watchdog Diet Prada put it: “The costume design for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights sca
  
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• Vaping in cars carrying children to be banned in England

  13-02-2026 19:54 via theguardian.com
  Rising evidence that secondhand vapour from e-cigarettes poses health risks, government saysVaping in cars carrying anyone under 18 will be banned in England under government plans to reduce the harm caused by smoking and e-cigarettes.The move is included in the tobacco and vapes bill, which will also outlaw smoking, vaping and using heated tobacco in playgrounds and outside schools and hospitals. Continue reading...
  
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• Ebo Taylor obituary

  13-02-2026 19:34 via theguardian.com
  Ghanaian guitarist, arranger, singer-songwriter and cult hero who rose to fame outside Africa only late in lifeEbo Taylor, who has died aged 90, was one of the great innovators of west African music, a Ghanaian guitarist, arranger and singer-songwriter who never received the fame he deserved outside Africa until late in life, by when he had become a much-sampled cult hero. It was only in 2010, when he was 74, that he released Love and Death, his first solo album to be given an international dist
  
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• The Guardian view on Starmer’s trust crisis: it is unlikely to be managed away | Editorial

  13-02-2026 19:30 via theguardian.com
  At a moment of stagnation and political drift, Andy Burnham’s push for a new plan suggests the centre-left debate has moved beyond Downing StreetOnce a political leader’s net favourability sinks deep into negative territory, recovery is the exception, not the rule. It usually takes an economic rebound, a dramatic political reset or an opposition implosion to reverse the slide. Sir Keir Starmer’s personal ratings are in a danger zone from which few escape.Yet the prime
  
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• The Guardian view on the BBC World Service: this is London calling | Editorial

  13-02-2026 19:25 via theguardian.com
  With just seven weeks before its funding runs out, the UK’s greatest cultural asset and most trusted international news organisation must be supported“The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good,” said the then BBC director general John Reith, when he launched its Empire Service in December 1932. Nearly a century later, the BBC World Service, as it is now known, broadcasts in 43 languages, reaches 313 million people a week and is one of the UK’s most inf
  
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• UK Palestine Action ban ruled unlawful, in humiliating blow for ministers

  13-02-2026 19:09 via theguardian.com
  Thousands arrested for supporting group since proscription are now in legal limbo as Mahmood says she will appealJudges have humiliated ministers by insisting Palestine Action should not be banned under anti-terrorism laws in a ruling that has left thousands of its alleged supporters in legal limbo.The high court said on Friday the government’s proscription of the direct action group was “disproportionate and unlawful” and that most of their activities had not reached the level
  
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• ‘His favourite book was by Jordan Peterson, which was a massive ick’: how books perform on dating apps

  13-02-2026 19:08 via theguardian.com
  Mentions of reading in Tinder bios are up 29% in the last year. But is searching for a fellow fan of one’s favourite author really a shortcut to compatibility?‘One of my Hinge prompts is: ‘What’s the best book you read this year?’ and I swipe left on anyone who says a book I don’t like,” says 29-year-old Ayo*. “Someone once replied with a book by Jordan Peterson, which was a massive ick.”It’s a blunt approach to romance, but Ayo is far
  
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• From vertigo to Van Gogh: 10 things you may have missed at the Winter Olympics

  13-02-2026 19:03 via theguardian.com
  Benoît Richaud is working on the ice with 13 countries, with uniform changes to match, and Korean skiers are having nightmares on waxDomen Prevc set a men’s ski jump world record of 254.5m on the Planica flying hill in Slovenia last March, known for its steepness and long jumps. Germany’s Philipp Raimund sat it out – he suffers from vertigo. “From time to time, I have the issue that my body is reacting without me controlling it,” he said. “It’s lik
  
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• UK mother separated from children for years has ‘draconian’ order overturned

  13-02-2026 19:01 via theguardian.com
  Flawed evidence by psychologist Melanie Gill was used to remove children from woman in 2019A mother who did not see her children for nearly six years after they were taken away by the family courts has been reunited with her son after the flawed evidence used in her case was overturned.An assessment by an unregulated psychologist led to “extraordinary” and “draconian” orders that effectively terminated her relationship with her children, lawyers told the high court. Conti
  
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• Everybody Digs Bill Evans review – absorbing delve into the tumultuous world of the great jazz man

  13-02-2026 19:00 via theguardian.com
  Grant Gee’s film thoroughly inhabits the creative and personal torment experienced by the American pianist – with a terrific supporting Bill Pullman turnThis elusive, ruminative and very absorbing movie presents its successive scenes like a sequence of unresolved chords carrying the listener on a journey without a destination – and is, incidentally, one of those rare films featuring a wonderful supporting turn that does not undermine or upstage the rest. It’s a film about
  
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• Bad Bunny gets first solo UK Top 10 hits thanks to Super Bowl boost

  13-02-2026 19:00 via theguardian.com
  The Puerto Rican star’s album Debí Tirar Más Fotos jumps to No 2, while the song DTMF rises to No 4Despite being one of the most streamed musicians in the world, Bad Bunny had never had a solo UK Top 10 hit – until now.The Puerto Rican musician has attracted a huge number of curious new fans – and jubilant preexisting ones – after last week’s Super Bowl, where he performed in a half-time show described by many people as one of the greatest in NFL histo
  
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• ‘Handmaid’s Tale future’: Reform’s Matt Goodwin sparks outcry with fertility comments

  13-02-2026 18:59 via theguardian.com
  Byelection candidate accused of indulging ‘alt right fantasy’ by suggesting women need ‘biological reality’ checkReform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection has been accused of wanting a “Handmaid’s Tale future” after unearthed YouTube footage revealed he called for “young girls and women” to be given a “biological reality” check.In a clip posted to his personal YouTube channel in November 2024, Matt Goodwin st
  
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• University expels student who called for accountability over Hong Kong fire

  13-02-2026 18:58 via theguardian.com
  Discipline committee decides to terminate Miles Kwan from studies because of ‘multiple acts of misconduct’A Hong Kong university student who had called for accountability over a deadly fire at an apartment complex in the city has been expelled by the school for disciplinary offences.Miles Kwan, a politics student, was detained for two nights by the city’s national security police last year for “seditious intent” after handing out flyers calling for an independent in
  
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• Can we make a plea for 'thank yous' | Letters

  13-02-2026 18:53 via theguardian.com
  Readers respond to Sangeeta Pillai’s objection to Britons’ ‘pointless stream of politeness’I do not agree with Sangeeta Pillai (The hill I will die on: Britons love saying thank you – I think we should ban the phrase, 7 February). I do not like sarcastic or passive aggressive “thank yous”, but what is wrong with thanking people in the service industry for the service they give? I do not believe that it is overworked or meaningless. I love to thank barist
  
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• There’s a cost to going cashless | Letters

  13-02-2026 18:48 via theguardian.com
  Readers respond to Sammy Gecsoyler’s article about his week without bank and contactless cardsI welcome Sammy Gecsoyler’s article (My week of only using cash: could a return to notes and coins change my life?, 10 February) while noting that he is young, employed and living in a city, and that he commented about the older cash-payers seen in charity shops.I am one of the many who live rurally. We rely on access to cash. Our lives still include paying small sums – £2.50 for
  
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• Trump sends second aircraft carrier to Middle East in effort to increase pressure on Iran

  13-02-2026 18:46 via theguardian.com
  USS Gerald R Ford will take about three weeks to sail to region, amid push for Iran to curb its nuclear ambitionsDonald Trump has ordered the world’s largest aircraft carrier to sail from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East in an effort to increase pressure on Iran amid discussions over curbing its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.The USS Gerald R Ford and its supporting warships should take about three weeks to return to the region, where they will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, d
  
