Nottingham Forest sack manager Dyche after 114 days
Feb. 12th, 2026 12:42 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
bbc_feedNottingham Forest sack Sean Dyche as head coach after just 114 days in charge and are looking for their fourth boss of the season.
bbc_feed'Big asset' Oxlade-Chamberlain has immediate Celtic impact
Feb. 12th, 2026 12:32 ambbc_feedMartin O'Neill hails Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's impact after the former Arsenal and Liverpool midfielder nets a crucial winner on his Celtic debut.
UK economy grows by 0.1% despite uncertainty over Reeves’s budget
Feb. 12th, 2026 07:01 amguardianworldnews_feedONS reports GDP growth increased in final three months of 2025 after 0.1% growth in previous three months
The UK economy expanded by 0.1% in the final three months of last year, according to official data, despite signs that tax speculation around Rachel Reeves’s budget had dampened spending.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the economy picked up a little in the fourth quarter, increasing from a rate of 0.1% growth in the previous three months. Economists had been expecting a rise of 0.2%.
Continue reading...guardianworldnews_feedWhen the Davydenko family woke up at night shivering in their winter coats and hats under several layers of duvets, they knew it was time to move. Systematic Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid had left their 12th-floor flat with no electricity for eight days and heating for almost two weeks. Luckily, the family has a cafe near the city centre they could decamp to
Continue reading...‘The intimate and the epic’: the best way to understand India is to travel by train
Feb. 12th, 2026 07:00 amguardianworldnews_feedBeing a passenger in this vast country is ‘a full-blooded immersion in the local’, says the novelist whose latest protagonist is lured by the romance of the rails
I carry my train journeys in my bones, the juddering song of the Indian rail. Our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, famously likened India to a palimpsest, no layer quite effacing the one that went before. That’s how I think of Indian railway journeys. They inscribe on the mind our fellow travellers, our ways, our thousand languages, our landscapes, our climate.
I think of a rail journey I made in 1998 – that brutal summer of nuclear testing – setting out from Mumbai, in an ordinary three-tier sleeper, for Dehradun, 1,000 miles (1,600km) north. The frazzled train fell off any semblance of a schedule. The voyage grew longer, past 50 hours; hotter, past 50C. I remember the metallic burn on the window grilles; the hot, killing wind that blew through them; the sizzle of water drops splashed on the face when theyhit the uncovered platforms in the heart of the country; the melt of my rubber soles. A fortnight later, having trekked to the mouth of a tributary of the Ganges, completing my expedition from the Arabian Sea to a Himalayan glacier, it was possible to look back on the rail ordeal with affection.
Continue reading...guardianworldnews_feedSpanning eras of conflict and Covid in Lebanon, this irresistible queer coming-of-age tale explores what it means to be truly free
Meet Raja, the narrator of Rabih Alameddine’s new novel. A 63-year-old gay philosophy teacher and drag entertainer, he is a stickler for rules and boundaries, living in a tiny Beirut flat with his octogenarian mother, the nosy and unfettered Zalfa. Invited to a writing residency in the US, Raja will use the occasion to relate his life – that is, if you don’t mind him taking the scenic route. “A tale has many tails, and many heads, particularly if it’s true,” Raja tells us. “Like life, it is a river with many branches, rivulets, creeks and distributaries.”
Winner of the 2025 US National Book Award for fiction, Alameddine’s seventh novel opens and closes in 2023, but the bulk of its action takes place earlier: encompassing the lead-up to and aftermath of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), the Covid pandemic, Lebanon’s 2019 banking crisis, and the Beirut port explosion in 2020. If this timeline makes the book sound like a punishing tour of Lebanese history, I promise it isn’t. More than a war chronicle or national exposé, it is a queer coming-of-age tale, an exploration of the bond between a mother and a son, and a meditation on storytelling, memory, survival and what it means to be truly free. Told in a voice as irresistibly buoyant as it is unapologetically camp, this rule-breaking spin on the trauma plot holds on to its cheer in the face of sobering material. Poignant but never cynical, often dark but never dour, wise without being showy and always eager to crack a joke, this is a novel that insists that the pain of the past need overwhelm neither present nor narrative, identity nor personality. With Sartre as his guide, and a drag fabulousness all his own, Raja shows us how.
Continue reading...guardianworldnews_feedPeople are (rightly) complaining about the records being set for extreme rainfall. Personally, I’m finding it oddly rewarding
Whenever it rained when I was a child, my mother did something that seemed normal at the time yet seems quite mad looking back: she dragged the huge, heavy plants from the living room – the massive bird of paradise; the hulking clivias in their enormous tubs – out on to the patio so they could “enjoy a drink”. She came from the southern hemisphere where water was in short supply and, while she grew depressed every January and hated English winters, she never found rain less than thrilling.
