With debate still swirling over the unlikeable nature of Marty Supreme’s careless protagonist, Guardian writers have picked their all-time love-to-hate leads

Spoilers ahead

I can remember seeing As Good As It Gets in theaters as a teenager and being pleasantly startled by the sight of Jack Nicholson’s Melvin Udall, romcom super grouch. Here’s a bestselling romance author who disdains love, an OCD sufferer who weaponizes his affliction, a New Yorker who hates crowds (who can’t relate?). In one scene, an adoring fan asks Melvin his secret to writing women. “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability,” he says, an epic burn forever seared in my brain. Of course Melvin’s anti-charm offensive only goes so far in a James L Brooks project. Before long, the rudeness erodes as Melvin is forced on to a journey of self-discovery with the nextdoor neighbor he can’t abide (Greg Kinnear) and the diner waitress he can’t live without (Helen Hunt). Melvin comes out a changed man in the end, but retains the essence of his super grouch-dom. That was the moment I fell in love with the writer’s life. Andrew Lawrence

The irreverent approach of the Colombian hotline Jacarandas has made it the most-followed abortion account on social media in the Spanish-speaking world

What do a purple cartoon cat and abortion have in common? Nothing – and that is the point, say the women behind Jacarandas, a Colombian abortion helpline. Determined to set themselves apart from more traditional reproductive health organisations, Jacarandas commissions street and graphic artists to create eye-catching illustrations – most recently a cartoon feline called Gataranda, inspired by the team’s much-loved office pet.

The aim is not to make light of abortion but to appeal to the teenagers and young women who use Jacarandas’ services. “A lot of people do not connect with [an image of] the uterus on fire, so we thought ‘what can we do to connect more with young women?’” says Carolina Benítez Mendoza, the deputy director.

Previous meddling has damaged the region, and once again the the US and Israel don’t have Iranians’ best interests at heart

What does it take to shake illusions in western intervention? This is not a question designed to deflect from the barbarism being unleashed by Iran’s theocratic regime. Because it severed the country’s internet connection, facts are difficult to establish, but the respected Human Rights Activists in Iran has confirmed 544 have been killed and well over 10,000 arrested – those numbers are probably significant underestimates.

Here is a regime that consolidated its power in the 1980s by butchering leftists – helped, it should be noted, by both MI6 and the CIA, who supplied them with lists of alleged Soviet agents. Today, trade union activists are arrested and tortured, while women’s activists languish in jails. The economic disaster resulting from sanctions may have helped spark these latest protests, but millions of Iranians are fed up with living under fundamentalist rule – underlined by surveys confirming growing religious non-observance and opposition to the compulsory hijab.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

The offer of thousands of dollars a month was hard to refuse for those living in poverty in a war-torn country. But while some Yemenis have died on the frontline, others are now prisoners of war

The first time I heard Hussein’s mother’s voice, it wasn’t anger that came through the phone, it was exhaustion.

“There are rumours that he burned to death,” she said to me. “How do you think that makes me feel as a mother? Where are you, Hussein? I’m looking for you. Please my daughter, help me.”

Given how easy it is to kill plants by overwatering, these devices are tempting – but can they beat simply sticking your finger in the soil?

The problem
Houseplants often die from too much water, not neglect. Might a moisture meter help?

The hack
For around £10, a probe promises to tell you exactly when to water.

Exclusive: China Labor Watch says people aged 16-18 employed without required special protections

A labour rights NGO says it has found evidence of worker exploitation in the supply chain of Labubus, the furry toys that took the world by storm last year and which are expected to continue to grow in popularity in 2026.

Labubus, toothy gremlins made by the Chinese toy company Pop Mart, have become one of China’s hottest cultural exports. In the first half of 2025 alone, “the Monsters” line of toys, which includes Labubus, generated 4.8bn yuan (£511m) in sales for the Hong Kong-listed company. In August, Pop Mart’s chief executive, Wang Ning, said the company was on track to reach 20bn yuan in revenues in 2025.

Ukrainian president says ‘Russia must learn that cold will not help win the war’ as energy infrastructure targeted

Meanwhile, a number of airports in central and eastern Europe faced delays and disruptions due to difficult weather conditions this morning.

Budapest airport was temporarily closed as a precaution due to black ice and extreme icing, the airport said on Facebook.

Health secretary says: ‘If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge’

Here is a fuller version of the quote from Wes Streeting’s speech, from the Times’ Steven Swinford.