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• The Southbank Centre is striking, polarising and now protected | Letters

  13-02-2026 18:46 via theguardian.com
  Francis Bown says its grey concrete and childlike composition expressed the fatalism and despair of the time, while Helen Keats reflects on other brutalist buildsFiona Twycross, the heritage minister, is to be congratulated for finally giving London’s Southbank Centre Grade II listing (Campaigners welcome ‘long overdue’ listing of brutalist Southbank Centre, 10 February).I remember being shocked when I first saw it in the 1960s, but it has become a remarkable symbol of the zeit
  
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• Social inequality is thriving in the hive | Brief letters

  13-02-2026 18:46 via theguardian.com
  Beehive socialism | Ratcliffe’s apology | Tommy Cooper’s dream | Valentine’s Day | Love boat The beehive may not be quite the utopian dream it first appears to be (Letters, 9 February). Worker bees need to be so active during the summer months that they typically only survive for about four to six weeks. Drone bees’ longevity is not much better. The lucky ones may get to service the queen, but die as a consequence. Unsurprisingly, the queen fares much better.
  Tom Challeno
  
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• Arundhati Roy is right, not Wim Wenders – here are eight films that have changed politics

  13-02-2026 18:43 via theguardian.com
  From ‘honour’ killings to nuclear war, some screen works have led directly legislative action – despite what jury head Wenders suggested at the Berlin film festivalShould film festivals be more than just screenings and red carpets? Should they prompt us to think about the role cinema plays in the world? Novelist Arundhati Roy certainly thinks so. She pulled out of the jury at the Berlin festival in protest at jury president Wim Wenders’ claim that films should “stay
  
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• Owen Jones on Palestine Action high court win | The Latest

  13-02-2026 18:27 via theguardian.com
  The co-founder of Palestine Action has won a legal challenge to the home secretary’s decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws. Palestine Action was the first direct action protest group to be proscribed. The decision was widely condemned and was defied by a civil disobedience campaign, during which more than 2,000 people have been arrested. From July last year, being a member of – or showing support for – the group became an offence punishable by up to 14 years in pr
  
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• Winter Olympics thrills, FA Cup magic and the Six Nations – follow with us

  13-02-2026 18:16 via theguardian.com
  Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports Continue reading...
  
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• Deftones review – alt-metal veterans sound exceptionally fresh 38 years on

  13-02-2026 18:08 via theguardian.com
  BP Pulse Live, BirminghamThe US band’s brawny, pit-inciting riffs come laced with blurry waves of distortion, making for music that is oddly reflective and melancholyEarly 00s metal is enjoying a revival, but that alone can’t account for the dramatic surge in commercial fortunes being enjoyed by Deftones. Thirty-one years on from the release of their debut album, they find themselves, as frontman Chino Moreno has put it, “literally bigger than we’ve ever been”. Betw
  
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• NGOs sound alarm as foreign families flee camp holding suspected IS members

  13-02-2026 18:06 via theguardian.com
  Annexe holding 6,000 women and children is now mostly empty, raising security and humanitarian concernsMost of the foreign families of suspected Islamic State fighters have left al-Hawl camp since the Syrian government took control of the facility, prompting security and humanitarian concerns over their whereabouts.About 6,000 women and children from 42 different countries were previously held in the foreigners’ annexe of al-Hawl camp in north-east Syria, which housed some of the most radi
  
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• UK ad agencies undergo their biggest exodus of staff as AI threatens industry

  13-02-2026 18:00 via theguardian.com
  Number of employees declined by more than 14% to 24,963 last year, with fall greatest among younger workersAI is indeed coming – but there is also evidence to allay investor fearsUK advertising agencies had their biggest annual exodus of staff last year, led by younger workers, as artificial intelligence tools threaten to replace workers and force the industry to cut jobs and costs.Staff numbers at creative agencies, which are facing acute pressure from the rollout of AI tools that reduce
  
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