Well, here we are in February after more than a month of what the Met Office is delicately calling the “unusually southerly jet stream”, what Shakespeare neatly immortalised with “for the rain it raineth every day” and what the rest of us have been summarising with the sentiment “is it ever going to fucking stop”? I’m English, so talking about rain and its related conditions occupies 30% of my personality at any given time, but most of us have hit a wall at this point. According to the weather people, 26 weather stations in the UK set new records for the highest-ever January rainfall last month and in Aberdeen they haven’t seen the sun since the iron age.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Looney Tunes: The Day the Earth Blew Up review – still capers after all these years
Feb. 12th, 2026 07:00 amguardianworldnews_feedThe trusty cartoon franchise brings Daffy Duck and Porky Pig back for fresh antics, updated pretty neatly for our times
The Looney Tunes franchise has been regularly resuscitated and rebooted for new generations ever since Warner Bros stopped making the original cartoons back in the 1960s, creating more minutes of screen time than all the Dracula, Wuthering Heights and Jurassic Park remakes and spin-offs combined. Like some fiendish glue from the Acme corporation, the Looney Tunes IP is sticky, resilient stuff: instantly recognisable, easily dubbed into other languages, with codes and quirks peculiarly pleasing to audiences of all ages, and yet easily malleable to fit the comic modes and manners of each age.
This feature, starring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza), feels very 2020s – in that it’s not embarrassed about getting sappy from the off and then resolving its core dramatic problems with a big dose of child psychologist-friendly empowerment lessons about accepting people for who they are and the value of loyalty. Bizarrely for anyone raised on Saturday-morning repeats of the original 1930s-50s toons where the two were usually adversaries, Daffy and Porky are best friends forever here, raised together like brothers by their adoptive parent, Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore), who then promptly carks it in the first 10 minutes after enjoining them to always stick together.
Continue reading...'One in a billion': Dawson's Creek stars lead tributes to James Van Der Beek
Feb. 12th, 2026 05:24 ambbcnewsworld_feedVan Der Beek's co-star Busy Philipps urged people to support the actor's family through an online fundraiser.
China's Xi Jinping makes rare reference to recent military purge
Feb. 12th, 2026 04:24 ambbcnewsworld_feedZhang Youxia, widely seen as Xi's closest military ally, was in January removed from his post.
Russia moves to block WhatsApp in messaging app crackdown
Feb. 12th, 2026 03:57 ambbcnewsworld_feedWhatsApp says the move aims to push its 90 million users in Russia to a "state-owned surveillance app".
Bud Cort, star of cult classic Harold and Maude, dies aged 77
Feb. 12th, 2026 03:24 ambbcnewsworld_feedThe veteran actor of stage and screen appeared in more than 80 films and TV series.
US House votes to overturn Trump's tariffs on Canada
Feb. 12th, 2026 01:42 ambbcnewsworld_feedSix Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to back a resolution that seeks to end the tariffs Trump imposed on Canada last year.
Powerful cyclone kills at least 31 as it tears through Madagascar port
Feb. 11th, 2026 06:48 pmbbcnewsworld_feedMadagascar's disaster management says roads are inaccessible with trees uprooted, power poles down and ninety percent of roofs ripped off.
Mother of fire disaster victims speaks to Swiss bar owners at hearing
Feb. 11th, 2026 02:20 pmbbcnewsworld_feedLeila Micheloud had gone to the court where Jacques Moretti was being questioned over the deadly Crans-Montana fire.
Snow and ice warnings issued for UK after relentless rain
Feb. 12th, 2026 05:22 ambbc_feedAfter weeks of wet and gloomy conditions, there are finally some changes to the weather as Simon King explains.
Thursday news quiz: badges, badgers and bad decisions
Feb. 12th, 2026 06:30 amguardianworldnews_feedTest yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?
Welcome to the Thursday quiz, 15 questions designed to see whether you’re the one asking the questions this week, or whether you’ve been happily swaying along to someone else’s melody – or about to be yeeted out of Downing Street like an inept contestant on The Traitors. You will be tested on topical news, general knowledge and pop culture. There are no prizes, but you can let everybody know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!
The Thursday news quiz, No 234
Continue reading...TV tonight: a fun whodunnit drama in the 60s fashion world
Feb. 12th, 2026 06:10 amguardianworldnews_feedGrantchester’s crimefighting duo tackle a knotty case. Plus, Channel 4 special Not Welcome: The Battle to Stop the Boats. Here’s what to watch this evening
9pm, ITV1
“One spread in Woman’s Own and he thinks he’s David Bailey …” The suspicious death of a self-regarding fashion photographer threatens to derail the grand opening of Cathy Keating and Mrs Chapman’s new boutique in sleepy Grantchester. Thankfully, Rev Alphy and Cathy’s copper husband Geordie are on hand to tackle the knotty case, even if DI Keating seems equally determined to dig further into his holy friend’s family history. Might this cause some friction for the 1960s crimefighting duo? Graeme Virtue
‘We’re on a cliff edge’: the struggle to keep youth services alive in Knowsley
Feb. 12th, 2026 06:00 amguardianworldnews_feedDespite high needs, the Merseyside borough has the most youth work ‘black holes’ of any local authority in England
“I feel like I’m failing because I can’t reach everyone,” said Toni Dodd, the centre manager at Karma in the Community, a youth service in Knowsley on the outskirts of Liverpool.
