From his steely self-effacing consigliere in The Godfather to his surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast in Apocalypse Now, just to see him on screen made me smile

• Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95

Robert Duvall was a foghorn-voiced bull of pure American virility, and he put energy and heart into the movies for more than 60 years. Just to see him on screen was enough to make me smile. That handsome face and head gave him the look of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas or a three-star general playing the country music circuit. Duvall was famously bald (the rare roles needing hairpieces always looked artificial on him) and so he looked the same age almost all his acting life: forever in his vigorous fortysomething prime – though often playing figures complicated with tenderness and woundedness.

Duvall had a long, rich career, starting out with notable roles in To Kill a Mockingbird, M*A*S*H, The Conversation and Network, but it was destiny to be chiefly known for two sensational and very different roles given to him by Francis Ford Coppola at either end of the 1970s. One was Tom Hagen, the quiet, self-effacing consigliere to the Corleone crime family in The Godfather (1972), with a complex relationship both with the Don himself, played by Marlon Brando, and his youngest son and heir, the coldly imperious Michael, played by Al Pacino. And the second was his extraordinary turn as the surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979), who with his “Air Mobile” division of helicopters leads a gigantic attack on a Vietnamese village in broad daylight, with speakers blaring The Ride of the Valkyries – in theory to airlift Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, and his boatful of men into the river’s strategic entry point. But all too clearly, it’s because he just wants an excuse for a whooping and hollering cavalry attack.

Big investment in coaches and kit – £5.8m in the last cycle – has paid off despite lack of facilities and snow at home

According to the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, 3,500 people have signed up to audition for their skeleton Talent ID programme in the past three days, an extraordinary surge of interest in what has never been what you might call the most accessible sport.

It is all after Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker won Great Britain’s 10th and 11th Olympic medals in the sport, continuing a lineage that reaches back to 1928, when it was the winter sport of choice for the most reckless of a set of aristocratic adventurers. The 11th Earl of Northesk won bronze ahead of his teammate, and the pre-race favourite, Lord Brabazon of Tara. It is some legacy. After a century of competition, skeleton is the only Winter Olympic sport in which Britain lead the all-time medal table.

Reform of this stealth tax is long overdue – and with it, a shake-up of the whole university system

Never go to war with Martin Lewis. The one iron law of politics is that the financial guru who built moneysavingexpert.com has a quasi-godlike status in Britain, the man millions trust with their cash in a way they would never trust any politician. If he takes up a cause, he usually wins. So when Lewis joined the revolt against recent changes to the student loan system, urging young graduates to lobby their MPs in protest, trouble was never going to be far behind.

And now apparently it’s here. Last week, the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, called for “a conversation about student debt forgiveness”, echoing a rallying cry among young Democrat voters at the last US election for loans to be written off faster (though he didn’t explain where he would find the billions that would cost). Shortly afterwards, five former education secretaries – including Labour’s David Blunkett – publicly backed a Sunday Times campaign for admittedly more modest reforms to student finance. It looks like the slow-burning anger of graduates who went to university in England and Wales between 2012 and 2023 – on a plan that walloped them with higher interest rates than those who went before or after – is finally starting to set Westminster alight.

Barack Obama has caused a frenzy after saying he thinks aliens are real during a podcast interview. The former US president was forced to release a statement clarifying he had not seen any evidence of extraterrestrials. There is a long-running conspiracy theory claiming the US government is hiding extraterrestrials at Area 51, a highly classified air force site in Nevada.
Lucy Hough speaks to the host of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, Madeleine Finlay

Mme Pelicot’s innate dignity shines through, as she explains why she waived her anonymity – after her husband drugged her so that dozens of men could sexually assault her

It’s hard to judge an interview with Gisèle Pelicot in the normal terms. Let’s start with the easy bit: Victoria Derbyshire is the ideal interlocutor. The co-presenter of Newsnight has a kind of steely warmth that meshes well with the innate dignity of Mme Pelicot – as she is called throughout – while they walk unflinchingly through her terrible story.

Her “descent into hell” began on 2 November 2020 when the local police called her and her husband, Dominique Pelicot, to the station. They believed it was to do with his recent arrest for covertly taking pictures underneath the skirts of three women in the supermarket. It was not. In the course of that investigation they had found on his laptop thousands upon thousands of videos and photographs accumulated over a decade of his wife unconscious and being raped by strangers.

He left school at 15 and worked as a scaffolder. Then success on New Faces launched him to stardom – and he’s been a panto and musicals sensation ever since. So what made him write a comedy about two men waiting?

Gary Wilmot has had many lives. A children’s TV presenter turned variety show host turned panto marvel turned musicals sensation, Wilmot has now turned his hand back to playwriting. His London debut is a comedy about two men, waiting. One is chill, the other restless; both become bonded by the wait. Very Samuel Beckett, isn’t it? The men could be Vladimir and Estragon, no?

“Funny you should say that,” Wilmot says, sitting at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, the theatre above a pub in London that is staging While They Were Waiting, in which he also stars, opposite Steve Furst. Soon after the play was commissioned, he was asked if he had been influenced by Beckett’s existential play Waiting for Godot. He’d never seen it but it just so happened there was a production in the West End starring Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati. Wilmot went, saw it and left nonplussed. “I thought, ‘There’s a reason I’ve never seen this. I haven’t got a clue what’s going on.’”

Polls in 30 areas had been due to be postponed as part of the government’s shake-up of English councils

Ministers have dropped plans to delay 30 local elections this May after receiving legal advice that doing so might be unlawful.

The government had planned to delay elections in England while local authorities are reorganised, which is likely to lead to some authorities merging or being subsumed into others. Ministers argued against holding elections for councils that could cease to exist in a year or two.

From the classic To Kill a Mockingbird to blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds, the Oscar-winning actor’s films spanned a remarkable range

• Robert Duvall was a vigorous and subtle actor who always performed with passion and conviction

Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, MASH and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95.

“Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” wrote his wife, Luciana Duvall, in a message on Facebook.

British women in Spain and Greece face ‘huge problems’ entering UK because of differing surname rules

New rules requiring British dual nationals to show a UK passport when entering Britain are “discriminatory” against women, campaigners claim.

From 25 February, British dual nationals are required to present a British passport when boarding a plane, ferry or train to the UK, or attach a new document, a “certificate of entitlement”, which costs nearly £600, to their second passport.

Exclusive: First meeting to be held over domestic payments system aimed at reducing reliance on US networks

UK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump’s ability to turn off US-owned payment systems.

The meeting, chaired by Barclays’ UK chief executive, Vim Maru, will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur.