Truly, I am the country’s biggest fan. But in the spirit of free speech its leaders apparently love, here’s a few things the rest of the world needs them to know

We in the rest of the world have had to hear a lot – such a lot – about what this US government and its hardcore fanbase thinks about us. So you know they’ll be super-relaxed and free-speechy about hearing some thoughts about how they look from the outside. Let’s use last Saturday as a single snapshot. In Minneapolis, they had the shooting by ICE agents of a protesting nurse who posed no threat – an event promptly, provably and blatantly lied about at the highest level by Donald Trump’s politburo. Then that evening in Washington, a lot of those same politburocrats turned out for the White House premiere of a ridiculous propaganda film about the president’s wife, also attended fawningly by bloodless Apple oligarch Tim Cook. And he’s not even the oligarch who paid an insane amount for the film. Top line, guys: all this makes you look like what your president likes to call a “shithole country”. Sorry! I assume it’s fine to use officially licensed vocabulary?

Obviously, it’s not a proper shithole country until the soft-skinned puppetmasters in the presidential palace cut some grizzled local warlord off at the knees for following orders, so it’s good to learn overnight that border patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino has been pulled out of Minneapolis, possibly locked out of his social media accounts, and may soon “retire”, presumably a fall guy for the likes of stage 4 homeland security tumour Stephen Miller. Bovino’s the guy who’s literally got the same haircut and outfit as the Sean Penn character in One Battle After Another. But hey, at least he wears a uniform. Again, what are international outsiders to make of the spectacle of ICE’s federal officers coming masked and frequently dressed in civilian clothes, while images from protests across the States show resisting civilians increasingly drawn to military-style clothing? Can Trump’s storm detachment not at least be issued with matching shirts? They don’t have to be brown, but Maga chic desperately needs to make even a first step to getting itself together. In the entire history of the movement, only one follower – the QAnon shaman – has ever had true style.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basic they scrimp on? Ben Fogle talks to the Filter about vintage clothing, toothpaste and garden makeovers gone wrong

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Ben Fogle is an adventurer, broadcaster and bestselling author. He has presented TV series from all over the globe: his many extreme exploits include climbing Everest, rowing the Atlantic, crossing the deserts of the Empty Quarter in the Middle East and racing across Antarctica to the south pole.

He has toured the UK with his sell-out shows, and most recently has become co-owner of Sheffield-based outdoor clothing brand Buffalo Systems. His work combines adventure, conservation and storytelling.

She has based ballets on Frida Kahlo, Coco Chanel and Eva Perón. So Annabelle Lopez Ochao was well placed to take on the passionate, complicated figure of Anne Lister

A couple dance across the studio, their movements formal, the mood resigned. The man pulls his partner towards him but she spins away, landing face to face with another woman. Now the two women dance and everything is different: bright and playful as their eyes meet. It ends in a clinch behind a bookcase. The great love is not between the woman, Mariana, and her husband, but between Mariana and Anne Lister, also known as Gentleman Jack.

I’m watching this play out in a rehearsal room at Northern Ballet in Leeds, where choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is in the midst of creating a ballet version of Gentleman Jack, as popularised in Sally Wainwright’s hit TV series (Wainwright is a consultant on the ballet). Lister was a 19th-century landowner running her family’s estate in Halifax, but is better known for the diaries that revealed her passionate lesbian love affairs and for boldly living an unconventional life for the times.

Their faces may not have been given any airtime, but they remain some of the most beloved characters in television history – in shows like Friends, Frasier and This Country. Take a bow, Ugly Naked Guy …

When you think of television characters, chances are you remember the ones you can actually see. But this is a wildly unfair slight on a small but powerful minority: the characters who remain staunchly offscreen. For decades – mostly in comedies, with a handful of dramatic exceptions – these invisible workhorses have more than earned their keep, and they deserve their props. Here are the 10 best characters whose faces you have never actually clapped eyes on.

A country where safety is under threat from federal violence on the streets is not fit to stage soccer’s showpiece event

Removing the United States as co-host of the 2026 World Cup would hurt for pretty much everyone. Fans would miss out on seeing the sport’s pinnacle in their home towns (or somewhere nearby). Cities and businesses small and large would lose the financial benefits they had banked on. It would be a logistical and political nightmare on an international scale, the likes of which have never been seen before in sports. It would be eminently sad. And it would be entirely justified.

It brings me no pleasure to say this. The United States has been eager to host a men’s World Cup for more than a decade and a half. The desire survived and even grew after 2010’s failure to out-bid Russia and Qatar (in public and behind closed doors) for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. With hosting rights for 2026 later secured alongside Canada and Mexico, the US soccer scene prepared to show off that the sport is now part of the nation’s fabric, 32 years after hosting the tournament for the first time in 1994. Soccer’s growing popularity in America has helped inspire other US sports to try new formats, encouraged us to engage more fully with the world in a sporting context, and has been at the center of conversations about our society and culture. The 2026 World Cup was seen as the best chance for the world to fully experience not just how much the US has improved at soccer, but how much soccer has improved the US.

Accused, isolated and constantly under scrutiny, The Traitors contestant drew on years of social deduction gaming to stay calm under pressure

The latest series of The Traitors, which ended last week on a nail-biting finale, featured some of the usual characters – from guileless extroverts to wannabe Columbos endlessly observing fellow contestants for the slightest flicker of treachery. But one faithful stood out for her quiet determination, despite a ceaseless onslaught of suspicion and accusation. That person was Jade Scott, and I wasn’t at all surprised when, quite early on in the series, she revealed she was a keen gamer.

“Minecraft was my way in, when I was 15,” she says. “I made loads of friends at school playing that.” From this innocent introduction, however, she moved on to darker titles: the first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and the multiplayer battle-arena game Dota. “That’s where my interest in strategy gaming really kicked in,” she says.

Manchester mayor suggests claims he was told Labour would not give him permission to stand were untrue

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Labour party’s civil war over the Gorton and Denton byelection has intensified after Andy Burnham accused Downing Street sources of lying about his decision to apply to stand in the Manchester seat.

The Manchester mayor was reacting to suggestions by unnamed Keir Starmer allies that he had been told “in no uncertain terms” that any request to the NEC committee to put his name forward for the byelection would be refused.

Gregory Bovino, an aggressive promoter of Trump’s deportation agenda, is said to have been stripped of ‘commander at large’ title

• Analysis: The rise and fall of Gregory Bovino, US border patrol’s menacing provoker-in-chief

Gregory Bovino, the border patrol commander who has become the public face of the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, is expected to leave the city on Tuesday as the Trump administration reshuffles the leadership of its immigration enforcement operation and scales back the federal presence after a second fatal shooting by officers.

A senior Trump administration official told Reuters that the 55-year-old, who has been a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists, would be leaving Minnesota along with some of the agents deployed with him.

Milan’s mayor says agents’not welcome’ in co-host city and that Italy can take care of security itself

A unit of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will have a security role in the Winter Olympic Games in Italy, sparking uproar and petitions against the deployment.

Sources at the US embassy in Rome confirmed a statement from ICE, the agency embroiled in a brutal immigration crackdown in the US, saying that federal agents would support diplomatic security details during the Milan-Cortina games but would not run any enforcement operations.

Effect of heavy rain and strong winds prompts calls for more investment in resilience to extreme weather

• Storm Chandra – live updates

Swathes of south-west England were left flooded and cut off as Storm Chandra brought heavy rain and strong winds, prompting calls for more resources to be invested in making the region more resilient to extreme weather.

The storm, which also caused deep snowfalls in northern Britain, led to travel disruption and hundreds of schools being shut across the UK.