↩ Accueil

Vue lecture

Canada calls Trump metals tariffs ‘totally unjustified’; Bank of England’s Mann sees inflation threat easing – business live

Canada says response to 25% aluminium and steel tariff will be ‘clear and calibrated’; Hong Kong to file complaint with World Trade Organization over tariffs imposed on city

It’s always worth noting when a bird changes its plumage. Shedding one coat for another can be both attractive and informative – alerting us to a change in conditions (that’s enough Spring Watch, Ed).

And as in ornithology, also in monetary policy. Last week, Catherine Mann – previously a hawkish Bank of England policymaker opposed to large interest rate cuts, emerged as a dove!

“Demand conditions are quite a bit weaker than has been the case — and I have changed my mind on that,

“To the extent that we can communicate what we think are the appropriate financial conditions for the UK economy, a larger move is a superior communication device, in my view.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Nick Iwanyshyn/AP

© Photograph: Nick Iwanyshyn/AP

Campaigner for migrants in Libya says his phone was targeted in spyware attack

Italy-based David Yambio, a critic of Meloni government, helps ICC find evidence of abuse of detainees in Libya

An Italy-based human rights activist whose work supports the international criminal court in providing evidence about cases of abuse suffered by migrants and refugees held in Libyan detention camps and prisons has revealed that Apple informed him his phone was targeted in a spyware attack

David Yambio, the president and co-founder of Refugees in Libya, has been a critic of the Italian government’s migrant pact with the north African country and its recent controversial decision to release Osama Najim, a Libyan police chief wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for suspected war crimes, including torture, murder, enslavement and rape. Yambio, 27, was an alleged victim of Najim’s abuses during his detention at the notorious Mitiga prison near Tripoli.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

© Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

‘We’ll be brothers forever but business is business’: Sam Burgess on family, infamy and fears for Luke Littler

The Warrington head coach reflects on high expectations, learning from pain and a Super League opener against Huddersfield and his younger brother Thomas

“A lot of pain or adversity can be a great foundation for future success,” Sam Burgess says as we track back through the dark times, as well as the glory years, which have shaped him. Burgess, the once imperious rugby league player from Yorkshire who earned searing fame and then infamy in Australia, is about to start his second campaign as the head coach of Warrington Wolves.

Having guided Warrington to third place in Super League and to the Challenge Cup final last season, Burgess aims to end the club’s 70-year wait for another championship. It is a sign of the calm hope he feels now that the 36-year-old can reflect on the tumult and strife he has endured – starting with the death of his father from motor neurone disease when Burgess was a teenager to playing with a shattered cheekbone and fractured eye socket while inspiring the South Sydney Rabbitohs to their first NRL title in 43 years in 2014.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

‘Why can’t it be us?’: Exeter target FA Cup shock and fly fan-ownership flag

League One side with rich cup history are proud to be doing it their own way before Nottingham Forest’s visit

A Tottenham team of Hoddle, Ardiles and Archibald were the opponents that stopped Exeter City the last time the Devon club went beyond the third round of the FA Cup. A quarter-final defeat by the eventual winners 44 years ago came after the scalps of Leicester and Newcastle in earlier rounds. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” says Nick Hawker, the chairman of Exeter City Supporters’ Trust – which owns the club – since 2017 and a fan for much longer. “The thrill of it. Going to White Hart Lane was just amazing.”

In the intervening decades Exeter have encountered near-extinction but also enjoyed other noteworthy Cup occasions, with the fourth-round visit on Tuesday of Nottingham Forest, third in the Premier League, the next in line. Nuno Espírito Santo follows Alex Ferguson and Jürgen Klopp in taking teams to St James Park.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

Dirty water and endless wars: why cholera outbreaks are on the rise again

The number of cases globally has surged since 2021, as war and the climate crisis pile pressure on vaccine supplies

Cholera, the scourge of the Victorian era, is staging a comeback fuelled by conflict and climate breakdown. In 2024, there were 804,721 cholera cases and 5,805 deaths, according to the World Health Organization, a near 50% increase from the 535,321 cases and 4,007 deaths in 2023. Numbers have been surging since 2021 and scientists say official figures are probably very conservative. They estimate between 1.3m and 4m cases, and a range of 21,000 to 143,000 deaths from cholera globally each year.

