Table of contents for 13 February 2026 in Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol214 | Issue№ 7 Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian’s digital editions in the UK, US and Australia, and the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The weekly magazine has an international focus and four editions: global, Europe, Australia and North America. The Guardian was founded in 1821, and Guardian Weekly in 1919. We exist to hold power to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold liberal and progressive values, to fight for the common good, and to build hope. Our values, as laid out by editor CP Scott in 1921, are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The…

As Keir Starmer fights for his political life, the contest to replace him has already begun. The revelation that a website claiming to launch a leadership campaign for Angela Rayner was briefly published last month has added to speculation about when the prime minister could depart and who might replace him. As the phoney war has gathered pace in recent weeks, allies of Rayner and of the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have been taking aim at each other. “Anyone that has any association with Peter Mandelson should be nowhere near government,” Steve Wright, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, told the BBC last Sunday, in an apparent swipe at Streeting, who has long been close to the former Labour politician and diplomat. Allies of Streeting have hit back,…

On an outcrop above the Chubut River, one of the few to cut across the arid Patagonian steppe of southern Argentina, Sergio Pichiñán points across a wide swathe of scrub-land to colourful rock formations on a distant hillside. “That’s where they dug for uranium before, and when the miners left, they left the mountain destroyed, the houses abandoned, and nobody ever studied the water,” he said, citing suspicions arising from cases of cancer and skin diseases in his community. “If they want to open this back up, we’re all pretty worried around here.” Pichiñán lives in Cerro Cóndor, a hamlet with a sparse Indigenous Mapuche population. The National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) mined uranium here in the 1970s but now it is back in focus as part of President Javier…

The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market. Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu. Here are some of the key points from the second annual report, published last week. It stresses that it is a state-of-play document, rather than a vehicle for making specific policy recommendations to governments. Nonetheless, it is likely to help frame the debate for policymakers, tech executives and NGOs attending at the global AI Impact Summit in…

Wakefield 17 JANUARY 2026 “I’m dying for a wee,” Zack Polanski says as he gets off the train at Wakefield Westgate. Why didn’t you go on the train, I ask? “It was very busy and too many people recognised me on the way to the toilet. I knew I’d never get there for all the conversations, so I came back.” When did it become hard for him to go to the toilet on a train? “2 September, ” he says. “The day I was elected.” At first, I wonder if Polanski is bigging himself up, but over the next couple of weeks I see for myself he is not exaggerating. While Polanski says it’s not, and cannot be, about one individual, in Green circles there is much talk of the…

Monogamy, you may have heard, is in crisis. Fewer people are in relationships, let alone opting to be in one ’til death. And even those who have already exchanged vows seem to be increasingly looking for wiggle room. “Quiet divorce” – mentally checking out of your union, rather than going through the rigmarole of formally dissolving it – is reportedly on the rise, as is “ ethical non-monogamy” (ENM) and opening up a relationship to include other partners. This is borne out by my experience on mainstream dating apps. About one profile in every 10 I come across seems to express a preference for “ENM” or polyamory, or mentions an existing wife or girlfriend. The best you can hope for, if you’re prepared to accept those terms, is that the…

Stuffed with a barrage of road signs, artful modernist chairs and all the tools of her trade, Margaret Calvert’s studio occupies the ground floor of her house in Islington, London. She still draws by hand, using coloured pencils, ink pens and gouaches, echoes of a simpler time when there were neither computers nor gazillions of Pantone colour options. “There was also no such thing as graphic design back then,” she says. “It was just called commercial art.” Only a handful of graphic designers have had a typeface named after them, but Calvert has been inducted into the graphic equivalent of Mount Olympus. The Calvert typeface can be appreciated on the Tyne and Wear Metro. The black M on a yellow background has become a civic and graphic landmark across the…

You wouldn’t know the Lion Pit was there. This overgrown gorge exists quietly, without the sensation its name implies, below a housing estate, within earshot of the M25. This is industrial West Thurrock, where the wild marshes have long since disappeared. As I arrive, a fox strolls up the road, urbanely cool. It darts over the edge and into the gorge. I follow it. Descend into the pit, and you’re down in deep time. Ice age time, to be precise, because this location has produced some of the most important archaeological finds of Britain’s Palaeolithic past. The gorge is, in fact, a Victorian tramway, originally built to transport chalk, but the excavation revealed a superb section of ice age sedimentation. There are glimpses still, high up on the slopes, beneath…

Across 1 Increase in strength or quantity, sometimes economic (7) 8 Footballer’s nightmare (3,4) 9 It goes from the shoulder to the elbow (7) 10 Droopy-eared, silky-coated companion (7) 11 They’re performed on the boards (5) 13 Aspiration unlikely to transpire (4,5) 15 Talk about the old days (9) 18 Roman form of transport? (5) 21 Legs, so to speak (7) 22 Hee-hawers (7) 23 Simple BMX trick (7) 24 The point of the church? (7) Down 1 Not trendy (5) 2 Lively modern ballroom dance (5) 3 Reckless (13) 4 ___monger (6) 5 NZ equivalent to HMRC (6,7) 6 Eco-bid (anag.) – ___-ripper (lowbrow literary genre) (6) 7 Zigzag race (6) 12 Mojito fruit (4) 14 Straddling (4) 15 Stitched once again (6) 16 Protected by a watery trench…

1 EUROPE/US Europe ‘must be bolder with US’, says security report Europe has come to the painful realisation that it needs to be more assertive and more militarily independent from an authoritarian US administration that no longer shares a commitment to liberal democratic norms and values, according to a report prepared by the Munich Security Conference, which was due to take place this weekend. Polling commissioned for the report shows Europeans are increasingly willing to operate without US leadership. The MSC report accuses Trump of having a lust for destruction and of siding with Vladimir Putin. “Most of Europe is watching the United States’ descent into ‘competitive authoritarianism’ with rising concern or even horror, wondering how resilient US democracy really is,” it says. The report suggests European leaders need to be…

Western leaders were bullish when they imposed sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half,” Joe Biden said, a month into the war. “It was ranked the 11th biggest economy in the world before this invasion – and soon it will not even rank among the top 20.” His prediction proved to be off the mark. After the immediate shock of sanctions, Moscow’s military spending surged and the economy boomed. Russia was the world’s ninth biggest economy as of 2025, overtaking Canada and Brazil. However, this year there are clear signs the Russian economy is finally running aground. While a dramatic collapse may be off the cards, the Kremlin faces its most precarious economic position since its…

For days, the 25,000 residents of the Sicilian town of Niscemi have been living on the edge of an abyss. On 25 January, after torrential rain brought by Cyclone Harry, a landslide ripped away an entire slope of the town, creating a 4km-long chasm. Roads collapsed, cars were swallowed and whole sections of the town’s urban fabric plunged into the valley 25 metres below. Authorities have evacuated more than 1,600 people so far. Entire sections of the historic centre are at risk, including 17th-century churches that could slide downhill at any moment. According to geologists and environmental experts, the landslide is the latest sign of how the climate emergency is reshaping the Mediterranean, where there has been indifference to decades of flawed building policies and an out-of-control model of urbanisation.…

From two-person shelters to a 54-bunk fortress, New Zealand’s countryside is scattered with huts that offer weary hikers a safe place to rest. Some huts sit along popular tracks, others are perched in remote valleys in the wilderness, with views ranging from snowy peaks to flourishing bush. But the publicly owned network is too vast for the government to maintain, so ordinary people in New Zealand are filling their backpacks with cleaning supplies and hiking into the hills to clean and maintain the huts. Among them is Suzie Bell, who moved from the UK to New Zealand in 2010. She soon discovered “tramping” – or hiking – and recalls her amazement at first coming across the huts. “The fact that there are these epic huts in the middle of nowhere…

The UK, the UN, EU and rights groups condemned the sentencing of the prodemocracy activist and publisher Jimmy Lai, a British citizen who has been jailed for 20 years in Hong Kong for national security convictions that critics say are politically motivated. Yvette Cooper, the UK foreign secretary, said: “For 78-year-old Jimmy Lai, 20 years is an effective life sentence, following a politically motivated prosecution under a law that was imposed to silence China’s critics. The Hong Kong authorities must end Jimmy Lai’s appalling ordeal and release him to be with his family.” His son Sebastien said Lai feared dying alone while his legal team called him the world’s current highest profile political prisoner. The UN rights chief, Volker Türk, said the verdict was incompatible with international law and must…

THE ALLIED ATTACK ON IRAQ began on 20 March 2003. The Guardian’s 4am edition on Friday 21 March carried the headline : “Land, sea and air assault.” The report was by Julian Borger in Washington and Rory McCarthy in Camp As Sayliyah, on the outskirts of Doha, the capital of Qatar. It opened: “The ground war began in Iraq last night as British and American marines stormed beaches on the Gulf coast in an assault on the south-eastern city of Basra, while explosions lit up Baghdad under a heavy bombardment by cruise missiles.” The first British fatalities came shortly afterwards when a US helicopter crashed in Kuwait, killing all on board. Suzanne Goldenberg’s front-page report from Baghdad revealed that only two hours after the decapitation effort, Saddam Hussein had made…

In Syria, where I worked during the years of Bashar al-Assad’s terror, people were often taken away to torture cells before dawn by masked men. The timing was deliberate. It disoriented them at their most vulnerable, ensuring the torture to come would be even more agonising. The testimonies I recorded from survivors almost always contained the same phrase: “The morning they came for me.” In Iraq, those who spoke against Saddam Hussein – even abroad, even casually – were punished in cruel ways by a vengeful leader determined to crush dissent. In Egypt in 2016, Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Italian academic researching labour unions, was abducted, beaten and tortured to death, it is thought, by president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s security services. His own mother had difficulty recognising his mutilated body.…

Unusually for a political period drama that is not in the English language, runs nearly three hours and peppers its authentic portrayal of a military dictatorship with sight gags and gory shootouts, The Secret Agent has transpired to be quite the awards magnet. Best picture and best actor, for its star Wagner Moura (who recently won a Golden Globe), are two of the four categories in which it will compete at next month’s Oscars. The nominations haven’t yet been announced when I meet Moura in a London hotel room, but it is unlikely they will have turned the head of this seasoned 49-year-old. He has years of experience: he headlined the Elite Squad thrillers, played Pablo Escobar in the streaming hit Narcos, and joined Parker Posey as husband-and-wife assassins in…

Why is everyone talking about fibremaxxing? Chris, by email TikTok-born trends rarely go hand in hand with sage health advice, but that’s not to say upping our fibre – an often-forgotten part of our diets – is a bad idea. “Fibre needed its moment, so this is a good thing,” says dietitian Priya Tew. The non-digestible carbohydrate has two main functions: “There’s insoluble fibre, which is found in things such as wholegrains, brown rice or vegetable skins, and I think about it like a broom,” Tew says, “in that it brushes the system out.” Then there’s soluble fibre (oats, beans, lentils), which she likens to a sponge: “It turns into this gel in your gut, and aids digestion and keeps us regular.” That’s only part of the story, as fibre…

LABOUR Cabinet backing saves Starmer from turmoil Keir Starmer on Monday saw off a challenge to his leadership, telling his MPs he was “not prepared to walk away” from power and plunge the country into chaos. But the prime minister emerged badly damaged from a tumultuous spell that brought his premiership to the brink. The cabinet rallied behind him but, despite public displays of support, several ministers warned he was not out of danger. The chaos unfurled as Starmer fought to reassert control after accepting the resignation of his closest adviser, Morgan McSweeney, amid anger over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the ambassador to the US. Tim Allan, Starmer’s director of communications, also quit. Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, urged Starmer to step down. Angela Rayner, a potential…

There will be little to celebrate when Norway’s King Harald, Europe’s oldest reigning monarch, turns 89 later this month. Two multigenerational crises have rocked the institution, causing its popularity to dip in polls of Norwegians and bringing a public glare that far exceeds that of previous scandals. The king’s step-grandson, Marius Borg Høiby, who joined the royal family when his mother Mette-Marit married the heir apparent in 2001, is standing trial in Oslo charged with 38 counts, including the rape of four women. Crown Princess Mette-Marit, meanwhile, has come under intense scrutiny over damaging revelations in the Epstein files about her years-long relationship with the late sex offender. Last Tuesday, on the first day of his trial that has transfixed Norway, Høiby pleaded not guilty to the most serious charges…

The email landed in Lizzie Johnson’s in-tray in Ukraine just before 4pm local time. It came at a tough time for the reporter: Russia had been repeatedly striking the country’s power grid, and just days before she had been forced to work out of her car without heat, power or running water. “Difficult news ” was the subject line. The body text said: “Your position is eliminated as part of today’s organisational changes,” explaining that it was necessary to get rid of her to meet the “evolving needs of our business”. “I was just laid off by the Washington Post in the middle of a warzone,” Johnson wrote on X. “I have no words.” The Washington Post’s Ukraine correspondent may have been rendered speechless over last week’s move by Jeff…

Say someone brings you a bouquet of flowers. You get a vase and one by one intuitively place each stem inside, allowing an arrangement to unfold on its own. It was on this level, as lead curator Nikhil Chopra suggests, that the Kochi-Muziris Biennale was not curated so much as created. On a stroll through the largest contemporary art biennale in south Asia, creation takes centre stage. Against the backdrop of the coastal city’s lush strip of backwaters and the historic Fort Kochi, works by 66 artists animate Kerala’s grand colonial warehouses and bungalows where art feels less installed than encountered. The idea, as the biennale’s title For the Time Being suggests, is to enter, be present and exit, said multi-disciplinary artist Chopra, who curated the show with artist-led organisation…

Ahead of a 1995 referendum, leaders of Quebec’s independence movement made a string of provocative overtures to foreign governments, including a trip by the province’s premier to France. In a move that outraged anglophone Canada, the mayor of Paris gave Quebec’s Jacques Parizeau a welcome befitting a national leader. Three decades later, reports of a far more covert visit to the US by a group of would-be separatists from the western province of Alberta have provoked a similar backlash. Proto-diplomacy – the act of courting sympathetic countries for support – has often been undertaken by separatist movements around the world, said André Lecours, a professor of political science at the University of Ottawa. But the recently revealed contacts with the Trump administration by members of Alberta’s nascent independence movement had…

Contempt everywhere. From Jeffrey Epstein’s email exchanges to the scandal of Peter Mandelson’s appointment, contempt radiates. Contempt for women and girls, for the law, for the public. A continuum of disdain runs from Epstein on the one end to our political establishment on the other. The other thing that joins them is a restless pursuit of power. Contempt is not a byproduct of that power, it is the point of it. Procuring, trading, objectifying and violating women and girls is the summit of potency for those who already have money, status, respect. To subordinate another human being to your urges, to reduce her in all ways, is to be initiated into a club of super-predators who are above the law. The Epstein emails are a demonstration of how misogyny –…

As the Grammy winners took to the stage in Los Angeles earlier this month, one common thread emerged: many had once walked the halls of a comprehensive school in Croydon, south London. British performers Olivia Dean, who won the gong for best new artist; Lola Young, who took home best pop solo performance for Messy; and FKA twigs, who won best dance/electronic album for Eusexua, all attended the Brit school. As did Raye, who ahead of the ceremony received the Harry Belafonte best song for social change award for Ice Cream Man. Since it opened in the 90s with a focus on the performing and creative arts, the Brit school has become Britain’s most potent launchpad for global stardom. The list of alumni reads like a who’s who of British…

In February of last year, Donald Trump convened the first full cabinet meeting of his second term in the White House. He proudly announced his intention to impose sweeping tariffs on the US’s closest allies in Europe. When asked by a reporter whether Europe might retaliate, Trump sounded confident. “ They can’t,” he said. Pressed to explain, he continued: “We are the pot of gold. We’re the one that everybody wants. And they can retaliate, but it cannot be a successful retaliation.” As Trump saw it, Europe was weak and feckless – a minnow compared with the American economic juggernaut. In the year since, Trump has repeatedly wielded America’s economic might against Europe, from coercing the EU and the UK to swallow lopsided trade deals to pressuring Denmark to sell…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 7 Squid Game uncovered racial manoeuvring (8) 9 Harpo dealt with new undesirable counterpart of widow? (6) 10 Firm’s fine when internally upset (4) 11 Coping with much support, adults bear struggles (10) 12 Trouble held back plant (6)  14 Update me – he wants different wife? (5,3) 15 Ineffectual sort of check on unopened list of options around university (6) 17 Disappear à la goods vehicle? (6)  20 Bombastic outburst breaks cautious guarantee (8) 22 Fruit bar, 50% pineapple (6) 23 Self-governing modus operandi in car intelligence (10) 24 Small piece of timber hit with heavy blows (4)  25 Payment contributing to current allowance (6) 26 Work out tax spanning years, off and on (8) Down 1 Information store starts to defrag and…