She’s got the smarts, the FBI training and the CBeebies wardrobe. Will the bookies’ favourite become the first female Traitor to win a UK series?

Even a stopped castle clock is right twice a day. During last Friday’s jack-in-the-box mission on The Traitors, the remaining contestants were asked which of their fellow players would make the best Traitor. In a rare moment of insight, Weymouth gardener James Baker – he of the clumsy shield-stealing – said: “Rachel. She has those FBI skills and is just so smooth.”

He doesn’t know the half of it. Cut to Rachel saying through gritted teeth: “Shut up, James. Just shush.” She might have been momentarily rattled but the canny operator was soon making a mental note of everyone’s answers to use against them later. Translation: James’s days could be numbered.

Tory leader tries to score points by siding with out-of-control president hellbent on destroying Nato and Europe

It had been a relatively quiet night. Apart from Donald Trump giving a long, rambling press conference in which he offered only a few mild insults to his supposed allies and posting mockups of Canada and Greenland covered in the Stars and Stripes. Apart from that. But that barely raises an eyebrow these days.

Still, any respite – even 12 hours – is to be welcomed. Gives Keir Starmer a moment to catch his breath. A morning when the news cycle looks vaguely like it did the night before. Even if that is situation normal: all fucked up. A chance to think. Rather than be bounced into yet another psychotic parallel universe. Shame then that Kemi Badenoch didn’t also use the time to do the same. Thinking has never appeared to be her strong point.

Manchester City have issues with injury and form, and need their big players to step up and turn the ship around

At Bodø/Glimt, in a first Champions League outing since 1 October, the 29-year-old appeared what he is: a player still recovering after 18 months out with a serious knee injury and several related setbacks. This was only a third start since his latest return began with the second 45 minutes of the goalless draw at Sunderland on New Year’s Day. Last week Rodri declared he was “ready to go” and said: “I’m really happy to be on the pitch every single day.” Yet in Saturday’s 2-0 loss at Manchester United he was a one-paced, non-factor unable to do what he did with ease pre‑anterior cruciate ligament rupture: run midfield and so the contest. In Tuesday’s 3-1 humbling in Norway the Spaniard was the same, and two moments tell the tale of his form. First Jens Petter Hauge left him a statue before registering a memorable long-range strike for Bodø’s third goal; then came the two yellow cards in two minutes that had Rodri sent off.

I’ve got a feeling this is the year skirts regain their main character energy

I never stopped wearing skirts, I just sort of stopped thinking about them. They were a plus-one, not the main event. For the past few years I have planned my outfits around my obsession with pleated trousers, or my latest experimental jean shape. Or I have worn dresses. Sometimes I have ended up in a skirt, but the skirt was kind of an afterthought. For instance, at one point last year when it was chilly and I needed to look smart as well as cosy, I picked out a sweater and a pair of knee-high boots, and then slotted in a plain midi in satin or wool, just something to sit in between.

Things could be about to change. I’ve got a feeling that 2026 could be the year that skirts get main character energy again. For a start: hemlines are getting shorter again, which makes skirts more attention-grabbing. If you left the house with your eyes open at any point in 2025, you will have noticed this happening: generation Z and Alpha wear very, very short skirts – she says, trying and failing not to sound about 150 years old – but the trend for above-the-knee hemlines crosses all generations. Adult women with their legs out was very much a feature of the pre-Christmas party season. But what is noticeable is that the mini renaissance is much more about a skirt, than it is about a dress. A short skirt feels cooler; more about your style and less about your body than a minidress.

‘After I took this, police officers bundled me into the back of a car and drove me to the local station where I was questioned for a long time. On the way out, they took turns to punch and kick me’

In 1993, a photograph I’d taken of a bus driver in Luxor, Egypt, won a competition. The prize was some money, a camera and a return ticket to anywhere in the world. I chose Chile. The camera was an all-bells-and-whistles model: I sold it to a taxi driver at 3am. I’ve always preferred working with light 35mm cameras.

After three months in Chile, I caught a train that rose up to the high Bolivian Altiplano plateau, leaving me with a splitting headache only relieved by some coca tea. I had an open-ended commission with the Financial Times to provide photographs from financial areas of the South American cities I went to, so while my main aim was to wander around photographing exciting things I came across, I also made sure to head to the financial district and government quarters in the city of La Paz, which is where this was taken.

They’re hyped as fixes for everything from anxiety to insomnia, but can lying under seven kilos of fabric really help you unwind? We put weighted blankets to the test

• I tested the most-hyped sleep aids – here’s what worked

Anyone who’s ever nodded off under the weight of a purring cat or snoring dog already knows how weighted blankets work. The warmth, the softness, the hefty pressure that renders you unable to fidget or indeed move. Worries subside, and you have no choice but to slide into slumber.

Studies have demonstrated some success for weighted blankets as sleep aids, but where these hefty quilts seem to excel is in alleviating anxiety – and not just according to TikTok influencers. Scientists, medics and the NHS are trialling them to comfort dementia patients, soothe neurodivergent children and even relieve chronic pain.

Best weighted blanket overall:
Emma Hug

Best budget weighted blanket:
Silentnight Wellbeing

Nato chief Mark Rutte says there is ‘a lot of work to be done’, as some Danish MPs voice concern at Greenland apparently being sidelined in US president’s talks

Donald Trump’s announcement of a “framework of a future deal” that would settle the issue of Greenland after weeks of escalating threats has been met with profound scepticism from people in the Arctic territory, even as financial markets rebounded and European leaders welcomed a reprieve from further tariffs.

Just hours after the president used his speech at the World Economic Forum to insist he wanted Greenland, “including right, title and ownership,” but backed away from his more bellicose threats of military intervention – Trump took to social media to announce “the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” after talks with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, and withdrew the threat of tariffs against eight European countries. He later called it “a concept of a deal” when he spoke to business network CNBC soon after Wall Street closed.

Trial of Adrian Gonzales in Corpus Christi was the first over the hesitant law enforcement response to the 2022 attack

A former Uvalde schools police officer was acquitted Wednesday of charges that he failed in his duties to confront the gunman at Robb Elementary during the critical first minutes of one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.

Jurors deliberated for more than seven hours before finding Adrian Gonzales, 52, not guilty in the first trial over the hesitant law enforcement response to the 2022 attack, in which a teenage gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers. Had he been convicted, he faced up two years in prison on more than two dozen charges of child abandonment and endangerment.

IFG says proposed plans, which will slash the number of jury trials, will produce ‘marginal gains’ of less than 2% time saved

David Lammy’s plans to introduce judge-only criminal trials in England and Wales will save less than 2% of time in crown courts, the Institute for Government (IFG) has said.

In a report that casts doubt on the ability of the changes, which will slash the number of jury trials to achieve their goal of wiping out the courts’ backlog, the thinktank described the gains from judge-only trials as “marginal”.

Record-breaking rains spark landslide at Mount Maunganui campsite, with helicopter teams retrieving families from rooftops and local states of emergency declared

Emergency services in New Zealand are searching for several people, including a child, believed missing after a landslide hit a campsite during storms that have caused widespread damage across the North Island.

Emergency minister Mark Mitchell told RNZ that parts of the east coast looked like “a war zone”, with helicopters deployed to rescue families sheltering on rooftops from flooding, and local states of emergency declared in five regions across Northland and the East Cape due to days of record-breaking torrential rain.