Already in 2025, six countries – Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Angola and Ghana – have requested doses from the global stockpile of cholera vaccines to help contain outbreaks.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Florence Miettaux

© Photograph: Florence Miettaux

Our four dogs sleep on the bed – so I haven’t had sex with my wife in 10 years

My partner doesn’t seem to care about our sex life or my needs as her husband. Should I have an affair?

I haven’t had sex with my wife for more than 10 years. We have four dogs and she has them sleep in the bed; I told her I can’t sleep with the dogs and she didn’t do anything about it. She has me sleeping in another room by myself.I don’t know what to do and I feel so bad because I don’t get what I need. I have contemplated finding another woman and having a private affair, but I don’t know what to do.

If we allow someone to mistreat or disrespect us once there is a high likelihood that it will happen again, and if we continue to allow it again and again, it will escalate. You have put up with this situation for far too long, and if you really want change you will have to address it urgently and firmly. It is not necessary to be harsh or create a big fight. Quietly and clearly state how you feel and ask for change. An example would be: “I care about you and there are many things I enjoy about our life together. However, I am extremely unhappy that we are neither sleeping in the same bed or making love … and I need that to change. I need you to prioritise me as your husband. If there are impediments to you wanting to sleep with me or to you enjoying sex with me I need to understand what they are so we can try to become intimate again. I’m sorry, but I cannot tolerate being replaced in your bed by our dogs … I need you to change this now.” Undoubtedly, there will be reasons and excuses. You need to listen to these things calmly then repeat them back to her: “OK, I heard you say that …” Hopefully this method will give you enough mutual understanding to move forward, but, if you reach an impasse, insist on joint therapeutic help.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.

Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer. Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

Continue reading...

© Composite: Guardian Design; Miljko; SilviaJansen/Getty images

© Composite: Guardian Design; Miljko; SilviaJansen/Getty images

Plight of Reading shows how football fans’ dreams can easily spiral into a death vortex | Jonathan Liew

The Dai Yongge Show continues: eight seasons and counting at Reading. It is the soap opera no network can seem to cancel

And by our tennis balls shall you know us. And by our clown outfits and face paint shall you know us. And by our carefully worded media releases and painstaking analysis of tribunal documents shall you know us. And by the gigantic billboard we hired outside the train station shall you know us. Anyway, what we’re saying is: you know us. As for the next step … yeah, we’re working on that part.

“Ripped apart while the world watches” reads the aforementioned billboard outside Reading station. But is the world actually watching? Beyond the RG postcodes it was hard to identify too many concentric ripples from the news last week regarding another mysterious takeover bid for the club apparently falling through. It’s hard to drum up much interest in A Thing Not Happening, particularly when the transfer window is closing and the big beasts of the Premier League demand to be talked about at all times.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Warren Little/Getty Images

© Photograph: Warren Little/Getty Images

Georgina Hayden’s recipe for spiced mussels in coconut

A Thai-style mild mussel curry to whip up on a week night

This quick, post-work way of cooking mussels is greater than the sum of its time. It takes less than 30 minutes from start to finish, yet still manages to achieve an intense depth of flavour. Serve it how you wish, but I think a fresh, crusty baguette is key, to mop up all those juices, as is a sturdy napkin to tuck into your collar to preserve your clothes from the almost inevitable splash-back. And candles, because mussels always feel romantic to me, even if it is just a regular weeknight.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ola O Smit/The Guardian. Food styling: Aya Nishimura. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Allegra D'Agostini.

© Photograph: Ola O Smit/The Guardian. Food styling: Aya Nishimura. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Allegra D'Agostini.

