Monday’s ‘make or break’ speech was one of the PM’s best but the signs are that most Labour MPs have already seen enough

• What did Keir Starmer say in ‘last chance’ speech to save his premiership?

• UK politics live – latest updates

Was that it? Reset number … I forget where we’re up to now. Much the same as the last reset. And probably much the same as the next reset. That’s if there is one. The signs are that most Labour MPs think they’ve seen enough. That Keir Starmer has run out of road. He certainly seems to be running out of friends. Down to a few ultra-loyalists. And he can’t even trust those who want him to stay, as they are probably only biding their time until Andy Burnham is in Westminster and can launch a leadership challenge.

There’s a sadness here. Because Monday’s “make or break” speech was one of Starmer’s best. But it was always going to end in heartbreak, because Starmer can’t roll back the last two years. He can’t stop a leadership race that has in effect already started.

After years of upheaval, English National Opera is staging its first new opera in its northern base: the Pulitzer-winning Angel’s Bone, about two angels brutally exploited by human traffickers. We talk to its creators

I’m peering into a vast hangar teeming with tech crew wearing hi-vis and hard hats. Enormous lighting rigs hang low to the ground. Somewhere out of sight is the biggest lift in Europe, allowing articulated lorries to drive straight in. This is the Warehouse in Manchester’s Aviva Studios. Since opening in 2023, this arts venue run by Factory International has presented gigs by major pop acts, the largest ever show by cult Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and a “sprawling four-hour odyssey through often naked rituals” by performance artist Marina Abramović. Now, for the first time, it’s hosting opera.

More precisely, it’s about to host English National Opera’s first production created in and for Manchester: the UK premiere of Angel’s Bone by Chinese-American composer Du Yun and Canadian librettist Royce Vavrek, staged by acclaimed Australian director Kip Williams. The opera won the 2017 Pulitzer prize, commended as a “harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world” following its 2016 world premiere in the US.

Over his kaleidoscopic career, the great Shakespearean was a stalwart of the RSC, co-founded a ‘rock’n’roll’ theatre company and excelled at Chekhov and Pinter

Michael Pennington was what Richard II – a part he played with great distinction – called a “well-graced actor”. He had a resonant voice, a handsome countenance, a security and ease on stage. But looking back over his career, on his death at the age of 82, I am struck by its astonishing variety.

He co-founded, with Michael Bogdanov, the English Shakespeare Company. He toured the world with one-man shows on Shakespeare and Chekhov. He directed here and abroad and wrote 10 books full of practical wisdom. On top of all that, he was witty and delightful company.

The GB News commentator Sophie Corcoran’s case against 10,000 Interns is part of a broader strategy of anti-DEI lawfare imported from Trump’s US

If our culture wars are to reach a nadir, it may be this single, absurd moment: a white female influencer is moving to sue a positive action charity over anti-white discrimination.

This is the basis on which the GB News commentator Sophie Corcoran is bringing a legal case against the 10,000 Interns Foundation, which helps to organise internship opportunities for young black people and other ethnic minorities. Corcoran says that she applied for a programme run by the foundation and the Bar Council, as she had been “exploring a legal career”, only to be rejected. The legal action claims that Corcoran faced a loss of employment opportunity, as well as discrimination in violation of the Equality Act.

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

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The game already feels like a relic – so I suspect the TV gameshow will be very annoying indeed. But perhaps this is what newspapers need to stay afloat

Anyone who has watched television knows that late-night talkshow hosts have a habit of pulling entertainment formats from the barest of inspirations. James Corden got Carpool Karaoke from the act of singing songs in the car. Jimmy Fallon got Lip Sync Battle from the act of mouthing along to songs in the mirror. And now Fallon has struck again. He’s making a Wordle gameshow. It’s based on Wordle, that puzzle you used to do while sitting on the toilet.

Fallon’s production company, Electric Hot Dog, has acquired the rights to Wordle and will turn it into a show where teams compete to solve puzzles for cash. The show will film in Manchester, England, this summer and debut on NBC next year.

A new divide is emerging: between workers who use AI at work and those who are managed by it

The real danger that artificial intelligence poses to work is not just job loss – it is the growing divide between people who use AI to extend their skills and those whose working lives are increasingly shaped by opaque, AI-powered systems of surveillance and control.

