Bar owners say they struggle to dissuade people from forming a line as behavioural experts point to post-pandemic ‘new norms’

“I’m not sure what else we can do to be honest,” Paul Loebenberg said, of the people lined up at his bar. “Maybe there’s something I’ve missed, but we’ve tried everything.”

To anybody who frequents pubs and dislikes feeling as if they are waiting at a bank, Loebenberg’s exasperation is all too familiar.

Sabrina Carpenter fangirling Miss Piggy, Beaker losing his eyes … yes, Kermit and co are back for a trip down memory lane – and it’s a perfect, saucy joy

The Muppet Show is back! We need this, don’t we? We need them. The TV show ended in 1981, yet decades later, memes of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Animal et al still circulate. We give their movies Oscars. Their version of A Christmas Carol is a non-negotiable tradition for anyone with sense. Jim Henson’s furry anarchists bring us together like few things can. As a beady eyed fun-sponge, I can’t help but wonder – why?

In an 1810 essay, German poet Heinrich von Kleist argued that puppets demonstrate pure grace: a weightless unself-consciousness that humans long for but never achieve. He was talking about marionettes, suspended from strings. Yet Muppets are hand puppets; extensions of a body. They have weight. As for grace, have you seen how Kermit moves? His arms flap, and he bounces vertically, while moving forwards. It’s hard to imagine a less efficient walk. That frog, he silly.

Every year in Turkey, hundreds of women are recorded as having taken their lives by ‘throwing themselves from a high place’. But many grieving families maintain that investigators are missing the full story

Almost nothing seemed to scare Şebnem Köker. With her hair dyed fire-engine red, the 29-year-old nurse lived life by her own rules. Friends say she was so headstrong, she’d be getting ready for a night out in their home town, the Turkish coastal city of İzmir, and suddenly suggest a change of plan to a last-minute trip away. Even a prospective move to Canada didn’t seem to daunt her. But there was one thing that had terrified Şebnem: heights. Her father, Abdullah, says she was afraid to even tiptoe on to the slim balcony that wraps around the third-floor apartment they shared in İzmir.

“She wouldn’t even have a cigarette or eat out there. She wouldn’t hang laundry on the balcony,” he says, sitting on the sofa in the darkened living room they once shared. A pouting portrait of Şebnem is tucked into the frame of a mirror on the opposite wall.

In the second part of our series on digital politics, we look at how online provocateurs have advanced extreme political ideas – and watched them seep into the mainstream

• Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

• Part one: How liberals lost the internet

The internet has totally changed the way in which politics is conducted. As established in the first piece in our series, liberals have totally failed to grasp this fact. The right, however, are thriving in this new world. Future historians studying the role that fringe online ideas played in the US republic’s demise will be spoiled for choice. One episode in particular comes to mind: Tucker Carlson, a former primetime speaker at a Republican convention, inviting a white supremacist livestreamer, Nick Fuentes, on to his YouTube show in 2025 for a chat in which he talked about the influence of “organised Jewry” in the US.

Carlson spent years echoing white nationalist talking points on his Fox News show, but Fuentes’ style – combining Nazi salutes with cheeky grins – places him beyond the pale for broadcast television. However, under the logic of YouTube, the meeting of these two major influencers is almost inevitable. Platforms incentivise audience cross-pollination, which is why Fuentes routinely livestreams with figures such as Adin Ross and Andrew Tate, who are known more for their homophobia and misogyny than their thoughts on ethnostates.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

Nato chief has glibly dismissed prospect of coping without US support, but in the age of Trump the case for autonomy is growing

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, was typically blunt when he met members of the European parliament this week. From the dais of the blond-wood committee room in Brussels, he was clear: “If anyone thinks that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can’t. We can’t.”

And if Europe wanted to supplant the US nuclear deterrent, existing spending commitments would have to double, he added – “so hey, good luck!”

As rivers swell and homes are cut off, scientists say UK winter rainfall is already 20 years ahead of predictions

When flooding hit the low-lying Somerset Levels in 2014, it took two months for the waters to rise. This week it took two days, said Rebecca Horsington, chair of the Flooding on the Levels Action Group and a born-and-bred resident. A fierce barrage of storms from the Atlantic has drenched south-west England in January, saturating soils and supercharging rivers.

Elon Musk and former UK ambassador to US Peter Mandelson among those named in newly released documents

• What have we learned from the newly released Epstein files?

According to one file, Mountbatten-Windsor was said to be “very focused” on financier Harlan Peltz’s girlfriend during a dinner with Maxwell.

The apparent FBI document details a 2020 interview with Peltz in which he provided information to agents about Maxwell.

Peltz was at a dinner with Maxwell and Prince Andrew and Peltz’s then girlfriend. Prince Andrew was very focused on Peltz’s girlfriend. Maxwell would sometimes mention Prince Andrew’s name and that they were friends.

Maxwell would have outrageous parties back then. She liked to put people in uncomfortable positions for her entertainment. Peltz realised that he was a pawn to her and she would try to use him. Sometime later on he found out that he was listed in Epstein’s black book.

People in the finance world never seemed to know how Epstein got his money.

Party picks ward councillor Angeliki Stogia to defend seat as PM and colleagues argue only Labour can beat Reform

Keir Starmer has said the byelection in Gorton and Denton will be a referendum on “true patriotism” saying Labour is the only party that can defeat the “poisonous division” of Reform.

The prime minister, during his visit to Japan, said he saw the vote as a two-way contest between Labour and Reform UK, as he criticised Nigel Farage’s party.

Deadly attacks launched day before border crossing due to open as part of ceasefire deal

Israel has carried out some of its deadliest airstrikes on Gaza in months, killing at least 30 Palestinians, some of whom were sheltering in tent cities for displaced people.

Despite a nominal ceasefire, the Israeli military struck a police station in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood west of Gaza City on Saturday, killing 10 officers and detainees, the civil defence said. It indicated the death toll could rise as emergency responders searched for bodies.

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Enzo Fernández and Jarrod Bowen lead the teams out. Anthony Taylor is the man in the middle. We’re ready to go.

Warm-ups are done at the Bridge. Chelsea were harking back to the 90s with their training strip based on that notorious away kit.