With a new hit film, Netflix has reduced disabled lives to feelgood fodder – and got the facts shockingly wrong | Archie Bland and Ruth Spencer

This story about a child with cerebral palsy is badly misleading – and a slap in the face for families like ours

Amazing news from Netflix: there is an extraordinary treatment available for children with very severe neurological disabilities, one that, given the appropriate level of parental gumption, will grant kids written off as hopeless cases the ability to walk and talk. The medical establishment, populated as it is with hopeless dinosaurs, hasn’t yet absorbed its full significance, and you won’t find it on the NHS, or through mainstream providers in the United States or Europe. But quietly, almost magically, it is already changing lives.

The device that provides this treatment, the Cytotron, is the subject of the Mexican movie Lucca’s World, the No 1 non-English-language film on the world’s biggest streaming platform last week. It follows one family – led by a remarkable mother, Bárbara Anderson, on whose memoir the movie is based – as they turn every stone in pursuit of a better life for their little boy. And as soon as Anderson learns about the Cytotron, there is very little room for doubt about its remarkable properties. By “stimulating the damaged brain cells in order for them to become more active and create new connections”, the device can apparently restore the functions that have been destroyed by Lucca’s severe cerebral palsy. “The Cytotron will mark a before and after in the history of medicine,” we learn. It’s “scientifically supported”. Yes, it’s eye-wateringly expensive – $50,000 for a single course of treatment in the movie – but that’s because it’s unprecedented.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Maria Medina/Netflix

© Photograph: Maria Medina/Netflix

‘Each of us is afraid’: Guinea’s junta leader tightens grip as opposition lies low

Mamady Doumbouya has led the country since a 2021 coup. Some fear he has no intention of relinquishing power

Across Guinea’s capital, Conakry, billboards and posters proclaim the people’s loyalty to the vision of Mamady Doumbouya, the general who has led the west African country since a coup in September 2021.

The iconography is omnipresent. Along the Fidel Castro highway, the posters hang on poles that rise out of piles of rubbish. Near the grand mosque, one poster is accompanied by the gnomic inscription “Your silence is precious, your eyes reassuring”. Another, bearing an image of him shaking Xi Jinping’s hand at a meeting in Beijing in September, has the caption: “Welcome back Mamady Doumbouya, our pride.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Cellou Binani/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Cellou Binani/AFP/Getty Images

Shot, poisoned and beaten to death: why leopard killings are soaring in Pakistan

A wave of incidents threatens the survival of the species in the country, say conservationists

Inside the Pakistan Museum of Natural History, in Islamabad, two taxidermists work on a leopard skin. They scrape away at the remaining flesh and sprinkle the underside with boric acid powder. It’s difficult to look away from the two holes where the leopard’s eyes should be.

“We ask conservation groups, if they find any dead specimen, to relay it to us so that we can preserve it and make it available to young researchers,” says Muhammad Asif Khan, the museum’s director of zoological science. “This particular leopard died from gunshot wounds in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir region,” he says.

Clockwise from main image: taxidermists at the Pakistan Natural History Museum work on a leopard specimen that was shot in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir region; Asif Khan holds a piece of shot; a bullet hole or shot wound can be seen in the pelt

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ana Norman Bermudez

© Photograph: Ana Norman Bermudez

Looking at Women, Looking at War by Victoria Amelina review – in memory of the Ukrainian novelist who catalogued war crimes

A powerful, posthumous collection of diary entries, interviews, war reports and poetry has the late author’s tragic absence at its heart

When Russia attacked Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Victoria Amelina was a novelist and children’s writer, and the founder of a literary festival staged in New York, a town in the Donetsk region. But the invasion, of course, changed everything. What purpose did fiction have now, Amelina wondered? Wanting fervently to be useful, in the next weeks and months she worked in a humanitarian warehouse in Lviv, found vital medicines for those who needed them, and helped to evacuate both civilians and their pets from the most dangerous corners of the country. Most significantly of all, she volunteered as a war crimes researcher, training with a Kyiv-based NGO called Truth Hounds.

If such work was horrifying, it was also inspirational. Soon, she was thinking of a different kind of literary project: a book about the women who, like her, were taking huge risks to document the war. She would write this book in English, and in it she would deploy a purposeful jumble of interviews, diary entries, reports from field missions, Ukrainian history and even poetry. Such a book, she believed, wouldn’t only play its small part in holding the perpetrators accountable; one day, it would help to give “lasting peace a chance”. For a year, she worked on it, even as she performed all her other roles. On 27 June 2023, however, she was in a pizzeria in Kramatorsk in Donetsk when it was hit by a Russian missile. Sixty-four people were injured and 13 killed. Amelina died in hospital a few days later.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Photo: Daniel Mordzinski/Daniel Mordzinski/Hay Festival

© Photograph: Photo: Daniel Mordzinski/Daniel Mordzinski/Hay Festival

The Sloth Lane review – slow-cooking tale of rebellious teen sloth in vegan animal paradise

A teenager who works in the sloth’s family restaurant seeks life in the fast-food lane in this bland animated adventure

The idea of a kids’ animation about sloths – those shaggy balls of furry happiness with mellow stoner smiles – feels like a winner. But, disappointingly, the sloths in this kids’ animation don’t look much like sloths, nor do they seem to act anything like their real-life counterparts. The movie is the latest from The Tales from Sanctuary City, an Australian franchise set in a vegan metropolis where animals have learnt to coexist in harmony. Like the earlier movies in the series, it’s perfectly adequate for little kids but with little character of its own and a straight-to-download-style blandness.

Essentially, this is a film about foodies and the delights of slow cooking. Laura (voiced by Teo Vergara) is a rebellious teenage sloth from the sticks who works in the family restaurant, cooking recipes handed down for generations. But Laura longs to live at a faster pace than her parents, and gets her wish after a storm destroys their village. The family is forced to relocate to Sanctuary City and make a fresh start, opening a food truck selling enchiladas and tamales. Laura even meets her culinary hero, fast-food entrepreneur Dotti Pace (Leslie Jones), a cheetah in cowboy boots and rhinestones.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Vertigo Releasing

© Photograph: Vertigo Releasing

Why is Trump imposing tariffs and which countries will be hit hardest? - in charts

These graphics explain how the US trade deficit has changed, why Trump may be targeting certain countries with tariffs – and what the impact could be

The US president, Donald Trump, has put global leaders ill at ease with his threat of tariffs.

After announcing and then delaying tariffs on Canada and Mexico, hitting Chinese goods with an additional 10% tariff and also threatening the European Union, countries and markets are concerned about where the US president will go next.

Continue reading...

© Composite: Alamy / EPA / Alamy / The Guardian / Guardian design

© Composite: Alamy / EPA / Alamy / The Guardian / Guardian design

On board the maiden sleeper from Brussels to Venice: we got there in the end

Affordable couchettes, wonderful scenery and good company make up for the teething problems en route

At 6.45pm on Wednesday, the Good Night Train trundled out of platform 3 at Brussel-Zuid station. It departed 40 minutes late due to trespassers on the tracks, but the train soon picked up pace, the golden lights of the Belgian capital sweeping through the carriages where groups were stashing skis, families were settling young children and solo travellers stood at the open windows swapping names and stories amid the clamour and confusion on board. This was the inaugural European Sleeper service from Brussels to Venice … only the train wasn’t going to Venice.

Two days earlier, passengers had received an email explaining that the train would be running only as far as Verona, and that a regular Trenitalia service would take us on to Venice. Then, on the evening of departure, we learned that owing to unspecified Italian bureaucracy, the train wouldn’t enter Italy at all, but would be terminating at Innsbruck, with two connections taking us to Verona and then on to Venice.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Marc Sethi

© Photograph: Marc Sethi

By courting the far right, the man tipped to be Germany’s next chancellor may have sealed his own downfall | Florian Ranft

Conservative Friedrich Merz shattered a political taboo. His blunder gives the centre-left a chance in the 23 February election

There are moments in every election campaign when the fate of a key protagonist takes a decisive turn, often after an unforced error. There was Rishi Sunak’s overly hasty return from D-day commemorations in France for a TV interview, and, in Germany, Armin Laschet’s unfortunate laughter during a 2021 visit to a flooded town that marked the beginning of the end for the then Christian Democratic Union (CDU) frontrunner.

