What if the thing we needed more of was to do less? What if this was the year we finally learned to rest?

Every new year – after the holiday glut of travel, parties, shopping and baked goods – there can be pressure to do and be more: more active, more productive, more creative, more thrifty. Maybe this will be the year I finally start meal planning or doing morning pages. New year, new me!

But what if the thing we needed more of was to do less? What if this was the year we finally learned to rest?

Physical rest: making sure you get enough sleep; taking naps.

Mental rest: journaling; meditating; doing tasks that are not mentally taxing, like puzzles.

Emotional rest: talking through feelings and experiences with a friend or therapist.

Social rest: setting aside time alone to recharge; making sure you’re spending time with people who don’t leave you feeling drained.

Sensory rest: spending time outdoors; taking breaks from screens.

Creative rest: engaging in creative hobbies like drawing, reading or dancing.

Spiritual rest: connecting to a cause or tradition that feels meaningful to you.

Walid Regragui faced calls to resign despite stunning record with Atlas Lions after nightmare that prolongs 50-year wait

“There will be no second star for Morocco,” read the headline of Le360.ma, referring to the symbol of an Afcon title being sown on the shirt of the winning team. “The most prestigious African title is at odds with Morocco. The dream and the ambition will have to wait some time,” laments the writer, Abdelkader El-Aine.

It is now 50 years since Morocco won their only Afcon. This month, as hosts of the tournament, Morocco had started to dream of a second title. That became a nightmare on Sunday evening in Rabat.

Europe could use powerful but untested law amid pressure over Greenland – but it could also lose out from a trade war

• European industry hits out at ‘ludicrous’ demands

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Donald Trump’s threat to impose punitive US import tariffs on eight European countries opposed to his ambitions in Greenland has raised fears of a full-blown transatlantic trade war.

US justice department announced it is investigating protesters in Minnesota who disrupted church services

Kristi Noem first denied that federal agents were using chemical agents against protesters, then after being shown video footage turned to blaming the protesters themselves, as tensions continued to run high amid the Trump administration’s surge of federal officers into Minneapolis.

The head of homeland security, who has acted as spearhead for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in the city – known as “Operation Metro Surge” – told the CBS show Face the Nation on Sunday that her department had not used pepper spray against crowds.

New menswear director Leo Dell’Orco appears to have ditched the ‘greige’ while embracing the brand’s history

What exactly Giorgio Armani looks like without its eponymous founder at the helm has been the burning question in the fashion industry since the designer’s death in September.

In Milan on Monday afternoon, it got its answer as the designer’s collaborator and right-hand man of four decades, Leo Dell’Orco, made his debut at the Italian fashion house where he will oversee menswear for the foreseeable future. It was the first Armani collection in which the late designer had no involvement.

Worth a staggering $2.45bn, Suno is an AI music company that can create a track with just a few prompts. Why is its CEO happy to see it called ‘the Ozempic of the music industry’?

‘The format of the future,” says Mikey Shulman, “is music you play with, not just play.” As the CEO and co-founder of the generative AI music company Suno, Shulman currently finds himself in the exhilarating if perhaps unenviable position of being simultaneously regarded as the architect of music’s future – and its executioner.

Suno, which was founded just over two years ago, allows users to create entire songs with just a few text prompts. At the moment, you can’t prompt it with the name of a specific pop star, but asking for “stadium-level confessional pop-country” that “references past relationships” or “public rivalries” might get you a Taylor Swift-style song or thereabouts.

Oscar-nominated actor says his lawyer was trying to reimburse those who had donated money to a GoFundMe appeal set up allegedly to raise funds for the star

The actor Mickey Rourke has again spoken out against the GoFundMe appeal set up in his name, purportedly to raise funds for the star, who is currently in financial hardship.

Earlier this month, the actor – who made his name in 1980s action and romance films before being Oscar nominated for his 2008 comeback, The Wrestler – declared he had nothing to do with the crowdfunder.

People picturing positive experiences found to produce more antibodies, hinting at future clinical potential

Positive thoughts may boost the immune system according to research that points to a connection between the mind and our body’s natural defences.

Scientists have found people who used positive thinking to boost activity in the brain’s reward system responded better to vaccination, with their immune systems producing more antibodies than others after having the shot.

Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees

Scientists have been forced to rethink the intelligence of cattle after an Austrian cow named Veronika displayed an impressive – and until now undocumented – knack for tool use.

Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker from a small town in Carinthia near the Italian border, keeps Veronika as a pet and noticed that she occasionally played with sticks and used them to scratch her body.

The veteran is known for his sense of responsibility and it was apparent as his Senegal teammates threatened to quit African football’s showpiece

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Sadio Mané has done many great things for Senegal and for Senegalese football, but what he did on Sunday evening, in what he confirmed would be his last Africa Cup of Nations game, was perhaps greater than his winning goal in Wednesday’s semi-final, greater than his penalty to win the World Cup qualifying playoff against Egypt in 2022, greater even than his decisive penalty in the 2021 final.

When Senegal stormed off the pitch in protest at the award of a penalty against them eight minutes into added time at the end of the Cup of Nations final, African football faced a crisis. For this to happen at all was embarrassing, for it to happen in the final of the confederation’s showpiece would have been a humiliation – not least because many may have felt that Senegal had a point. Refereeing has been a topic of discussion in this tournament in a way it should never be.

Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate
Munch, Bourgeois, Gormley and Baselitz go shoulder to shoulder with up-and-coming artists in an exhibition that revels in its stygian gloom

Tracey Emin catches me looking from her self-portrait to her as I try to assess the closeness of the resemblance. Not that close. This inky screenprint is bigger than she is, its face wider and taller. But it’s not a picture of the outer person but an inner vision. As we stand in front of it I seem to fall into radiating pools of blackness – to cross into darkness.

Emin has curated an exhibition for the depths of winter. It’s a generous, unexpected show with an eclectic yet profound openness to kinds of creativity many might think incompatible: paintings, installations, performance art all face the night here. She sets artists she nurtures at the Emin Studios alongside her heroes Edvard Munch, Louise Bourgeois and other luminaries of modern art – if luminary is the right word in this stygian setting. For, by a stroke of lighting genius, the Carl Freedman Gallery has been plunged into nocturnal shadow that still lets you see the art.

Embark Studios’ multiplayer extraction shooter game has already sold 12m copies in just three months. Will it capture you too?

Released last October Arc Raiders has swiftly become one of the most successful online shooters in the world, shifting 12m copies in barely three months and attracting as many players as established mega hits such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. So what is it about this sci-fi blaster that’s captured so many people – and how can you get involved?

So what is Arc Raiders?

• England defender’s contract was due to expire in summer

• City are without injured Dias, Gvardiol and Stones

Marc Guéhi has completed his £20m move to Manchester City from Crystal Palace. The England international has signed a contract to 2031 after choosing the club over other offers.

An agreement was reached on Friday and the England defender was withdrawn from Palace’s weekend game at Sunderland to finalise the transfer. Guéhi was close to joining Liverpool last summer before Palace pulled the plug but the Premier League champions decided not to revive their interest because they saw no value in a January deal for a player out of contract in the summer.

PM’s effort to take heat out of Greenland situation is yet another humiliation in his relationship with The Donald

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Toady, or not toady? That is the question. When even Piers Morgan has taken his head out of Donald Trump’s bum far enough to see a glimmer of daylight, then it’s fair to say the US president has probably overstepped the mark.

Not content with threatening tariffs against the UK and seven EU countries for sending troops to Greenland – having previously demanded Nato allies get stuck in to protect the country from Russia and China – The Donald has now sent a letter to the Norwegian prime minister to complain about not winning the Nobel peace prize and to say he was so pissed off he was thinking of starting a war instead.

Countries due to play on Valentine’s Day in Italy amid Trump threats to seize Danish territory of Greenland

Their rendezvous may be on Valentine’s Day, but its nature looks likely to be anything but romantic: Denmark and the US, their relations frostier than they have been for decades, are due to face each other in ice hockey next month.

A week into the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy, the Danish Lions are scheduled to play Team USA in a preliminary round game at Milan’s Santagiulia ice hockey arena on 14 February, according to the official programme.

The TV hit has cracked open a rich seam of misogyny: romance is written off as a weird thing that women like, and the audience is dismissed as ‘wine moms’

I’ve never heard anything more sexist in my life than the (mounting) reasons why women supposedly love the hit TV drama Heated Rivalry. Quick recap: if you’re a woman, or even if you’re not and don’t yet love it: Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) are two professional ice hockey players on rival teams. It matters that they’re hockey players, beyond the athletic perfection of their “insanely oiled, slick bodies” (as my friend, Eve, who’s 21, put it). And it matters that Rozanov is Russian, because the obstacles are real: he cannot be gay – think about the sponsorship, think about the fans, think about the oppressive patriarchal regime. Think about it for two seconds and this can not happen; and it achingly doesn’t, and almost does, and does, then doesn’t happen, over years.

Heated Rivalry dropped in Canada and the US at the end of November, and the fandom around it is so intense that Williams and Storrie have a compound nickname (HudCon). The actors are all over the late-night US TV shows; the clip of them presenting at the Golden Globes has been viewed more than a million times, and their most throwaway remark on social media blows up.

Data shows 133% increase from 2017 to 2025 as anti-ICE and No Kings protests push mobilization against White House

In the year since Donald Trump retook office, the number of protests in the US outpaced those at the same point in his first administration, according to data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, an open-source project collaboration between Harvard University’s Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut.

There were more than 10,700 protests in 2025, a 133% increase from the 4,588 recorded in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first term. According to the data, an overwhelming majority of US counties – including 42% that voted for Trump – have had at least one protest since he was re-inaugurated last year.

‘I wanted Kid ’n Play but the studio said, “Who are these guys?” I replied, “They’ve got platinum records.” I had no idea if they did’

Black music videos weren’t played on MTV in the late 80s. So while I was still at Harvard, I’d make music videos in my head. One day, while listening to Bad Boy/Having a Party by Luther Vandross, I thought: “This could be a great music video or movie.” And I sat down that night and wrote a script for a short film that ended up not only being made but shown at festivals and becoming a big hit in the world of student films. Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It had piqued interest in up-and-coming black film-makers. New Line Cinema saw my short and brought me in for a meeting. I pitched an expanded version of my idea and they said: “Let’s do it.”

Syrian Democratic Forces warns of serious security repercussions that could open door to ‘chaos and terrorism’

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has said it is fighting Syrian government forces near a prison holding Islamic State detainees on the outskirts of Raqqa, in what it described as an “extremely dangerous development”.

The announcement came less than 24 hours after Syria’s president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said it had agreed a ceasefire with the SDF and would move to dismantle the group’s decade-long control of the country’s north-east.

Reuters obtains letter from union last year raising worries over potholes and power lines amid investigations into cause of devastating crash

King Felipe of Spain has expressed his “concern about the terrible accident” in which at least 39 people have been killed.

Speaking from Greece, the monarch was quoted as having told the media:

We have been in contact with Sánchez and Juanma Moreno to learn the details. As soon as we finish, we will return as soon as possible. I understand the anguish of the families of the victims and the injured.

We know that many residents of Adamuz assisted the victims immediately, and we express our gratitude to them for that.

The champion will be decided on 19 July in New Jersey. Here’s a rundown of the issues that will shape the tournament as it comes to North America

We’re only six months from the biggest single sporting occasion in the world. On 19 July in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the men’s World Cup final will kick off and a champion will be crowned (although it will be hard to top the last one).

The final will be more than a coronation (or confirmation, if Argentina repeat as champions). It will also be a culmination of six weeks of near non-stop soccer played across three countries, four time zones, and 16 cities. It’s likely that conclusions will already be drawn at that point on how the whole tournament fared. But for now, at this semi-convenient milestone, it’s worth taking stock of where we are six months out.

Duke of Sussex and six other high-profile figures say media company used unlawful information gathering

Lawyers representing Prince Harry and six other prominent figures have accused the publisher of the Daily Mail of “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering” to secure stories about them.

In a witness statement submitted to the court, the Duke of Sussex accused the newspaper group of subjecting him to “intrusion [that] was terrifying” for loved ones, creating a “massive strain” on his personal relationships. He said it had the effect of “driv[ing] me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me”.

Experts say Sydney Water should better treat wastewater before sending it offshore at Malabar, Bondi and North Head. The corporation disagrees

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In the first half of the 1900s, the mantra “the solution to pollution is dilution” ruled. The idea was that harmful chemicals and pollutants could be dealt with by spreading them out in the environment.

Now, that approach is derided as outdated and, often, dangerous.

Modern western diets are full of ultra-processed foods, but experts say we need to reduce our intake. Here they offer achievable alternatives

• My week avoiding ultra-processed foods

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“It’s not poor willpower,” says Mark Lawrence. The ecological nutrition professor from Deakin University is a global expert in ultra-processed foods, a beacon of knowledge in the proliferation of UPFs.. Including, he says, “It’s really difficult to avoid them.”

Australia, alongside the US and UK, has one of the world’s highest consumption rates of ultra-processed foods which have been linked to “multiple diet-related chronic diseases”, according to a global report of which Lawrence was a co-author.

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