She has suddenly become one of the world’s most successful comedians, with a hit Netflix special, an Emmy-nominated role in Hacks and another opposite Steve Carell. But many of her jokes raise hackles. Is she a genius – or an edgelord?

‘Once in a while, you get to see a legend at the absolute top of their game,” booms a voice at the beginning of Robby Hoffman’s Netflix special, Wake Up, welcoming her to the stage. High praise indeed – especially since the voice is that of the leading US comedian John Mulaney, who directed the special, and who clearly thinks this 36-year-old New Yorker is one of the hottest talents around.

He’s not the only one. Over the last year, Hoffman’s star has risen at a stunning pace. She is currently on TV in Rooster, a college campus comedy starring Steve Carell, as well as the fifth season of the critically acclaimed sitcom Hacks. This is only her second season as talent agency assistant Randi, but last year the role earned her an Emmy nomination.

If Starmer’s Labour refuses to concede more powers to Plaid Cymru, the triumphant independence party, it will only accelerate its own decline

On Saturday, I stood on the steps outside the Senedd, listening to the leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, take questions from the media. It was one of those rare moments of almost feeling history being made. As one of the other journalists said to me: “I have never seen a political event like this in Wales.”

A crowd of Plaid supporters had gathered to welcome their 43 new MSs. People were giddy with excitement: for the first time since the party was founded just over 100 years ago, it was about to form the next Welsh government. And for the first time in Wales’s history, the country’s highest-ranking political representative would be from a party committed to securing independence – to breaking away from the United Kingdom. Some of the Senedd members were crying. The crowd starting singing the Welsh national anthem, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, and were joined by the assembled politicians.

Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist. He publishes a regular newsletter on Welsh politics

Up to 150 passengers and crew from hantavirus-hit MV Hondius start flying home aboard military and government planes from Spain’s Canary Islands

The complex operation to repatriate passengers and crew of the hantavirus-hit cruise ship, the MV Hondius, is almost complete.

Up to 150 people have started flying home aboard military and government planes from Spain’s Canary Islands, and the World Health Organization has recommended, but not mandated, a 42-day quarantine once they have landed.

It’s the biggest night in British television! Join Aimee Lou Wood, Alan Carr, Owen Cooper and stars of the year’s best shows on the red carpet

• Adolescence dominates Bafta TV awards

• Bafta TV awards 2026: the full list of winners
  

Banknotes are now so tattered that even buses refuse to accept them, as a dollarised economy and mobile phone payments push up the cost of essentials

As US troops withdrew from Somalia in the spring of 1994, a teenaged Muse Omar Jama began working as an exchange trader in Mogadishu’s Bakara market. More than three decades later, he still does the same job, but wonders for how much longer.

Jama, 49, sits in a plastic chair in the one-room office he shares with other traders. The auto-rickshaws speed by outside, but inside is quiet; the noise of bargaining has faded and the traders exchange few words between themselves.

Shock and fears for future, including homelessness, after landlords rushed to issue section 21 notices before 1 May

It was 2pm on 30 April when Carl Kansinde Middleton received a “no fault” eviction from his landlord in Brighton – just 10 hours before section 21 notices were officially banned under the Renters’ Right Act.

“As we were getting closer, I really thought I was safe,” he said. “It just never occurred to me that it would just come right on the last day – I truly felt blindsided.

Chances of Starmer remaining in No 10 appear to be diminishing as about 40 Labour MPs call on him to quit

Keir Starmer faces a fight for his political life in the next 24 hours as potential Labour leadership rivals from Wes Streeting to Angela Rayner began to position themselves for a contest.

Starmer is hoping to save his job on Monday with a speech promising to “face up to the big challenges” for the country on growth, energy, defence and Europe.

US president expresses ire at Tehran’s reported demands, as drones strike Gulf nations and Israel warns war ‘not over’

Donald Trump has rejected an Iranian response to a US peace proposal as “totally unacceptable”, on a day the month-old ceasefire showed signs of fraying as drone strikes were reported around the region and Benjamin Netanyahu warned the war was “not over”.

The Iranian counter-proposal was passed to Washington through Pakistani mediators.

FoI responses collected by insurer show brigades tackled 1,760 battery-linked fires in 2025, up 147% in three years

Fire brigades across the UK are tackling lithium-ion battery fires at a rate of one every five hours, figures show, as fire chiefs warn that public awareness and government regulation have not kept pace with the ubiquity of this new hazard.

Lithium-ion batteries power most rechargeable devices including mobile phones, electric toothbrushes, toys and vapes, as well as ebikes, e-scooters and electric vehicles.

Britons among passengers and crew taken off vessel and put on flights to 10 countries, while France and US later say two people showing symptoms

• Explainer: what happens to cruise ship passengers now and will they quarantine?

Dozens of passengers and crew from countries around the world have been evacuated from a cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak.

British people were among those taken off the ship as part of a two-day operation that began on Sunday in Tenerife. They were put on chartered flights back to the UK, where they will enter hospital quarantine in Merseyside. At about 9pm on Sunday, a plane carrying 22 UK citizens landed in Manchester, it was reported.

Station will be first to be given full GBR branding and will directly link city’s Biomedical Campus to London, Brighton and Stansted airport

The delayed Cambridge South station will finally open in late June – and become the first station to be given full Great British Railways branding, the government has announced.

The station sits beside the city’s Biomedical Campus, Europe’s largest medical research centre, and will connect it with direct trains to London, Brighton and Stansted airport, as well as up to nine trains an hour to the centre of Cambridge itself.

Zbigniew Ziobro has been accused in Poland of leading an organised criminal enterprise and abuse of power, which he denies

Poland’s former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, wanted on several criminal charges in his home country, has fled Hungary to the United States, he confirmed on Sunday, after being granted asylum from former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government last year.

“I am in the United States,” Ziobro told rightwing Polish broadcaster Republika. “I arrived yesterday, and this is my third time travelling around the country,” he said.

Senior academics describe the Judge business school’s proposal to provide services and training as ‘horrifying’

Cambridge University’s business school is seeking to provide “leadership development” and “innovation management” to Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry despite concerns over its government’s record on human rights and climate change, the Guardian has learned.

Cambridge’s leadership has approved a proposal by the university’s Judge business school to form a “memorandum of understanding” with the ministry for services and training, after an initial introduction by the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

British singer claims electronics company ‘repeatedly refused’ to stop using a photo of her on its packaging

Dua Lipa is suing Samsung for at least $15m (£11m, A$20.6m), alleging that the electronics company used a photo of her to sell its TVs without financially compensating her or seeking her permission.

According to the legal complaint, filed in a US district court in California on Friday, Samsung began using an image of Lipa on an image of a TV screen printed on its cardboard packaging for “a significant portion” of its TVs sold in the US last year.

Netflix show wins best limited drama while Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper and Christine Tremarco take acting prizes

• Bafta TV awards 2026: the full list of winners

• Bafta TV awards 2026: on the red carpet – in pictures

The Netflix drama Adolescence, which won universal acclaim for its chilling portrayal of violence by disaffected teenage boys, has dominated the Bafta TV awards.

The four-part series where each episode was filmed in a single take won the award for best limited drama, while Stephen Graham, who co-created the show, took the best leading actor prize.

Members of minority communities in Birmingham and elsewhere fear results could lead to rise in hostile rhetoric

Conceding defeat at the election count at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena on Friday, the outgoing Labour leader of the city council, John Cotton, made a plea. “What I would encourage the next administration in this city to do, whatever form that administration takes, is that it ensures it champions the diversity of this city,” he said.

Labour’s 14-year rule of the local authority had come to a crashing end, with Reform emerging as the largest party with 22 councillors so far, followed by the Greens on 19, albeit both parties a long way off the 51 needed for a majority.

Party leader has been vocal about its gains in London and there is a feeling that its losses could have been worse

By any sane person’s reckoning, the Conservative party had a night to forget in Thursday’s local, mayoral and devolved elections. It lost about 500 councillors in England and ceded control of three local authorities to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – losing to the rightwing upstarts in England, Wales and Scotland. Why, then, is Kemi Badenoch hailing these results as proof that “the Conservatives are coming back” – and why do many Tory MPs appear to agree with her?

The Conservative leader was vocal on Friday about the eye-catching gains her party made in politically atypical London, where the Tories won back the totemic council of Westminster, took the most seats in Wandsworth council and saw off the threat from Reform in Bexley and Bromley.

Significant gains this week lay bare an increasingly fragmented political system

• Full results from England, Scotland and Wales

Local elections have fundamentally reshaped the political landscape in England. Labour suffered heavy losses, losing ground to the Green party and Reform UK, while the Conservatives also sustained significant losses to Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.

Reform and the Green party made significant gains, in results that laid bare an increasingly fragmented political system. Reform gained 1,349 council seats and control of 14 councils, while the Green party won 376 council seats, control of five councils, and took two mayoralties.

From devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales to councils and mayoralties in England, find out what happened in your area

• Elections mapped: how Labour lost ground in different directions

London mayor talks up coalition-building, highlights his environmental record, and worries national Labour party is on the wrong track

When Sadiq Khan was first elected as mayor of London 10 years ago, Barack Obama was US president, the UK was still in the European Union and Leicester City had just been crowned the unlikely champions of the English Premier League.

In the intervening decade, Donald Trump has gone from reality TV star to two-time US president, the UK has had six different prime ministers, and Brexit has convulsed the country. London has been rocked by tragedies ranging from terror attacks to the Grenfell Tower fire.

The gloriously knowing adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s novel gets a tremendous second season. Its fabulous escapism is beyond earthly praise

Rupert Campbell-Black is a bounder, a braggart, a scoundrel who won’t play by the rules, by Jove. “The man is a loose cannon,” hisses show-jumping coach Malise Gordon (Rupert Everett), as Rupert (Alex Hassell) directs his own cannon at the latest in a seemingly endless conga-line of pantingly grateful locals. By “his own cannon” I mean, of course, his penis. Or rather his “willy”, for there is no aspect of the anatomy – or, indeed, life – that Rivals will not reduce to a cartoon while pointing and sniggering like a schoolgirl. And quite right, too. Who wants boring old reality when you could be engaging in an explosive bout of nude tennis with the MP for Chalford and Bisley (“Tit fault!”)? Anyway, back to Rupert, who, as the aforementioned minister for sport and “most handsome man in England”, is the throbbing nub of this unapologetically preposterous adaptation of the late Jilly Cooper’s 80s bonkbuster.

Rupert has a head for business and a body for wearing jodhpurs while shouting “ARE YOU READY FOR ME TO COME DOWN YOUR CHIMNEY?” during sex. Men admire his ruthlessness; horses are magnetised by his reckless approach to leisurewear.

From B&Bs and cabins to fincas and family hotels, these rural boltholes make ideal bases for exploring the region’s mountains, trails and historic towns and villages

For centuries, outsiders have been lured to the radiant hills and valleys of Andalucía, not least the Moors of north Africa who left such an impact on the land and culture. More recently, an influx of northern European aficionados has fostered a string of seductive, small-scale guesthouses to join some idiosyncratic Spanish-owned properties. These are idyllic, tranquil settings in which to de-stress and recharge, hike, ride, cycle, cook, swim or simply stargaze – the rural skies here are blissfully free of light pollution. Nor are cultural highlights ever far away, whether in Granada, Córdoba or Seville.

