As Maria Balshaw steps down after nine years, her successor at the gallery needs to forge a fresh financial and cultural path

Roland Rudd, the chair of Tate, is in a bullish mood when we meet at his offices in the Adelphi Building, which sits on the Thames between the art institution’s two London sites. “Things have never been better,” he says.

It’s a rebuff to any suggestion that the organisation is in flux – and, as if he were expecting the question to arise, Rudd produces a piece of paper from his suit pocket with notes to prove his point. The recent wins, he says, are so numerous that he has written them down so as not to forget any.

Claim of nefarious plot draws attention of lawmakers and president – but are disappearances and deaths really linked?

Are the disappearances or deaths of at least 11 US scientists, each allegedly connected in some way to space, defense and nuclear research, really linked in a nefarious plot: one that involves the Chinese or other state enemies, or possibly links back to UFOs?

A conspiracy theory positing exactly that has roared through sections of the US population in recent weeks, spreading rapidly from the internet into rightwing media and hence into the mainstream press and prompting an inquiry from Congress and questions from Donald Trump.

Christine Dawood found herself trapped on the ship, waiting for signs that the Titan submersible carrying her family would surface. She talks in detail for the first time about those harrowing four days

Walking into Christine Dawood’s kitchen, it’s impossible not to be drawn to the model Titanic in the centre of the room. Sitting in its own glass-fronted cabinet, the Lego ship is almost 1.5 metres long, constructed of 9,090 of the iconic plastic bricks. Dawood’s 19-year-old son Suleman spent almost two weeks building it. “People are always a bit shocked to see it,” she admits. “But what was I going to do? Break it up? Hide it away? Suleman put all those hours in. He’d been fascinated with the Titanic since we went to a huge exhibition when we lived in Singapore.“

I went to that same exhibition when it came to London, and remember marvelling at the china dinner plates that had survived intact; the unused lifejackets that had failed to save someone; the sheet music belonging to the orchestra who had supposedly bravely played even as the ship went down. Instead of a ticket, you were given a replica boarding pass with a real passenger’s name on it. At the end, you could find out who survived and who didn’t.

Being financially equipped to retire feels like a fantasy. And yet plenty of people who could do so are avoiding it

“Retirement.” A word I can hardly spell anymore, it seems so abstract and impossible – like a science-fiction concept from a tattered old novel. In the classic film Blade Runner, “retirement” is the term used to describe the brutal ritual of future cops executing rogue androids called replicants (which auto-correct just tried to turn into “Republicans” against my will, though maybe Google Docs has a Freudian slip function now).

The Blade Runner version of retirement strikes me as more feasible for modern humans – getting blasted by a jackbooted assassin with a phallic-looking blaster – than the traditional process. Actual retirement – cocktails on the beach in between golf games – is as distant as the farthest known star. As glamorous as my life must seem to you, dear reader, it is not that at all. Like most creative types who never bothered to learn to code, I scrape by every month, white-knuckling until the next heaven-sent direct deposit.

The White Lotus actor on an awful audition, an important lesson and her first kiss with Leo Woodall

Born in Massachusetts, Meghann Fahy, 36, understudied for the musical Next to Normal in 2008 and went on to play a principal character on Broadway from 2010 to 2011. On television she was cast in the soap One Life to Live in 2010 and starred in the comedy drama The Bold Type from 2017 to 2021. She appears in The White Lotus season two, The Perfect Couple, Sirens and the forthcoming The Good Daughter. Her films include the thriller Drop, and Rebuilding with Josh O’Connor, in cinemas now. Her partner is the actor Leo Woodall and she lives in New York City.

When were you happiest?
When I realised that I could get myself through anything that came my way.

Many people are taking action now, from taking family on holiday to paying off grandchildren’s student loans or giving tax-free gifts

Many of us are still getting our heads around the price increases and tax tweaks that took effect this month, but you might want to give some thought to next April.

Some big changes to pensions, savings and investments are coming down the track, and there are things you can do now and in the coming months to get ready for them.

Extra social media checks brought in amid growing threat to politicians from extremists

The security company that provides bodyguards for MPs has tightened its vetting processes after it sent a bodyguard with far-right links to protect a politician who was under threat from extremists.

Mitie, which has a £31m contract for the work, is updating its CPO (Close Protection Operative) vetting processes to include regular social media checks. There will also be random checks on the social media activity of those already taken on.

The IDF said it detected two rockets launched from southern Lebanon towards northern Israel

We have some images coming through the newswires of Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, speaking with Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, and other officials in Islamabad this morning.

Araghchi arrived in Pakistan last night. He wrote on social media that his trip would focus on “bilateral matters and regional developments”.

Jets flew from bases in Romania but did not open fire as potential targets stayed within Ukrainian airspace

Two RAF Typhoons have been scrambled from a Romanian air base to engage Russian drones close to Nato airspace, although they did not open fire.

British defence sources said the fighter jets did not enter Ukrainian airspace, contradicting reports that Russian drones had been shot down by the RAF there, an event which would have represented a major escalation in hostilities between the western alliance and Moscow.

⚽ FA Cup semi-final updates from the 5.15pm BST kick-off
⚽ Live scores | York back in EFL after wild finish | Mail Scott

1 min: City waste no time in establishing how they plan to go about this. A lot of patient possession. Saints yet to have a touch.

Manchester City get the ball rolling. April. Wembley. Sun. It’s that time of year. What’s not to love?

• England 62-24 Wales

• Red Roses run in 10 tries, Wales earn bonus point

There is an alternate universe in which Meg Jones played the Six Nations clash between England and Wales in a red shirt instead of a white one. The Red Roses captain was born in Cardiff and can speak fluent Welsh but she chose to play for England, being qualified through her mother. That decision is surely one of the most important to England’s current form with Jones an integral and irreplaceable cog in the Red Roses machine.

Jones was named skipper before the Six Nations with Zoe Stratford pregnant and she has more than stepped up to the plate. The 2025 World Rugby player of the year nominee has scored in two of the three opening matches of the tournament, bagging two against Wales at a sold-out Ashton Gate.

Enzo Bettamio alleged to have stabbed Kamonnan Thiamphanit in April 2024 at a property in Bayswater

A teenager has been charged with murder over the death of a 27-year-old woman after his extradition from the United Arab Emirates to the UK.

The charge relates to the stabbing of Kamonnan Thiamphanit, which took place at a property in Bayswater, west London, on 6 April 2024.

A previously unknown species of bacteria found in patients with noma could be key to creating treatments for the neglected tropical disease

The “astonishing” discovery of a new bacteria could open the door to better ways to prevent, detect and treat a fatal and disfiguring childhood disease, researchers hope.

Noma, which is fatal in 90% of cases without treatment, begins as a sore on the gums but goes on to destroy the tissues of the mouth and face.

Students aged 12 to 15 steered bus to safety and called for help after driver lost consciousness from asthma attack

Middle school students in Mississippi acted quickly to halt their school bus from crashing after their driver passed out while on a highway, prompting the operator to declare: “They saved my life.”

The bus in question had just left the Hancock middle school in the Mississippi community of Kiln on Wednesday when the driver, Leah Taylor, suffered an asthma attack and lost consciousness.

Italian newspapers claim singer and actor, who is tipped to be next James Bond, are planning ‘wedding of the year’ in the city

Last July, Dua Lipa shared a series of photos on Instagram while on holiday in Palermo with Callum Turner, the British actor she had become engaged to weeks earlier. In these photos, the pair appeared radiantly in love with each other – and the Sicilian capital.

There were pictures of the couple strolling through the city’s vibrant baroque alleys, admiring the ceiling frescoes in its striking cathedral and enjoying sunset boat trips. In another, a smiling Turner is holding a pair of ricotta-filled cannoli, the Sicilian dessert. One photo even captured the word ‘“amore” scrawled on a wall.

In February 2025, a cheap Russian drone tore through Chornobyl’s confinement shelter. Workers warn the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident is not safe yet

The dosimeter clipped to your chest ticks faster the moment you step off the designated path inside the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Step back, and it slows again – an invisible line between clean ground and contamination.

Above rises the “new safe confinement” (NSC) – the largest movable steel structure ever built, taller than the Statue of Liberty, wider than the Colosseum, its arch curving overhead like an aircraft hangar built for giant planes.

A crypto tycoon is giving record-breaking amounts to Farage’s party. But little is known about his motives

Shortly before Christmas 2022, Chakrit Sakunkrit, owner of the Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary on the Thai island of Koh Samui, invited 200 guests to spend a few days celebrating his 60th birthday. One sultry afternoon, Sakunkrit and a small group gathered around a table near the shore, surrounded by the burgundy foliage of Good Luck plants. To his right, dressed down in a polo shirt, sat Nigel Farage.

Since Brexit marked the achievement of his life’s work three years earlier, Farage had fizzled. Even some of his supporters had pronounced him finished. Now, with the Conservatives in disarray after Liz Truss’s disastrous budget that September, Farage was hinting at a still more ambitious project: to make himself prime minister.

Some familiar, arcane terms are returning to the fore as the Tories study the tactics Labour used against Boris Johnson

The lexicon of a British parliamentary scandal is arcane.

As Keir Starmer fights to remain prime minister, he has had to respond to a “humble address”, had his judgment picked over during an “emergency opposition day debate” and now faces the ignominy of a “privilege motion”.

Abby, 25, a partnerships manager for film, meets Charlie, 26, a finance analyst

What were you hoping for?
A different kind of Friday night with good company and a fancy meal!

The court sided with a Canadian hiker who deliberately challenged the order imposed to curb spread of wildfires

As wildfires raged across Nova Scotia last summer, the Canadian province made a simple plea to residents: stay away from the woods.

As the situation deteriorated, authorities turned the request into a prohibition: anyone caught hiking under the shade of the forest canopy faced a C$25,000 fine – a figure more than half the average worker’s yearly salary.

Our resident product tester sips and puckers his way through a range of high-street balsamic vinegars

• The best supermarket gherkins

The old adage that you get what you pay for definitely applies to balsamic vinegar, no matter whether it’s an independent brand or a supermarket’s own-label. The best are made in Modena, Italy, and carry at least IGP (protected geographical indication) status. Though that’s not the strictest certification, it’s still a mark of quality, assuring the product has been made following certain guidelines.

None of the vinegars I tested had PDO (protected designation of origin) status, which is a more coveted certification with strict guidelines and a 12-year ageing process, and which explains why it can cost upwards of £1,200 a litre.

Relatives of London pupils and German villagers mark anniversary of ‘English misfortune’ that Nazis turned into propaganda coup

On 17 April 1936, the bells of St Laurentius church in the Black Forest rang out to guide to safety a group of London schoolboys trapped in deep snow on a mountain hike gone very wrong. Ninety years on to the day, as the bells sounded again, there was hardly a dry eye in the congregation of British relatives and German villagers remembering the night that had brought together their parents and grandparents.

The people of Hofsgrund risked their lives heading out with sledges and lanterns in the deadly weather to rescue the party of 27 and their teacher after two boys, fumbling though fog and frozen to the bone, had reached a farmhouse and told its startled inhabitants there were many more of them strewn over the Schauinsland mountain.

The Daily Sketch from 20 and 29 April 1936

Richard Gadd presents a bruisingly intense dissection of masculinity, and the soul-pop chanteuse heads out on tour. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

An idiosyncratic thriller sees Anne Hathaway’s pop icon and Michaela Coel’s fashion designer embark on a psychosexual romance, while Dave Grohl and his boys are back with album number 12

Mother Mary
Out now
Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel play a pop star and a fashion designer embroiled in a psychosexual affair in this A24 drama-slash-thriller from the reliably idiosyncratic director David Lowery. Also starring FKA twigs, Sian Clifford and Hunter Schafer.

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

⚽ Premier League updates from the 5.30pm BST kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Table | Top scorers | Follow us on Bluesky

Mikel Arteta’s pre-match thoughts

[On making only one change from the City game] We did a lot of great things, with some connections that we really liked througout the game.

[On how long Bukayo Saka might be able to play from the bench] We will see how the game goes. We have alternatives in the front line to change the game; we’ll use them in the right way.

Roberto De Zerbi had said he wanted no crying in his camp after Brighton scored their late equaliser last week, and it was just as the Wolves fans had started chanting “You’re going to cry in a minute” that the substitute João Palhinha struck the goal that briefly helped Tottenham climb out of the relegation zone and avoid a club record of 16 consecutive league games without a win.

The Spurs manager ran on to the pitch, pumping his fists, after the Portugal midfielder, played onside by the former Spurs defender Matt Doherty, slid in to score after Richarlison had scuffed a shot goalwards when Pedro Porro’s corner fell his way in the 82nd minute.

Vitalii Mykolenko crossed from the left, James Tarkowski headed the ball down, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall lashed it into the back of the net and for a moment it felt as if West Ham were sliding towards the Championship.

It was 1-1 at the London Stadium, Tomas Soucek’s opener on his 250th appearance for the east Londoners cancelled out. But added time is proving crucial in this relegation battle. Last week it was Georginio Rutter shattering Tottenham with a late equaliser for Brighton. This time it was Callum Wilson popping up in the 92nd minute to score his ninth goal in his last eight games against Everton and maintain West Ham’s two-point advantage over Spurs, who remain in 18th place despite their win over Wolves.

Liverpool finally lifted the curse of Crystal Palace on a sun-kissed, restorative afternoon at Anfield where Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz scored, third choice goalkeeper Freddie Woodman took the acclaim of the Kop and Arne Slot’s side climbed to fourth in the Premier League. Of course, this season being what it is for the champions, there had to be a sting to a third consecutive league win.

Mohamed Salah hobbled off with an apparent hamstring injury that could threaten his involvement in the remainder of his final season with Liverpool. It certainly appeared that way as the Anfield great applauded all four sides of the ground before heading straight down the tunnel. There were also mass protests inside and outside the stadium against Liverpool’s decision to increase ticket prices for the next three seasons. “You greedy bastards, enough is enough,” reverberated around Anfield as the vast majority of fans showed yellow cards to Liverpool owners, Fenway Sports Group.

The prodigious growth of running clubs, fuelled by young women, has seen the popularity of the event sky-rocket

There is always magic in the air on a London Marathon morning. But this year the event promises to dazzle and soar more than ever. A world-record 59,000 people will take part in Sunday’s race, raising close to £100m for charity while swallowing 93,024 Lucozade gels from Greenwich to the Mall. There are also whispers of a men’s world record attempt. But the biggest noise of all is coming from those hailing a new golden era of running.

The numbers are astonishing. The facts indisputable. More than 1.1 million people entered the ballot for this year’s race – 750,000 more than four years ago. Notably, a third of those were in the 18-29 category, with female entrants making up the biggest percentage of those under 30.

• Brazilian midfielder’s arrival could mean Ugarte moves on

• Summer wishlist also includes Real Madrid’s Tchouaméni

Manchester United have identified Éderson, the Atalanta midfielder, as a potential recruit to fill the gap left by Casemiro’s summer departure, with the 26-year-old Brazilian valued at €40m-50m (£35m-£45m).

United’s director of football, Jason Wilcox, is an admirer of Éderson and is monitoring the Brazil international after drawing up a list of potential replacements for Casemiro.

• Bundesliga champions score four second-half goals

• Kane’s 33rd goal of the season earns ninth straight win

Bayern Munich fought back from three goals down to clinch a 4-3 win over Mainz 05 on Saturday as substitutes Harry Kane and Michael Olise led a second-half comeback for the Bundesliga champions. Dominik Kohr, Paul Nebel and Sheraldo Becker scored for Mainz in the first half while Bayern, who had made eight changes to the starting line-up that beat Bayer Leverkusen in Wednesday’s German Cup semi-final, had no shot on target until the break.

The Bayern coach, Vincent Kompany, brought on Kane and Olise after the break and their renewed aggression paid off with Nicolas Jackson scoring in the 53rd minute and Olise finding the net 20 minutes later.

This story will be updated

Minstermen are back in the Football League after a decade away, but only after a scarcely believable finish

Football, bloody hell. We may never see the likes of it again after York struck an equaliser in the 103rd minute to secure a dramatic return to the Football League at Rochdale’s expense.

The hosts thought they had done it when Mani Dieseruvwe headed a 95th-minute goal that would have sent Dale into League Two. A pitch invasion ensued and after a lengthy delay play restarted. But there was still enough time for Josh Stones to bundle the ball over the line for York’s 114th, and most important, goal of the season to secure the point needed for unparalleled glory.

Kiko Seike and Madison Haley put Manchester City’s title celebrations on hold as Brighton upset the Women’s Super League leaders. Three points at the Broadfield Stadium would have enabled City to take the title as early as Wednesday, if Arsenal were to lose against Leicester that day. But the race could now go down to the final day, which is 16 May.

Brighton could have found themselves at least three goals down within 10 minutes after gifting their opponents several chances – the first of which came after 12 seconds when a terrible backpass from Moeka Minami was intercepted by Khadija Shaw. The striker played a short pass across to Aoba Fujino, who fired her attempt wide.

Digital communication in its most basic forms can push us into an ‘always on’ state – and generate feelings of exclusion or rejection

When I first started teaching at Oxford in 2005, I would offer “office hours” a couple of times a week. They were literally that – time for students to come by my office and chat about anything on their mind. Emails were formal and for rare occasions, with the expectation that most issues would be discussed in person. Fast forward to 2026, and office hours have been replaced at many universities by constant email and Teams communication. These are incessant, with responses often expected within hours, if not minutes, blurring the line between evenings, weekends and normal working hours.

I have to admit that every time a notification pops up on my phone or laptop, even before reading it, I can feel my stress levels rising. It’s made me reflect on how modern communication is pushing our minds to the limit. While most of the recent conversation on mental health and technology has focused on social media, we forget how even older forms of digital communication can push us into a stressful, “always on” way of being.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)

She backed the president as he ran millions of dollars in anti-trans ads. Now she’s disappointed her passport has the wrong gender

Thoughts and prayers for Caitlyn Jenner. It seems that it’s starting to dawn on the Olympian and reality TV star that being a rich, white, Maga supporter doesn’t entirely shield her from Donald Trump’s transphobic policies.

What sparked that realization? Was it the millions of dollars spent by the Trump campaign on anti-trans ads during the 2024 election? Was it, perhaps, the fact that one of Trump’s very first acts in his second term, conducted just hours after he took office, was to sign an executive order which stated that government-issued identification documents would be changed to reflect the holder’s “immutable biological classification as either male or female”, defined by a person’s cells at conception – in other words, your passport would reflect the sex you were assigned at birth?

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Progress has always been made by people who think differently. Neurodiversity helps us think outside the box – and when we do, the sky’s the limit

One of my favourite pieces of scientific equipment is something called a retrospectroscope. I admit that it only exists in my imagination, but it has turned out to be a very useful bit of kit. It allows me to look back through the years of my life and analyse the journey so far. And what a journey it has been.

When I started looking back in earnest as I wrote my memoir, there were many discoveries. Some made me laugh. Some made me wince. Some made me want to give my younger self a hug and a cup of hot, sweet tea. But one of the biggest standouts has been the path my dyslexia has taken me on.

For all his sins, Johnson didn’t sacrifice others to save himself. That’s not leadership – and Starmer may learn that all too soon

• Simon Hart was government chief whip from 2022 to 2024

Sitting at the back of the public gallery watching Olly Robbins give his evidence to the foreign affairs select committee hearing on Tuesday felt horribly like the summer of 2022 all over again. Back then, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, had seen off numerous attacks on his integrity – most of them from Keir Starmer, for what it’s worth – mainly on the back of Partygate, but with the final blow being struck by the resignation of the little-known deputy chief whip after allegations of sexual misconduct.

The similarities are not lost on anyone like me who has witnessed all of this from relatively close quarters. In Johnson’s case, the main plank of his defence was either that he had been told nothing at all, or that what he was told (by officials or advisers) was selective at best. The trouble was that no one really believed him. He was PM and with that came the expectation that irrespective of the whys and wherefores, the buck had only one place to stop.

Simon Hart was government chief whip from 2022 to 2024, and is author of Ungovernable

She’s already taken Paris and Venice – now, with husband Jeff Bezos, she’s stormed New York’s Met Gala. And for a mere $75,000, you can be there with her

We live in an age when the most successful revolutionaries are not the peasants but the Silicon Valley billionaires. They are the true disrupters, the victorious radicals and the people who have successfully ripped up legacy systems and replaced them with themselves. Revolutionaries used to rebel against governments, but the techlords are now so powerful that meaningful revolt against them could really only come from governments. Governments are the new peasants. The erstwhile peasants, meanwhile, are in endless thrall to the technologies of their overlords, each one carrying in their hands a device pretty much guaranteed to distract them from doing anything other than clicking impotently – and only when they remember – on “change”. Never mind televised; their revolution will be narcotised.

Anyhow: I can’t believe Lauren Sánchez hasn’t gone with the above paragraph as the theme for the Met Ball that her husband, Jeff, bought her. Maybe it was too long for the invitations. Either way, we are just over a week away from the biggest event in the fashion calendar, which, like his own fairy godfather, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has purchased the honorary chairmanship of for himself and his wife. Cinderella and her Cinderfella shall go to the ball. You cannot imagine how much Silicon there’s going to be at the event.

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Name the deadliest of sins – cruelty, deceit, avarice – and Trump will both exhibit them and celebrate them

It’s no accident that the figure emerging as the global challenger to the might of Donald Trump is a priest in white, known as Pope Leo XIV. In recent weeks, the pope has issued a string of barely coded denunciations of the US president, unfazed by the insults that have come his way in return. It’s no longer fanciful to imagine that what an eastern European pontiff, John Paul II, did by confronting the Soviet empire in the 1980s, an American-born pope may do in the 2020s by daring to speak truth to the would-be emperor in the White House.

Of course, several heads of government have stood up to Trump too. Canada’s Mark Carney has done it most explicitly, while his European counterparts have taken a stand by refusing to join the president’s reckless, wrong-headed war on Iran. But none has the global reach of the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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.

Developments in Berlin and Tokyo show how far the strategic environment has shifted in response to authoritarian threat and American unpredictability

When Donald Trump hosted Sanae Takaichi, the Japanese prime minister, last month, he could not resist a gratuitous reference to Pearl Harbor. The US president is impelled to trash longstanding alliances. He has done more than anyone to demolish the postwar global order.

This week alone, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, questioned whether the US would be “loyal” to Nato if Russia attacked. A Pentagon memo reportedly floated suspending Spain from Nato and reviewing support for the British claim to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. And a report said US officials believe that it has depleted munitions so rapidly in Iran as to put in question contingency plans to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion in the near future.

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.

Architect-designed loos such as the ones in Tokyo are fantastic. But even ordinary facilities enhance cities and towns

Five years on from the delayed Tokyo Olympics, one of its less obvious legacies is probably the highest-spec public toilets in the world. Seventeen architects turned conveniences across the city into what one, Kengo Kuma, called “must-see attractions” – including a design with clear-glass cubicles that become opaque when occupied. The German film director Wim Wenders took note. In 2023 they featured in his film, Perfect Days, about a cleaner.

A public realm in which humans and their needs are treated with so much dignity deserves to be celebrated. But new loos do not have to be architectural icons. The main thing is that there should be enough of them, and that they are maintained.

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.

Readers respond to Daniel Trilling’s article asking if fascism is making a comeback

As an analysis of rightwing populism, Daniel Trilling’s argument works well enough (The impossible promise: are we witnessing the return of fascism?, 18 April). We cannot assume that fascism will always take the same form, rather than adapt to, and try to provide answers to, events as they unfold.

Fascism might best be seen as history’s punishment for the failed universalism of the Enlightenment project – the failure to deliver on the promise of universal equality. The resurgence of the far right is a reactionary response to the broken promises of social democracy. Working-class supporters of the far right, having seen the fight for equality for all replaced with a neoliberal war of all against all, simply adopt the logic of the day.

Readers respond to an article suggesting Justin Trudeau was too old to attend Coachella

While I appreciate that Emma Brockes’ article was slightly tongue-in-cheek, I do reject the premise that there are aspects of modern culture that should be “off-limits” as you get older (Justin Trudeau at Coachella? That’s just wrong: at a certain age, things must change, 16 April).

I am 57, absolutely love dancing and clubs (although I rarely go), and I think this raises the question of whether it’s OK to maintain what is, essentially, a product of societal expectations and mores which are moving on. I went with my wife and 16-year-old daughter to the Reading festival last year. We left our daughter to enjoy the festival with friends as she wanted independence – we were on hand “just in case”, and it meant she had a safe tent to return to at whatever time of night she chose.

Prof Peter Ayton welcomes science in sporting commentary, but wants to set the record straight

While it is wonderful to see scientific theories cited in sport analysis (Guardiola ready to benefit as fellow Cruyff disciple Arteta strays from path, 17 April), Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Nobel prize-winning paper on prospect theory did not show that “human beings suffer from loss aversion when in a favourable position”. Or that those in pursuit of the favourable position are “much more open to risk taking”.

Prospect theory predicts that people are more highly motivated to avoid losses than to achieve gains of comparable magnitude – which explains why teams facing a disappointing scoreline get more yellow and red cards and use more substitutes, why basketball teams behind by a point at half time win more often than teams ahead by a point, and why golfers hole more par putts than birdie putts at the same distance, but not why a race leader would take less risk than their pursuers.

Readers respond to the Guardian’s picture essay showing a year in the life of London zoo vets

We were pleased by your article on the important work of zoo vets (From sleeping lions to spitting snakes: a year in the life of London zoo vets, 19 April). Our father, Calvert Appleby, worked as a vet at Edinburgh zoo from 1948 to 1959, before moving to the Royal Veterinary College in London. His first few years were as a PhD student of veterinary pathology with the Dick veterinary school while also active in the zoo, before being fully employed there from 1951, so he might have claimed to predate Oliver Graham-Jones, who your article says became “Britain’s first dedicated zoo vet” at London zoo that year.

For these pioneering vets, some animal physiology was unknown, so experimental treatments were necessary. A crocodile with an abscess was anaesthetised with chloroform (via a huge cotton-wool ball on a long pole), but sadly didn’t survive. It wasn’t known then that reptiles couldn’t cope with chloroform. Appleby later received an award from a learned society for his pioneering work on reptiles and amphibians. He had many other stories, often successes, but also including the huge efforts made to move a sick camel indoors one winter’s day, only for the camel to stagger to its feet and return to the bottom of the paddock.

Exclusive: Advanced practitioners are being deployed to cover doctor rota gaps across the NHS, figures show

UK hospitals are using nurses to cover for doctors because of an NHS-wide shortage of medics, raising fears that “substitute doctors” may provide inferior care.

Health professionals known as advanced practitioners – who are mainly senior nurses – are undertaking roles usually performed by doctors in A&E, neonatal units, critical care and other areas.

Will the president’s reverence for royalty ease transatlantic tensions or will his protocol-smashing predilection prevail?

Some expect a masterclass in soft power. Others warn of a brutal humiliation. Few in the US will envy King Charles, a royal whose entire life has been governed by protocol, next week when he faces a man who glories in smashing it.

The British king will travel to Washington for a private tea and state dinner with Donald Trump at a moment when the “special relationship” has been plunged to its lowest point in 70 years by the US president’s war in Iran and belittlement of the prime minister, Keir Starmer.

Industry figures say that going viral is no replacement for the classic route of apprenticeships and competitions

Scroll through your timeline of choice and it won’t be long until you land on a video posted by a social media chef trying to send their recipes viral.

Such is the popularity of cooking videos that everyone from Michelin star masters to self-taught beginners like Brooklyn Beckham are setting up tripods on their kitchen counters to capture the perfect cut, cuission or crust on their culinary creations.

Hisham Abugharbieh was arrested after standoff with police and charged with killing Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy

The man who was detained after two Bangladeshi doctoral students went missing from the University of South Florida (USF) has been booked with two counts of murder.

Hisham Abugharbieh faces two counts of premeditated murder in the first degree with a weapon in the deaths of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, the Hillsborough county sheriff’s office announced on Saturday.

A new UK civil resistance group has called for ‘mass shoplifting’ to focus attention on inequality, but recent stunts have led to arrests

Eve Middleton was sitting on a picnic blanket in a park, sharing out vegan biscuits with six fellow activists, when she saw a squad of police bearing down on them. About 30 officers, she said, surrounded the seven young people, and one officer told them: “Don’t run or you’ll be cuffed.”

Another officer focused on gathering evidence. “Whose Oreos are these?” they asked, seizing the biscuits.

After a two-year wait, video of a young male crossing above a road gives hope that critically endangered species can survive habitat fragmentation

The critically endangered Sumatran orangutan has been filmed for the first time using a canopy bridge to cross a road.

In 2024, conservationists in the Pakpak Bharat district of North Sumatra in Indonesia built the bridge high over the Lagan-Pagindar road, which provides an essential route for local people but which became a barrier for animals.

Study of 1,300 campaigners finds arrests, fines and jail terms increase determination of activists to take direct action

The criminalisation of direct action climate protests in the UK is counterproductive and increases the determination of activists to undertake disruptive demonstrations, according to a study of 1,300 campaigners.

New findings suggest arrests, fines and lengthy prison sentences given to nonviolent climate protesters who have blocked roads or damaged buildings may actually radicalise them. The repression of protest could even be one driver of recent covert actions such as the cutting of internet cables, they said.

Exclusive: International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol, the world’s leading energy economist, also says UK should largely forgo North Sea expansion

The oil crisis triggered by the Iran war has changed the fossil fuel industry for ever, turning countries away from fossil fuels to secure energy supplies, the world’s leading energy economist said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), also said that, despite pressure, the UK should forgo much of its potential North Sea expansion.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting an antelope species in Africa when the incident occured

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An American millionaire big-game hunter has died after being crushed by a group of elephants during a hunting expedition in Gabon.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the central African country of Gabon when the incident occurred last Friday. While in the Lope-Okanda rainforest, he and his guide unexpectedly came across five female elephants accompanied by a calf.

The 32-year-old jailed for life for a racially motivated sex attack on a Sikh woman had a collection of hate-filled uploads

John Ashby is a man who did not hide his hatred of women.

In fact, the rapist, who was sentenced this week to life in prison with a minimum of 14 years for a racially motivated sex attack on a Sikh woman, vented his misogyny online for all to see.

Wendy Duffy died at Pegasos clinic in Basel as assisted dying bill in England and Wales fails to pass

A grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child.

Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus.

Internal email proposes US should reassess support for UK claim to islands because of lack of support for Iran war

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Downing Street has been forced to insist that Britain will not yield sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, after a leaked Pentagon email proposed the US should reassess its support for the UK’s claim on the islands because of a lack of British support over Iran.

The memo reflected ways in which the Trump administration could punish Britain for failing to follow the US lead in bombing Iran, and comes before a potentially fraught three-day state visit to the US by King Charles.

Officers continue with inquiries after West Midlands police confirm deaths of boys aged one and three

A woman has been arrested after a house fire in Wolverhampton on Friday in which a one-year-old and three-year-old boy died, West Midlands police have said.

Emergency services were called to the property in the south of the city at about 8.30pm on Friday, with first responders attending from West Midlands police fire and ambulance services.

Haris Doukas warns that with 700,000 residents and 8 million tourists, people are being pushed out of their neighbourhoods

In the heart of ancient Athens, on narrow streets and around archaeological sites, visitor groups appear to be everywhere, snaking their way behind tour guides.

Previously, officials would have welcomed such scenes. But for Haris Doukas, the socialist mayor who is determined to reclaim the capital’s congested city centre for its citizens, the start of tourist season leaves much of its historic heart at risk of “over-saturation.” Entire neighbourhoods, he believes, are in danger of losing their authenticity because of uncontrolled tourist development.

Jake Reiner calls parents ‘center’ of his life and says brother being at ‘center’ of loss is ‘almost too impossible to process’

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The elder son of beloved director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Reiner, eulogized his parents, who were “the center” of his life, in a Substack essay published Friday, four months after the pair were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home.

Nick Reiner, the couple’s younger son, who long struggled with drug addiction and mental illness, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection to their deaths, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Anti-war, anti-ICE, anti-authoritarian Christians and Catholics are organizing around their faith in opposition to the version claimed by Trump and Hegseth

The Trump administration has long tried to wrap itself in Christianity, with Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, invoking warfare “in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ”. Trump even recently posted an AI image of himself as a Christ-like figure (later claiming he thought it was a doctor) and streamed himself reading the Bible.

But in reality, faith leaders have been some of the loudest and most consistent voices organizing against the administration’s policies.

Unhindered by critics who called the $114m project ‘a bridge to nowhere’, a gigantic throughway allowing animals to cross a busy freeway is close to completion

Atop a gigantic wildlife bridge in California this week, butterflies filled the air. A red-tailed hawk sailed above as a slight breeze ruffled the 6,000 native plants, including poppies and purple sage. You’d never guess that below the quiet expanse of rocks and plants, a 10-lane freeway ferries 400,000 cars each day.

When the project broke ground four years ago, enthusiasm was high. The wildlife crossing in northern Los Angeles county would be the largest of its kind in the world, providing safe passage for mountain lions, bobcats and lizards.

The economy and public finances were on the right path, bond yields were falling, interest rates likely to drop further … then came the US-Israeli attack

Donald Trump’s war on Iran is “folly”; shadow chancellor Mel Stride should be “lined up for the sack”; and the Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper’s plan for managing fuel shortages is “fundamentally economically illiterate”.

Rachel Reeves has always relished a political fight, but in recent days she has been swinging at her opponents with what looks very much like enjoyment.

As AI erases the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder, some gen Z workers skip the entry level to become their own CEOs

When Ashley Terrell graduated from the University of Hawaii in 2024, she planned to find a job in marketing, maybe for a tech company. She had a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a college résumé that included a student marketing job for Red Bull. But after months of applying, her only offer was to work in the power tools section at Home Depot. “It was quite a shock,” she told the Guardian. “I searched for jobs every single day in that Home Depot bathroom.”

Terrell’s generation is entering the workforce in a particularly unlucky moment. Hiring in the United States has slumped to its lowest rate since 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While workers of all ages are feeling the pressure of an uncertain economy, it’s gen Z who is the most pessimistic about their job prospects: entry-level jobs are the most vulnerable to impacts from artificial intelligence, and some younger workers are seeing their careers stall before they have even started. Terrell felt she was not just competing with other people for jobs. “Especially with marketing, a lot of people think it can be replaced with AI,” she said.

Claudia–Liza Vanderpuije has fully withdrawn allegations relating to her former co-host, her lawyers say

The TV presenter Claudia–Liza Vanderpuije has withdrawn claims against her former Channel 5 News co-host Dan Walker after reaching a “mutual agreement” with the broadcaster and ITN.

Vanderpuije, who co-hosted a show with Walker for a year between 2022 and 2023, had filed claims of unfair dismissal, discrimination and harassment on grounds of race and sex, and breach of contract.

OpenAI said the company had identified an account using abuse-detection efforts, but determined at the time it didn’t meet threshold for legal referral

The head of OpenAI has written a letter apologizing that his company didn’t alert law enforcement about the online behavior of a person who shot and killed eight people in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.

In the letter posted on Friday, Sam Altman expressed his deepest condolences to the entire community.

Famous artists including Magritte are suspects in this glossy, grisly whodunnit – and it’s loads of fun

I don’t know about art, but I know what I like: cosy crime. I’m excited by Flemish series This Is Not a Murder Mystery (U&Drama, Wednesday, 8pm, and streaming on Channel 4), which offers a classy shot of both. Silent movie credits tell us the year is 1936. An English aristocrat is hosting a private show of surrealist artists, who are all on the cusp of major celebrity. Following a wild party a week before the show, we see René Magritte wake up in bed, next to a dead woman. Their heads have been wrapped in shrouds, in a ghoulish recreation of his own painting The Lovers. Fame can lead artists to lose their heads, but this is something else.

The beak arrive in the double-act form of DCI Thistlethwaite and DC Quant. They lock down the estate, along with its bohemian guests: Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Man Ray, performance artist Sheila Legge and the American war photographer Lee Miller. Magritte is determined to clear his name, but as the show approaches, the theatrical murders mount up. Each crime pays twisted homage to the masterpieces of the artists present, who are also suspects.

She coined the term ‘intersectionality’ and helped to develop critical race theory, now her life’s work is under attack by Washington’s war on ‘woke’. As her memoir is published, the legal scholar explains why she’ll never stop speaking truth to power

When Donald Trump returned to office in January last year, one of his first acts was to sign an executive order intended to cut federal funding for any school teaching what the administration defined as “critical race theory”. A raft of other orders mandated the termination of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) personnel, offices and training across the federal government. Federal agencies began flagging hundreds of words to avoid or eliminate, including “intersectional” and “intersectionality”. All of which has amounted to 40 years of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work being literally and deliberately erased.

For decades, the 66-year-old legal scholar has been naming things that powerful people would prefer remain unnamed. In 1989, she coined the term intersectionality to describe the way race and gender overlap to shape lived experience, often in ways the law fails to recognise. Around the same time, she was one of a group of African American scholars who created the framework that came to be known as “critical race theory”, which sought to examine how racism is embedded in legal systems rather than simply enacted through individual prejudice. Now, Crenshaw’s ideas are being contested like never before.

The chatshow host lifts the energy of this game where families battle to avoid being voted out of a street they move into. But he’s not onscreen often enough to save it

I’ve had a good idea. Let’s apply for a moratorium on new reality shows, at least until the frenzied desire for a challenger to The Traitors’ crown is over. Otherwise they’re just going to keep happening.

The Neighbourhood – presented by Graham Norton, its saving grace – is the latest to throw its cap into the ring. Six families take up residence in a suburban close (the neighbourhood, you get it) and each is aiming to be the last one voted out and thus claim the uncustomarily large pot of £250,000. This at least suggests that someone in the TV commissioning offices is beginning to understand the concept of inflation and the truth that yer 50 or 100ks are no longer universally life-changing amounts of money but closer to being a month’s rent or the price of a tank of petrol.

The Holby team prepare for a hellish time as a mysterious illness breaks out. Plus: Nicola Coughlan hosts Saturday Night Live UK! Here’s what to watch this evening

8.50pm, BBC One

He is one of the most chilling actors around. Yet Matthew Rhys is now playing a Basil Fawlty type in comedy horror Widow’s Bay. He talks about fluffing his James Bond audition, unzipping in Girls – and why he almost jacked in acting to join the army

‘What an absolute twat!” cries Matthew Rhys, clutching his face in both hands. He has just been reminded of a remark he made in 2000, when he was playing the Dustin Hoffman role in the West End stage version of The Graduate. He was 25, not long out of Rada, and was asked if he could imagine being middle-aged like his Mrs Robinson, Kathleen Turner, who was 45 at the time. His response? “Yes – and it’s frightening. I wonder – will I still be acting?”

Perhaps the “frightening” part merits derision. But acting is a precarious business, so no wonder he questioned his career’s potential longevity. “It is precarious,” he says, grateful for the off-ramp. He is wearing a black T-shirt and speaking over video call from the Brooklyn home he shares with the actor Keri Russell, their 10-year-old son and her two teenage children from a previous marriage. “It was after The Graduate that I had my longest stretch out of work. I thought I’d made it, and then I was like, ‘Nope’.” His prospects were so dire back then that he applied to join the army, only to be rejected by a recruiting officer convinced that he was merely researching a role. “I remember him looking down my CV at the list of acting jobs and saying: ‘I’m very confused …’”

Matthew Rhys stars in a genuinely creepy comedy horror from the maker of Parks & Rec. Plus, the woman who turned informant when her fiancé confessed that he’d killed a man

Young people are high-kicking to vintage US soul tunes again, but this time London and Bristol are leading the charge. Is the scene losing its working-class heritage?

Tom found northern soul by mistake. Despite living in Salford, Greater Manchester his entire life, the 24-year-old had never heard of the movement that began in the north and Midlands – known for its bombastic dancing and devotion to obscure black American soul music. He remembers how he felt on the fateful evening, watching people his age at a northern soul club night ditch their phones for the dancefloor.

Captivated, Tom took it upon himself to learn the signature dance style: spinning, high air-kicking, and falling to the ground backwards before launching back upright. Now Tom can regularly be seen keeping the faith on talc-covered, friction-reducing floors. The evening in central Manchester was an awakening for Tom and he’s not the only one.

Northern soul is back. So say the many, many articles documenting gen-Z’s love for the subculture. “[…] across the country there’s a surge of youth-led northern soul scenes that are not only surviving – but thriving”, read a piece in youth culture magazine, Dazed. Videos of young dancers frequently go viral. Photo features dazzle us with images of twentysomethings keeping the faith during new all-nighters.

The trio combine sludgy rock, homemade electronics and squawking into a watertight groove that makes light work of their complex musicianship

From Glasgow, Scotland
Recommended if you like Horse Lords, Melt-Banana, abrasive saxophone
Up next Album out now, touring the UK and Ireland from June

Taupe’s lawless mix of “not jazz”, sludgy rock and homemade electronics hits like a shock of cold water to the face. The Glasgow-based trio are a formidable live band: thunderously loud, crushingly tight, quick to surrender all control and trust-fall their way through wild improvisations. Their third album, Waxing | Waning, out now on Prague’s Minority Records, finally captures that power, as well as the band’s oddball humour and free-flowing imagination.

(Blue Note)
The redoubtable musician and guests including Branford Marsalis and Ron Carter make standard song-shapes sparkle with focus and rugged phrasing

As the passing of time undoes established norms, the contemporary music world keeps updating the meaning of that collection of styles often bundled up as “classic jazz”. In the 1940s, the modernist bebop movement was jazz’s uncompromising cutting edge, and the music’s early 20th-century roots in street music, plantations, saloons and red-light districts became its classic trad forms.

Thirty years later, bebop’s breakneck melodies and jarring chords became “classic jazz” themselves, overtaken by the free-improv avant garde of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, the jazz/rock fusions of Miles Davis, Weather Report and Frank Zappa, and new jazz-influenced folk and contemporary classical forms from all over the world. In those creatively dizzying years, jazzers still wanting to play song-tunes and old-school swing sometimes found themselves mocked by progressives as sad nostalgics. But now, in a 21st-century music world accepting of abundantly competing choices, all that has changed.

(Kallista)
The Australian songwriter’s fourth album exists in the captivating chasm between the coolness of her music and the unrepentant obsession of the crush it explores

Across what is now four albums, Australian singer-songwriter Carla dal Forno has moved with an eerily light gait across spartan post-punk landscapes with the occasional spot of sunlight from dub or indie-pop. She has said her latest, Confession, is about “a friendship that became emotionally charged in an unexpected way”, a drama that plays out in a series of riveting scenes. Powered by a New Order-worthy bass line, opener Going Out confesses her shame as a romantic obsession hardens into brute determination; Dal Forno’s tone of voice is unrepentantly chilling as she makes up her mind to acquire her target.

That obsession continues on the title track, though it’s as if Dal Forno tries to brush off how deep it goes by using a bright, gently skanking rhythm (a style familiar to listeners of 2022’s Come Around). The coolly funky Nighttime crackles with erotic potential, but other songs contain hurt and regret – though again, it’s not always mirrored by the music, which takes in naive twee-pop melodies, peppy coldwave and more. All of her conflicted feelings rattle around the superb Under the Covers, about the inexorability of not just attraction, but also the stasis that can set in to a relationship.

The Tale of Kaho, out in July, will be 16th novel by Japanese author who has faced criticism for portrayal of women

The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami will publish his first novel to feature a woman as the main character this summer.

The Tale of Kaho will be published in Japan on 3 July, with an ebook edition released the same day. A UK edition has not yet been announced.

The author on feeling Thomas Hardy’s pain, being duped by Donna Tartt and how reading his sister’s copy of Trainspotting made him want to write

My earliest reading memory
I only realised how well I knew the Alfie stories by Shirley Hughes when I started reading them to my own children. Every time we read one now, I’m suddenly back in my attic room in Swansea 40 years ago, watching my dad turn the same pages.

My favourite book growing up
At 10 years old, I read only Terry Pratchett. As far as I was concerned, there were no other authors. I loved everything he wrote but my favourite was Mort, where the eponymous protagonist is Death’s young apprentice. He learns the skills of the trade: traipsing between appointments, meeting the soon-to-die and reaping their souls. I liked how it made the afterlife seem ordinary, even bureaucratic, with the Grim Reaper more like a taxman – unwelcome wherever he goes.

A young woman’s dissociation from reality and her road to recovery are vividly rendered in this striking novel

Meet Ada, the anguished young narrator of 26-year-old Albertine Clarke’s radically strange and engrossing debut novel. Adrift in London, Ada occupies herself by swimming in her apartment’s basement pool and generally hiding from the world until she finds herself on the verge of a tumultuous mental collapse. If you’re allergic to the kind of novel in which characters exchange lines such as “I’m not real”, “Neither am I”, then it’s a case of diminishing returns. Otherwise, the book bears rich rewards.

The title refers to Ada’s father, an IT technician who is kicked out by Ada’s mother when he becomes obsessed with the gym – and much of the book explores how we create ourselves and others. Ada grows up surrounded by the marshy countryside near Norwich and early on experiences episodes of dissociation and ontological insecurity, including auditory and visual hallucinations. She imagines a voice on the radio saying her parents are getting divorced. The voice is “like a door swung open inside her head. Through it she could see a black tunnel, like a mine shaft, stretching down inside her.”

An imposter monkey, an underworld princess, art’s female trailblazers, and YA tales of fear, family and friendship

Our World: Nigeria by Bunmi Emenanjo and Diana Ejaita, Barefoot Books, £7.99
Part of a delightful educational series from a brilliant inclusive publisher, this colourful, joyous board book whisks babies away to spend a day in Nigeria, learning to say hello in three languages and feasting on porridge, akara and plantain.

Monkeypig by Huw Aaron, Puffin, £7.99
What makes a real monkey? This rapturously silly picture book from the Waterstones prize winner follows Molly, a pig who blends in with her simian friends – despite head monkey Norman’s best efforts to detect the impostor.

Genki Kawamura’s eerie new film expands on a haunting video game that leaves players lost in endless subway tunnels. He explains how this makes viewers and players face their worst fears

Genki Kawamura is something of a polymath. A bestselling author, film-maker, script writer and producer – he is also a lifelong gamer who grew up playing and being inspired by the games of legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto. His latest project Exit 8, now in cinemas, is a fascinating adaptation of the Japanese horror game, developed by a lone coder based in Kyoto, operating under the name Kotake Create. “I was captivated by its game design and the beauty of its visuals,” says Kawamura. “At the same time, I watched many streamers play it. As I did, I realised that although the game is incredibly simple, each player creates their own story, and each streamer brings their own unique reactions. It felt like a device that could reveal something fundamental about human nature.”

The concept behind Exit 8 the game is simple. The player finds themselves trapped in an endlessly looping section of a Tokyo subway station. Viewing the narrow, brightly lit corridors in first-person, you pass the same posters, the same silent commuter, the same locked doors over and over again. The only way to escape is to spot anomalies each time you pass through – maybe the eyes on a poster start following you, maybe the commuter stops and smiles – at which point you have to double back the way you came. Complete eight runs without missing an anomaly and you get to leave through the eponymous way out. There’s no story, no reason for it at all. The mystery is part of the appeal.

PlayStation 5; Housemarque/Sony
As a fast-firing spaceman, one minute you’re invincible, the next you’re dead – with every battle like watching a firework show through a kaleidoscope

On the planet Carcosa, mangled, blackened trees and crimson flowers take root next to the ruins of some ancient alien civilisation, flanked by statues contorted in pain, tearing at their marble skin. There are metallic tunnels deep underground, chasms of impossible size snaked with cables, so you feel as though you’re exploring the intestines of some giant machine. There’s a House of Leaves quality to these spaces, which shift and change and clearly weren’t built for humans.

You are Arjun Devraj (played by Rahul Kohli), a space security guy who’s on a mission to find missing colonists on an alien world before it all goes a bit Event Horizon and you become the next lost expedition. Classic. There’s some unethical space capitalism happening out here, and Devraj himself is a bit of a traumanaut who brought way too much mental carry-on luggage for this extremely long-haul flight. But it’s nothing that shooting some aliens won’t fix, right?

From mega hit Clair Obscur to the genius Blue Prince, the winners at this year’s event help me refocus on why games really matter

The 22nd Bafta game awards were on Friday, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took the biggest game prize. This makes it only the second game ever (after Baldur’s Gate 3) to win top prize at all five of the main awards shows: the Dice awards in Vegas; the Game awards in LA; the public-voted Golden Joysticks in the UK; the Game Developers Choice awards in San Francisco; and now London’s Baftas, the final event to celebrate the gaming output of 2025.

I’ll be honest: I was hoping for a different winner. Blue Prince, an eight-year project by the visual artist and former film-maker Tonda Ros, is the most extraordinary thing I played last year. It’s the game where you inherit a sprawling mansion that changes shape every day, and you must navigate its ever-shifting blueprint to find its secret room. I went so deep on this game that I was still playing it and thinking about it weeks after solving its initial mystery, piecing together bits of opaque lore from Reddit threads. I think it deserved at least one best game award (apart from ours).

The iconic game that came to define 8-bit programming still conjures flutters of nostalgia 40 years on – all thanks to a 15-year-old tea boy who worked a Saturday shift in a computer shop in Greater Manchester

If you were playing games on a home computer in the early 1980s, you knew about Chuckie Egg. No question. This simple-looking platform game had you wandering around a chicken shed, collecting eggs and avoiding the patrolling hens. But when you reached level eight, a large duck was suddenly let loose and would stalk the player like a feathery missile, completely changing the pace and tactics of the game. It was a boss battle before boss battles existed.

Everyone knew about Chuckie Egg because everyone could play it. Originally released on the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and Dragon 32 in the autumn of 1983, it immediately topped the charts, encouraging its publisher, A&F Software, to begin porting it to as many machines as possible. Around 11 conversions followed, including the Commodore 64, Amstrad and Acorn Electron. I first played it on the BBC computer in my school library, but I also had it on my C64 and a friend played on his Speccy. Like Manic Miner, Bruce Lee and Skool Daze, it was woven into the tapestry of British 8-bit gaming culture.

Royal Court theatre, Liverpool
Writer-actor Aron Julius captures the sparkling charm of Liverpudlian fighter John Conteh in a punch-by-punch account of his career

Don King is singing the praises of his new signing. The boxing impresario, played by Zach Levene with an extravagant bouffant, sees something special in John Conteh, the light-heavyweight champion. It is a talent that goes beyond the ring. “He walks into a room and the air changes,” he says.

Impressively, this is a quality captured by Aron Julius. Playing the Kirkby kid who became WBC light-heavyweight champion in 1974, he is muscular, light-footed and graceful. More than that, he sparkles. With a needling Liverpool wit, he is as cheeky as he is charming. Who wouldn’t want him to win?