Bafflingly, some on my own side of the political divide have begun to parrot the same argument. They complain about the civil service. They blame stakeholder capture.

This excuses culture does the centre-left no favours. If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge?

New - Streeting goes full throttle on the idea that politicians can’t make the state work and that “nothing happens” when levers are pulled.

“Where there aren’t levers, we build them. Where there are barriers, we bulldoze them. Where there is poor performance, we challenge it.”

He says the complaints are just poor excuses from the right.

“Bafflingly, some on my own side of the political divide have begun to parrot the same argument... If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge?”

My experience now as prime minister is of frustration that every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be, which is among the reasons why I want to cut down on regulation, generally and within government.

UK media regulator is investigating whether X has breached the Online Safety Act – what could happen next?

The UK government is threatening Elon Musk’s X with the nuclear option under the country’s online safety laws: a ban. The social media platform is under pressure from ministers after it allowed the Grok AI tool, which is integrated within the app, to generate indecent images of unsuspecting women and children.

The government has said it will support the media regulator Ofcom, which has launched an investigation into X, if it decides to push ahead with a ban. But is such a move likely?

Road project, part of blueprint for new illegal settlement in E1 area east of Jerusalem, is considered a tool of annexation

Israel plans to start work next month on a bypass road that will close off the heart of the occupied West Bank to Palestinians and cement the de facto annexation of an area critical for the viability of a future Palestinian state.

The road is a key part of the blueprint for a vast illegal new settlement in the E1 area east of Jerusalem, which would fragment the occupied West Bank. The Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the plans were intended to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

Ryan Chapman and a friend survived 90 minutes in the ocean before being picked up by a passing boat – and carrying on with their dive

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Two divers have survived becoming stranded in the ocean after losing their boat while diving in a popular fishing spot in Western Australia.

Ryan Chapman and his mate were free diving and scuba diving about 5km off Mindarie, a coastal suburb north of Perth, when they resurfaced to find their boat had disappeared.

US president speaks after saying that any country that does business with Iran will face 25% levy on trade with US

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Donald Trump has said “it would be a complete mess” if the US supreme court were to strike down his global trade tariffs.

In a lengthy post on social media, the US president said “WE’RE SCREWED” if the supreme court rules against the tariffs, before the decision, which could come as soon as Wednesday. It is a crucial legal test of his controversial economic strategy and his power.

A crime committed in the home of a regular black American family results in paranoia on all sides in this 81-minute film from Nnamdi Asomugha

Here is a compact drama that twists itself like a tourniquet over 81 minutes, as a bad situation turns into a catastrophe for an ordinary American family.

Late one night in an unnamed city, construction worker Chris (Nnamdi Asomugha, also the film’s director and co-writer) finishes a DIY project in his own home and sinks a beer or two. He takes a couple of pills before checking on his two young daughters Kendra (Amari Alexis Price) and Ryley (Aiden Gabrielle Price), who have been sneakily pretending to be asleep. Then he gets into bed with wife Alex (Aja Naomi King) for a chat and a soon-abandoned attempt to have exhausted marital sex while their infant baby sleeps next door.

Randa Abdel-Fattah, who is Palestinian Australian, has faced criticism for controversial comments on Israel, including alleging Zionists had ‘no claim or right to cultural safety’

When the board of a South Australian festival cut a prominent Palestinian Australian author from its lineup, citing her “past statements” in the context of the deadly Bondi terror attack, it no doubt braced itself for controversy.

What it may not have foreseen, however, is an implosion.

Today’s rumours are misty-eyed

The fun has only just begun at Old Trafford where Michael Carrick will become the head coach until the end of the season. As someone who knows a thing or two about central midfielders, Carrick will immediately realise Manchester United are desperately in need of one. Al-Hilal’s Rúben Neves is on the radar, as is Atlético Madrid’s Marcos Llorente. The 30-year-old is valued at £30m, leaving Jason Wilcox and chums plenty to ponder.

There are, supposedly, admirers of Sassuolo’s Tarik Muharemovic at United but if they really want to acquire the centre-back’s services they will need to overcome competing interest from Tottenham and Newcastle.

Biopic charting Naseem Hamed’s rise has reopened old wounds but is also a reminder of what was and what might have been

The first time I watched Prince Naseem Hamed train, my jaw couldn’t have dropped any faster if he had hit me with one of his lassoing uppercuts. I had followed all his fights on TV, of course. But to see him in the flesh in September 1994, a year before he became world champion, was an altogether more visceral and mesmeric experience.