The tale of ‘black-cab rapist’ John Worboys gives the spotlight to the survivors. It’s a sensitive, compelling look at their fight for justice – which rightly pushes the perpetrator into the background

In 1982, the film-maker Roger Graef made the first ever fly-on-the-wall documentary, in 12 parts, about the police. One of the episodes – A Complaint of Rape – showed Thames Valley detectives aggressively questioning a woman with a history of psychiatric treatment who had reported being violated by three strangers. “This is the biggest bollocks I’ve ever heard!” is a fairly representative sample of the police interview technique deployed. The episode caused a public outcry (especially as it was broadcast after a court decision in which a judge accused a hitchhiker of “contributory negligence” in her own rape) and led to the formation of an all-female rape investigation team at the police station in the months afterwards.

It has been seen as a pivotal moment for a revolution in the way victims and their cases were approached and handled. And maybe it was, at least for a while. But it’s hard to say with any conviction that any progress gained has been maintained or built on. Conviction rates for rape are horrifyingly low and there is an ever-growing mass of documentaries and dramas – about historic and recent cases – highlighting the role of the police in creating that phenomenon, be it their negligence, apathy, incompetence, misogyny, active malevolence (in cases such as that of Met officer Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard) or any combination of the above.

Finborough theatre, London
Titas Halder’s raw solo play relays one young man’s feverish struggle in the face of racism, deftly played by Amar Chadha-Patel in his stage debut

Titas Halder’s striking new one-man play is about a young British Asian man, A.K., growing up in Britain and experiencing increasingly brutal incidents of racism: bullying in the playground; casual jibes at work; parents who no longer feel safe in their family home. And at the centre of it all: a funny and sensitive man, struggling to find himself and fracturing in two.

This is a strangely arresting production but there are some issues too. It feels like there’s a fairly specific play hiding in here but we’re only given scraps of details. A.K. spends his youth growing up on unnamed “Island” and later moves to the city, where he lives in a dingy flat on Seven Sisters Road. There are fleeting references to Walkmans in his childhood and, later, an allusion to the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes but the writing wavers between a feverish nightmare and something much more grounded and political.

Haringey council’s penalty seems extortionate – especially when other authorities charge lower amounts

I read your story about a man fined £500 for dropping a cigarette butt on the pavement.

I have been issued with a £500 fixed-penalty notice (FPN) by Haringey council for putting a butt in a refuse sack awaiting collection on the street.

The Booker winner’s epic tale of gay love and loneliness in the Hebrides charts an uneasy homecoming against a backdrop of repression

There’s a common greeting in the Outer Hebrides: the lineage-establishing “Who do you belong to?” By the time this question is posed to 22-year-old gay Harris islander John-Calum Macleod, or Cal, in Douglas Stuart’s new novel, there is a sense that Cal is his father John’s beyond the ordinary claims of blood – the latter’s sway containing undercurrents of domineering ownership.

The book opens with the two conducting a strange ritual over the phone, performed regularly ever since Cal moved to Edinburgh to study textiles: John, a precentor, reads to Cal in Gaelic from the New Testament and has him sing back “with the full power of his belief”. The verse John recites – which prefigures the novel’s themes of repression and self-denial – urges the faithful to guide the errant and to stay vigilant against temptation. After receiving Cal’s assent, John orders him to return home, ostensibly because Cal’s maternal grandmother, Ella, is sick. Though John lives with Ella in her croft house, she is his ex-wife’s mother and thus not his responsibility.

Instead of obsessing over rules that have ceased to matter, we must consider giving Beijing a dose of its own medicine

The US and Israel may have started the war in Iran, but – apart from the belligerents themselves – it is China and Europe that stand to lose the most from it. Yet while European leaders watch like rabbits caught in the headlights as energy prices shoot through the roof, China has responded to the crisis with remarkable equanimity. It is striking how self-confident Beijing is ahead of this week’s Trump-Xi summit.

That’s because China is better prepared for what I call an age of “un-order”. This is not the same as disorder, where rules exist but are broken. Un-order is a world where the rules themselves have simply ceased to matter. While European governments have been obsessed with preserving order, China has been working out how to survive chaos.

Mark Leonard is director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail

When my husband went away for a week, days of blissful alone-time beckoned. Instead, I started talking to household appliances and eating ‘crone dinner’

My husband is away this week, something that used to happen regularly, but is a post-pandemic rarity. Like, I suspect, many people in long-term relationships, I look forward to a little alone-time (I’m sure he does, too – a few carefree days away from me and my dogmatic, dourly expressed opinions on everything from the correct cup for my morning coffee to radio volume). But how enjoyable is it, really? It’s day five and I realise that, yet again, I’m following my usual six-stage timeline towards total collapse.

1. The purge
Within minutes of the door closing, and without conscious thought, I find myself kneeling in front of the fridge, excavating decomposing and expired matter, tackling the jar graveyard (grey, ancient, pickled beets and luxuriantly furred pesto) and wiping shelves. Next, I move through the kitchen like a whirlwind, taking out bins, sorting recycling, spraying surfaces and putting everything in its place.

There are many good reasons to not like the prime minister. But ours is an age in which hatred is a remarkably popular currency – leaders need a strategy for countering it

It might be that Keir Starmer, not known for his rhetorical skills, expresses himself most clearly through his furrowed brow. It has a way of telling the public that none of this is easy and that difficult decisions must be made. It says that although Starmer wishes it were otherwise, things will get worse before they get better, if they do indeed get better; that there are no good options, only difficult decisions. The local and regional elections on Friday meted out another round of pain for Starmer, and his furrowed brow was once again doing a lot of the talking. “The results are tough, they are very tough,” he said. “That hurts, and it should hurt, and I take responsibility.”

Starmer’s furrowed brow courts pity and patience – but voters are in no mood to feel sorry for their prime minister. Instead, if the public’s feelings towards Starmer could be reduced to a single emotion, it would probably be hatred, resentment or scorn. Even those who don’t like Starmer can be surprised at the sheer intensity and spread of the animosity towards him. “[It] is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” John McDonnell said on LBC recently. On Newsnight on Wednesday, the Daily Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey said that “visceral dislike” of Starmer was the local elections’ defining theme – and the Labour peer Thangam Debbonaire conceded that “I’ve certainly picked that up on the doorstep, yes.”

Samuel Earle is the author of Tory Nation: The Dark Legacy of the World’s Most Successful Political Party

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Integrated mental healthcare for maternity services, more perinatal psychiatrists and public awareness of the problem could deliver meaningful change

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

When Mia* was referred to me, she was 32 weeks pregnant and had not slept properly in two months. Her GP had told her it was “just pregnancy insomnia”. Her obstetrician said it was normal and suggested she try going to bed earlier with a pregnancy pillow. By the time she sat in my consulting room, hands clenched around a damp tissue, she had been quietly planning how her partner and baby would be better off without her.

Mia is not a real person. She is a composite – an amalgam of the hundreds of women I see each year in my perinatal psychiatry practice. But her story is so common it could be a template. A woman develops psychological symptoms during pregnancy or the postpartum period. She mentions them, tentatively, at an antenatal appointment. She is reassured that what she feels is normal. Weeks or months pass. By the time she reaches specialist care, she is freefalling into a crisis.

The group’s latest triumph won over the Department for Business and Trade, now it is eyeing private care providers and supermarkets

A paragon of the kind of people-powered progress that feels all the more necessary in divisive times, the Living Wage campaign is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Born out of Telco (The East London Citizens Organisation), which ultimately became the nationwide group Citizens UK, the campaign has always involved communities working together to press for social and economic change.

The US president will be counting on China to influence Iran and help him out of his latest mess. But the price may be high – including for Taiwan

Like an out-of-control wrecking ball, swinging wildly back and forth, Donald Trump smashes up the international order without much thought for the consequences. Lacking coherent strategies, workable plans or consistent aims, he power-trips erratically from one fragile region, tense warzone and complex geopolitical situation to another, leaving misery, confusion and rubble in his wake. Typically, he claims a bogus victory, demands that others repair the damage and pick up the tab, then looks around for something new to break.

The president will bulldoze into another international minefield this week – the fraught standoff between China and Taiwan – when he travels to Beijing for a two-day summit with President Xi Jinping. After a string of humiliating policy implosions over Ukraine, Gaza, Nato, Greenland, and now Iran and Lebanon, needy Trump craves a diplomatic success to flaunt at home. But his hopes of vote-winning trade pacts are overshadowed by his latest war of choice. He needs Xi’s promise not to arm Iran if all-out fighting resumes – and Xi’s help keeping the strait of Hormuz open as part of a mooted framework peace deal.

My activist group is about 80% women. Where did all the men go – and how can we get them back?

In Donald Trump’s first term, my Brooklyn-based activist group had the peculiar dynamic of being started by two men while being composed of about 65% women. Since November 2024, our group has doubled in size, and the gender imbalance has tipped even further: we are now about 80% women.

Almost 18 months into Trump’s second term, it is abundantly clear that the appetite for anti-Trump, pro-democracy activism has not dimmed at all. And yet, there is a substantial portion of the populace that, in my experience as an activist, seems to have lost its fervor for the fight.

Progressive nationalist parties now hold power in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That will be a challenge for the United Kingdom’s overcentralised state

When the Scottish and Welsh parliaments were created on the eve of the millennium, the then Labour government in Westminster believed that it had engineered a win-win situation. Devolution, it was hoped, would see off any nationalist threat in Scotland and Wales. Meanwhile, the Labour party’s longstanding political dominance in both nations would see it take comfortable control of the two new parliaments.

That was then. Last week’s devolved elections left Scottish and Welsh Labour battered, bruised and humiliated. Plaid Cymru’s historic victory in Wales, and a fifth successive triumph for the Scottish National party (SNP), mean that pro-independence governments are now set for the first time to rule in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast (where Sinn Féin won in 2022). The starting gun has been fired on a new and constitutionally contested era in the politics of the UK.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

After five years of deliberation the global south has forced the question that defined the Covid crisis: who will get the vaccines?

The Covid-19 pandemic did deep and lasting damage to the international political system. Countries in the global south are keenly aware that the established order let them down. They received vaccines later, in smaller numbers and often at a higher price than rich countries, resulting in avoidable death and suffering, and extended economic malaise. Last week, a coalition of those countries made their displeasure known by continuing to stonewall negotiations on the vaunted pandemic preparedness treaty of the World Health Organization (WHO), sending a clear message that when the next crisis arrives, they will not accept the same status quo.

An international treaty is sorely needed. But five years into negotiations, it is clear that the western backers of this plan, especially in Europe, have consistently presented it as a fait accompli, while avoiding the most basic and obvious political impasse before them.

Readers assess the prime minister’s position in the wake of Labour’s losses in local elections

As a local Labour activist, I understand the general wailing and gnashing of teeth that has beset the party after our drubbing in the local elections. But amid the panic about who should or shouldn’t resign, or what may or may not happen in three years’ time, I’d like to propose a philosophy that I’m calling “positive defeatism”.