Marylebone theatre, London
A tremendous cast lifts what might have been a formulaic drama into a compelling examination of contested memory

Arthur Miller is evidently speaking to the moment. Several revivals have surged on to London stages, almost at once, all refracting the corruptions of power, wealth and conformity in our current world. This odd, explosive drama about two estranged brothers follows the recent, stupendous West End revival of All My Sons and the mysterious, magnetic Broken Glass at the Young Vic.

The scenario is simple: Victor (Elliot Cowan), a disgruntled man approaching 50, invites furniture dealer Gregory Solomon (Henry Goodman) to buy his late father’s old yet prized possessions from a building that will soon be demolished. They spend half the play brokering the deal until Victor’s more successful – and to him disloyal – brother Walter (John Hopkins) turns up, whereupon the play reveals its true face as a fractious family face-off.

Royal Festival Hall, London
Part of the Southbank’s Multitudes festival, this pairing of silent movie and Messiaen was a feast for the eyes and ears

What happens when you pair one of the 20th century’s most hectic and emotionally overwhelming scores with a hyperactive animated movie? The result might easily have been an unholy mess, but what emerged from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s inspired collaboration with the multi-award-winning 1927 Studios was a triumph.

Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie is steeped in the legend of Tristan and Isolde, its 80 luxuriant minutes culminating in a joyous outpouring of sensual and spiritual love. The 100 or so musicians never balked at the work’s complexities as Vasily Petrenko guided them through the knottiest musical thickets in an unusually clear-eyed account of this most challenging of scores. Elastic tempi generated vast orgasmic peaks, and yet not one of the composer’s vivid colours was ever smudged. Steven Osborne, an old hand at the fiendish solo piano part, was particularly impressive in the glittering cadenzas with Cécile Lartigau’s eerie glissandos on the ondes Martenot cutting cleanly through the orchestral maelstrom.

Barbican, London
Accompanied by a virtuosic band and powered by her operatic voice, Anohni is as good as Nina Simone at interpreting songs – and her own catalogue proves equally malleable yet strong

‘I never felt a part of this world,” Anohni begins on You Are My Enemy. “I reject the way that we live.” The career-spanning songs and cover versions she has selected for this show, entitled Wilderness, reiterate themes of exile and alienation, to which the answer (as a distorted prerecorded monologue explains) is the power of creativity to remake the world and the self. In the quarter-century since she emerged from the New York art scene, blessed by William Basinski and Lou Reed, Anohni has held fast to the belief that communication through art is of existential importance, and with such unwavering intensity that she makes most singers look like they’re just having a laugh.

Wilderness is typically rigorous. Anohni and her virtuosic band – Gaël Rakotondrabe on grand piano, Chris Vatalaro on percussion, Leo Abrahams on guitar and bass – play before a film of swans gliding through the night. Sometimes they change colour, but it really is just 90 minutes of swans. Even swans don’t want to look at swans for that long. It’s much more interesting to watch Anohni herself. With her peroxide-white mane and floor-length black robe, she resembles a cleric or a sorcerer. She barely speaks and, when she sings, she stands motionless but for the hands trembling by her sides, as if making her entire body a channel for her extraordinary, operatic voice and the words it carries.

In this week’s newsletter: In an era preoccupied with overstimulation, a trio of cartoon rodents​’ slowed-down reinterpretations of pop classics offer an uncanny kind of calm

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The best album I’ve heard so far this year isn’t from this year at all. It’s from 2015 (though its recordings were made decades before that), and is a collection of sludgy, doomy covers of late-70s punk, new wave and pop perennials: My Sharona, Call Me, Walk Like an Egyptian. The guitars on this mysterious tribute album have had their pitch tuned down to a low, thick squelch, the drum beats are slow and punishingly thudding, and the vocals, while sung in a sweet tenor, have a strange, almost lobotomised quality to them. The weirdest thing of all though is who is performing: Alvin, Simon, Theodore.

OK, let’s explain. Just over 10 years ago, Canadian musician Brian Borcherdt – best known as one half of experimental noise duo Holy Fuck – bought an old 16rpm turntable, designed for playing slow-speed records such as spoken-word albums. Naturally, Borcherdt immediately started messing about with it, playing normal 45rpm records on the turntable, which slowed them to a disorienting crawl. After experimenting with slowing down a few LPs, he landed on his masterwork: the Chipmunks album Chipmunk Punk, a cynical 1980 attempt by the creators of the squeaky-voiced cartoon rodents to capitalise on the ascendant musical genre of the moment, while of course not sounding the slightest bit punk at all.

The clean geometry of the Iran Mall in Tehran, and the way light moves through it, caught the fine art photographer’s eye

The Iran Mall in Tehran is the largest shopping mall in the world. Ali Zolghadri recalls it being fairly empty the day he took this image, four months before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. “This particular spot is in the central atrium. It’s a huge, futuristic space with sweeping curved lines, layered architecture, metallic surfaces and massive skylights,” Tehran-born Zolghadri says. “The clean geometry and the way light moves through the structure really caught my eye. It’s a public space, but because of its scale, it often feels quiet and almost otherworldly.” The shot, a composite of three images, was shortlisted in the creative category of the 2026 Sony World Photography awards.

“As a fine art photographer, editing is an essential part of my process,” Zolghadri says. “Every element in the final composition was photographed by me, but some unnecessary elements were removed, and the frames were carefully blended in Photoshop. I don’t use AI in my workflow; everything is captured and edited manually by me. The post-production process is a continuation of the creative act, not a shortcut.”

The undercroft at London’s Southbank Centre has been a haven for skateboarders since the 1970s. Now a new exhibition is celebrating its contribution to culture – and community

Shane O’Brien first skated at London’s Southbank Centre in the summer of 1975, at the age of 10. But before he could call himself a “Southbanker”, a regular of the famous spot, he had to face a certain ritual. In 1983 he was launched into the Thames by senior skaters and could finally consider himself one of the crew. Now in his 60s, O’Brien calls the South Bank his second home.

The skate spot at the Southbank Centre was created by accident. When the centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall was built in the 1960s, the architects left a space, or undercroft, beneath the building open to the public. The space featured concrete ledges and ramps, features that were utilised by local skateboarders in the mid-1970s – the spot has been skated ever since. If you’re in the area on the south-east side of the Thames in central London, you may not see the skaters right away. You will, however, always hear them.

A social media clip released before the film hits cinemas, which introduces new character Jin Chao, has been greeted with furious reactions online

A minor character in fashion-magazine comedy The Devil Wears Prada 2 has sparked a major backlash online, before the film has even reached cinemas.

A 38-second clip released on social media by 20th Century Studios on 16 April was designed to showcase “the former assistant’s new assistant” Jin Chao, played by Helen J Shen; she is shown introducing herself and speaking to Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, who is newly returned to work at the fictional Runway magazine.

Soomaaliya is one of few cookbooks to examine Somali food and how conflict has reshaped it across the diaspora

On a video call from Brooklyn, between stops on her book tour, Ifrah F Ahmed is drinking ginger-root tea. The smell transports her to her childhood kitchen, where her mother often baked aromatic cardamom cake.

“That’s a core childhood memory for me,” she said.

To celebrate the release of the film Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, in which a fashion designer creates a comeback dress for a pop star, we weigh up the best performative looks

“Dressed like a fabulously turned-out carrion crow,” is how our reviewer described the gothic, avian-like get-up PJ Harvey wore to perform her journalistic and theatrical ninth album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, in Brixton, south London, in 2016. The dress was the work of Harvey’s longtime friend, the Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester, and epitomises the more dramatic stage looks – melodramatic but pared-back – that Harvey turned to for her later, darker albums. As she said of the clothes: “For me, it’s about the ability to meet the world. And it is a second skin, isn’t it? It’s protection, as well. It’s a very big part of clothing, the feeling of protection, particularly in Ann’s clothes.” Who would have thought that someone who earlier in their career took to the stage in Spice Girls co-ords and hot-pink catsuits would wind up in such serious Belgian high-fashion? Ellie Violet Bramley

Whether you’re a beginner, an ultra-runner or a speed demon, our expert clocked up more than 50km in each trainer to find the perfect shoe, no matter your goal

• The best running watches, tested

Whether you’re just starting Couch to 5k or well on the way to the 100 Marathon Club, finding running shoes that suit your pace, physique and running style is mission-critical. The right shoes can help you run better, ward off injury and, most importantly, help you to build the consistency that unlocks the biggest fitness and mental health gains.

The first step out of the door is the hardest, and uncomfortable shoes are just another barrier between you and that sweet endorphin release. Yet with dozens of brands – from Hoka, Adidas and Nike to New Balance, Saucony and On – hundreds of styles, and enough tech jargon to make Susie Dent’s head spin, finding your solemate can be a challenge in itself.

Best running shoes overall:
Saucony Endorphin Azura

Best value running shoes for speed:
Kiprun Kipride Max

Want to recreate the lustre of days spent in the sun with none of the damage? Try these expert-approved formulas

• The best IPL and laser hair removal devices tested

The wise among us would never forgo our safe-sun protocol, but there’s no denying that many of us feel happier and healthier with a tan. The irresistible lure of sunkissed skin has long been a summer staple – and from tanning waters to wipes, instant tans to gradual tanning moisturisers, there are now more ways than ever to get a faux glow.

There’s also been a growing demand for multitasking beauty products, so the newest fake tan formulas often add skincare benefits alongside the bronze. Self-tans infused with hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and vitamin C hydrate, nourish and protect much like your usual body cream or facial serum.

Best fake tan overall:
Bare by Vogue Williams clear tan water

Best budget fake tan:
Boots Glow tanning milk

Inspired by David Attenborough’s Secret Garden? Try these easy, enjoyable tips to turn your outdoor space into a sanctuary for wildlife

• Gardening pros on the tools they can’t live without

It’s happening: spring’s stretching and greenness, vibrant and achingly alive. But the last thing your garden needs is to be tidied up in a rush, for soil to be cleared of debris, for rotten, grey, dead and dying bits to be whisked away. For it’s these bits that hold all the life.

So many small things – overwinter insects, larvae, pupae and eggs – are still sleeping or waiting for just a few more warmer days. In our attempt to spruce things up, we often whisk away their homes in hollow stems and under layers of autumn leaves, and then wonder where the birds have gone.

