Ukrainian president says ‘our unity is the best interceptor against Russia’s aggressive plans’

Rubio insists that the US “do not seek to separate, but to revitalise an old friendship.”

He says “we do not want allies to rationalise the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it.”

“We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker.

We want allies who can defend themselves, so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame.

Huda Ammori calls for proscription to be lifted after high court finds it to be very serious interference with protest rights

The co-founder of Palestine Action has said the ban on the group “massively backfired” and called for its proscription to be suspended after the high court found it to be unlawful.

Three senior judges ruled on Friday that the ban was disproportionate and constituted very serious interference with the rights to protest and free speech.

Luis Muñoz Pinto, 27, who was sent to notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador would like to clear his name after US judge’s ruling

A US federal judge’s order that some of the Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador must be allowed to return to the United States to fight their cases has been greeted with hope and a sense of vindication – but also fear – by one of the deportees.

US district judge James Boasberg ruled on Thursday in Washington DC that the Trump administration should facilitate the return of deportees who are currently in countries outside Venezuela, saying they must be given the opportunity to seek the due process they were denied after being illegally expelled from the US last March.

Boasberg added that the US government should cover the travel costs of those who wish to come to the US to argue their immigration cases.

Claims that agreement is unconstitutional could pose problems in talks with Washington over Greenland

Denmark could face legal action over an agreement that gives the US sweeping powers on Danish soil, over claims it is “unconstitutional” and could pose problems in talks with Washington over Greenland.

The agreement, which was signed under the Biden administration in 2023 and was passed by the Danish parliament last year, gives the US “unhindered access” to its airbases and powers over its civilians.

Pelicot says she wants to look Dominique Pelicot ‘straight in the eye’ over potential abuse of daughter and case of estate agent who was raped and murdered in 1991

Gisèle Pelicot has said she needs to visit prison to look her abusive ex-husband “straight in the eye” after his conviction for drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her in a case that shocked France and the rest of the world.

Pelicot, 73, said she needed “answers” from Dominique Pelicot over the potential abuse of their daughter and the case of an estate agent who was raped and murdered in 1991, which he is under investigation for.

Environmental groups say ‘cynical and devastating’ reversal of endangerment finding has grave implications

The Trump administration has dismantled the basis for all US climate regulations, in its most confrontational anti-environment move yet.

The 2009 endangerment finding determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare and should therefore be controlled by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). By revoking it on Thursday, officials eliminated the legal foundation enabling the government to control planet-heating pollution.

Mayor of Brendola in Vicenza says he has received complaints from residents who live near industrial zones

An Italian town is seeking a crew of sniffers to identify bad smells in its quest to improve air quality.

Bruno Beltrame, the mayor of Brendola, a small town in the northern province of Vicenza, said he began the recruitment campaign for six “odour evaluators” after complaints about “unpleasant smells” from people living in neighbourhoods close to industrial zones.

Annual remembrance in Neauphle-le-Château revives memories of short exile that reshaped Iran, but which locals would rather forget

Every February, members of the Iranian diaspora descend on an abandoned plot of land in an unremarkable street in the French town of Neauphle-le-Château, a 90-minute drive west of Paris.

On the nominated Sunday, a marquee is hastily thrown up and framed photographs of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini hung on the canvas. Green baize is laid on the muddy garden path between posts painted with equal bands of green, white and red, the colours of the Islamic republic’s flag.

His shameful stewardship of a once great title highlights how much we lose when private interest eclipses the public good

Not long after being made Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999, Jeff Bezos told me: “They were not choosing me as much as they were choosing the internet, and me as a symbol.” A quarter of an increasingly dark century later, the Amazon founder is now a symbol of something else: how the ultra-rich can kill the news.

Job cuts in an industry that has struggled financially since the internet came into existence and killed its business model is hardly new, but last week’s brutal cull of hundreds of journalists at the Bezos-owned Washington Post marks a new low. The redundancies that were announced to staff on a video call, the axing of half its foreign bureau (including the war reporter in Ukraine) – not since P&O Ferries have layoffs been handled so badly. Former Post stalwart Paul Farhi described a decision that affected nearly half of the 790-strong workforce as “the biggest one-day wipeout of journalists in a generation”.

Line handily sums up people’s bewilderment at state of world, but it isn’t quite what the Marxist thinker wrote

At a time when geopolitical certainties of old are crumbling away, it has become the go-to quote to make sense of the current moment in all its seeming senselessness. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” is a line attributed to the former Italian Communist party leader Antonio Gramsci.

Over the last two months alone, it has been quoted – and often mangled – by a rightwing Belgian prime minister, a leftwing British political leader, an Irish central banker and in the title of the most recent BBC Reith lecture, given by the author Rutger Bregman.

Epstein files release shows David Stern advised against mentioning ‘being denied previously or criminal charges’

An aide to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor advised Jeffrey Epstein to illegally hide his child sexual abuse conviction to obtain a visa to China, according to the latest Epstein files release.

David Stern, who was a close associate of both Epstein and the then prince, was asked for his help after the disgraced financier’s initial application for a visa was rejected.

For centuries in Ireland lifting huge boulders was a way to test strength and bond communities, says Instagram sensation Indiana Stones

David Keohan surveyed the County Waterford beach and spotted a familiar mound half-buried in sand: an oval-shaped limestone boulder. It weighed about 115kg.

He wedged it loose with a crowbar, wiped it dry with a cloth, dusted his hands with chalk and paused to gaze at the Irish Sea, as if summoning strength from the waves pounding ashore.

Lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving an impasse over much-criticized agency’s funding

The Department of Homeland Security has begun a partial shutdown, after funding for the much-criticized agency expired, with a range of services, including domestic flights and the US Coastguard, now vulnerable to disruption.

The shutdown was all but confirmed on Thursday, after the Senate failed to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the DHS appropriations bill and lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving the impasse.

Ukraine-Russia war high on the agenda at Munich Security Council; France’s Macron says world must not accept Ukraine defeated. What we know on day 1,452

British PM to tell Munich Security Conference that Europe together is ‘sleeping giant’ and will say UK won’t turn away from its allies

Keir Starmer will say the UK and Europe need to step up their commitments to Nato and avoid the risk of overdependence on the US for defence, as he sets out one of the main planks of his foreign policy vision on Saturday.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the prime minister will warn against the idea of the UK turning inwards on security, instead calling for a focus on what he will call the “sleeping giant” of shared European defence capabilities.

A skier from France is also killed with manslaughter investigation to be carried out by mountain rescue police

Two Britons are among three skiers to have been killed in an avalanche in the French Alps.

The pair were part of a group of five people, accompanied by an instructor, off-piste skiing in Val d’Isère, in south-east France. A French national, who was skiing alone, was also killed.

Letter says it is clear the former US ambassador ‘holds critical information’ for their investigation into Epstein

Peter Mandelson has been asked to testify to the US Congress over his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Robert Garcia, ranking member of the committee on oversight and government reform, and congressman Suhas Subramanyam have written to Mandelson requesting he be questioned as part of the investigation into Epstein.

German chancellor rebuts idea of American unilateralism and says ‘democracies have partners and allies’

The US acting alone has reached the limits of its power and may already have lost its role as global leader, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, warned Donald Trump at the opening of the Munich Security Conference.

Merz also disclosed he had held initial talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, over the possibility of joining France’s nuclear umbrella, underlining his call for Europe to develop a stronger self-standing security strategy.

Protests in Buenos Aires, Lindsey Vonn crashes at the Winter Olympics and Bad Bunny performs at Super Bowl LX – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Customers flock to Daoxiangcun to pick up cakes selected by the president during lunar new year tour around city

A Beijing pastry shop visited by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on a lunar new year tour this week has been swarmed by customers hoping to get their hands on Xi-approved sweet treats.

Traffic was brought to a standstill in Beijing’s capital as the president took a tour around the city on Monday and Tuesday.

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 influential cultural assets. It is also a lifeline for millions. “Perhaps Britain’s greatest gift to the world” in the 20th century, as Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, once put it.

But this week Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, announced that the World Service will run out of funding in just seven weeks. Most of its £400m budget comes from the licence fee, although the Foreign Office – which funded it entirely until 2014 – contributed £137m in the last year. The funding arrangement with the Foreign Office finishes at the end of March. There is no plan for what happens next.

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.

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 investigation into a fire that killed 168 people in November.

