As the public rejoice at shedding weight, the likes of Wegovy seem to be controlling other bad habits – in particular drinking to excess
‘My alcohol intake has plummeted,” says Hannah. “Since taking Wegovy I hardly ever crave a drink when I get home. When I used to go out with friends, I was nearly always the last one standing; now I’m leaving two hours before closing.”
In her early 30s, the Londoner is among the rapidly growing number of people turning to weight loss injections such as Wegovy and Mounjaro. The results have been dramatic – she has shed four stone (25kg) in little over six months.
Is there room for a more exploratory – rather than confrontational – dialogue?
The question I grew up as the scapegoat in a toxic family where my mother played her children off against each other. I went no-contact with her a few years ago and keep my interactions with my siblings to a minimum.
I am now the divorced mother of four young adults, all living away from home. I have a male relative who, with his partner, has become close to two of my children. Initially I welcomed this, but it has increasingly come at some cost to me. The relative has been expressing astonishment that a person who is such a mess (me, apparently) could have brought up such wonderful children. By doing that, they are trying to cause a rift between myself and the children. They have also become very friendly with my ex-husband, despite the latter never being interested in cultivating any sort of relationship with them until I ended the marriage.
Striking image will be unveiled at National Portrait Gallery in March, as part of a major exhibition of the Norwegian master’s portraits
At first glance, it is a striking portrait by Edvard Munch, painted in 1892, a year before the Norwegian master was to create his most famous masterpiece, The Scream.
But peer closely at the man’s sleeve along the bottom edge and two embracing, ethereal figures in a mysterious moonlit landscape are revealed.
California’s wines are expensive, but choose carefully and you can still find a bottle that packs a real flavour punch
The Path Chardonnay, California, USA 2022 (from £10.99, brayvalleywines.co.uk; kwoff.co.uk; darcywine.co.uk) The last time I wrote about wine from the United States after a certain person won a certain election back in November, I complained about the lack of decent quality wines available from the country at prices under £20. A couple of weeks before said reality star/criminal took up residence in The White House TV room for another four years earlier this week, I attended a tasting of about 140 wines from California hosted by The California Wine Institute and UK trade magazine The Wine Merchant – a tasting that confirmed that the US does indeed have a higher average starting point for interesting wine, but that it nonetheless can offer good value in that £10 to £20 bracket if you look hard enough. The Path Chardonnay is a case in point, a sunny, ample, peachy fruit-filled, but fresh and balanced example of a white grape variety that is one of California’s biggest strengths.
Haarmeyer Zinfandel, Lodi, California, USA 2022 (£19, allywines.com) For properly thrilling chardonnay that matches the best of the variety’s homeland in Burgundy or other modern classic chardonnay regions such as Victoria in Australia, there is something of a premium to pay – but no more (considerably less in fact) than you would expect if you were upgrading from a simple, regional Burgundy (labelled Bourgogne blanc) to a swanky Meursault or Montrachet. Certainly, in the context of the world’s very best chardonnays, you could build a case for saying the savoury, chiselled, luminously bright and energetic Arnot-Roberts Watson Ranch Chardonnay, Napa Valley 2022 is good value for its £48.50 price tag at robersonwine.com. The grape variety that I think generally offers the best dollar-for-dollar value in California, however, is the state’s very own zinfandel, which can come in a wide variety of winemaking styles including Haarmeyer’s light and juicy red, which has something of Beaujolais in its light-and-juicy feel and the easy, chillable drinkability of its tangy red berry flavours.
The newly inaugurated US president told reporters on board Air Force One that he and Starmer ‘get along well’ despite their divergent political views
President Donald Trump has praised British prime minister Keir Starmer’s leadership, telling reporters on Saturday his UK counterpart has “done a very good job” and the two leaders have a planned call in the next 24 hours.
The newly inaugurated US president told reporters on board Air Force One that he and Starmer “get along well” despite their divergent political views.
The small port city of Gwadar has a huge new airport funded by China, but local suspicion of Beijing’s true intentions threatens to wreck the project
As the first flight touched down on the fresh tarmac at Gwadar, it was hailed by Pakistan’s government as a step towards “progress and prosperity”. The newly opened airport – now the largest in the country – built in Pakistan’s troubled Balochistan province was “a symbol of the cooperation between Pakistan and China”, according to defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.