Hamed’s punches sounded like firecrackers welcoming in the new year as they smashed into the pads. He was almost impossible to hit. And, most staggering of all, despite standing 5ft 4in tall and weighing only nine stone, he would bully far bigger men in sparring – including fighters such as John Keeton, who went on to become the British cruiserweight champion – until my great uncle, Brendan Ingle, called time.

Specialists in choreographing sex scenes have come under fire from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Mikey Madison – is there any weight to their complaints?

When intimacy coordinator Adelaide Waldrop gets asked about her job at parties, she contemplates lying. “I’ve considered saying I’m an accountant,” she says. When she reveals the truth, the response is almost always seedy. There are questions about erections, merkins, and inappropriate celebrities. “Or it’s a lot of, ‘Oh we could use one of you at home with me and the missus’, and questions about my sex life,” Waldrop adds. “We’re a hot button topic.”

Lately, the heat has been on high. To some, intimacy coordinators are an auspicious part of a post-#MeToo industry, one that protects cast and crew while providing crucial creative input – Michelle Williams, Alexander Skarsgård, and Emma Stone are among those to have gushed about their experiences. To others, they’re the sex police, impeding artistry for the sake of avoiding an HR headache. Mikey Madison didn’t want an intimacy coordinator for her Oscar-winning sex worker film Anora. Gwyneth Paltrow asked hers to “step back a little bit” while making Marty Supreme. Jennifer Lawrence couldn’t even remember if she had one while filming Die My Love (she did), but said it wouldn’t have been necessary because her co-star, Robert Pattinson, “is not pervy”.

Former England midfielder needs to avoid the same pitfalls as Ruben Amorim, but he showed a dogmatic streak at Boro

In many ways Michael Carrick is the antithesis of Ruben Amorim but Manchester United’s soon-to-be-appointed interim head coach does have something significant in common with his Portuguese predecessor.

Like Amorim, Carrick has proved remarkably resistant to tactical change. So much so that at Middlesbrough the former United and England midfielder’s determination not to compromise a philosophy constructed around a patient, possession-heavy passing game arguably cost him his job.

Broadcaster’s submission calls on Florida court to throw out defamation case where US president is suing over editing of 6 January 2021 speech

The BBC is to attempt to have Donald Trump’s $10bn defamation lawsuit over the editing of a speech for Panorama thrown out, according to court documents.

The broadcaster faced criticism for airing an episode of the investigative documentary series that featured an edited clip of Trump’s address to a rally on 6 January 2021, which it is alleged gave the impression he encouraged supporters to storm the Capitol building in Washington DC.

Eastern region on high alert as authorities try to track animal tearing through villages in Jharkand after apparently becoming separated from herd

Forest officials in India are on the hunt for an elephant that has killed more 20 people in a days-long rampage through the eastern state of Jharkand.

Since the beginning of January, 22 people have been killed by a single-tusked elephant that has been tearing through forests and villages in West Singhbhum district of Jharkand.

The sociology professor is suitably comfortable with AI helpers that he creates his own – it’s their inventors’ motives and unregulated environment he argues we should be concerned about

If much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. A research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren’t merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead.

To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might seem mystifying and more than a little creepy. But Muldoon refuses to belittle those seeking intimacy in “synthetic personas”.

A brutal nomadic sport, quiet childhood reveries and stark human endurance define the photographs that wowed this year’s judges

Tibetan directors, who all live outside Tibet, deliver a quartet of films that explore the pain of separation and migration

The wrench of exile is the theme of this quartet of short films from Tibetan directors, who themselves all live outside Tibet. Their intimate, emotional family dramas tell stories of separation and migration. In two of them, the 90-year-old Dalai Lama smiles out from photographs on shrines, a reminder of the precariousness of Tibet’s future. As a character in one of the films puts it bluntly: will there be anything to stop China erasing Tibetan identity when its rock-star spiritual leader is no longer around?

In the first film a Tibetan man lives in a kind of complicated happiness in Vietnam. He loves his wife, and they both adore their sunny-natured little daughter, but he has mournful eyes. Home is a town on the banks of the Mekong River, which has its source in Tibet. The river is a constant reminder of the region – and of Chinese might too, since Chinese hydropower dams are the cause of drought downstream in Vietnam.

This was even though I had revoked my citizenship and now have dual British and German nationality

I want to flag a discriminatory experience I’ve had with the Co-op’s will-writing service.

I asked it to update a will it had drawn up for me in 2020, with my partner and our daughter as the beneficiaries. I received no follow-up for two months.