Whether you want cordless designs or a budget buy, we’ve tested the top hair straighteners for every hair type

• The best hair dryers, tested

Straighteners are here to stay – but thankfully, heat styling has come a long way since GHD’s first ceramic straighteners ushered in an era of poker-straight hair in 2001. Today’s models feature adjustable heat settings and protective technology for hairstyling with minimal damage.

The looks you can achieve with a straightener have become more versatile as well: one twist of a modern, curved-edge straightener can create styles from ultra-smooth strands to structured ringlets and soft, beachy waves. There’s a wide range of styling possibilities with just one tool.

Best hair straighteners overall:
GHD Chronos Max

Best budget hair straighteners:
Remington Shine Therapy S8500

There is plenty of sunshine in this seductive, Sri Lankan-style potato curry that’s chock-full of evocative smells and flavours

I stitch myself up sometimes by planning on cooking something that’s native to a country – a Sri Lankan potato curry, say – then embellish it with my own desires (lemongrass, leeks, ginger) to such an extent that it can no longer really be called as such. But taste and memory work in mysterious ways. This recipe still evokes Sri Lanka for me: sunshine, spiced earth, the smell of cinnamon bundles and dense forest, and also the sound of the bread vans (playing Beethoven, curiously) and the distinctive squawk of the myna bird. I hope, if you cook it, it might evoke a little Sri Lankan sunshine for you, too.

Boozy, tomato pasta dish is enjoying a resurgence – with Gigi Hadid posting her own take on it

Despite most traditional Italians considering it sacrilegious, penne alla vodka is quickly becoming one of the most in-demand Italian dishes.

Previously popular in suburban Italo-American restaurants during the 80s, the dish is now enjoying a widespread resurgence that is being driven by several factors including nostalgia and social media.

A delicate, elegant and aromatic sour that’s a bit like a floral white lady

A delicate, elegant and aromatic sour with notes of floral jasmine tea balanced by bright citrus, making it fresh and perfect for spring. By all means make double or triple the infused gin, if you like, because it also works beautifully in an elevated jasmine gin and tonic (plenty of ice, quality tonic and a lemon twist), or stirred into a simple floral martini with a splash of dry vermouth, or lengthened into a light spring spritz topped with sparkling wine and a dash of soda.

Fredi Viaud, bar manager, Julie’s, London W11

You’re never too old for a jelly, especially if it has the rather grownup tang of grapefruit and the earthy notes of bay leaf

You’re never too old for jelly, and I think we should all be eating more of it. Unmoulding a jelly and immediately giving it a good wobble is by far the best bit, and makes me giggle every time. Infusing the mixture with fresh bay leaves brings a grownup feel and gentle, earthy notes. While jelly and ice-cream is a classic combination, I love this just with some lightly whipped, unsweetened cream.

Being on dating apps can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack – so Dr Jennie Young devised a technique to burn it down and find better matches

It was 2023, and Dr Jennie Young was sick of online dating. She was looking for a partner, and instead all she found in the apps were inappropriately sexual come-ons and conversations that went nowhere. It felt like looking for a needle in a big, rancid haystack. So one day, frustrated and totally out of ideas, she Googled “how do you actually find a needle in a haystack?”

The answer: burn it down.

You can’t infer people never liked you because they haven’t reached out, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. The question is whether you can tolerate this asymmetry

• Read more Leading questions

I’m a 43–year-old man. Well-educated, with a healthy social skill level. I’ve always been surrounded by friends. Always invited to parties and events, both happy and sad, without effort on my part. Last year I moved from the city to a country farm and I came to the realisation that I had been the one maintaining contact. I was the one initiating every time, and when I stopped, they all went away. We’re not talking just one friend either. I’m talking full-on loss of an entire social circle.

It’s been a rough year, socially and emotionally speaking. My partner has borne the brunt of it, being my only contact and social outlet. I just don’t understand it. If I had been an atrocious person then people wouldn’t have interacted with me like they did, seemingly voluntarily and happily. I was invited to every wedding, engagement, birthday, hiking trip, you name it. I was made to feel welcome and wanted. As long as, it turns out, I was the one sending the first message, making the first call.

Steven uses a mousse to prevent his hair thinning, but Mabel thinks it’s risky for their cat and dog. Whose argument contains a strand of truth?

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

The mousse he uses puts our animals at risk. I would like him to switch treatments

I’m really careful with the cream and always keep it away from our pets. Plus, it works

Experts share why you might sleep better with that special someone and how couples can find healthy sleep dynamics

• Tell us: do you use AI for fitness?

I don’t live with my partner, but when we sleep in the same bed, I doze off almost instantly. When I’m alone in my own bed, I toss and turn throughout the night.

Between talk of “sleep divorces” being key to a healthy relationship and boyfriends being embarrassing, it’s been hard to admit that I sleep much better with my partner.

Lucy O’Brien was shocked when she discovered how high interest rates were leading to ballooning debt

Like many of my drowning-in-debt “plan 2” student loan comrades, I didn’t think twice about diving straight into a master’s degree, bright-eyed and fresh out of my undergraduate course in 2021.

To say I was naive to the additional financial burden would be an understatement. Even less did I think that, four years after finishing my master’s, I’d be using the savings money I’ve built up – which I’d planned to put towards a deposit to buy my first property – to pay back my postgraduate loan in full. And yet here I am.

From a country cottage with double-height bookshelves to a new-build flat in London with ‘period’ panelling hiding tech

Some people are put off by myriad investment options. Here is a guide to the key decisions to help you choose

• ‘Savvy Squirrel’ ad campaign looks to push Britons towards investing

The UK government is keen to encourage people to invest. If you are thinking of dipping your toe into the stock market, an Isa is often the best way, as it lets you protect any gains from tax. Here’s how to get started.

Kaf Okpattah reveals the language used by scammers, from ‘squares’ to ‘clicking’ and ‘mule herder’

Kaf Okpattah can speak the language of scammers. “Squares is one word which comes up a lot. That’s bank cards,” he says. “Fullz … that’s a person’s full financial information.”

In his new book, Scam Nation, he goes through more. “Clicking”, which means using stolen details to commit online crime; “addy”, which is used for the shipping address for fraudulently bought gear; and “mule herder”, meaning someone who recruits and manages people accepting stolen funds. Many of these are words he learned at school, he says.

NHS struggling to cope with record numbers, which Cancer Research UK says puts progress on survival rates at risk

The number of people in the UK being diagnosed with cancer has reached a record high, with one person diagnosed every 80 seconds, a report reveals.

Cancer Research UK found that more than 403,000 people were being diagnosed with the disease each year. The rise is largely due to a growing and ageing population, as people are more likely to develop cancer as they get older.

Knowing the difference between hunger and appetite, and understanding the sensory cues behind them, can help us make better decisions about what we eat

Imagine you’re in a meeting room when someone brings out the biscuits – a packet of Jammie Dodgers, perhaps, or a nice little plate of custard creams. Maybe you want one and maybe you don’t, but the chances are the people around you are all responding differently: someone will grab a couple straight away, someone else will eat one without seeming to notice, another will barely be aware the biscuits exist, and someone will spend the whole meeting wanting one but not taking it. Our appetites and responses to food vary wildly – but what’s going on behind the scenes to govern them? And has modern food somehow hijacked the process? Grab a biscuit (or don’t) and settle in.

“First, it’s important to distinguish between hunger and appetite,” says Giles Yeo, a professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge and the author of Why Calories Don’t Count. “Hunger is a feeling – it’s what happens in the run-up to you deciding you need to eat something. Appetite is everything that surrounds why we eat – including hunger, fullness and reward, or how you actually feel when you eat. Those three sensations all use completely different parts of the brain, but they all work together.”

Invoking a night imp might be ludicrous, but the superstitious and the sacred are often the same thing

• Sharing the load is a column about parenting children of all ages

I held my daughter up to better see the passing parade. She was still small enough to lift high with my hands and I watched her reaction from below, her joy, growing in the morning light. The colour and noise moved past. “You’re missing it,” I heard someone say. But I had never seen something as beautiful as that; it seemed perfect, her smile looking down at me.

My daughter appeared above me again the following morning, though something had changed. Her mouth, blood-streaked, opened to reveal a gap. She had lost her first tooth. We celebrated but I felt something else as well; it all changes from here. I wondered if it was grief.

Size does matter – as does diet – but your genes are the main driver of your cholesterol levels

Cholesterol, a fatty substance mostly made by the liver and used by the body to build cells and produce hormones, has become a heart-health bogeyman. There are several types, but high levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Often labelled “bad” cholesterol, LDL builds up over time on artery walls, narrowing them and restricting blood flow.

High LDL cholesterol is not confined to people who are overweight. “Genetics are the main driver of higher LDL cholesterol levels,” says Naveed Sattar, professor of cardiometabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow. “Diets have smaller effects and it’s not necessarily the total calories that count; it’s the amount of saturated fat.” (Found in cakes, biscuits, chocolate and many ultra-processed foods, saturated fat can raise LDL levels.) All of this means someone relatively lean can still have high cholesterol, either because of their genetic profile or dietary pattern.

Film sequel reveals how luxury brands have turned the tables on once-dominant magazine editors

The National Gallery was the grand setting for the party that followed The Devil Wears Prada 2’s London premiere this week. Donatella Versace held court in a roped-off area beneath Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey.

Meryl Streep, reprising her role as Miranda Priestly – Anna Wintour’s fictional alter ego – wore a red satin Prada coat as a nod to the film’s title and black sunglasses as a wink to Wintour. Glossy magazine editors from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, flown in for the night, nibbled on fried chicken served with caviar and dishes of mac and cheese presented theatrically under silver cloches.

Wiltshire town councillor Andrew Edwards, who has large collection of neckwear, is a regular at committee hearings

It was blockbuster viewing for politicos across the country: the livestreamed grilling of Olly Robbins. While the sacked Foreign Office civil servant was billed as the star of the show, for many he was upstaged by a well-dressed man wearing a cravat.

“I’ve got a big collection,” said Andrew Edwards, the scene stealer in question.

The sun is out, and the sensible ones among us are already wearing hats and SPF. Not a hat person? Try a slogan cap. They work with almost anything

The 1980s band are being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year – but why does singer Sade Adu’s pared-back look still resonate in 2026?