USS Gerald R Ford will take about three weeks to sail to region, amid push for Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions

Donald 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, dramatically increasing the military firepower available to the US leader.

Annexe holding 6,000 women and children is now mostly empty, raising security and humanitarian concerns

Most 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 radical former members of the extremist group. The foreigners’ annexe was separate from the part of the camp that contained about 20,000 Syrians and Iraqis.

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

Whether you blame the US or the communist regime, there is no doubt that this is an island spiralling into tragedy

Felix Valdés García was nine years old when the revolutionaries came to blow up his trees. It was the verge of the 1970s and his father, Felin, was losing the family farm to Cuba’s 10-year-old communist regime. A push called the Revolutionary Offensive was under way, mobilising the people to sow, clean and harvest 10m tonnes of sugar cane in an effort to make Cuba financially independent. The land needed to be cleared.

For decades the family had nurtured their 800 hectares of rich loam alongside the meandering Sagua River. Eight couples, all related, worked the fields, while Felix and his sister had fruitful adventures among the royal palms, avocado, mango and magnificent ceiba.

Roblox says it has removed account after massacre that left nine people including the shooter dead

The 18-year-old suspect in a high school shooting in British Columbia had previously created a mass shooting simulator on the gaming platform Roblox, it has been revealed.

The simulator, set in what appeared to be a virtual shopping mall, allowed users – represented as Roblox-style avatars – to pick up weapons and shoot other players, 404 Media reported on Thursday.

This article was amended on 14 February 2026. An earlier version said there was more than one attacker in the Christchurch attack and incorrectly named the platform the attacker streamed on as Twitch.

Night at the opera theme for Kors’ autumn-winter collection features elegant gowns draped in opulent coats

Five years ago, Covid prevented Michael Kors celebrating 40 years as a fashion designer, so nothing was going to stop him partying when that figure reached 45. “It’s crazy, I’ve been in fashion 45 years, but I’m only 32,” said Kors, 66.

The sweeping double staircase of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York became the catwalk for a fashion week show dedicated to the chic women of the city. On Kors’ best dressed list is the “amazing, remarkable” Rama Duwaji, the city’s first lady as wife of the mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

The congresswoman was speaking at a panel on populism in her first appearance at the conference

If 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) diplomatic, and what other topics are likely to come up.

“We have had years, decades of complaints by the US about the fact that in Europe, we were not spending enough on defence. That has changed since the summit in The Hague.

The shift in mindset is that yesterday in the room, what we felt, all of us, there was a clear coming together of vision and of unity.

“They want [us] to perceive the Russians as a mighty bear, but you could argue they are moving through Ukraine at the stilted speed of a garden snail, so let’s not fall the trap of the Russian propaganda.”

New border controls require ‘certificate of entitlement’ to attach to second nationality passport that costs £589

Dual British nationals have been warned they may be denied boarding a flight, ferry or train to the UK after 25 February unless they carry a valid British passport.

The warning by the Home Office comes amid scores of complaints from British people living or travelling abroad who have suddenly found themselves at risk of not being allowed into the UK.

If you are affected by the change and want to share your story, email lisa.ocarroll@theguardian.com

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem’s exit as group chair and CEO follows pressure after publication of emails

The boss of the P&O Ferries owner, DP World, has left the company after revelations over his ties with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein forced the ports and logistics company to take action.

Dubai-based DP World, which is ultimately owned by the emirate’s royal family, announced the immediate resignation of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem as the group’s chair and chief executive on Friday.

Some of the world’s most corrupt countries have received huge payments in controversial third-country deportation scheme

The Trump administration has spent more than $1m per person to deport some migrants to countries they have no connection to, only to see many sent back to their home nations at further taxpayer expense, according to a new congressional investigation.

A 30-page report from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats, released on Thursday and shared with the Guardian, details how the US government paid more than $32m to five foreign governments – including some of the world’s most corrupt regimes – to accept approximately 300 third-country nationals deported from the US.

Army in turmoil after Xi Jinping placed top general under investigation for suspected corruption last month

The CIA (the US’s Central Intelligence Agency) has published a Mandarin-language recruitment video aimed at Chinese soldiers, in an apparent attempt to capitalise on the recent instability in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after a series of high-level purges.

The video, published on the CIA’s YouTube channel on Thursday, is titled The Reason for Stepping Forward: To Save the Future.

Bad boy Heathcliff is described as ethnically ambiguous and ‘dark’ in the novel, yet is played by a pretty straightforward white Australian Elordi

Tired of movies for kids? Superhero capes and flatulent animated squirrels? Me too. Fortunately, you and I are in luck. This weekend brings the wide release of Saltburn director Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. As is befitting Fennell’s established style, the movie offers over-the-top sexual titillation (though, crucially, zero nudity) and elaborate production design. Plus, a contemporary pop soundtrack from Charli xcx. A horny film version of a 19th-century novel is as adult-skewing as it gets at the box office these days.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi suck face and stand around in the rain in expensive costumes for over two hours in a movie that Fennell proudly declares a loose translation from the page. It excises a large portion of the book’s story and focuses its eye primarily on the illicit romance between Cathy Earnshaw and swarthy Heathcliff. Crucially, it should be pointed out that Heathcliff is technically Cathy’s foster brother, which allows Wuthering Heights to fit comfortably into one of the most popular genres of online video in the world.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Western Australia and Madagascar struck by destructive winds and rain, while Finland and Norway have coldest January since 2010

Tropical Cyclone Mitchell hit the coast of Western Australia last week. It initially developed as a weak tropical low over the Northern Territory in early February, then tracked eastwards over Western Australia’s Kimberley region and eventually reached the Indian Ocean.

Fuelled by warm waters, Mitchell intensified into a tropical cyclone and moved south-west, hugging the coast of Western Australia and eventually deepened to a category three storm.

Brazil president to receive unprecedented honour at opening night of procession with a giant effigy of him

He is a giant of Brazilian politics and soon he will become a giant of Brazilian carnival too: a 22-metre metal figurine, to be precise.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who rose from rural poverty to become his country’s first working class president, is to receive an unprecedented tribute at the opening night of Rio’s annual carnival procession on Sunday.

SemiCab platform by Algorhythm, previously considered a ‘penny stock’, sparks ‘category 5 paranoia’ across sector

Shares in trucking and logistics companies have plunged as the sector became the latest to be targeted by investors fearful that new artificial intelligence tools could slash demand.

A new tool launched by Algorhythm Holdings, a former maker of in-car karaoke systems turned AI company with a market capitalisation of just $6m (£4.4m), sparked a sell-off on Thursday that made the logistics industry the latest victim of AI jitters that have already rocked listed companies operating in the software and real estate sectors.

From Greenland and Orbán to kicking US bases out of Europe … Guardian Europe editor Jon Henley answered readers’ questions about the continent’s uncertain future

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Ex-PM’s thinktank urges more drilling and fewer renewables, ignoring evidence that clean energy is cheaper and better for bills

A thinktank with close ties to Saudi Arabia and substantial funding from a Donald Trump ally needs to present a particularly robust analysis to earn the right to be listened to on the climate crisis. On that measure, Tony Blair’s latest report fails on almost every point.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) received money from the Saudi government, has advised the United Arab Emirates petrostate, and counts as a main donor Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, friend of Trump and advocate of AI.

Analysis shows that the world is moving closer to China, as Trump’s isolationism rears its head at the United Nations

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has accelerated a profound shift in the global order, according to new analysis.

A report from Focaldata, which analyses UN voting records, reveals how Washington’s “America First” agenda has started to redraw the geopolitical map in favour of China.

Union urges Leonard Blavatnik to scrap Channel 13 deal, saying it is part of Netanyahu plan ‘to capture the media’

Israeli journalists have appealed to a British billionaire not to proceed with the sale of a stake in an Israeli television channel, which they warn would represent a severe blow to the independence of the country’s media.

Sir Leonard Blavatnik, listed by the Sunday Times as the UK’s third richest person, is selling a nearly 15% share in Channel 13, a commercial channel that has run critical news coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in recent years, including investigations into the prime minister’s financial dealings.

European leaders divided over how far to accommodate Trump’s ‘wrecking ball’ politics and foreign policy

US Democrats will use a security summit this weekend to urge European leaders to stand up to Donald Trump, with the continent divided over how to keep the unpredictable US president on side.