The current CDU leader, Friedrich Merz, who is the polls’ favourite to become the next chancellor after Germany’s general election on 23 February, may have had his moment of truth when his proposed crackdown on asylum seekers was narrowly passed by the Bundestag with the full support of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Florian Ranft is a member of the management board at Das Progressive Zentrum, a thinktank based in Berlin

Continue reading...

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

Ukraine ‘may be Russian someday’, Trump says ahead of Zelenskyy meeting with Vance

US president also says he wants a return on US aid given to Ukraine such as rare minerals, in interview with Fox News

US president Donald Trump has floated the idea that Ukraine “may be Russian someday”, as his vice-president JD Vance gears up to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy later this week.

Pushing for an end to the nearly three-year war with Russia, Trump discussed the conflict in an interview with broadcaster Fox News that aired on Monday.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

UK family share nightmare of bloodstained, sex toy-filled holiday rental

The family, which included four small children, were initially told by Vrbo that the property’s issues were ‘minor’

A family who arrived at their rented holiday house to find bloodstained furniture and a room full of sex toys were told the problem was “minor” by the booking platform Vrbo.

Paul Norris [not his real name] and his wife had booked the five-bedroom, £300-a-night house in Northern Ireland for a week’s holiday for their extended family, including four young children.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Postmodern Studio/Alamy

© Photograph: Postmodern Studio/Alamy

It’s straight from the Trump playbook: Labour is tearing up the machinery of government | George Monbiot

If Starmer and Reeves really want a greener, cleaner, wilder nation, then why attack vital state bodies that are already on their knees?

This might sound astonishing, but the UK government’s core programme now appears to be the same as Donald Trump’s: dismantling the administrative state. There’s less theatre, but the results could prove harder to contest. Absurd? Consider the evidence.

Take the government’s brutal expulsion of the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority, Marcus Bokkerink. His crime, it seems, was to take his role seriously, seeking to prevent the formation of corporate monopolies. He has been replaced with the former manager of Amazon UK, a company widely accused of monopolistic practices. This is pure Trump: kick out the regulator and insert someone from a company they were seeking to regulate.

Continue reading...

© Illustration: Nathalie Lees/The Guardian

© Illustration: Nathalie Lees/The Guardian

National Theatre to stage major work by ‘forgotten’ black British playwright

Alterations, by Michael Abbensetts, follows a Guyanese tailor as he tries to establish himself on Carnaby Street

The National Theatre’s decision to stage a work by a “pioneering” and “forgotten” black British playwright should be the start of a revival of similar overlooked work from the 70s and 80s, according to the creative team behind the project.

Director Lynette Linton and writer Trish Cooke will bring their revival of Alterations by Michael Abbensetts to the Lyttelton Theatre stage this month, and have said the decision to stage a play by the Guyanese-born author, who was the first black British writer to have a series commissioned by the BBC, is overdue.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: National Theatre

© Photograph: National Theatre

Trump’s aid cuts will lead to a surge of propaganda, say press freedom groups

Loss of USAid funds will sow ‘chaos and confusion’ and force independent media outlets to shut down, says RSF

Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze will lead to a decline in the number of independent media outlets across the world, causing a surge in misinformation and playing into the hands of state propagandists, media organisations have warned.

The US president has suspended billions of dollars in projects supported by USAid, including more than $268m (£216m) allocated to support “independent media and the free flow of information”.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images

© Photograph: Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images

Trump signs order to bring back plastic straws claiming paper ones ‘explode’

Order rolls back Biden policy to phase out federal purchases of single-use plastic as Trump calls it a ‘ridiculous situation’

On Monday, Donald Trump took aim at a “ridiculous situation” that directly affects his daily life: paper straws.

He signed an executive order that rolls back a Biden administration policy to phase out federal purchases of single-use plastics, including straws, from food service operations, events and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP

© Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP

❌