Yet the optics of the event told another story. As it unfolded on 20 January, the surrounding city of Gwadar was put under a draconian security lockdown. And while several senior Pakistan government and military figures were present, their Chinese government counterparts were noticeably absent – even though it was China footing the $230m bill for the airport.
Sundance film festival: Cherien Dabis’s drama, spanning nearly 75 years in one Palestinian family, is a heart-wrenching, if sometimes blunt, portrait of displacement
All That’s Left of You, Palestinian American film-maker Cherien Dabis’s wrenching portrait of intergenerational trauma, begins its 75-year tale of displacement as the great epics do, in medias res.
A teenage boy chases a friend through the narrow streets of Nablus, a blur of surefooted youth amid the sun-bleached, nobly dilapidated homes. In a series of kinetic, precise shots, Dabis sketches a vibrant map of the occupied West Bank in the late 80s, where humiliation and hope coexist in a dangerous pressure cooker. Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) bounds from an auntie’s kitchen to a bustling fruit market to a protest against Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint; he summarily joins the chant of intifada (“uprising”). Then, the soldiers open fire.
All That’s Left of You is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
Comments follow an announcement from newly inaugurated US secretary of state Marco Rubio that he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days. What we know on day 1,068
The US has not stopped military aid to Ukraine after newly sworn in US secretary of state Marco Rubio announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday. The Ukrainian leader did not clarify whether humanitarian aid had been paused. Ukraine relies on the US for 40% of its military needs. “I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” he said at a press conference alongside Moldovan president Maia Sandu.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to offer coal to Moldova, which is gripped by an energy crisis after flows of Russian gas through Ukraine stopped in the new year. Moldova accuses Moscow of refusing to send gas by other routes. “Russia’s latest move has been to orchestrate an energy crisis,” Sandu told reporters. The Moldovan president said energy prices had shot up in areas controlled by her government, and the situation was worse in a region held by pro-Russian separatists who relied on Russian energy and were subject to daily power cuts.
US president Donald Trump could fulfil his promise to end the war in Ukraine, but only if he includes Kyiv in any talks, Zelenskyy said on Saturday. Zelenskyy also said the terms of any deal that might arise under Trump were still unclear – and might not even be clear to Trump himself – because Russian president Vladimir Putin had no interest in ending the war. Putin has said he is ‘ready for negotiations” on the war in Ukraine with Trump and suggested it would be a good idea for them to meet.
Zelenskyy said he hopes Europe and the United States would be involved in any talks about ending the war. He told reporters on Saturday that Ukraine also needed to be involved in any discussions on ending the war for such negotiations to have any meaningful impact. “As for what the set-up of the talks will be: Ukraine, I really hope Ukraine will be there, America, Europe and the Russians,” Zelenskyysaid, later clarifying that no framework had been established.
The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, has rejected calls for his resignation after tens of thousands demonstrated against his government’s policy shift closer to Russia. About 60,000 people protested in the capital, Bratislava, on Friday and approximately 100,000 turned out for rallies in cities across the country, the largest demonstrations since Fico returned to power in 2023.
Three civilians were killed on Saturday in shelling in the Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Moscow-installed governor Vladimir Saldo said. He urged the residents of Oleshky, which sits close to the frontline in southern Ukraine, to stay in their homes or in bomb shelters.
Russia attacked Ukraine with two missiles and 61 Shahed drones overnight Saturday, said officials. Ukrainian air defences shot down both missiles and 46 drones, a statement from the air force said. Another 15 drones failed to reach targets due to Ukrainian countermeasures. The downed drones caused damage in the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Khmelnytskyi regions.
Russia also struck Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region with drones causing casualties and damage, local authorities said on Saturday. Drones targeted the city’s Shevchenkivskyi, Kyivskyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts, said mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said the number of victims was still being determined, while Kharkiv’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said three people, two women and a man, were injured in the strikes.
Finding suggests the agency believes totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely, but assigns a low degree of confidence to the conclusion
The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the coronavirus pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory, according to an assessment released on Saturday that points the finger at China even while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion.
The finding is not the result of any new intelligence, and the report was completed at the behest of the Biden administration and former CIA director William Burns. It was declassified and released on Saturday on the orders of president Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn in as director on Thursday.