“I’ll go over and get kids hanging outside the shops, bring them in, but it’s who am I not reaching? It just takes one thing and they’re on that track into crime, into drugs. There are kids going into school on ketamine. I do all I can but it’s so hard to keep it open and running, and you can’t meet the demand there is.”
Continue reading...Rachel Roddy’s recipe for cacio e pepe, the old-fashioned way | A kitchen in Rome
Feb. 12th, 2026 06:00 amguardianworldnews_feedShaken and rubbed in a cloth, this simple Italian classic has never tasted better
Nightclubs, mechanics, restaurants, a theatre, a wholesale butcher and an Apostolic church occupy some of the network of caves and tunnels that, over the centuries, were burrowed into Monte Testaccio, an ancient rubbish dump hill in the middle of Rome that’s made entirely of broken amphorae. Some places make a feature of their situation, revealing sections of pots not dissimilar to the cross section of snapped wafer biscuits, while others have smoothed the curves with plaster.
A few use the caves as originally intended – that is, as natural warehouses offering steady low temperatures and good humidity. In short: the ideal temperature for storing certain foods and wine. Most recently, Vincenzo Mancini, whose project DOL distributes artisanal products from small agricultural realities in Lazio, has taken over a deep cave behind door 93, reclaiming it as an urban ageing space for cheese and cured meat. I visited a few months ago with the chefs from Trullo in London, to do a cheese tasting – and to eat an unexpected cacio e pepe.
Continue reading...EU leaders to clash over ‘Buy European’ push at Belgium summit
Feb. 12th, 2026 06:00 amguardianworldnews_feedLeaders to discuss once-taboo policy of favouring European companies, in attempt to regain economic competitiveness
EU leaders are expected to diverge on whether “Buy European” is an answer to Europe’s waning economic fortunes, at a summit on how to secure the continent’s future in a more volatile global economy.
At a moated castle in the east Belgian countryside, the EU’s 27 leaders will gather on Thursday for a brainstorming session on how Europe can regain its economic competitiveness vis-a-vis the US and China, at a time of economic threats and political turbulence.
Continue reading...guardianworldnews_feedOpening the Berlin film festival, No Good Men blends romance and rebellion, capturing love, humour and female agency in Kabul on the eve of the Taliban’s return
‘Afghanistan’s first romantic comedy” was not the easiest of sales pitches, director Shahrbanoo Sadat admits. But her long shot of a movie landed her the opening slot at the Berlin film festival starting Thursday, sending her in the red-carpet footsteps of the likes of Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers.
Sadat, 35, wrote, directed and stars in the daring, genre-bending film No Good Men, about a budding love affair in a Kabul newsroom on the eve of the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 and the west’s chaotic withdrawal.
Continue reading...guardianworldnews_feedIt is not just this doomed government but the Labour party itself that is disappearing before our very eyes
When he does go, what will the political death certificate give as the true cause of Keir Starmer’s demise? It won’t be the Peter Mandelson scandal, the policy U-turns or the bleak nights at provincial counting centres. All these are symptoms, not the disease. No, what is turning the guy elected just 19 months ago into an ex-prime minister is the slow realisation among ministers, colleagues and voters of one essential truth about the man: there is less to him than meets the eye.
His promises get shrunk in the wash. A green new deal is jettisoned, an Employment Rights Act has a large watering can poured over it, a bold manifesto pledge to end Britain’s feudal leasehold laws suddenly grows caveats.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...The Monocle review – sultry celebration of Paris’s secret Sapphic society
Feb. 12th, 2026 06:00 amguardianworldnews_feedThe Corn Exchange, Newbury
There are quirky, characterful dances, bodies melting together and understated charisma in this story of a famed 1920s lesbian club
Le Monocle was a famed lesbian club, opened by Lulu de Montparnasse in 1920s Paris. Marlene Dietrich visited and Edith Piaf’s mum sang in the cabaret. It was a rare haven where lesbians could live and love freely. It’s also the setting for Rendez-Vous Dance’s latest show, telling this secret Sapphic story.
We see the clientele arrive, in sequins or suits, to the rich honey voice of jazz singer Imogen Banks, whose understated charisma is at the heart of the show. Banks and BSL interpreter Caroline Ryan seamlessly infiltrate the cast, and with the help of James Keane’s atmospheric score, choreographer Mathieu Geffré builds up a world.
Continue reading...Weatherwatch: How frost flowers turn icy landscapes into beautiful gardens
Feb. 12th, 2026 06:00 amguardianworldnews_feedIntricate ice formations can grow on frozen lakes and seas when relatively warm ice is exposed to still air
Intricate fern-like “frost flowers”, said to be painted on windows and windscreens by Jack Frost, are a familiar feature of British winter. In Arctic regions there is an even prettier three-dimensional version.
These frost flowers are typically 3-4cm across and whole gardens of them grow on frozen lakes and seas. Like the window version, they are the result of ice crystals growing in a slow, orderly fashion.
Continue reading...