For only the fourth time in a century, a Labour prime minister has won a general election with a large majority – with a mandate that takes us to July 2029. What if we stop worrying about a second term and just get on with making consequential changes in this term?

Keir Starmer’s banal platitudes | Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman | Tacking backwards | Crap council

Keir Starmer’s word salad of banal platitudes – “we will deliver the change that people are desperate for” (which change?) – exemplifies his inability to capture the imagination (These election results don’t mean tacking left or right…, 8 May). If he stays on as PM, it is extremely likely that Nigel Farage will succeed him. While I’m uninspired by any potential Labour successor, it is possible one of them might step up into the role and succeed. Starmer must resign to give us that chance for the future.
Dr Kimon Roussopoulos
Cambridge

• If Keir Starmer is seeking to reassure voters that he is really the man to deliver change, it seems bizarre to bring in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman (9 May). It smacks of desperation. The message is that he doesn’t have the political answers and neither does his cabinet. But that has always been the problem. Starmer’s political antennae are virtually nonexistent. Sadly, Labour made the worst possible choice when it chose him as leader and there is no getting away from that.
Shirley Osborn
Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire

Dr Simon Nieder responds to Richard Dawkins’ encounters with a chatbot

Richard Dawkins’ reflections on AI consciousness are striking – not because they show that machines have crossed some hidden threshold into inner life, but because they reveal how readily we can be persuaded that they have (Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious, even if it doesn’t know it, 5 May).

Many will recognise the experience: a system that responds with fluency, humour and apparent understanding. At some point, simulation starts to feel like presence. But that shift tells us more about human cognition than machine consciousness. The error is a category one. These systems generate highly convincing representations of thought and feeling, but they provide no evidence of subjective experience. To move from one to the other is to mistake output for ontology – to infer an inner life where there is no credible mechanism for one.

Investment in the courts and legal aid will be vital to deal with the expected increase in contested repossession cases, says Mark Evans of the Law Society of England and Wales

The new Renters’ Rights Act is a step forward in ensuring that both tenants and landlords can access justice, but without proper investment it risks creating new court delays and injustices for both parties (The Guardian view on the Renters’ Rights Act: finally, protections fit for the modern housing market, 5 May).

The end of “no fault” evictions in England is expected to lead to an increase in the number of contested repossession cases. If courts do not have the funding to handle the increase, delays will grow and leave many people in limbo, as we have recently seen with the closure of the Hillingdon Law Centre.

Jérémy Doku finds the net again, Joshua Zirkzee struggles at Sunderland and Ismaïla Sarr is fulfilling his potential

On Friday when Bruno Fernandes became the Football Writers’ Association player of the year, either Declan Rice or David Raya could have been forgiven for feeling a touch aggrieved. Both have been essential to Arsenal’s bid for a Premier League and Champions League double but it is Raya who showed why he may have been more deserving at the London Stadium as his technically pinpoint one-on-one save gave Arsenal the platform they so desperately needed to secure a vital three points late on. Mikel Arteta’s side were on the ropes as Mateus Fernandes exchanged a one-two with Pablo to run in with the goal at his mercy. Surely this was it for Arsenal: the title slipping again. Raya’s nerve held strong, making the most crucial of saves. Arsenal’s dream of winning a first title in 22 years remains in his hands. Graham Searles

Match report: West Ham 0-1 Arsenal

Barney Ronay: VAR offers up title-deciding moment

Match report: Manchester City 3-0 Brentford

Match report: Liverpool 1-1 Chelsea

Match report: Sunderland 0-0 Manchester United

Match report: Nottingham Forest 1-1 Newcastle

Match report: Burnley 2-2 Aston Villa

Multibillion stage of title-relegation stagger boils down to a referee in front of a screen decoding a raised forearm

There’s a great moment towards the end of the otherwise non-great Rocky III, when Clubber Lang is asked by a straw-hatted, bowtie-twirling US sports reporter for a prediction before his imminent title fight. There’s a pause as Clubber looks down, lets the mask of showmanship drop, and just says the word “pain”.

You can say that again. Let’s face it, this was always going to hurt, whichever way the latest note in the conjoined title‑relegation stagger fell. Just as it was always likely the destination of the Premier League title would come down to staring at a referee staring at a screen to decide the minutiae of an arm wrestle at a corner.

New heavyweight champion climbed off the canvas twice before overwhelming Fabio Wardley in a battle that finally silenced his doubters

“I was in there with a live dog and I loved it,” Daniel Dubois said in the early hours of Sunday morning as, looking suitably gladiatorial without a shirt, the new WBO world heavyweight champion reflected on the monumental battle he had just shared with the valiant Fabio Wardley in Manchester. “He came to win and it was a real crowd-pleaser. We had a great fight.”

At ringside it had been a sobering privilege to see the courage and resolve of both men in a contest that captured the glory and the damage of boxing in equal measure. Dubois rose from the canvas twice, with the first knockdown coming a mere 10 seconds after the opening bell, but Wardley endured a sustained form of punishment which became increasingly worrying. He was a stricken and weaving figure at the end, refusing to succumb until the referee, Howard Foster, finally rescued him early in the 11th round.

Experts warn of ‘soft target’ vulnerabilities and intelligence gaps as federal agencies prepare to secure 78 matches across 11 cities

Fifa World Cup matches set to be held across the United States face heightened terrorism risks, with experts warning that vulnerabilities are being amplified by the US-Israel conflict with Iran and a depletion of counter-terrorism expertise within federal law enforcement.

The biggest threat stems from homegrown violent extremists, often lone actors that may have become radicalized online by extreme political views or jihadists such as the Islamic State (Isis), said four counter-terror experts interviewed.

This time it was Marcus Rashford who delivered the knockout blow. Three days after the fight between Fede Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni that ended with Real Madrid’s vice-captain taken to hospital and the crisis at the club laid bare for all to see, they went to the Camp Nou and finally, definitively relinquished a league they had lost long ago. For the first time in 94 years a clásico decided the title, 62,000 fans starting the party as goals from the Englishman and Ferran Torres took Hansi Flick’s team over the line with three games to spare.

If, that is, decided is the word. For Madrid, at least it is over now. They had avoided it ending last week by beating Espanyol, just across the city limits, sparing themselves from having to give their rivals a guard of honour before this game but they knew they could not avoid it for ever: their aspiration was limited to stopping Barcelona celebrating in their presence. But, like so much else this campaign, that was beyond them, and so a second successive season closes without a trophy, and on the worst possible stage.

The Scots could collect the wooden spoon a year after their historic World Cup run. Why has progress stalled so dramatically?

Is it a World Cup hangover? Or a growing injury list? Or something else? These are the questions Scotland supporters are asking themselves in the midst of a disappointing Women’s Six Nations. This was a tournament where legends such as Donna Kennedy were hoping for a third-place finish; the fact the team could end up with the wooden spoon is staggering, especially considering their historic World Cup run last year.

Scotland reached the last eight for the first time since 2002 and did so in convincing fashion. They defeated Fiji, their win over Wales was dominant and they challenged Canada, the eventual runners-up, in their final pool match. They were blown away by England in the quarter-final but it was nonetheless a successful campaign. The tournament’s end brought a close to Bryan Easson’s time in charge of the team and a whole new coaching staff were employed.

Holders were near enough unbeatable in brushing aside Warrington in the semi-final with a performance to rival the quality of the Warriors

As everyone expected, it will be the irresistible force against the immovable object at Wembley in three weeks’ time. Every great era-defining athlete or team needs an adversary. Ali v Frazier. Manchester United v Arsenal in the early Premier League years. Prost v Senna.

Perhaps in the years to come, this will be viewed as rugby league’s equivalent; a modern clash of the titans. You have to go back to 2022 to find a major final that did not include Hull KR or Wigan. They have contested the past two Super League grand finals against one another, winning one apiece.

Khadija Shaw showed Manchester City what they are giving up and Chelsea what they are potentially getting in emphatic style at Stamford Bridge, scoring an injury-time equaliser and then an extra time winner as City came from two goals behind to earn a place in the FA Cup final against Brighton.

Shaw has dominated headlines this week: the Women’s Super League top scorer is set to leave City and Chelsea are leading the chase. Her 91st-minute goal forced extra time before a thumping header in the 103rd minute ensured City’s double ambitions remain alive after the most fraught of encounters.

• 1st ODI: England, 211-9, bt New Zealand, 210, by 1 wkt

• Captain guides long tail to low target

England’s biggest summer got off to an underwhelming start at Chester-le-Street, as they limped to a one-wicket win in the first one-day international against New Zealand.

Only a calm rearguard effort from the stand-in captain, Charlie Dean, who finished unbeaten on 31 and valiantly marshalled England’s long tail, enabled them to crawl across the line.

Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, seeks to present issue as irrelevant in interview with Laura Kuenssberg

Labour has accused Nigel Farage of attempting to dodge scrutiny as the Reform leader continued to face questions over the £5m gift he received from a crypto billionaire shortly before the last general election.

Asked about the gift from Christopher Harborne on Sunday, the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, sought to present it as an irrelevance to voters and said it had complied with all the rules.

PwC survey reports fast fall in consumer confidence with people worried about Iran war’s impact on economy and personal finances

British households are bracing for a new cost of living crisis, as the impact of the Middle East conflict dampens confidence in the economy and personal finances, a survey has suggested.

Consumer confidence in the UK has dipped over the last three months at the fastest rate since June 2022, when inflation in the UK was soaring as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the spike in commodity prices.

Actor and comedian speaks publicly for the first time since his 42-year-old daughter died by suicide in February

Martin Short has spoken for the first time about the death of his daughter, Katherine Short, saying her death has been “a nightmare for the family”.

Katherine died in February aged 42, at her home in the Hollywood Hills. The County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s office confirmed she died by suicide.

In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Minister defends preparedness against novel threat after officials detonate device suspected to be from Ukraine

Authorities in Greece have intensified investigations into how an explosive-packed drone ended up in waters off the west of the country.

An inquiry, involving specialised military teams, broadened at the weekend after bomb disposal experts detonated the unmanned device at sea.

Countries such as US and Mexico that have longer hours also have higher obesity rates, research finds

Those who work longer hours are more likely to be obese and cutting how much time you spend working could help you keep the weight off, research suggests.

International research presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul compared working patterns and obesity prevalence for 33 OECD countries from 1990 to 2022. The study found that countries such as the US, Mexico and Colombia, which have longer annual working hours, also had higher obesity rates, even though northern European countries consume more energy and fat on average than those in Latin America.

With the help of citizen scientists, researchers studying rare humpback ‘jaw-gaping’ believe the move could be a social display

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Off the coast of Western Australia, a humpback whale is “pirouetting”, sweeping its pectoral fins through the water, its massive jaw hanging wide open. Surrounded by companions, the animal isn’t lunging for a meal: rather, it is putting on a mysterious behavioural display.

This underwater ballet, captured on camera by an onlooker and shared online, is one of the clearest examples of a rarely documented phenomenon known as “gaping”.

East Midlands electric car club helps residents and cuts emissions – but the need for a volunteer-led scheme reflects a much wider problem

In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic Miriam Stoate, a regenerative farmer from rural Leicestershire, noticed that too many people in her small village in England’s East Midlands were struggling to get around.

Although there were plenty of cars parked in Tilton, too often she found some of the village’s residents did not have access to one when they really needed it.

Warming ocean waters are priming beaches and raw shellfish for Vibrio even as scientists are trying to stay one step ahead

Bailey Magers and Sunil Kumar cut strange figures on Pensacola Beach. Bags of disinfectant solution surrounded them on the white sand; their gloved hands juggled test tubes while layers of rubber and plastic shielded their skin from the elements. As the two organized their seawater samples on the popular Florida shoreline last August, an older woman wearing a swimsuit walked over to ask what they were doing.

“We’re just actively monitoring water quality,” they told her, but she pressed on.

National Geographic photographer and WWF ambassador Jasper Doest joined conservation teams during the latest mountain gorilla census in Bwindi Impenetrable national park, taking pictures of the apes and the people essential to their survival

Officials reportedly drafting legislation likely to safeguard Britain’s last blast furnaces and save thousands of jobs

The full nationalisation of British Steel is expected to be announced in the king’s speech this week, a year after the government took over the daily running of the loss-making business from its Chinese owner.

The steelmaker, which employs 3,500 people at its plant in Scunthorpe, came under government control last April amid fears that its owner, Jingye, was planning to shut down the site.

Sports Direct founder says people in his employ recorded footage of Peter Cowgill meeting another retail boss

The Sports Direct founder, Mike Ashley, has admitted to arranging surveillance footage that brought down his rival Peter Cowgill, the former JD Sports chair.

Cowgill was secretly filmed in 2021 in a car talking with the Footasylum boss Barry Bown. JD Sports was in the process of acquiring the trainer retailer at the time and the two companies were not allowed to share commercially sensitive information.

William Harrison, a US soldier stationed in the region, was convicted and hanged for the murder of Patsy Wylie

On the afternoon of 25 September 1944, William Harrison, a US soldier stationed in Northern Ireland, visited the cottage of the Wylie family in Killycolpy, County Tyrone, and offered to buy treats for the children.

He had visited before and was, if not a friend, at least known to the family. Mary Wylie let him take her seven-year-old daughter, Patricia, better known as Patsy, across the fields to the shops.

Conservative and Reform leaders cheered as they address crowd, while Labour’s Pat McFadden met with boos and shouts of ‘where is Starmer?’

Thousands of people gathered outside Downing Street on Sunday to protest an increase in antisemitic hate crimes and violence, as senior politicians and interfaith leaders called for unity.

The Standing Strong: Extinguish Antisemitism rally, backed by more than 30 Jewish groups, drew thousands of people to Whitehall, as Conservative and Liberal Democrat party leaders, alongside Labour and Reform representatives, addressed a crowd studded with Israeli and union jack flags and ‘Where is Keir?’ placards.

Critics question former German chancellor’s suitability, while others think Europe should seize every chance for peace. What we know on day 1,538

German officials have reacted cautiously to Vladimir Putin’s surprise suggestion that former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder could act as a mediator in Ukraine war peace talks, saying they had “taken note” of Putin’s comments but viewed them as part of “a series of bogus offers” from Russia, government sources told Agency-France Presse. One source said a real test of Moscow’s intentions would be to extend the current three-day truce.

Schröder, 82, has remained close to Putin long after leaving office, standing apart from most western leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. He previously held key roles in Russian energy projects, including work on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and a seat on the board of Russian oil firm Rosneft, which he gave up in 2022. Putin on Saturday said he thinks the Ukraine war is winding down and he nominated Schröder as a potential key negotiator to help end the conflict.

Michael Roth, a former lawmaker from Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD) and chair of the foreign affairs committee, said a mediator “cannot be Putin’s buddy”, in an interview with Tagesspiegel. He stressed that any mediator must above all be accepted by Ukraine. “Neither Moscow nor we can decide that on Kyiv’s behalf.” Others within the party, however, have been more open to Putin’s suggestion.

Quoted by Der Spiegel, the SPD’s foreign affairs spokesperson in parliament, Adis Ahmetovic, said the proposal needs to be “carefully considered” with European partners. SPD lawmaker Ralf Stegner argued, in the same magazine, that “if we don’t want Putin and (US President Donald) Trump to decide Ukraine’s future” alone, Europe should seize every possible chance – however small.

Meanwhile, the US-mediated ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine appeared under serious strain on its second day on Sunday, writes Angelique Chrisafis and Pjotr Sauer. Both sides have accused the other of violating the deal through weekend attacks. Three people were killed in Russian drone strikes on areas near the frontline, and more than 200 battlefield clashes had taken place since early Saturday, Ukrainian officials said. Russia’s defence ministry said it had downed 57 Ukrainian drones over the past day and “responded in kind” on the battlefield.

The US envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will visit Moscow “soon enough” to continue talks with Russia, news agency Interfax reported Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov as saying on Sunday.

Russia has accused Armenia of providing Volodymyr Zelenskyy with “a platform for anti-Russian remarks”, in a further sign of a chill in relations between traditional allies Moscow and Yerevan. On a visit to Yerevan last week, Zelenskyy said Russia feared “drones may buzz over Red Square” in Moscow during the annual parade on 9 May. “The main thing for us is that Armenia does not adopt an anti-Russian stance,” the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, adding that Russia was awaiting an explanation from Yerevan on the matter.

Latvia’s defence minister resigned on Sunday, after the recent incursion of two Ukrainian drones into its territory, hitting oil storage facilities. Minister Adris Spruds’s decision followed a call for his resignation from Latvia’s prime minister, Evika Silina, who stated he had “lost (her) trust and that of the public”. Silina said anti-drone systems had not been deployed quickly enough to counter the Thursday’s incursion.

On Thursday, two drones crossed over the Russian border into Latvia. A fire broke out, but was quickly brought under control. The Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiga said that the drones had flown into Latvia as a result of “Russian electronic warfare”.

Four Australian citizens and one permanent resident from the MV Hondius to fly home via Perth on Tuesday

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Some of the Australian travellers on board the MV Hondius, the ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, will return to New South Wales this week and enter Australia’s first purpose-built biocontainment facility.

The federal government is still finalising health measures and quarantine arrangements for the group of five people – four citizens and one permanent resident – about to disembark in the Canary Islands.

African archipelago hopes startups, digital infrastructure and diaspora investment can transform its economy

For much of its history since its discovery by the Portuguese in the mid-15th century, the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of west Africa served as a hub of the international slave trade, with Africans forcibly transported to marketplaces before being distributed across the Americas and Europe.

Now, almost 150 years since slavery was abolished in Cape Verde, and just over 50 years since independence from Portugal, Pedro Fernandes Lopes wants the country to become a beacon for the free movement of human and financial capital across the African diaspora.

The Right Rev Evelio Menjivar-Ayala vows to ‘keep talking’ as West Virginia bishop, amid tension between Trump and the Vatican

The new bishop appointed to lead West Virginia Catholics has pledged to continue speaking up for immigrants in the mould of Pope Leo, who appointed him last week amid ongoing tension between Donald Trump and the Vatican.

The Right Rev Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, 55, is not planning to hide his views after being elevated from assistant bishop in Washington DC to lead the diocese that covers West Virginia – the first Latino American bishop from El Salvador, who left Central America as a teenager and arrived in the US smuggled in the trunk of a car.

The economic warnings are bleak, but full extent of shortages are still not felt for many European countries

The biggest energy shock in modern history, jet fuel shortages “within weeks”, a global recession – since Iran throttled shipping flows through the strait of Hormuz at the end of February the economic warnings have become increasingly dire.

Yet 10 weeks on from the first US-Israeli attacks, share indices, companies and governments have been surprisingly sanguine. Every day the divergence grows between the eerie quiet on markets and alarming warnings of an imminent supply chain crunch.

SS and Glass Lewis back shareholder resolution amid fears over power wielded by Jamie Dimon, who holds both roles

Investors in JP Morgan have been urged to vote in favour of splitting the role of chief executive and chair at America’s largest bank, amid concerns over the power wielded by its billionaire boss Jamie Dimon.

ISS and Glass Lewis, which issue advice to some of the world’s biggest fund managers on how to vote at annual investor meetings, have thrown their weight behind a shareholder resolution that would ensure two separate people hold the office of chair and chief executive “as soon as possible”. Investors are due to vote on the resolution at the bank’s annual general meeting on 19 May.

The salacious gossip website is hounding politicians and tracking vacationing members of Congress

TMZ has only been in Washington DC for a matter of weeks, but the salacious gossip website is already having an impact: hounding politicians, tracking vacationing members of Congress and reporting on a senator taking a trip to Disney World.

It’s been quite the start as the website and TV channel attempts to break into the political scene, with its first focus on members of Congress taking a two-week recess – typically meaning the politicians return to their home districts and states to meet constituents – during a record partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The board of the vocational charity has shown a ‘catastrophic failure of governance’, according to a member of the group’s council

The trustees of City & Guilds London Institute have been accused of attempting to dodge accountability for a “catastrophic failure of governance” by stalling on the launch of an independent inquiry into the £166m sale of the vocational charity’s training and accreditation business last October.

Members of the 148-year-old body voted overwhelmingly last month for the trustee board to trigger what would be the third investigation into how the foundation sold its operations to the private operator PeopleCert in October.

House where Monroe died, which hasn’t been occupied in seven years, is in limbo after current owners wanted to demolish it but were stopped by a public campaign

Marilyn Monroe is said to have had more than 50 addresses in her lifetime, but only once, in the final months before she died from a drug overdose at the age of 36, did she have a house she could call fully her own.

The Hollywood star, burned out by the failure of her marriage to the playwright Arthur Miller and by health problems that prompted a year-long hiatus from acting, bought herself a quintessential hacienda-style Spanish bungalow with a pool at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains in February 1962.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Liverpool-born actor says depression and anxiety followed death of his father when he was 15

The actor David Morrissey has spoken of how “terrible” social anxiety contributed to him becoming an alcoholic.

“I am a recovering alcoholic,” Morrissey, who has been sober for 21 years, told Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. “Drinking first was about anxiety. I’ve had this terrible social anxiety and that helped me get through it.”

A moving documentary marks 85 years since the end of the blitz. Plus, the finale of Steve Carell’s hit comedy Rooster. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
“Don’t worry … we’ve got big strong slates on our roof.” This is how one Liverpool dad tried to comfort his young son, who was worried at the prospect of an aerial attack. Marking the 85th anniversary of the end of the blitz, this moving documentary gathers reflective testimony from people who were children in London and other cities targeted by the Luftwaffe’s bombing campaign but weren’t evacuated. Amid the vivid stories of terror and loss there are heartwarming flashes of defiance, humour and love. Graeme Virtue

Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Daniel Mays star in this grim but sensitive true crime story. Plus, Greg Davies hosts this year’s Bafta Television Awards. Here’s what to watch this evening

Sunday, 9pm, ITV1

Mick Hucknall belts out all the tunes on stage in Chile. Plus, the wonderfeul Hannah Waddingham hosts SNL UK! Here’s what to watch this evening

10.15pm, BBC Two

In this week’s newsletter: As studios chase safer bets and streamers fail to deliver, the humble standalone comedy has been replaced by blockbusters that sprinkle jokes instead of delivering belly laughs

There was a striking moment during this week’s episode of The Rewatchables, the wildly popular film-recap podcast that I reach for when I’ve had my fill of history/football/glum current affairs pods. The episode was revisiting 90s comedy There’s Something About Mary, a film that in some ways holds up hilariously, and in others has aged about as well as a bottle of semi-skimmed on a summer’s day in Death Valley. As part of the episode, the podcast’s panel were going through their favourite comedy films by decade and were spoilt for choice – until, that is, they reached the 2020s, when they seemed to collectively draw a blank. “The Drama’s pretty funny …” one offered tentatively. Finally, host Bill Simmons cut through the umming, ahhing and awkward silence to get to the heart of the matter: “Do we have comedies any more? What happened to comedies?”

Yes, what did happen to comedies? Or rather, what happened to the “everyday” American comedies like There’s Something About Mary that once set up a permanent frat house residence in cinemas? You know the ones I mean: those that took a familiar real-world situation – teens trying to lose their virginity, a man clashing with his girlfriend’s dad, a maid of honour struggling to arrange a hen do, stunted adolescents refusing to fly the nest – and stretched them to absurd and lurid extremes. It’s a lineage that goes back almost half a century, to the days of Animal House (rowdy college students annoy the dean by throwing a massive rager).

An enthralling history of the record label that stuffed the charts with hits takes in everything from Bananarama to Bronski Beat. Plus, Suzi Ruffell serves up a lovely series of LGBTQIA+ chat and discussion

When my father collapsed suddenly, an episode of the US comedy in which Steve Carell does CPR to the tune of Stayin’ Alive sprung miraculously to mind

It was a boiling hot day last summer, four days after my dad’s 73rd birthday. Mum was plating up dinner and Dad was on the sofa complaining about how stifling it was. I was meant to head to work, for my job as a personal trainer, but decided to take the evening off. It was just as well: as I turned back to Mum, Dad collapsed backwards and suffered a massive cardiac arrest.

Mum was hysterical. She called the ambulance as I tried to stay calm but inside I felt mad with fear as she relayed what the 999 handler was saying. “Check if he’s breathing,” she told me. I put my hand on his chest but felt nothing. “Move him to the floor.” I laid him on the wood flooring.

(Atlantic)
The lyrics may argue the dancefloor is dead, but this funny, wilfully plasticky new single isn’t the total about-turn from Brat that fans expected

Last month, Charli xcx began the media campaign for her seventh studio album by giving an interview to Vogue magazine. The ensuing feature caused an impressive degree of online consternation, not because the 33-year-old star had said anything particularly controversial, but because she had suggested that the follow-up to 2024’s Brat would sound markedly different to its predecessor. “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she said, not unreasonably declining to chase Brat’s vast success by attempting to replicate it. (Although, in fairness, you could have probably worked that out from House, the noisy, experimental collaboration with John Cale she released at the end of last year as the first single from her soundtrack to Wuthering Heights.)

She also played the interviewer a track that contained both “heavily processed guitars” and the lyrics “I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we’re making rock music”: Vogue duly ran with the idea, trumpeting Charli xcx’s “rock reinvention” in both the headline and on its cover and other news outlets picked up on the story – “CHARLI XCX CONFIRMS ROCK ALBUM”. What one journalist tactfully called “heated discourse online from some fans and artists within the music industry” followed, eventually prompting the singer to respond, posting “a video of me making a song called Rock Music that is not actually rock music which is funny because I never said I was making a rock album”.

Brooklyn Storehouse, New York City

The viral star electrified Brooklyn with winking visuals, self-aware humor and a slew of special guests

From the look of the crowd at PinkPantheress’s show in Brooklyn last night, you’d be forgiven for thinking that King Charles had extended his recent trip to New York. The crowd that snaked its way through a never-ending circuit of cracked asphalt and grimy water on their way to Brooklyn Storehouse wore union jacks and tartan miniskirts, which you could imagine would be in line with royal protocol for how to dress when a sovereign visits a warehouse rave.

PinkPantheress is certainly royalty among a vast swath of young, terminally online people; a pop princess who is mainstream enough to clinch top billing at Coachella and perform on primetime TV, but whose taste has always leaned more niche and left-field than anything that would ever go platinum. Or would it? Pop music is always in a state of flux but we’re living through an interesting period of realignment. Chalk it up to AI backlash, a floundering music industry or fatigue with chart-gaming reindeer games, but lately a raft of musicians who’d played nice for years have seen big rewards going for broke with wildly adventurous work. Performers like Slayyyter, Zara Larsson and Jade, who’d once been siloed off as “pop’s middle class” or incarcerated in the “Khia asylum” have been rewarded twice over for their boldness with both critical acclaim and charting hits. PinkPantheress is something of a figurehead among these artists and one of its brightest hopes. Her show yesterday night at Brooklyn Storehouse doubled as a flex of her star power and a mini-music festival highlighting a wave of like-minded musicians who are just as poised to break out.

His first story collection, Reward System, was a cult hit. Now comes a novel that’s a bleakly funny appraisal of millennial relationships, technology and ennui. He talks about love, precarity and being called the ‘voice of a generation’

Jem Calder’s writing career had a fairytale start. Sally Rooney emailed him, impressed with a short story he’d submitted to the literary magazine she was editing soon after Conversations with Friends came out. It was the first story he’d ever completed. Calder was already “a huge fan” of Rooney’s, so the whole thing was surreal, he tells me. “I can’t really imagine what could top that, to be honest.”

That story ultimately ended up in Reward System, Calder’s 2022 collection of six interconnected tales following a cast of sad young things living in an unnamed city. It was hailed as a book of the year; a review in this paper placed Calder among “the most talented young writers of fiction at work today”. Now, his debut novel, I Want You to Be Happy, picks up some of the themes of the first book: the trials of modern love, millennial ennui, consumer culture, technology, political and ecological doom. And it’s already got some famous fans: David Szalay has sung its praises, while Andrew O’Hagan says Calder is his “new favourite writer”.

An erudite account of the foundation of the state and its subsequent moral and political decline

Israel’s attack on Iran is only the most recent example of its degeneration in recent decades, coming on top of its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, genocide in Gaza, invasion of Syria and relentless bombardment of Lebanon. The fact that the US joined in this illegal war confirmed to many in the region what they have long suspected: that the country is an outpost of western imperialism in the Middle East.

The state of Israel, which arose from the ashes of the Holocaust 77 years ago, has received an unprecedented degree of international sympathy and support ever since. This support was partly due to western guilt and partly due to the perception of the Jewish state as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. The country’s Declaration of Independence promised to uphold “the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex”. In the early years of statehood, Israel was seen in the west as an icon of liberal, progressive and egalitarian society.

The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed; The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro; No Ghosts by Max Lury; Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler; Moon Over Brendle by Jeff Noon

The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed (Gollancz, £22)
On a gigantic spaceship halfway through its 400-year voyage to a new world, hundreds of Earth colonists are kept in frozen stasis by the ever-increasing maintenance crew. Not all the crew are happy with the way their lives are harshly controlled by the Administration, and peaceful protests have inspired whispers of revolution. The multicultural city-ship has two official languages: Inglez and Arabek. Iskander Ezz is a translator between Crew and Administration, aware that “when you speak a different language, you become another person”. Damietta, his younger cousin, finds the unofficial Nupol better for communicating with her fellow protesters. Nupol, an argot made up of many “dead Earth” languages, is used throughout the book by several viewpoint characters, adding a distinctive flavour to a speculative fiction its author calls Arabfuturism. Partly inspired by the historic Arab spring, this is a thoughtful, exciting space opera.

The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro (Solstice, £20)
The first volume of a trilogy inspired by Japanese pop culture is set in bustling, crowded Rainshadow City, where hi-tech wealth and a corrupt emperor exist alongside magic, poverty and criminality. Toshiko, Jun and Mei are the Kawakamis, haphazardly seeking revenge on the Lucky Crow gang for the murder of their adoptive Aunt. When Toshiko almost accidentally steals a precious dragon pearl from a powerful gangster, they’re plunged into a fast-moving adventure involving a conspiracy to deport all the city’s illegal immigrants to certain death, and replace low-paid workers with attractive female robots. Various plot strands see characters discovering magical powers, a mother dragon desperate to save her baby’s life, and a strangely helpful cat. Trope-heavy, entertaining fun, with a cartoonish vibe.

Fearing the worst can lead to physical changes, according to this fascinating study of a strange medical phenomenon

In Roald Dahl’s 1980 masterpiece The Twits, Quentin Blake’s illustrations demonstrate how Mrs Twit’s horrible attitudes eventually ended up deforming her looks. “If a person has ugly thoughts,” wrote Dahl, “it begins to show on the face.”

In her latest book, science writer Helen Pilcher explores this very idea: that negative beliefs “can be physically transformative”. The nocebo effect, as this is known, comes from the Latin for “I will harm”, and strikes when a person’s negative expectations, whether subconscious or conscious, lead to illness.

Previously prohibited use of websites such as Omoggle that connect a streamer to a stranger’s video feed now allowed

Last week, at 4am, 19-year-old Sammy Amz was scrolling through X when something caught his eye: a popular Twitch streamer was competing in a 1v1 “mog-off” with a stranger, and losing.

The next day he opened the Omoggle gaming website and began to play. Quickly he matched with another user – green dots appeared on their faces onscreen, as the website began to compare their measurements: canthal tilt, palpebral fissure ratio, nose-to-face width ratio and so on.

For anyone needing a break from binging The Pitt, you can always put in your own shifts as a hospital manager, surgeon, paramedic and of course as a demonic morgue assistant

Like the rest of the western world, our household is currently binging medical drama The Pitt, revelling in its visceral depiction of life in a modern emergency department. So far the series has yet to inspire a video game tie-in (though there has been an amusing parody), but fans wishing to try their hand at tense medical (mal)practice, should not despair. Here are eight of the best hospital games spanning more than 40 years of gruesome interactive surgery. Squirt some hand sanitiser and come this way.

PS5, Xbox, PC, Switch 2; Annapurna Interactive
The nostalgic antics of a trio of tenacious teens make for silly yet undeniably enjoyable gameplay, framed by a playlist of bona fide bangers

The older we get, the more we tend to romanticise our teenage years. As bills pile up, we yearn for the simple days of drinking cider in parks. We often tend to forget the bad parts: the frustrating lack of autonomy, the unrequited crushes and the doofuses you’re forced to tolerate in the playground. But after four hours spent hanging out with the pretentious teens in Mixtape, I felt pretty relieved to be in my 30s.

Set in a nondescript town in northern California, Mixtape follows the exploits of tenacious trio Rockford, Slater and Cassandra as they head to a legendary party on their last day of high school. With Rockford about to leave her friends to move to the big city, she wants to immortalise the gang’s time together in musical form. Every song on a carefully curated mixtape triggers a totally tubular flashback to one of their shared memories.

Enchanting and a little eerie, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth is the second great game in as many years based on the classic children’s books

Sleepy, happy-sad, and imbued with the mildest peril, Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories may seem an unlikely fit for the action-heavy medium of video games. Rather than embark on swashbuckling adventures, these milk-white, hippo-esque creatures prefer to potter about Moominvalley, only venturing further if the weather conditions are just right.

Yet a small Norwegian video game studio, Hyper Games, is now on its second exquisitely charming Jansson adaptation. The first, 2024’s Snufkin: Melody of Moomin Valley, put players in control of the wily free spirit, Snufkin, as he dismantled overly ordered nature parks (and evaded authority-loving wardens). The latest, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth, sees young Moomintroll wake up at night in the dead of winter. With his parents still hibernating, the creature is all alone, thrust into a cold and unfamiliar world.

Southwark Playhouse, London
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s revenge drama has plenty of rug-pulling twists, but stilted presentation leaves little sense of jeopardy

As a revenge fantasy between a former school bully and her victim, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s 2015 drama sits squarely at the baroque end of the spectrum. Heather (Cassandra Hercules) was targeted by Carla (Serin Ibrahim), a former friend turned class-room oppressor whose campaign culminated in a shocking incident of abuse.

Several decades on, they meet, ostensibly to make amends, but Heather has a dark ulterior motive. It is clear the tables have turned in the interim: Carla is now the one oppressed by life, barely making ends meet, fielding a fifth pregnancy without any feeling of joy and in an unhappy partnership. Heather, by contrast, is a rich professional who fires sly broadsides at Carla, letting her know who came out on top.

Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
The Welsh band with a weird edge mostly let their formidable music speak for itself, lent a transcendent power by frontman Gruff Rhys’s rich voice

In the gloom of an underlit Barrowlands stage, a man in black is holding a large inflatable phone to his ear and chanting these words: “SFA OK. SFA OK.”

The man is Gruff Rhys. The band is Super Furry Animals. And the song, Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home), allows them to reintroduce themselves at this, their second gig after 10 years away.

Connaught theatre, Worthing
Balloons meet the sharper points of competitive parenting over a weekend of back-to-back kids’ parties, in this broad comedy of social manners

Some of my most traumatising experiences have come hosting children’s parties: the Wardrobe Ensemble’s new show should come with a trigger warning. This devised play pitches us deep into the parcel-passing, E-number-addled tantrumscape of a weekend shepherding one’s five-year-old to three (three!) tots’ birthday bashes. Such is the burden borne by 34-year-old Xander, recently – and reluctantly – back in Bristol after a temporary escape to London, obliged to reconnect with old friends and painful memories across 48 primary-coloured hours of musical statues, puppet shows and small talk with people whose kids happen to know yours.

For much of Party Season’s 95-minute span, we’re in the territory of the sitcom Motherland, a broad comedy of manners about competitive parenting, sleeplessness and ideal-home envy. Co-directed by Helena Seneca and Jesse Jones, the production brings all that to fluid, sometimes expressionist life, as a protective mum (Jesse Meadows) breathes fire, adults become kids and kids become adults – and a mysterious children’s entertainer plays our spectral MC. There are too many sharply observed moments to mention, from party-game soundtracks stymied by dodgy Bluetooth to the spoilt brat of aspirational parents who “gets anxious when there’s no structure”.

Lowry, Salford
The tale of a Burnley businessman who gives his town a financial leg-up overeggs the north-south cultural divide, but Pippa Cleary’s bright musical numbers propel the positivity

Was ever a musical so eager to be liked, so anxious not to exclude? It is not just the patronising pre-show introduction, which assumes we have never been in a theatre and insists we all hate bankers. It is also the pathological number of pop-culture references in Rob Madge’s book. “We’re on your side,” it seems to say, “because we too have heard of Coronation Street, EastEnders, Cher, The Legend of Zelda, Jeremy Beadle, Mamma Mia!, Dirty Dancing, Wonderwall …” The list goes on.

The level of insecurity is strange because Bank of Dave: The Musical is a tremendously likable show. The source material is the feelgood true-life story of Dave Fishwick (Sam Lupton), the Burnley businessman whose egalitarian conscience led him to step in where others had failed. Seeing his fellow townsfolk being held back for want of money, he determined to set up a non-profit bank that would treat them with trust and respect.

Photographer Sonia Reveyaz explains the lure of the hustle, bustle, glitz and glamour on the sidelines of the Cannes film festival

It’s flashy, jazzy, tacky, it’s jet set, totally. From dawn to dusk on the Croisette, the boulevard stretching along the Mediterranean Sea in Cannes, everyone is dressed to the nines. For 10 days, it’s all about getting an invitation to join the Cannes film festival’s exclusive club. But not everyone stops to watch a movie.

In this image-driven economy, luxury is embodied right down to the skin. The media plays a central role in creating desire. Magazine publishers and social media platforms collaborate with brands to promote their new products and showcase the celebrities who wear them. Now, a new type of celebrity – one with an unconventional career path and who starts from nothing – is invited to the Croisette: influencers.

Ginevra Bonina wins the 2026 ZEKE award for systemic change for her project Out for Blood, which highlights period poverty in India and the women and girls fighting to reclaim the body ‘as a site of struggle, resistance and liberation’. Ebrahim Alipoor wins the award for documentary photography for his long-term project, Bullets Have No Borders, which showcases the lives of border porters who carry goods across the treacherous Iran-Iraq mountains to support their families

As the pioneering BalletBoyz company celebrates its 25th anniversary and Billy Elliott returns to the stage, the male dance landscape appears transformed from where it was at the turn of the century. But a certain macho dismissiveness remains …

“We always thought BalletBoyz was a really stupid name. We wanted not to be BalletBoyz.” says William Trevitt, founder of the company called, guess what, BalletBoyz. It was the BBC that landed them with that tag, when then-Royal Ballet dancers Trevitt and Michael Nunn made a cheeky and revealing backstage documentary at London’s Royal Opera House. Their knockabout, laddish charm won them fans, and when they went on to found their own company, first the two of them, later expanded to 10 men, the name stuck. It does carry a slight hint of the Chippendales about it. “We had a theatre manager coming and saying: ‘Could you ask the dancers to take their shirts off in the second act?’” remembers Trevitt. Which may say something about the expectations of a group of men dancing.

BalletBoyz is heading out on tour this month to celebrate its 25th anniversary. In those two-and-a-half decades, Nunn and Trevitt have done a lot for the image of men dancing (they have had women in their shows over the years, too, it must be said). It was never their intention to make a statement, it was always just about great dance, but still, here were two straight men who danced together – and later a whole company of young men – and commissioned a new repertoire that wasn’t about romantic partnering, but “two matching energies and exploring the balance between them”, as Trevitt puts it.

Around the same time Nunn and Trevitt were making their video diaries, another iconic male dancer spun into view. The film Billy Elliot came out in 2000, the story of the miner’s son who wanted to dance, and by the moving final scene was leaping into choreographer Matthew Bourne’s pioneering Swan Lake with its cast of all-male swans. The film was turned into a multi-award-winning musical that’s still going strong, with a new national tour opening this autumn.

It seemed like a moment where the image and profile of male dancers was changing – the so-called “Billy Elliot effect” – with rumours that one year more boys than girls auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. It feels as though in 2026 we’re living in a culturally different time to the turn of the millennium, especially when it comes to expectations of gender, so have attitudes to boys and men dancing completely changed?

“It’s cool to dance now, isn’t it,” says Layton Williams, who was the ninth Billy Elliot on stage, and more recently a runner-up on Strictly with pro partner Nikita Kuzmin. “My nephew is dancing on TikTok with his mates, and he’s a proper lad.”

Roast chicken the Cornish way (with a splash of cider), for a simple, lighter Sunday lunch

Roasting a whole chicken seems to be one of those things that works all year, whether with salad in the summer or as a part of a heavy roast in the chillier months. This is a Cornish riff on the French classic petits pois à la française, and a really simple, lighter alternative to a traditional Sunday lunch. Plus, braising vegetables really unlocks another level of sweetness.

David Gingell is chef and co-founder of Primeur, Westerns Laundry and Jolene, all in London

In some places, a half-birthday allows you to learn to drive or join the army. But for others, it’s a way to embrace the midpoint of each year of life

Six months after Lorraine C Ladish turned 59, she began to get emails – from fashion stores, the supermarket, the opticians – offering her a discount. Her half-birthday was coming up, the emails said. She used one of the offers to buy a magenta leather jacket and posted her celebration on TikTok. Ladish is a digital content creator who says she makes “a living out of sharing my age online”. But what really appealed to her about marking the midpoint between birthdays was the chance to “squeeze every second, every month, out of my late 50s”.

Ladish is not alone. Half-birthdays are having a moment. Or, at least, a fraction of a moment. On TikTok there are half-cake designs, half-birthday banners, half-birthday cards – sometimes, they are whole ones brutally sheared – and half-candles. One French brand even released a comma candle for cake decorators wishing to celebrate a half-birthday decimally.

Whether you want floaty, floral, midi or maxi, the perfect summer dress should be versatile and easy to style. Here are 30 of our favourites this season

• Jess Cartner-Morley’s May style essentials

There’s a particular kind of optimism that comes with the first real day of summer sun; not the false start kind in April, all blue skies and betrayal, but when you can leave the house without a coat and not immediately regret your decision.

In theory, the summer dress is the easiest item in your wardrobe to style. One decision, one zip (or none) and done. However, this ease can be deceptive. Without the option of layering, a summer dress has to be versatile.

We spill the tea on the supermarket bags worth your cuppa – and which should be left to stew

• The best (and worst) supermarket coffee

My grandma would turn in her grave if she knew I tested these teabags by brewing them in a cup, but that’s how I drink tea mostly. Or at least I did until I met tea specialist Matt Ritson, who helped me test today’s teas with the industry-standard cupping process and, afterwards, introduced me to some mind-blowing whole-leaf teas. We studied the appearance and aroma of the wet leaves in an observation bowl, then the colour and clarity of the tea itself, before supping it from small bowls and aerating the tea to maximise its surface area.

The bags I tested ranged from 2p to 34p a pop, but when you think about the quality and sourcing of the higher-priced teas, even they are incredible value. We scored them on flavour, structure and balance, plus certification, trading standards and sourcing. I also awarded points to plastic-free bags – it seems the industry is finally responding to the uproar against microplastics, though some producers need to catch up and work without the polypropylene glue that’s still often used to seal teabags.

Whether it’s the Met Gala or the start of holiday dressing, May is big news in the fashion world

• The best wedding guest dresses for every budget

May starts with a bang, in fashion. The Met Gala, which happens on the first Monday in May every year, is the most outrageous, most high-concept red carpet of the year. The Met looks don’t offer much in the way of real-life style, but they are a nice reminder that fashion in the summer should be fun.

Bank holiday weekends are the perfect time to road test your holiday-season style, and longer evenings make a breezier kind of dressing up feel doable. There are some gems out there right now: read on for the Cos trousers that might just be your new wardrobe staple, and the high-street flats that I’ve had compliments on every time I’ve worn them.

Whether your skin is dull, dry or sensitive, these are our expert’s favourite formulas from her test of 25. Plus, dermatologists share their top tips

• The best eye creams for banishing bags, puffiness and fine lines

Moisturiser is a crucial step in any skincare routine. It supports barrier function and repair, helps protect your skin from environmental stress, and even forms the base of a flawless face of makeup.

However, the market is flooded with options – Boots has more than a thousand listings under facial moisturisers – and finding the right formulation for your needs can be a nightmare. Admittedly, I found the task of writing this page far more daunting than anything I’d tackled before.

Best face moisturiser overall:
Haruharu Wonder Black rice 5 ceramide cream

Best budget moisturiser:
Simple hydrating light moisturiser

These fried rice balls are the Sicilian equivalent of a sandwich lunch, and can be batch-made in advance. Here is your step-by-step guide …

Before I wrote this recipe, it hadn’t occurred to me that the word “arancini” means “little oranges”, and, plump, round and golden as they are, it makes sense, too. Indeed, these robust rice balls, which are said to have come to Sicily with Arab invaders in the 10th century, are now, according to the late Antonio Carluccio, the local equivalent of a sandwich lunch.

Prep 25 min
Cook 45 min
Makes 8 large balls

Are you feeling hungry? If not, you will be after reading about the world’s most mouth-watering, life-changing sandwiches of all time ...

A crab stick and taramasalata baguette
I was young and carefree, living in Barons Court, west London, in the mid-90s. Chains weren’t a thing, and delis all had sandwich fillings laid out in silver dishes of a uniform, surgical shape, inviting adventure. Russian salad and ham? Sure, why not. The price structure was weird: sometimes everything was the same, and other times you’d accidentally hit a premium ingredient and your sandwich would be £3.50. That’s how I hit on the crab stick and taramasalata baguette, after a financial catastrophe involving actual crab. Crab sticks taste nothing like crab. They are, in fact, more delicious. So much better. And everything so pink. My life was like a fairytale. Zoe Williams

A vegetarian Christmas focaccia
Christmas sandwiches can be wildly underwhelming for veggies – but I’m still craving Glasgow cafe Boca’s offering: salty focaccia, stuffed to the brim with mushroom and chestnut roast, apricot glazed carrots and parsnips, cranberry and walnut agrodolce, sprout slaw and the option to add hefty slices of brie – which, of course, I did. Indulgent, Christmassy, and not a “festive falafel” in sight. Leah Harper

It won’t win any plaudits from Japanese purists, but there’s still much to admire here

No spoilers, but I knew even before I’d reached for my chopsticks that Mitsu would be a vast improvement on its predecessor, because it has taken the place of Nobu Shoreditch in the under-gusset of the Aethos hotel, a Swiss-owned “lifestyle hospitality brand”, in east London. Nobu was gargantuan, moodily lit (that is, pitch black), woundingly expensive and terrifically hard to book, despite having something like 797 seats; it was also one of the most soulless London restaurants of the past 25 years. Nobu Shoreditch felt symbolic: it was where all the raffish hope of the 1990s YBA crowd and the early noughties electroclash heads went to die.

But that was then, and now, in 2026, the Aethos crew has deftly brightened and lightened the mood of the room, making it actually cosy and adding a twinkly central bar; there’s an open robata kitchen and roomy booths, as well as a pretty Japanese garden. Mitsu calls itself an izakaya, which is what European restaurateurs always say when they mean the Japanese-influenced food isn’t too po-faced and you can get really tipsy on sake.

Zingy lemon and mint elevate tender young beans in this fresh and simple spring supper

What are your simple pleasures in the kitchen? The sizzle and spit of a fried egg? The smell of buttered toast, or putting on an apron to mark the end of a day? I like podding beans. I enjoy how it involves hands but not much brain, and how it makes time feel slow and good, like drinking a cup of tea. I also like that it reminds me of my Gujarati aunties doing the same (but with valor beans). And I love not always cooking so much, as in this recipe, where you pod and chop the beans, then mix them with pasta to reveal a simple good meal.

When Leah and I planned a family, we wanted to be as mutual as possible. Could reciprocal IVF – Leah carrying an embryo made from my egg – be the way forward?

Late last year, it became my friend’s favourite party trick. “Rosa’s going to have a baby next week,” she’d say to a group of people who didn’t know me. I’d watch their faces as they tried to inconspicuously scan my body, detecting no sign of a bump. “Congratulations!” they’d say, smiles tight, clearly wondering what other delusions I might have up my sleeve.

I was, however, about to have a baby. At daybreak on a warm October day, our beautiful, 6lb 10oz, 19.5in‑long baby girl was born; skin pink and taut, scream wet and bright. I held my wife’s hand and head as our daughter emerged from her body – a daughter who had initially come from me.

Ali used to want sex more than James, and feels guilty that she doesn’t enjoy it as much as she used to
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Any pressure to have sex doesn’t come from James – it comes from within, from a fear of complete loss

You must look after your own mental health. A therapist could provide a safe space to discuss your feelings

I feel torn between being a supportive wife and protecting my own mental health. My husband has recently had great success using drugs, diet and exercise to lose weight. He has struggled for a long time, and I am immensely proud of him, especially as he is now tapering off the medication and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The problem is that I have struggled with anorexia and bulimia my entire life. I’m not in therapy as I can never find the right therapist. I go through periods when it’s manageable, but sometimes it flares up.

My husband is well aware that I still struggle with these issues. However, our daily life since his weight loss has become a constant stream of calorie talk, workout updates and discussions about his shrinking clothes. I pretend I’m fine to avoid raining on his parade, and because he can be defensive when challenged, but beneath the surface I am drowning. I have stayed the same size throughout our relationship, yet find myself constantly comparing my body with his progress. I’m in my 40s and worry about getting older and being replaced. I am exhausted by trying to act as if I’m OK when I am actually deeply triggered.

When Mitch Cairns met Agatha Gothe-Snape, he was instantly charmed. Then an absurd exchange shifted their relationship into something more than friendship

The first time I saw Agatha, she was saturated, standing in a knee-high bucket wearing a knitted woollen jumper that said Ho Ho Ho on it. Whatever I’d expected to see at the Christmas group show at MOP Projects – an artist-run gallery in Redfern, Sydney – this vision transcended it. As I walked into the hall-like space, it was devoid of any artwork aside from this absolutely beautiful woman standing there with water dripping on to her head.

It was 2007, and I was a graduate of the National Art School. People weren’t making this type of work there, so it’s no exaggeration to say the whole image was completely new and arresting for me. She was silent and stationary but so alive.

Fraudsters exploit confusion or anxiety over new IHT rules by offering a ‘safe haven’ for savings pots

The caller pitches a great deal. Shift the moneysaved in your pension and reinvest it in a scheme overseas where you can avoid it being caught under next year’s changes to the UK’s inheritance tax (IHT) system.

From April next year, any money left in a defined contribution pension after your death, which is most workplace and all private pensions, will be pulled into the IHT net.

As fuel prices soar, millions of Britons could reduce their electricity costs by installing home storage

Consumers across the UK are bracing for the war in the Middle East to deliver a sharp rise in home energy bills from this summer.

The looming energy cost crisis has prompted a record number of households to investigate green home upgrades to try to keep bills down, including heat pumps, solar panels and electric vehicles.

I’ve received 77 unpaid PCNs from TfL but it won’t accept they weren’t from my vehicle

Someone cloned my car number plate back in October and racked up £8,500 in Ulez fines. I appealed, but this was rejected.

Unfortunately, the cloned car is the same make, model and colour as mine. I’ve now received 17 “order for recovery of unpaid penalty charge” notices from Transport for London (TfL). The bailiffs will arrive next week, according to their letters.

From a picturesque countryside corn mill to a city flat in London’s historic waterside heartland

Social media influencers and booming men’s health companies are pushing the hormone as an answer to all ills. But is ‘low T’ really problematic – or something created to sell men a cure to a problem they don’t have?

A s a young man, Nick Dooley never thought about his hormones. He always considered himself “quite an outgoing, confident, chatty person”. Around the time he turned 30, however, Dooley began putting on weight and struggling with anxiety, “just slowly becoming a shell of my former self”, he says. By 38, he weighed 22st (140kg) and had a range of health issues. “I spent most of my life sat in front of a TV, doing nothing, with zero motivation, and from how I was in my 20s, that wasn’t me. I knew something wasn’t right.”

In 2024, Dooley had a private medical exam, which flagged he had fatty liver disease and was producing low levels of testosterone. “It wasn’t something I’d ever really heard of,” he says. “So I started down a Reddit rabbit hole.” An NHS doctor told him his blood testosterone levels, at 11.2 nmol a litre, were “within range” (although guidance differs between trusts, NHS England generally considers between 8 and 30 nmol/L normal) and offered him antidepressants. “I knew that wasn’t going to fix me,” he says. Instead, Dooley signed up with Manual, an online men’s health company. After two quick blood tests and a virtual consultation, Manual, which has since rebranded as Voy, started him on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).

After embarking on a trial of CAR T-cell therapy, actor Sam Neill announced he is cancer-free. Researchers are enthusiastic the therapies could be a major weapon in the battle against cancer

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“Game-changer.” That’s how Prof Misty Jenkins, an immunologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, describes CAR T-cell therapy, an emerging but still costly cancer treatment that supercharges the body’s immune system to fight disease.

Late last month, Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill put the treatment in the spotlight, revealing his stage three cancer was in remission after undergoing CAR T-cell therapy as part of a clinical trial in Sydney. He stopped short of describing his remission as a miracle – the success, he said, was “science at its best”.

There are misconceptions about the addictiveness of cannabis and many users are struggling with dependency

Amy knew it wasn’t great. But there she was, at the bottom of a dumpster, desperately searching for the THC vape cartridge she’d thrown away just hours earlier.

Amy, 18, had previously tossed that same cartridge, known colloquially as a cart, into a public trash can. Passersby stared as she later rooted around to recover it. So she lifted the entire garbage bag and brought it back to her apartment, where she dug through a bunch of sloppy, stinking detritus before finding it and taking a grateful toke. Later that same week, she threw it into the dumpster – surely that would prevent her from going back. But she did.

Beauty products have never been more advanced. But as people layer them up, experts have seen a rise in perioral dermatitis. What is the too-much-skincare rash, and what can you do about it?

It often starts innocuously: a small cluster of spots around the mouth, easily dismissed as a hormonal breakout or a reaction to something you have eaten. But this is how perioral dermatitis shows up – quietly, persistently and seemingly more frequently.

“It’s quickly become one of the most common inflammatory conditions I treat,” says Dr Anjali Mahto, a consultant dermatologist and founder of the Self London clinic. Reddit threads on the subject run to thousands of posts, TikTok is awash with people documenting flare-ups, and actor Amanda Seyfried has spoken publicly about dealing with it. A recent report in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology confirmed the condition is on the rise. Meanwhile, the global market for perioral dermatitis treatments is growing.

PM’s wife, accompanying him to the polls, follows a long line of women to mobilise the jacket when stakes are high

Not a white flag but a cream blazer was what Victoria Starmer chose to wear to accompany her husband, the prime minister, to vote on Thursday morning. She follows in a long line of women who have mobilised the power blazer at high-stakes moments.

Starmer’s, which looks much like a £1,690 ivory Alexander McQueen crepe design, comes hot on the lapels of another. In episode one of the new series of Amandaland, Amanda wears a beige double-breasted iteration in a high-stakes fictional moment: to give a toe-curling talk about her (not shallow) lifestyle brand Senuous as part of careers week at her kid’s school. Earlier in the week, the Princess of Wales launched the Foundations for Life report wearing a creamy beige high-waisted Roland Mouret suit.

Duo Whitaker Malem worked with pop art sculptor Allen Jones and a car bodyshop in Kent to create gala’s biggest jolt

At Monday’s Met Gala, it inevitably fell to Kim Kardashian to deliver the evening’s biggest jolt. One of the few celebrities to straightforwardly interpret the “fashion is art” dress code – which focused on how the dressed and undressed human body is the through-line in most works of art – she decided to forgo her usual role as a walking billboard for a major fashion house and instead arrived in an orange fibreglass breastplate created by a small east London art duo and a car bodyshop in Kent.

“Good art should start conversation, and Kim did exactly that,” says 61-year-old Patrick Whitaker, half of the design practice Whitaker Malem, who made the breastplate just weeks before the gala. “She was very clear on wanting a breastplate, very clear on the car body finish. And I think she was nervous really. She understands the competition.”

Whether it’s Palantir selling a $239 chore coat, Anthropic taking over a coffee shop or executives walking the red carpet at the Met Gala, tech’s biggest players are pivoting to fashion to sell their brands – and attempt to appear cooler in the process

Last week, the US spy tech and data firm Palantir launched its latest “merch drop”, including a denim chore coat. “Rugged utility, enduring style” reads the website’s description of the $239 (£175) jacket, which is branded with the company’s logo on the chest pocket and comes in blue or black.

Eliano Younes, the head of strategic engagement at Palantir, told the New York Times that it was part of the company’s commitment to “re-industrializing America” – the jacket is made in Montana and recalls workwear of a previous era. “It’s not political,” he added. “It’s about people who love Palantir and are aligned with our mission.”

The key lesson from Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s style is to keep the messaging simple

Carolyn Bessette Kennedy has been an insider style icon for ever, but this year she has flipped from under-the-radar reference to global phenomenon. Ryan Murphy’s Love Story, a glossy dramatisation of her doomed romance with JFK Jr, gave us nine delicious hours of lingering closeups of her white tank tops and jeans, her simple black dresses, perfect black oval sunglasses and tortoiseshell headbands. If you didn’t know you wanted to dress like CBK before you started watching, you did by the end.

Carole Radziwill, who was friends with Carolyn, has pointed out that copying CBK’s style is pretty much the least CBK thing you could do. Her friend, she told the Deuxmoi podcast, “pulled her hair back in a headband because she didn’t want to wash it every day. She did what felt natural to her and she dressed in things that made her feel comfortable and most like herself. Mostly jeans and button-downs and T-shirts. The takeaway is not to mimic her style, but to do and wear what feels most authentic to you. Be yourself. She was very much herself.”

It took 10 years for Naseby to achieve its DarkSky International certification. Now, a night out in the tiny Otago town is like ‘a tour through the history of the universe’

As the last strip of pink on the horizon fades to indigo on the Maniototo Plain in Otago, every word I speak arrives in a puff of condensation. Six hundred metres above sea level, in winter the temperature here can drop to -15C. Spring isn’t much warmer. But the chill is worth it. Standing in the dark in what feels like the middle of nowhere, I’ve come to a paddock not far from the historic mining town of Naseby to stargaze.

Even in a country where there’s about 20km of space per person, the Maniototo Plain is sparsely populated. During the 1860s gold rush about 20,000 fortune seekers descended on Otago, but when they eventually moved on, towns like Naseby were left to a sleepy future. Now home to just 140 people, it’s not even a place you drive through. “We’re not on the way to anywhere,” says local Jill Wolff. “You’ve got to choose to go to Naseby.”

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From the breezy dunes of Normandy to the dreamy lagoons of the Algarve, our writers choose their favourite places to eat and drink by the sea

You share your favourite spots for sand, seafood and sundowners from the Kent coast to the Greek islands
• Tell us about your favourite railway trip in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Dungeness is a place of wild beauty, a stretch of coast that knows fierce winds. Artist and gardener Derek Jarman’s cottage roof blew off at least once and the wind regularly wreaked havoc with his planting. Stubborn plants survive on this vast shingle beach and just as stubborn is the Snack Shack, with its opening times dependent on the weather, as its website says. On fair weather days it’s an ideal place to have lunch as you explore the peninsula. If you’re in luck they will not have run out of lobster rolls among other freshly caught seafood delights. Paying homage to Jarman and eating outdoors here replenishes the soul.
Charlotte

The West Sussex village of Amberley, near Arundel, is easy to reach by train and offers great hiking in the national park, castles and a newly reopened pub with a focus on local food

Wisteria and clematis hang from weathered cottage walls. Tulips and pink apple blossom spill out of several gardens. Thatched animals decorate the rooftops. There’s a Norman church, a medieval castle and an 80-hectare (200-acre) nature reserve. Amberley is the kind of place people assume you can only reach by car, but the village has its own railway station with regular direct trains, along the scenic Arun Valley line, from Bognor, Horsham and London Victoria.

This spring, the Black Horse pub reopened in Amberley. The new owners are the gourmet Gladwin brothers, Oliver and Richard, returning to their Sussex roots near Nutbourne Vineyards. Having founded five Local & Wild restaurants in London, the Black Horse is their first country pub and first place with rooms.

Pronunciation puzzles

A homonym is a word that has the same pronunciation as, or is spelt identical to, another word with a different meaning.

For example, the letter “a” has the homonym “eh”.

(Second option) (Switch back and forth)

(Suitable) (Commandeer)

(Satisfied) (Components)

(Conference attendee) (Assign)

(Price reduction) (Disregard)

(Way in) (Enrapture)

(Incorrect) (Disabled)

(60 seconds) (Tiny)

(In attendance) (Give)

(Fruit and vegetables) (Generate)

(Deny) (Rubbish)

(Distress) (Surprise victory)

Allendale, Northumberland: Once again, wildlife has made a home here, in part because they feel safe

A big moon is cresting the Scots pine as I sit at an upstairs window looking down on to the garden. Awaiting the dusk emergence of a female tawny owl has become an evening ritual. After a day spent in the confines of a nest box in our sycamore tree, her departure shifts back by a few minutes every night. Completely silent, she drops towards the woodland border and skims the plants, each time on the same trajectory, a grey shadow in the gloaming.

Another movement on the path below catches my eye: a woodcock slinking along, using the box hedge to disguise her passage. If I hadn’t been watching for the owl I would never have known that she too is nesting somewhere in the garden’s thick leafiness. In July 2023, I wrote about a woodcock nesting in a flower border a few metres from the house, four chicks successfully hatching from four eggs. Last year, another attempt was disturbed by a cat captured on trailcam. This may be the same bird returned for a third time. Woodcocks are extremely secretive birds, their close proximity to a house very unusual.

They have opposite views on the flying of the union jack, but could they agree on the need for safe and legal asylum routes into the UK?

Maxine, 62, Barnsley

Occupation Retail sales assistant

The Strictly judge and her mum on Shirley’s love of dance, being a single-parent family, and the joy of living together now

Born in Wallasey (now Merseyside) in 1960, Shirley Ballas is one of the most decorated ballroom and Latin dancers in the world. She became a three-time winner of the British Professional Latin Championship (Open to the World), before retiring from competitive dancing in 1996 to become a teacher and adjudicator. In 2017, she joined the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing as a judge. She lives in London with her mother, Audrey, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Ballas supports the Breathe Equal campaign with Sanofi, to raise awareness of COPD and address stigma and inequalities in care.

Sentenced to 44 years in prison for her political activism, she is now critically ill and her family warn she may soon die in custody. In this exclusive excerpt from her writings, smuggled out of prison at immense risk, Mohammadi describes the horror of her incarceration

The cell had no ventilation. At the top of the door, at the highest point, there was a window set close to the ceiling, covered with a perforated metal sheet. The tiny holes in the sheet would allow the thinnest strands of sunlight to promise morning, and as the sun’s golden rays disappeared, they would signal the coming of night.

The most delusional element of solitary confinement is time itself. The hands of the clock are gone; day and night pass without measure. Time becomes nothing but a narrow beam of light slipping through the small holes in a metal sheet. I didn’t dare take an afternoon nap, because I would lose my grip on time entirely. In the outside world, such a nap might last only minutes – but inside the cell, within the confines of my shackled mind, it felt as though years had passed. When I woke up, I didn’t know if it was still today, if I had slipped back into yesterday, or if I had already arrived at tomorrow.

The problem wasn’t just the perfectly polished, yet mediocre prose. It’s what’s lost when we surrender the struggle to translate thought into words

I have been teaching fiction writing at MIT since 2017. Many of my students last wrote fiction in middle school, and very few have experienced a proper workshop, so at the start of every semester I offer these directions for writer and reader alike:

Read the story at least twice. Mark what works and what doesn’t – underline great sentences, flag clunky syntax, gaps in logic and unrealistic dialogue. Ask yourself: does the story work? Why or why not? What could improve it? Answer in a signed letter to the author, attached to their story. Give your honest opinions. Remember that an effective peer review demands close reading of the text accompanied by a boldness of spirit.

US leader enters talks with superpower rival from vulnerable position, but will be hoping for economic wins amid turbulent backdrop

If all goes to plan over the next few days – and that is a big if – Donald Trump will arrive in Beijing on Wednesday for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.

The trip will mark the first time a US president has visited China in nearly a decade. The last visit was also made by Trump, during his first term, in 2017.

How has this affected you? Have you been able to make alternative plans?

People could see their travel plans upended as airlines cancel or consolidate flights to conserve jet fuel as the war in the Middle East disrupts supplies.

Airlines are reviewing their timetables to see which flights can be cancelled in advance and cause the least delays.

We would like to hear from people who converse with AI chatbots on a personal level

Lots of people now use chatbots as personal assistants, sometimes to the extent that they have formed an emotional attachment to them.

We would like to hear from people who converse with AI chatbots on a personal level. Have you formed an emotional bond to an AI chatbot?

If you’re affected by the National Savings and Investments lost funds scandal, we would like to hear from you

This month the state-backed National Savings and Investments (NS&I) bank will share its plan to reunite thousands of bereaved families with their missing money.

In March it emerged that 37,500 people faced delays because of problems tracing the premium bonds of deceased customers. The families are collectively owed nearly £500m.

Share a tip on a great train journey you’ve taken, whether long or short. The best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

Whether it’s a short hop across the Channel on Eurostar or a long-distance adventure crossing several countries, more of us are rediscovering the excitement and romance of rail travel. We’d love to hear about your favourite train-based trips in Europe.

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

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