Democrats at the annual Munich Security Conference will include some of Trump’s most outspoken critics, such as the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego and the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Kremlin’s repeated targeting of infrastructure has left thousands without heating, reliant on shelters and desperate home hacks

Natalya Pavlovna watched her two-year-old son, Danylo, play with Lego. “We are taking a break from the cold,” she said as children made drawings inside a warm tent. Adults sipped tea and chatted while their phones charged. The emergency facility is located in Kyiv’s Troieshchina district, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Outside it was -18C. There was bright sunshine and snow.

“Russia is trying to break us. It’s deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. Putin wants us to capitulate so we give up the Donbas region,” Natalya said. “Kyiv didn’t use to feel like a frontline city. Now it does. People are dying of cold in their homes in the 21st century. The idea is to make us leave and to create a new refugee crisis for Europe.”

Natalia and Danylo near the ‘resilience point’ in Troyeshchyna district

Destined to a perilous life with no right to an education or to vote, state recognition ‘gives them hope’, campaigners say

Through the decades that the Daulatdia brothel in Bangladesh has existed, children born there have been invisible, unable to be registered because their mothers were sex workers and their fathers unknown. Now, for the first time, all 400 of them in the brothel village have their own birth certificates.

That milestone was reached after a push by campaigners who have spent decades working with Bangladesh’s undocumented children born in brothels or on the street. It means they can finally access the rights afforded to other citizens: the ability to go to school, to be issued a passport or to vote.

The Games could have showcased Milan’s abundant culture and architecture. Instead it has filled the city with gaudy pavilions and gentrification

On a bad day, Milan can feel less like a city than an open-air shopping mall. Since winning the bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2019, the urban landscape has been flattened into construction dust and swamped in corporate messaging. What started as a logo on a tram has gradually evolved into a feverish, full-scale takeover of the public realm. From Piazza del Duomo to the Sforzesco Castle, the city’s most popular spaces have been appropriated by gaudy pavilions, turning Milan into a bizarre spectacle staffed by dancing mascots.

Last Friday, I sat down with friends to watch the opening ceremony, broadcast live from the San Siro, the much-loved brutalist football stadium that has been slated for demolition The reaction in the room was telling. On the one hand, after so much buildup, most people were excited the big moment had finally arrived. But as the proceedings went on and the parade of familiar faces gave way to the peculiar sight of bobble-headed puppets of Rossini, Puccini and Verdi dancing to Italo disco hit Vamos a la playa, the melancholy kicked in. Was this really what these years of disruption had been for? Was this strange, kitsch pop concert worth all the political repression, the public inconvenience, the relentless marketing, the unspecified millions of euros in cost?

Jamie Mackay is a writer and translator based in Florence

Japan’s fisheries agency said the vessel failed to comply with an order to stop. The incident comes weeks after a row between China and Japan over Taiwan

Authorities in Japan have seized a Chinese fishing boat and arrested its captain in a move that is likely to inflame an ongoing diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing.

The seizure, which occurred on Thursday about 170km from the south-western port city of Nagasaki, came after the skipper refused an order to stop for an onboard inspection, according to media reports.

Exclusive: Manufacturers tell European Commission proposed ban would cause unnecessary confusion

More than a dozen food companies have urged the European Commission not to ban the use of words such as “sausage” and “burger” for non-meat products.

Companies including Linda McCarney Foods, Quorn and THIS have signed a joint letter calling on commissioners to “let common sense prevail” ahead of a debate on the proposed ban, which they say would cause “unnecessary confusion” for customers “without helping anyone”.

Canadian authorities seized firearms from the residence approximately two years ago but later returned them

Police have said they were called on multiple occasions to the home of the teenage suspect behind one of Canada’s deadliest school shootings after concerns were raised regarding mental health problems and weapons.

Six people, including a teacher and five children, were killed in a school shooting on Tuesday in the western Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge. About 25 other people were injured and two of them remain in critical but stable condition.

Seamus Culleton has been held for five months despite having valid work permit and being married to US national

An Irish court apparently issued a warrant for the arrest of the Irish man currently embroiled in controversy with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has been ramping up detentions and activity around the United States since last year.

Seamus Culleton has spent five months in US custody and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit in a case that has attracted widespread publicity. His lawyer called him a “model immigrant” with no criminal record.