The city was portrayed as an aspirational place to live, but now those who moved there are realising the precarity that comes with being an economic migrant

To be fooled by a mirage, you needn’t be lost in the desert. Sometimes, the illusion is strongest just when you thought you were safely home, posting from the pool about your teenage daughter’s spa party and your own glittering life in a city where “the possibilities are endless”, as they tend to be for billionaires’ daughters living in tax havens. Only then does the fantasy explode in a puff of intercepted missile smoke, leaving just another woman in her pyjamas telling Instagram (as Petra Ecclestone did at the weekend) that she moved to Dubai “to feel safe” and war was never mentioned in the small print.

Who could have guessed that living a few hundred miles as the drone flies from Tehran might have risks? Certainly not the anonymous hedge funder who fumed to the Financial Times that “the trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics”.

Alpine playgrounds, unforgettable train rides and white-water rafting feature in our readers’ family trips from Norway to the Netherlands

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Travelling by rail in Europe gives you plenty of opportunity for ad-hoc adventure. We were returning from a ski trip in Italy and took the Bernina Express part of the way. We’d heard that if you disembark at Bergün, leave your luggage at the station and take the train back one stop to Preda village it’s possible to sledge between the two stations. So there we found ourselves renting traditional wooden sledges from Preda and walking the short distance to the start of the tobogganing run. What we thought might be a gentle run into town turned into a fast and fun-filled couple of hours as we hurtled down the tree-lined course. At times it felt like we were in the game Mario Kart and at one point a children’s birthday party overtook us, the birthday girl’s sledge trailing balloons. About 5 miles later we arrived back in Bergün, before continuing our train journey onwards.
Layla Astley

More athletes than ever, new nations, old favourites and breakout stars: here are all your questions about the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics answered

This is the 14th edition of the Winter Paralympics, to be held on the 50th anniversary of its first. It will be bigger than ever before, with more than 600 athletes from 56 countries expected to take part. El Salvador, Haiti, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Portugal will compete for the first time. There will be 79 different medal events in six different sports, with mixed doubles in wheelchair curling a new addition since Beijing 2022. The president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Andrew Parsons, said the Games would deliver “world-class sport [that is] highly competitive. Sport that will surprise you. And most importantly, sport that will have a life-changing impact on everyone who witnesses it.”

As the Spanish PM decries the war in Iran, other politicians are unable – or unwilling – to speak against the US president

On Wednesday morning, Pedro Sánchez delivered a 10-minute televised address with the rather bland title: “An institutional declaration by the prime minister to assess recent international events.”

The speech’s words, however, were anything but beige. Hours after Donald Trump had threatened to cut off trade with Spain over its government’s refusal to allow two jointly operated bases in Andalucía to be used to strike Iran, Sánchez set out his thinking.

A drama about a president at the end of his career, La Grazia is the director’s finest film since The Great Beauty. As he reunites with his longtime collaborator, the pair discuss ageing, loyalty and the mysterious energy that has bound them for more than two decades

‘They like to smoke,” says the publicist ahead of my interview with Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo. That’s why the table and chairs have been hastily dragged outside. That’s why today’s audience will be conducted alfresco. We’re on the cramped sixth-floor balcony of a Venice hotel, overlooking the sea, beneath a tumult of dark clouds. The publicist points down at my recording device and asks: “Will it pick up what they say, or just the noise of the wind?”

They like to smoke – of course they do. The Italian film-maker and his muse are both men of old Europe: rigid and courtly and serenely unreconstructed; dignified at the core and a little rackety around the edges. They’ve made seven pictures together and dearly hope they’ll make an eighth. But who can predict? Even the best-laid plans can come a cropper. Sorrentino and Servillo know that time is finite and that the reassuring old order is slipping into the past. They’ve barely whipped out their cigars before the rain comes in sideways. We survive two minutes on the balcony and trundle back to the table indoors.

One afternoon, I set up my kit and taped a drumstick to my amputated arm

The transformer exploded a few feet from where I was standing. One moment I was on the roof of a restaurant kitchen in Atlanta, cleaning exhaust vents. The next, I was on the ground, my body seizing and burned.

Before that day, music had been the centre of my life. My father was a well-known guitarist in Australia and I grew up watching him play. When I was 14 my parents bought me a drum kit for Christmas. I fell in love immediately. By 22, I was playing in two bands – one metal, one reggae – and preparing to audition for the Atlanta Institute of Music. Then I was electrocuted.

Israel launched huge attacks on Iran and Lebanon overnight

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Iran and Lebanon were hit with a wave of intense Israeli strikes overnight.

Israel’s military said Friday morning it had begun “a broad-scale wave of strikes” on Tehran, Iran’s capital.

Justice secretary calls for inquiry into reports of cabinet splits at national security council over use of British bases

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David Lammy has said it is an “absolute travesty” that details were leaked from a top secret national security meeting on the US-Israel attacks on Iran and has called for an investigation.

There were reports last weekend of cabinet splits at a national security council meeting, which is protected by the Official Secrets Act, over allowing the US to use British bases for the strikes against Iran.

Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin are all trading blows over US involvement – while Sean Hannity says he’s staying out of it

The stars of the conservative media movement have been duking it out – in extremely personal terms – over Donald Trump’s decision to enter the United States into a conflict with Iran.

While it can be hard to cleanly group the warring factions, much of the fighting has centered on disagreements about whether the US is too deferential to Israeli interests. Those arguing that position most prominently include former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, while conservative media personalities like Mark Levin (a current Fox News host) and Ben Shapiro have strongly supported both the American intervention in Iran and collaboration with Israel.

While some Iranian exiles took to the streets in support of the US and Israeli attacks, not all are in celebratory mood

Sara* arranged slices of watermelon on a plate and poured mint tea into glass mugs. Outside her window, in north Finchley, lies the stretch of London known affectionately as Little Tehran, home to one of the UK’s largest Iranian communities.

“When the bombing happened, the streets here went crazy,” she said. “People were covering themselves in flags and chanting for the king to come back.”