Sundance film festival: A primary school teacher in Russia pushes back on cruel nationalist propaganda in a fascinating and daring look at everyday encroachment
Pavel Talankin is, by his own admission early in the extraordinary documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, not the person you or he would pick to be the hero of the story or to take on an oppressive regime. To stand up to Vladimir Putin takes a considerable amount of courage and a not inconsiderable amount of resources; Pasha, as he is known to his students, is a teacher at a small primary school in Karabash, a mining town in the Ural mountains remarkable only for its renowned levels of toxic waste, and would have been more or less content to remain the titular nobody far from Moscow. He loves his hometown, its smokestacks and Soviet buildings, but most of all loves the curiosity and enthusiasm of his students, all filmed by Talankin in his capacity as school videographer.
But Talankin has always cut a bit of a non-conformist streak – he is the one teacher with a Russian democracy flag in his classroom, a safe haven for the school’s punks and artsy weirdos, or anyone with a desire to speak freely. He is openly alarmed, to the extent one can be, when the school begins enacting Vladimir Putin’s new “patriotic education policy” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He keeps doing his job, filming the new blatantly nationalist curriculum, the lies about the necessity of invasion told as fact, the forced military drills and oaths of loyalty forced on initially bored and apathetic children.
Mr Nobody Against Putin is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
Official cites review of course curriculum at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where new recruits get basic training
Donald Trump’s order halting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has led the US air force to suspend course instruction on a documentary about the first Black airmen in the US military, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, a US official said on Saturday.
The famed Black aviators included 450 pilots who fought overseas in segregated units during the second world war. Their success in combat helped pave the way for Harry Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces in 1948.
Full restoration could take days, says energy official, with conditions still difficult and more yellow alerts issued
About 40,000 people in Scotland remained without electricity on Saturday night in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn and some may have to wait several days before it is restored, according to an energy distribution director.
As of 4pm on Saturday, about 28,000 Scottish Power customers were without power, while as of 7.30pm, about 12,000 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) customers were also without power.
Signing gave away Chelsea’s opening goal in shaky start
Enzo Maresca defends Robert Sánchez after mistake
Pep Guardiola defended Abdukodir Khusanov after Manchester City’s new £33.8m defender endured a torrid start to his debut in Saturday’s win over Chelsea, the manager saying this “is the best lesson you can take”.
The 20-year-old’s weak header back to Ederson led to Noni Madueke’s third minute opener, and he was booked soon after for fouling Cole Palmer.
Irritable and resentful, the Spurs manager is not unique in being unnerved by a remorseless league where every game is a test
Long before he began experimenting with the mind-expanding potential of psychedelic mushrooms, Timothy Leary was a psychologist. In 1957, he came up with the interpersonal behaviour circumplex, which sought to represent personality using two dimensions: power and love. While relationships on the power axis were oppositional – that is, dominance inspires submission and vice versa – on the love axis they are reflexive: hostility inspires hostility and cooperation inspires cooperation.
This was subsequently developed by Emily and Laurence Alison at the University of Liverpool. In their 2020 book Rapport, they use animals to express the four basic characteristics: a lion for control, a mouse for capitulation, a T-Rex for assertiveness and a monkey for cooperation. None of these are intrinsically good or bad: the lion could be inspiring and supportive, but he could also be patronising or dictatorial. And nor are many people represented by a single animal.
Christiane Amanpour has spent four decades as a celebrated journalist and war reporter. With disinformation rampaging through the media, she talks about the threat of technocracy, Donald Trump’s second term – and why facts are more important than ever
Just occasionally, in more than 40 years of reporting the world’s troubles, Christiane Amanpour has forced herself to step away and pause for breath. One of those moments for rebooting came over Christmas and new year, when she took a holiday in South Africa. I met her on the day she got back to work at the CNN offices in London, from which she makes her nightly news programme, and Saturday’s The Amanpour Hour. There is a powerful sense of her team buckling up for the tumultuous year ahead. “What I cover is the international reverberations of what America does in the world and what might be coming back at America,” she says. “The good, the bad and the ugly.”