Earlier this month it was announced that Sade, the British group fronted by Sade Adu that found fame in the 80s and 90s, would be inducted into the 2026 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And although the music is indisputably worthy of such a distinction, if there were a similar accolade for style, Adu would have been inducted a long time ago.

With her scraped-back hair, red lipstick, hoop earrings and penchant for simple black dresses or denim and polo necks, she has become the last word in understated – but somehow unattainable – style.

Clear waterfalls, mountain meadows and high-altitude refuges are just some of the highlights of this less-visited part of the stunning range

The “forgotten” Dolomites lie to the east, far from the crowds of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and Val Gardena. Belluno is the main gateway, two hours north of Venice by train or a drive up the A27. From here, the upper Piave valley leads into the quieter Friulian mountains. The land rises gently, opening into pasture, then stone lifting into spires above the meadows.

Traditional local councils, the Regole di Comunità, still manage the land and forests collectively here, sustaining artisans and alpine farmers in scattered hamlets shaped by shared work and resilience. Pastìn (a minced, seasoned blend of pork and beef), malga cheeses and polenta, once staples for long days in the mountains, are still shared over grappa at the end of the day. Beyond the hamlets, paths lead towards Monte Pelmo or drift into the beech woods of Cansiglio, where deer call at dusk. It’s a fine place to experience mountain culture, and these are some of my favourite places.

From cycling in the Cinque Terre to sipping espresso at a secret spot overlooking the Colosseum, here are some of your Italian highlights

• Tell us about great beach bars and restaurants in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

When we visited Venice, we stayed in Padua. It’s half an hour to Venezia Mestre (Venice’s mainland suburb), trains are frequent and cheap, as long as you avoid expresses, and easy to book if you have the Trenitalia app. You’ll find accommodation and restaurants significantly cheaper if you are based in Padua and day trip into Venice, and Padua is worth exploring in its own right. There are also trains to Vicenza, Verona, Bologna and Bassano del Grappa – we found it the perfect base for a public transport trip in north-east Italy.
Fergal O’Shea

In the 1980s ‘the Antwerp Six’ put Flanders on the fashion map. Now a major new exhibition celebrates the designers’ legacy and provides the perfect excuse to visit Belgium’s vibrant second city

You know you’re in a city that takes its fashion seriously when even the Virgin Mary is dressed head to toe in couture. A short walk from Antwerp’s old town, with its ornate medieval guild houses and cobblestone streets, is the baroque church of St Andrews. Like many of the city’s Catholic churches, it has beautiful stained glass windows, an exuberantly carved wooden pulpit and more artworks by Flemish masters than you can shake an incense stick at. But we’re here to pay homage to an art form of a different kind.

In a quiet chapel, an elegant 16th-century wooden statue of the Madonna is clothed not in her usual blue cloak, but a dress of pale gauzy fabric, trimmed with a collar of white pigeon feathers, custom made by renowned Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester. It’s a bold statement but one that’s entirely in-keeping with a city where a love of fashion seems woven into the fabric of everyday life.

To mark the anniversary there are dozens of events planned around Ashdown Forest (aka the Hundred Acre Wood) – and, of course, playing Pooh Sticks is always a good idea

Deep in a medieval hunting forest, amid 6,500 acres of heathland, a wooden bridge spans a tributary of the River Medway. Every single day, no matter the weather, people flock to stand on its slats and cheer on sticks as they float downstream.

I know this because on a frosty but sunny morning, (“a very long time ago now, about last Friday”, as children’s author AA Milne might have said), I stood with two such adults jumping up and down with delight as my little piece of oak stormed ahead and won the race.

The piccolo tune could only have been written to intentionally drive people completely crazy

I’m sitting in the kitchen with my phone on speaker, listening to an instrumental work featuring a repeated piccolo melody, as I have been for the last half hour. At first it seemed to be a composition without end, cagily constructed to fold back on itself, but after giving it close attention for some minutes I realise it’s just a short section of a larger piece – comprising the four bars before the drums kick in, and the four bars after – that lasts exactly 30 seconds. At the end of the loop it briefly cuts out before starting over again, leaving a silent gap that makes you think a customer service representative is about to speak. But that never happens.

Around the 45 minute mark I make a quick calculation – twice per bar, 8 bars per 30-second cycle – that suggests I have now listened to the repeated piccolo melody more than 1,400 times. It’s hard to imagine this work being devised with any intention beyond driving people – perhaps prisoners – insane.

Gloucestershire: I have loved watching the busy nest near our house, now the chicks have fledged and keep coming in the house

Spring is a relief after four months of darkness in my valley. We live on the north side, so the sun doesn’t rise above the tree line for the whole winter. A sign of spring returning is the birdsong, as they call the sun back to our valley. One of my favourites is the robin, which sings all through the year, but I have really noticed them this spring. They are bold and like to sneak into our kitchen for crumbs.

Recently, a pair of our red-breasted friends built a nest in the eaves near our courtyard. Apparently, it was quite early in the year for them to nest. We watched them flying in and out, carrying small bits of twigs and moss in their beaks. Soon the busy birds stopped being so busy and I knew there must be eggs there. After a couple of weeks, we heard a high-pitched buzz coming from the nest – the birds had hatched and were crying for food. The chicks got bigger, their cries got louder and the parents worked harder.

Dartmoor: We went for a family walk on the moor, and I ended up seeing something really rare and special

It was a bright spring morning, and I had gone up to Dartmoor with my mum, my brother and my grandma for a walk in the fresh sunshine. My mum suggested that we go off the path to look at some bluebells and everyone agreed. It was beautiful. I could hear the birds singing and see the granite rocks sparkling.

My grandma and my brother walked away from us, and I went in the opposite direction towards some brambles by a slab of concrete that was catching the sun. And then I saw it – a large, black snake rearing up at me. We looked at each other for a second – it had black scales and faint zigzag patterns on its body.

From a saint and a lion to ‘the original nepo baby’, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which US state was once an independent monarchy?
2 What cold spell lasted from circa 1300 to 1850?
3 Which bestselling book series is abbreviated as Acotar?
4 What word meaning haughty comes from the Latin for eyebrow?
5 Which pop compilation series was launched in November 1983?
6 What is the most visited museum in the UK?
7 Who described herself in a 2026 memoir as “the original nepo baby”?
8 Which saint is often depicted writing, with a lion at his feet?
What links:
9 Scotland (7, 10, 12, 14); Rwanda (15); England (the rest)?
10 Checkmate; Job; The Haunted Ballroom; The Rake’s Progress?
11 Mariner 10; Messenger; BepiColombo?
12 Evie and Ossie; Gladstone; Larry; Palmerston?
13 Phil Chisnall; Paul Ince; Thomas McNulty; Michael Owen?
14 Death From Above 1979; Royal Blood; the Black Keys; the Kills; the White Stripes?
15 Inertia (1); acceleration/force (2); action and reaction (3)?

Saturday marks one year since Virginia Giuffre’s death – and other survivors are making a public reckoning possible

Saturday will mark one year since the death of Virginia Giuffre, one of the first women to surrender her anonymity, detail her experiences and publicly call for criminal charges against convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. For other Epstein survivors such as Liz Stein and Jess Michaels, Giuffre’s public reckoning made it possible to finally name what had happened to them.

“I saw myself in Virginia, in [Epstein survivor] Maria Farmer, in all of them,” said Danielle Bensky, who was pulled into Epstein’s orbit when she was 17. “And I thought: if they can be victimized, anyone can be. I was not alone. I finally understood that we were not going to be silent any more.

Being hairless on top has never been in style, but r/bald members encourage one another in the face of insecurity

I was sitting in a cafe a few weeks ago when I overheard a rare bit of sunny talk about advances in medicine and technology when a woman said: “Nobody will be bald in the future.” The way she said it made me think of people in the 1950s imagining the 21st century as a world with flying cars, sassy robot maids and no wars; a world where everybody has hair on their heads is possible.

Bald has never exactly been in style, but these days, it feels like going bald is tougher than ever. It can feel lonely watching all those clumps fall out when you’re in the shower. Yes, there have been plenty of advances in hair restoration, and treatments have been proven to help some people avoid getting to the point where they need a doctor to surgically redistribute the follicles from the back to the front of their heads. But it won’t work for everybody, and people will still lose their hair as long as genetics and hormones have a say.

World’s worst nuclear disaster leaves mixed legacy of nature’s resilience amid serious contamination, as wars increase lobbying for energy supply

Forty years on from the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Chornobyl is still contaminated with almost half the caesium-137 that exploded from the Unit 4 reactor in 1986, as well other hazards such as plutonium, tritium and americium. But according to some experts, the long-term effects on nature may be less than if the area had been left to humans, resulting in unexpected consequences in an environment left to its own devices.

The reminder of the protracted fallout from Chornobyl was made ahead of Sunday’s anniversary, which coincides with renewed lobbying for nuclear power and a rise in fears about atomic brinkmanship due to the oil crisis and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

We want to hear from you about the rise of child skincare trends

Children as young as two are appearing in TikTok videos demonstrating their skincare routines, a Guardian investigation has found, raising concerns about the beauty industry’s reach. Dermatologists say children do not need multi-step skincare and warn the trend may be fuelling anxiety about appearance from an early age.

We want to hear from parents of children of primary school children or younger. Have your children asked for skincare products or felt pressure to follow routines they’ve seen online or heard about from friends? Have you noticed changes in how they think about their appearance? Do you have concerns?

We would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI

Companies are increasingly using AI in their hiring processes – including conducting job interviews themselves. With this in mind, we would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

If you’ve changed your holiday plans, we’d like to hear from you

Rising fuel prices, aviation fuel prices, and changes to travel rules such as the new EU border system, EES, are causing some holidaymakers to reconsider their travel plans. Holiday companies have predicted an increase in bookings for UK summer breaks after a jump in interest from Britons fearful of flight cancellations linked to the Iran war.

Have you changed your summer holiday plans in light of recent world events? We’d like to hear from you.

We’d like to hear from people who are in a throuple or who used to be in one, and what their relationship was like

The Guardian’s Saturday magazine is looking for throuples to talk honestly about the experience of love and commitment.

We’re particularly interested in talking to throuples living together under one roof, as well as throuples who are raising children as a unit of three parents. Is it easier to manage the chore rota and childcare when there are more adults in the room? Or more difficult?

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Crisis in the Middle East, Russian strikes in Dnipro, blackouts in Karachi and Manchester City’s Erling Haaland – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists