With just one day before federal funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is set to expire, the country’s lawmakers remain at an impasse about proposed reforms to the controversial agency.

Although Republicans control both chambers of Congress, they need Democratic votes in order to pass a bill to provide stopgap funding for the Department of Homeland Security until a long-term spending deal is reached. Democrats have pledged not to back the bill unless their terms are met. The reforms are a “line in the sand”, said the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries.

What did the commentators say?
The sanctity of American homes is a key sticking point for Democrats, who want to “bar federal immigration agents from entering private property without a judicial warrant”, said The Washington Post. Republicans claim this “would add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy”, but a recent Economist/YouGov survey found that 70% of Americans support such a measure.

Democrats are also “pushing for a mask ban”, said The Hill. Officials say face coverings protect Ice agents from being “doxxed” online, but critics claim it “erodes accountability”. Other demands include a guarantee that federal funds will not be used to carry out raids on or near “medical facilities, schools, child care facilities” and places of worship, said The Guardian. Agents would also be barred from profiling individuals based on “their job, their spoken language and accent, or their race or ethnicity”.

Ice has recently agreed to equip all of its agents with body cameras, but that has Democrats “running headlong into a new problem”, said Politico: a growing “outcry from privacy advocates that surveillance tools will allow Ice agents to identify and track protesters”.

What next?
Unless an agreement is reached by midnight tomorrow, the Department of Homeland Security will go into shutdown. But thanks to last year’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, which funnelled $75 billion to Ice, the department “has money to mitigate much of the shortfall”, said news broadcaster MS NOW. The department’s other agencies, including the Coast Guard and the Secret Service, are likely to be hardest hit.

Immortality may seem like the preserve of Greek myth, science fiction and the Silicon Valley elite, but an obsession with living forever appears to be affecting ordinary people too. Longevity Fixation Syndrome is being flagged by some health professionals as a new mental-health disorder characterised by an obsession with extending the biological clock and staving off not only the signs of age but death itself.

‘Obsessive self-surveillance’
People with LFS may “obsessively” monitor their sleep patterns, bowel movements and blood-sugar levels, following intense exercise routines, strict diets and “supplement protocols”, and embrace “controversial therapies”, said The Mirror.“What starts as self‑care becomes obsessive self‑surveillance,” Jan Gerber, CEO of Zurich-based mental-health clinic Paracelsus Recovery, told the newspaper. We’re starting to see “a growing number” of people “whose lives are dominated by the fear of ageing and decline”.

Although LFS has yet to appear in official diagnostic manuals, Gerber compares it to orthorexia, an eating disorder characterised by an obsession with healthy food. And like many other addictions, it can affect the sufferer’s career and personal relationships. Ironically, said The Mirror, “the stress generated by this mindset can be so intense that it actively shortens lifespan, rather than extending it”.

Struggle to ‘accept mortality’
The most public face of the crusade against ageing is Bryan Johnson, a 48-year-old American venture capitalist who has vowed to “achieve immortality” and to make his “Don’t Die” movement “the most influential ideology in the world by 2027”.

Public interest is clearly growing, with Global Google searches for “longevity” tripling over the course of 2025. At last month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, longevity tech was “the hype vertical du jour”, said the Financial Times. Items on display included a $899 (£660) “longevity mirror” that tells how well the person reflected is ageing.

This obsession with longevity “reveals a self-centred society” in which people struggle to “accept mortality”. It is also, “let’s face it”, a new “buzzword” for shifting products. We’d probably do well to face the fact “that when we die is not something we can control”, and “realise that life is too important to waste it trying to live forever”.

Waves whipped up by Storm Nils crash around the Rocher de la Vierge (Rock of the Virgin) in Biarritz, southwestern France. Some 850,000 homes in the country’s south were left without power following 100mph winds and heavy downpours.

Gaizka Iroz / AFP / Getty Images

It may be the greyest of Februarys but this is the month that Britain’s snowdrop enthusiasts (or “galanthophiles”) look forward to the most, as “enchanting white carpets” sprout up across the country, said The Independent. Here are some of the best places to spot the “pint-sized” blooms.

Goldsborough Hall, North Yorkshire
This Yorkshire stately home offers a truly “spectacular” sea of snowdrops that “blankets” the 12-acre grounds, said The English Garden. The Snowdrop Walk features more than “100 rare varieties of snowdrops”, some of which are so rare that “they haven’t yet been named”.

Shepton Snowdrop Festival, Shepton Mallet, Somerset
This year’s festival is dedicated to James Allen (the “Snowdrop King”), who in the 19th century became the first person to breed new varieties from wild species, said Country Life. For the first time, local landmarks including Forde Abbey and Dunster Castle will be joining forces to form the Great Snowdrop Trails of Somerset.

Cambo Gardens, St Andrews, Fife
The snowdrops found here are the perfect “tonic” when it feels like “winter is dragging its heels”, filling the air “with their honeyed scent”, said The Scotsman. Cambo Gardens offers a range of ways to enjoy the season, with “walks, talks, woodland trails, expert workshops and live music events”.

Gelli Uchaf, near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire
Although the smallest garden on this list, this Welsh beauty is home to one of the most “diverse micro-climates”, said The Independent. The slopes are underplanted with hundreds of thousands of snowdrops, as well as crocuses, cyclamens, daffodils and many other types of bulbs.

Britain’s predicament will get worse before it gets better
The Economist’s editorial board
The UK’s “political instability has become chronic”, says The Economist. You might “think things can only get better” for Labour after the past week’s drama, but “alas, the more likely path is drift”. The nation is in a “declinist mood” that’s “redolent” of the 1970s, and Keir Starmer lacks “a plan or the political capital to get much done”. In the absence of “clear-eyed” Labour modernisers, “voters will have to look elsewhere for renewal”.

Why heartbreak is good for you
Kat Rosenfield on UnHerd
I’ve always thought “getting hurt is table stakes for getting to fall in love”, writes Kat Rosenfield. But “droves” of young people are trying to “guard” their hearts and assets by getting prenups. “Perhaps this was predictable” for a generation raised to believe “every interaction should have an escape hatch to protect one from emotional harm”. But to “make a go of it in love”, you must take a “delirious leap together”, because this “foolish act of leaping is everything”.

Pubs are for everyone. Don’t let Reform make them the political property of the boorish hard right
Jonathan Liew in The Guardian
For Nigel Farage, romanticising the pub is a “shortcut to working-class authenticity”, writes Jonathan Liew. He portrays them as a “refuge where old white lads can say whatever they like”. But the “real beauty” of pubs is their “versatility” – from “chain pub” to “gastropub, darts pub, gay pub, old man pub, gay old man pub” and pub with “a dog bowl in the corner”. Talk of “saving the great British pub” shouldn’t focus on “one demographic”.