Amanpour’s choice of holiday destination was, inevitably, not unrelated to the immediate challenges of that role as kickstarted by the second inauguration of President Trump this week in Washington DC. Before that she wanted to holiday somewhere, she suggests, that represented a robust spirit of hope. She had always regretted missing out on perhaps the greatest good news story of our lives: the release of Nelson Mandela from 27 years in prison and his subsequent rise to power. “I was covering all the really bad stories, the Rwanda genocide, the Bosnia war,” she says. “And I’ve always felt a little sad I missed that, because I do strongly believe that good things happen in this world. I don’t ever want to only focus on the bad. South Africa is obviously still a huge work in progress, but it was just phenomenal to see it, even as a holiday.”
Too dark, too cold – winter’s charms aren’t as obvious as summer’s brassy joys. But for Robert Macfarlane, Alice Oswald, Poppy Okotcha and others, this is a rich season. Here, they offer ways to lean into it, with an introduction by Jeanette Winterson
Steel-lit days. Charcoal evenings. Dark nights.
Winter is part of the cycle of life. Every season brings us something different. Something to celebrate. And that includes winter.
With famous parents, Roman Kemp always knew people would make certain judgments about him – but he never guessed he’d become an advocate for mental health. Here, he talks about radio, tattoos – and the event that changed his life
I apologise if you hear any buzzing,” says Roman Kemp, the 31-year-old radio and television presenter, leaning back in his chair. I’ve done interviews in some strange scenarios, including a sauna (twice), but this is a new one. Kemp, who is in Northern Ireland filming the BBC One quizshow The Finish Line, is video-calling me on his day off from the tattoo parlour. As he holds the phone to his face, an artist is at work inking a portrait of Thierry Henry on to his shin. “On my right leg I want to try to build as many of my favourite footballers of all time,” Kemp explains. “So I started out with original Ronaldo and we’re currently doing Thierry, and then we’ll add from there. So it’s a work in progress but yes, as I’ll show you… Very much happening.”
Kemp spins the camera, just in time to catch the needle tracing his skin. Isn’t that quite painful? “Once you go past a certain amount of tattoos, you earn the right to use numbing cream,” he replies. “When I first started having them, especially some of the bigger ones, a lot of parlours want you to have the full experience. And I just suffered for many hours, and hated it. I’m too much of a wuss to do it any more to myself. I refuse to sit here in pain.”
Nigerian officials say a Boeing 787-800 belonging to United Airlines was forced to make an emergency return last Friday
Multiple people were injured on a United Airlines flight heading from Lagos, Nigeria, to Washington DC last week.
In a statement released on Friday, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria said that a Boeing 787-800 belonging to United Airlines was forced to make an emergency return last Friday.
David Armitage, resident in Thailand since 2004 death of Lamduan Armitage, detained by immigration officials
The British husband of Lamduan Armitage, a Thai woman whose body was found in a stream in the Yorkshire Dales in 2004, has been detained by police in Thailand.
David Armitage, a university lecturer, has been detained in Bangkok by immigration officials after an investigation into his visa.
According to the BBC, Armitage, who has a resident visa, was detained at his house in Kanchanaburi on Thursday before being transferred to the Bangkok immigration detention centre while the country’s authorities prepare to revoke his visa.
Tycoon tells 4,500 people at campaign event in Halle to be proud of German culture in speech via video link
Elon Musk made a surprise appearance during Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) election campaign event in Halle in eastern Germany on Saturday, speaking publicly in support of the far-right party for the second time in as many weeks.
Addressing a hall of 4,500 people alongside the party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, Musk spoke live via video link about preserving German culture and protecting the German people.
In an exclusive interview the Chelsea winger says they can still improve despite not losing under Sonia Bompastor as the reigning champions prepare to face Arsenal on Sunday
Guro Reiten pulls a face when asked about Chelsea’s developing rivalry with Arsenal that looks like a mixture of distaste and wryness. The clubs meet at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, with the opportunity to make statements.
For Arsenal, there is a chance to extend their unbeaten run under new manager Renée Slegers, close the gap on the rampant league leaders from seven points to four and ensure there is a title race. For Chelsea, their invincibility under Sonia Bompastor is on the line. They could go 10 points clear of the Gunners.
Source says: ‘The Danes are in crisis mode’ after US president’s call with prime minister Mette Frederiksen
Donald Trump had a fiery phone call with Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen over his demands to buy Greenland, according to senior European officials.
Speaking to the Financial Times, officials said that Trump, then still president-elect, spoke with Frederiksen for 45 minutes last week, during which he was described to be aggressive and confrontational about Frederiksen’s refusal to sell Greenland to the US.
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