The debate about artificial intelligence and how it will affect workers is stuck in the wrong place. On one side are warnings that machines are coming for millions of jobs. On the other are claims that AI will turbocharge productivity. Both stories miss what is already happening in workplaces across the world, from Britain to Kenya to the United States.

Labour MPs have called for prime minister to set a timetable for his resignation

Botterill says voters she spoke to during the campaign felt the country does not work for them. She is a working-class Yorkshire woman, she says. She knows that the opportunities she has enjoyed would not be there if if had not been for the achievements of Labour government.

She says Labour is one of the best vehicles for changing the lives of working people that this county has ever known.

US president said Iran’s response to the US peace proposal was ‘stupid’ and that the ceasefire is ‘unbelievable weak’

• Trump calls Iran’s response to peace plan ‘totally unacceptable’ as ceasefire frays

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, will visit Qatar later today for talks on the war, its impact on the region and efforts to ensure navigational safety in the strait of Hormuz is resumed, a Turkish diplomatic source told the Reuters news agency.

Turkey, which neighbours Iran, has been in close contact with the US, Iran and mediator Pakistan since the start of the conflict. It condemnded the US and Israel for launching the war, widely seen to have been done illegally, but also criticised Iran’s counter strikes on Gulf states.

Stuart Prior, who was elected in Essex last week, allegedly celebrated the rape of Sikh woman and called Muslim people ‘rats’

A Reform UK councillor has resigned days after being elected, after he allegedly celebrated on social media the rape of a Sikh woman in the Midlands, declared white people the “master race” and called Muslim people “rats”.

Stuart Prior was elected as a councillor for Essex county council last Thursday, winning 2,404 votes, the highest total of any candidate in the ward.

Exclusive: Britain expected to be allowed to keep ban on live animal exports, sources say, in fillip for Keir Starmer

• UK politics live – latest updates

Brussels is preparing to offer Keir Starmer a key concession in talks over an agricultural deal, giving the beleaguered prime minister an important victory in his efforts to move closer to the EU.

European officials have conceded that the UK can keep its ban on live animal exports as part of any joint deal on food and agricultural products, according to sources on both sides of the talks, even though the EU has not imposed such a ban.

Twenty-two people from MV Hondius cruise spend first day isolating in self-contained flats in Merseyside

• What is hantavirus?

Passengers evacuated to the UK from a cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak are spending their first day at an isolation facility after being repatriated from Tenerife.

A chartered Titan Airways flight transported the MV Hondius passengers from the Canary Islands to Manchester airport on Sunday evening. The evacuation of passengers of all nationalities will be completed on Monday, with flights arriving from Australia and the Netherlands, Spain’s health minister has said.

Month was one of driest Aprils on record with rainfall 23% less than average, according to Met Office figures

One of the driest Aprils on record for central and southern England has left river levels below normal, raising fears of drought in some areas over the summer.

The latest UK hydrological survey – which tracks river and groundwater levels – suggests central and southern England and eastern Scotland will experience notably low river flows over the next three months, raising concerns about water shortages if dry weather persists.

Violence in Guerrero state has driven as many as 1,000 households from their homes, rights group says

Hundreds of Indigenous families have been forced to flee their homes in the mountains of central Mexico by intense attacks from a local criminal group, including drone bombings, an Indigenous rights organisation said on Monday.

A gang known as Los Ardillos has been carrying out attacks in Guerrero state for years, but they started to intensify last week. Villages were subjected to eight hours of bombings on Saturday, the National Indigenous Congress said, forcing between 800 to 1,000 families to flee to other towns.

‘Brilliant, wise’ co-founder of English Shakespeare Company celebrated for roles including Macbeth and Mercutio

The actor Michael Pennington, known for his Shakespearean work and his role in the original Star Wars trilogy, has died aged 82, his agent has said.

Pennington, who is listed as an honorary associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, also founded and ran the English Shakespeare Company alongside the theatre director Michael Bogdanov.

⚽️ Premier League updates from 8pm BST
⚽️ Kinsky exorcises demons after Atlético debacle | Mail Simon

Daniel Farke now gets a grilling:

Of course I’m proud [that Leeds have stayed up]. Fantastic achievement for us. I enjoyed a little bit the feeling yesterday evening when it was confirmed, but there’s an important game for us tonight and for that I am concentrated. I can’t waste 1% of energy to be over-emotional or to be in a good mood, we need to be fully focused tonight.

We have important players missing out today but it’s a chance for some others to shine and hopefully they can grab the opportunity today. They have my faith and I’m sure we can be competitive tonight.

To win always does the team good. We need the same today as we’ve shown the past two games and if we continue to do so we can get the three points today.

Tweaks in everything. The mentality, buildup, the way we defend. He’s a fantastic manager, he’s proven it at many clubs, it’s just down to us to do what he asks on the pitch.

Keir Starmer appears to have staved off an immediate leadership challenge but MPs are still calling for him to set out a timetable for his resignation. So can he survive or has he run out of road? Lucy Hough speaks to senior political correspondent Peter Walker

Drone strikes, mounting casualties and a distracted US president means a slow-motion victory is in doubt

Vladimir Putin suggested that the war in Ukraine may be “coming to an end” on Saturday – comments that raise the question of why the Russian president might want a possible end to the war now, given how the fighting is evolving.

More than 1.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes amid bombings, evacuation orders and demolitions

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel’s destruction in southern Lebanon happened in phases. Hours after Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel on 2 March, the Israeli military issued forced evacuation orders for more than 100 villages close to the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Bombing quickly followed. Tens of thousands of residents of south Lebanon began heading north, taking shelter in cities such as Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. Many people outside the formal evacuation zones also fled their homes, recalling the autumn 2024 war in which Israel bombed wide swathes of south Lebanon without warning.

Long considered an important milestone in one’s fitness journey, pull-ups build upper body strength and look impressive in the gym

The pull-up has long been seen as an important fitness metric. From 1966 to 2013, public middle and high school students in the US were required to do pull-ups as part of the presidential fitness test (an evaluation Donald Trump has considered reinstating). US Marine Corps members were long required to perform pull-ups as part of their regular physical fitness test, and prospective UK Royal Marines must complete a minimum of three to four pull-ups before they are eligible to join.

There is no definitive data on how many adults can perform a proper pull-up, but two things are clear: they are very difficult and look extremely cool.

Lat pulldowns.

Bent-over dumbbell rows.

Single-arm dumbbell rows.

Wide upright rows.

Shoulder shrugs.

Scientists are discovering more and more associations between poor oral health and everything from heart disease to dementia. But can flossing and brushing properly guarantee a longer life?

Isn’t it weird that dentistry and medicine have been kept largely separate? Why should our mouths be treated differently from the rest of our bodies? Going to the dentist often feels like more of a lifestyle and cosmetic add-on, especially for adults in the UK. And, even if you can find an NHS dentist, the service is not free at the point of use like medical doctors are.

The origin story for this rift is that dentistry began, in the middle ages, as a trade – with tooth extractions handled by “barber surgeons” and dentures crafted by jewellers and blacksmiths. Today, dentistry and medicine still have their own separate training routes, professional bodies and NHS setup. Generally speaking, medical doctors can’t act as dentists, and dentists aren’t medical doctors. But the tide is turning on this conceptual separation, because the links between oral health and systemic healthcare are becoming ever more apparent.

The days of helicopter parenting, where raising a child was seen as a competitive sport, may now be over thanks to the looming threat of AI. It could be good news for everyone involved

Name: Beta Mum.

Age: 25-45.

Carly Schwartz wanted a solution for her mental health struggles. She found one, but not where she expected

On a threadbare carpet in the living room of a Bernal Heights bungalow, I lay blindfolded on my back. Two middle-aged rescue terriers, one missing an eye, sniffed my feet and climbed up and down my legs. F**kin’ Perfect by Pink blared in the background, but the music sounded muffled and distant, like I was listening from underwater.

It was 1pm on a Thursday. Instead of going to the office, I’d allowed a shaman named Jonathan to inject my thigh muscle with a large dose of liquid ketamine. Even in my compromised state, high and spread out like a corpse on a stranger’s rug, I knew I’d reached peak absurdity. I also knew I wouldn’t emerge from this activity with even a slight improvement to my mental health.

Carly Schwartz is the author of the new memoir I’ll Try Anything Twice: Misadventures of a Self-Medicated Life and the former editor in chief of the San Francisco Examiner

In the US, 60% of young men are single and sex is at a record low. Despite endless opportunities to meet the right person, it feels like dating in the US has become more fraught than ever. As political divides deepen and the #MeToo backlash grows, we meet the people navigating ‘heterofatalism’ and those ditching modern dating for 1950s values. From the unlimited choice of NYC dating apps to a Christian retreat in the south, reporter Carter Sherman explores a nation struggling to connect.

His speech today was OK, but nowhere near enough. Now the risk is that the longer he stays in No 10, the harder it will be to stop Britain’s Trump

Calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe: the lexicon ran out of words for Labour’s plight. Keir Starmer’s career-saving “reset” needed to be monumental. It was … OK-ish. But it didn’t dispel the sense of a country with no overall control. As ever, his tacking neither right or left, as he wrote in the Guardian, sends many Labour people into paroxysms of despair, when last week it lost most votes leftwards.

Britain at the heart of Europe was absolutely the right message, “shoulder to shoulder with the countries that share our interests, our values and our enemies” on growth, defence and energy. But as Starmer said himself, “incremental change won’t cut it”. His message lacked the ear-splitting sounds of red lines snapping and a manifesto straitjacket bursting open. Tiptoeing towards the single market and customs unions for a manifesto three years away doesn’t cut the mustard. What voters sniff, remainers and leavers alike, is the odour of cowardice, an unwillingness to say what he and Labour undoubtedly feel about Europe – rejoin ASAP.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Are you a fresh face without too much baggage? Then a new home awaits you in No 10

In the late 1800s, the boxing and wrestling scene of east and south-east London was going through a transformation, and if you are genuinely interested in that, I cannot recommend enough the work of the historian Sarah Elizabeth Cox. If, on the other hand, you are more interested in the fashioning of political analogy, it is this: boxing starts out a legit contest between boys and men trying to render one another unconscious; then it morphs into strongman pantomiming, with one amazing boxer in the ring and have-a-go heroes trying their luck; then it starts to lean in to its showbiz elements; and after that it’s chaos. The strongman is suddenly wrestling a donkey called Steve (this really happened). People are slicing lemons with swords in the interval. It’s all a terrible stain on the noble sport, and yet it looks revivified, because suddenly every idiot in town thinks he can have a go.

Which is more or less what’s happened to the office of prime minister, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this, unlike everything else to befall this stricken nation, is not Keir Starmer’s fault. Amazed as I am to even type this, it’s not Boris Johnson’s fault. It started with David Cameron.

While women continue to toil with the coil, fewer men are prepared to get snipped. The answer why may lie in the rumours and fear that spread online

There I was, lying on the operating table in just my socks and a Steely Dan T-shirt. I had taken the train back to my seaside home town in Essex to have a vasectomy after being on the NHS waiting list for almost two years, since our third child, Sylvia, was born. Three was our magic number. Any more and the car would become a wagon and dinner would turn into feeding time. And now, finally, the contraceptive burden would fall on me. After Hayley’s years of toil with a coil, and the pain of childbirth, I was due a little discomfort.

A vasectomy, as the pre-op letter explained, “is designed to make you sterile”. (You’d hope so.) It would involve “removing a segment of a tube called the vas deferens from each side so that sperm cannot pass through”. There would be an “injection of local anaesthetic to the skin of the scrotum” before “a tiny incision through the painless area of the scrotum, first on one side and then the other”.

Tim Burrows is an author and journalist

Hard decisions over a possible sale and future subsidies loom now full nationalisation is on the cards

• Full nationalisation of British Steel expected in king’s speech

“One of the proudest things we have done in government,” said Keir Starmer in Monday’s big speech about the decision a year ago to recall parliament in order to take control of British Steel at Scunthorpe.

It was an odd boast because last year’s action was merely an emergency exercise in saving the patient, as opposed to getting British Steel on its feet and out of the hospital. Taking control meant the Chinese owner, Jingye, could not turn off the two blast furnaces but meant the government was on the hook for operational losses, which will be £615m and counting by next month according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

I’ve had it up to here with Danny Dyer’s commercials for Paddy Power. The UK needs to take a tip from Amsterdam and rein in its advertisers

Amsterdam’s new ban on public advertisements for meat and fossil fuel products makes me wonder whether we should be more ban-happy with ads in the UK. There are plenty I want rid of: “See it, say it, sorted”, obviously, which refuses to die, and those LNER ads featuring a hideously perky puppet treating train travel like an excuse for a party (pipe down, Eleanor). Also up against the wall when I’m in charge: overly matey ads for banks (don’t you dare call me “bestie” when you’re selling me an Isa); any catchy jingle that displaces the scraps of useful information still clinging on in my brain; and the whole wellness grift of snake oil powders and goo.

But if I could ban only one type of advertising, I’d go after gambling. It’s hard not to sound like a Victorian tub-thumping religious zealot when you rant about gambling ads, but my God, they’re grotesquely disingenuous and cynical, making out that high street slot shops and online gaming sites are all razzle-dazzle and sparkle; that it’s a bit of fun for cheeky chappies and gorgeous gals.

As the president’s popularity withers, the party has no will to stage an intervention against him

Donald Trump wins, Republicans lose. The Indiana primaries on 5 May, in which five of seven Trump-backed candidates ousted stalwart conservative Republican state legislators who had refused his command to redraw congressional districts, has been the only victory Trump can claim recently. Indiana, happily for him, is not Iran. His appeal still prevails at least over the increasingly narrow band of Maga voters. But the persistence of Trump’s domination is a sign of mounting haplessness. His victory is an augury of repudiation. Maga devotion is hardening in response to his dwindling popularity, a telltale reaction of true believers to a failed prophesy. The cult survives, the party withers.

On the same day the Indiana Republicans went down to defeat to sate Trump’s vengefulness, a Democrat won a bellwether Michigan state senate seat by 20 points in a district that Kamala Harris carried by less than a point. The bell tolls for thee.

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton as well as Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist

After disastrous elections, Labour MPs voice public doubts over whether the prime minister can politically survive at all

The clock is ticking on Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party. He had begun Monday morning with a speech designed to save his premiership after it was routed in local and devolved elections last week. In it he attempted a political synthesis by occupying Reform’s terrain of national pride without the xenophobia, adopting the left’s language of industrial revival without class antagonism and repositioning Labour as culturally pro-European without reopening the Brexit settlement. It did not succeed. By the afternoon, scores of MPs from across the party had publicly demanded that the prime minister leave office in an “orderly transition”. As the hours passed, the rhetoric crossed an important threshold: from criticism of strategy to questioning Sir Keir’s legitimacy as leader.

Labour MPs increasingly say that voters do not trust, or believe, Sir Keir. Nor do they see the change the Labour government promised to deliver. Backbenchers are clearly saying the prime minister’s leadership is the issue. The instinctively loyal MP Catherine McKinnell put it in stark terms. The message from voters, she said, was clear: “The Labour government has to change, or we will change the Labour government.”

Fifa’s embrace of dynamic pricing and resale markets has led to sky-high costs and a speculative free-for-all, betraying the spirit of the beautiful game

In What Money Can’t Buy, his 2012 critique of a world where everything is for sale, Michael Sandel laments what he calls “the skyboxification of American life”. Price gouging and profiteering, Mr Sandel notes, can exclude millions from communal experiences that should unite people, rather than divide them according to the size of their wallets. That is “not good for democracy, nor is it a satisfying way to live”.

Ahead of the men’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico next month, millions of football fans would readily agree with the Harvard philosopher. Gianni Infantino, the president of the sport’s global governing body, Fifa, has predicted that this summer’s tournament will be the “greatest and most inclusive … ever”. But the lead-up has been overshadowed by a ticketing strategy that is almost surreally indifferent to the battered traditions of “the people’s game”.

Michael Bursill highlights the work of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections in response to an editorial on multiparty politics

Your editorial (The Guardian view on Britain’s multiparty politics: the Westminster voting system needs to catch up, 6 May) summarises the position perfectly. But what about a solution?

Fortunately, this has been thought of by the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections. This has been Westminster’s largest APPG since its formation a few months after the 2024 general election. More than half of its 159 members are Labour MPs, but it also includes Liberal Democrats, Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, an independent and a Conservative vice-chair.

Andrew Wallis on the political will and investment needed to tackle record levels of exploitation

Your article (Modern slavery at record levels in UK and expected to worsen, report warns, 5 May)( reflects a deeply troubling reality also seen by the UK’s modern slavery helpline. Cases of exploitation climbed to their highest level on record with a 41% increase in 2025, according to a recent helpline report. As a consortium of leading anti-slavery organisations has warned, the UK is failing to keep pace with the scale of exploitation, leaving too many victims without protection and too many perpetrators beyond reach. The UK is increasingly becoming a low‑risk, high-reward environment for traffickers and exploiters.

A shared vision for the next decade sets out practical steps: stronger corporate accountability, a more effective criminal justice response, a survivor‑centred system and a coordinated national strategy to tackle child exploitation.

Under private or public ownership models, what really matters is the level of investment in a service, says Andrew Snelson

If Julian Coman is old enough to remember the privatisation of British Gas (Reversing Thatcher’s failed legacy of privatisation can be a Labour vote-winner. If you see Keir, tell him, 5 May), he’ll surely also remember the running national joke that was British Rail, or the six-month wait to have a landline installed by the publicly owned British Telecom.

His “private ownership bad, public ownership good” analysis overlooks the key point that, under either ownership model, what matters is the level of investment in the service.

Power of the mind | Scattering ashes | Bus travel | Refusing to age | A better Saturday with the long read

Nocebo awareness is nothing new (I made my husband ill with a few words – nobody is immune to the power of the nocebo effect, 8 May). Shakespeare knew of the syndrome more than 400 years ago. “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” – Hamlet, act two, scene two.
Terence Adams
Birmingham

• Scattering my dad’s ashes in a river in Bannau Brycheiniog back in 2005 (Letters, 8 May), we had thought they would float gently away on the current. Instead, they sank straight to the bottom. My brother, in his surprise, lost his footing, fell in and emerged covered in the remains of the most wonderful father, who never did learn to swim.
Helen Ryan
Blandford Forum, Dorset

⚽️ Championship playoff updates from 8pm BST
⚽️ First leg match report | Mail Daniel

The first leg saw some classic Grown Men action:

And for balance, here’s some classic Hull.

• VAR will rule on corners and second yellows at World Cup

• PGMO fears change will put more pressure on officials

The Premier League is to reject widening the scope of VAR next season after talks with the refereeing body Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO). Under a regulation change approved by the International Football Association Board (Ifab) in February, the video assistant referee will be permitted to rule on the award of corners and second yellow cards from next month, with referees to use the powers at the World Cup after a request from Fifa.

Ifab has made the new law discretionary, however, allowing leagues and competitions to decide whether to adopt it. The Premier League’s final decision will be made by the clubs at their annual general meeting next month, but PGMO has advised against extending the use of VAR.

After learning of his father’s death on the morning of the clásico, the manager watched his players respond with devotion that underlined the culture he has built

Early on Sunday morning Hansi Flick got a call from his mum telling him that his father had died overnight. Hansi Sr was 82 and he had been ill for some time. The day that Barcelona were going to win the league again, the first clásico back at Camp Nou, had just begun and their coach was not sure what to do, yet he also knew. “I [thought]: ‘should I hide it or should I speak with my team, because for me it is like a family?’,” he said. “I said ‘OK, I want to get the information to my players, and what they did is unbelievable. I will never forget this moment.”

None of them would. Barcelona’s players had arrived at the Torre Melina hotel on the Diagonal at midday, where the man many of them consider a father told them about his. Now it was close to midnight and together they celebrated a title that was his too. For the first time in 94 years, the clásico had decided La Liga, if decided is really the word when it was done a while ago. Barcelona’s superiority in the 2-0 victory that finally ended it was incontestable as it had been virtually all season, Real Madrid’s players withdrawing swiftly, relieved that at least it was over now and leaving the stadium to them, the first round of fireworks exploding into the sky and a sardana forming in the centre circle.

• Proposed rules similar to those used by Premier League

• ECB responding after Sussex’s operating loss of £1.33m

Cricket counties will face automatic points deductions for making repeated losses under strict new financial rules that will be introduced next season.

The Guardian has learned that the England and Wales Cricket Board is planning to bring in its own version of football’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) underpinned by points deductions in a shadow form next year to give counties time to adjust, before fixed punishments for clubs that fail to break even are introduced in 2028.

The former England keeper has the chance to represent his country once again after flourishing as a senior cricketer

‘I once hit a six in very murky conditions to win a game which got us promoted.” Nigel Martyn is lost in a reverie. The former England, Leeds, Everton and Crystal Palace player was English football’s first £1m goalkeeper, chalked up 846 club appearances in a career that spanned three decades, went to two World Cups and played in an FA Cup final. But it is a smear over long-on in the Yorkshire gloaming that has him misty-eyed.

“Wow. I remember that feeling was … yeah. That was as good as any feeling that I had on a football field.”

• England forward has played key role in several title wins

• ‘Beth is such a special person and will always be welcome’

Beth Mead is close to agreeing a move to Manchester City, the Guardian understands, after it was confirmed she will leave Arsenal this summer when her contract expires after nine years at the club.

The England forward has made 265 appearances and scored 86 goals for Arsenal since joining from Sunderland, winning one WSL title, three League Cups, the Champions League and the Champions Cup to become a key name in the club’s modern history.

• Mourinho expected to return to Bernabéu

• Chelsea also keen on Silva, but Alonso is their first choice

Benfica will target Fulham’s Marco Silva as their manager if they lose José Mourinho to Real Madrid. Mourinho is Madrid’s preferred choice and talks have taken place over the former Chelsea and Manchester United manager returning to the Bernabéu.

Benfica do not want to lose the 63-year-old, who was hired last September, but need a contingency plan. They are looking at Silva as a potential replacement for Mourinho, who is expected to agree to a second spell at Madrid 13 years after his first ended.

• Average cost of one ticket claimed to be $3,000 (£2,200)

• Fifa insists terms and conditions of sale were made clear

Numerous Football Associations have been hit by increased prices when buying World Cup tickets for their players’ family and friends, with teams competing at the tournament affected by Fifa’s dynamic pricing model. While Fifa offered all national associations that have qualified for the World Cup a six-week window to buy tickets at a fixed price after the draw in December, any requests for tickets from the end of January have been subject to what Fifa describes as “adaptive pricing”, with the cost rising for most matches.

An executive at one national association said they had requested hundreds of additional tickets in recent weeks and have been surprised at the size of the bill. An executive at another association claimed the average cost of securing attendance at matches for their players’ family and their guests has risen to about $3,000 (£2,200) a ticket after extra purchases, a significant ­additional cost that will eat into their ­tournament funding. Fifa sources insisted the average cost of tickets bought by national associations is far lower than $3,000.

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

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

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

Criminal groups and state-linked actors appear to be using commercial models to refine and scale up attacks

• Business live – latest updates

In just three months, AI-powered hacking has gone from a nascent problem to an industrial-scale threat, according to a report from Google.

The findings from Google’s threat intelligence group add to an intensifying, global discussion about how the newest AI models are extremely adept at coding – and becoming extremely powerful tools for exploiting vulnerabilities in a broad array of software systems.

Keir Starmer says ‘agitators’ will be blocked from attending Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom event

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Seven people hoping to attend a far-right rally in central London on Saturday have been blocked from entering the country by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood.

Keir Starmer, the prime minister, promised on Monday to block “far-right agitators” hoping to attend the Unite the Kingdom event on 16 May organised by Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Regulator initially declined to investigate but now says it is looking into repeat broadcast from day after first showing

• UK politics live – latest updates

Ofcom is to investigate whether GB News breached broadcasting rules with a second showing of its interview with Donald Trump after complaints that the US president’s claims about climate change, Islam and immigration had gone unchallenged.

A series of complaints were made over the interview, which the presenter Bev Turner conducted last November.

Leaders cannot ignore support for reparations resolution this November, says St Vincent and Grenadines ex-PM

• What are reparations for slavery and colonialism – and will the UK pay?

It is “inconceivable” that reparatory justice from Britain for the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans will not be “front and centre” of the next Commonwealth leaders’ meeting, the former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines has said.

Ralph Gonsalves was in Jamaica to discuss the next steps of the “alive and growing” movement to advocate for reparations for hundreds of years of chattel slavery.

Far-right extremist Ivan Jennings had earlier pleaded guilty to dissemination of a terrorism publication

A rightwing extremist who called for “killing migrants when they arrive on their boats” has pleaded guilty to terrorism offences.

Ivan Jennings, 46, from Stafford, admitted encouraging terrorism between 15 August and 14 November 2024 at Leicester crown court on Monday.

Since his groundbreaking address to the Brazilian congress in 1987, the 72-year-old Indigenous leader has challenged assumptions and championed rights, urging us to ‘have the courage to change’

After 21 years of military dictatorship in Brazil, it was a pivotal moment. Wearing a suit and tie, Ailton Krenak, then an Indigenous leader in his 30s, stepped on to the rostrum in congress. It was 1987, a new constitution was being drafted for the re-established democracy – and Indigenous people were finally being heard in Brasília.

“I hope that my statement does not violate the protocol of this house,” he began, firmly but politely. As he spoke, he smeared his face with jenipapo, a fruit used for Indigenous bodypainting, until it was covered in black. “Indigenous blood has been spilt over every hectare of Brazil’s 8m square kilometres,” he told the constituent assembly. “You are witnesses of this.”

Move by largest donor to environment programme poses further uncertainty for already troubled negotiations

The largest donor to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has paused funding to the body before its revised budget on 12 May, triggering concern among member states and NGOs.

The news could carry significance for the already troubled plastic treaty negotiations being overseen by Unep. Since 2022 countries have been struggling to agree on how to deal with the volume of plastics being produced and used, a subject widely acknowledged to be one of the most serious environmental issues of the age, but despite six rounds of talks there has been no agreement in sight.

Levels of Pfas in northern gannet eggs in Canada fell up to 74% over 55-year period of study

Levels of some of the most dangerous Pfas compounds have dramatically fallen in Canadian seabird eggs, which the authors of a new peer-reviewed study say illustrates how regulations are effective.

Researchers looked at Pfas levels in the eggs of northern gannets in the St Lawrence Seaway basin over a 55-year period. Pfas levels shot up from the 1960s through the peak of the chemicals’ use in the late 1990s and early aughts, then fell.

Opponents say administration’s plan prioritizes big agriculture at expense of wildlife and protected species

New legal action aims to head off a Trump administration plan to open up to 24m acres of federal lands to cattle grazing, which opponents characterized as a gift to big agriculture and said could cause a spike in deaths among already imperiled wolves, grizzlies, steelhead salmon and other wildlife.

The plan also calls for opening up parts of Grand Canyon national park, and other sensitive landscapes. Cattle destroy critical habitats for wildlife because they strip land bare of essential vegetation and pollute streams with feces, urine, sediment and carcasses. Meanwhile, park rangers and ranchers often kill grizzly bears and other predators who prey on cattle, despite that ranchers and the government pushed the cattle into the predators’ home range.

Casting director urges Keir Starmer to intervene in case of Paata Burchuladze, 71, jailed for seven years after singing at anti-regime demonstrations

The Royal Opera House in London has urged Keir Starmer to intervene in the case of Paata Burchuladze, a world-renowned bass singer who has been imprisoned in Georgia since October on a charge of leading a coup against the country’s authoritarian leader.

The 71-year-old has performed at the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and collaborated with the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. He was arrested after joining a protest outside the presidential palace in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Last week he was given a seven-year jail sentence which Burchuladze suggested to the court was equivalent to a life sentence given his age.

Health service has given US tech firm ‘unlimited access’ to certain data to build integrated platform, according to reports

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MPs have warned that an NHS decision to grant Palantir access to identifiable patient information in its plan to use AI to improve the health service is “dangerous” and will fuel public fears that data privacy is not being prioritised.

NHS England has allowed staff from the US tech firm and other contractors to access patient data before it has been pseudonymised, despite internal fears of a “risk of loss of public confidence”, the Financial Times reported.

Report suggests that popular initiatives such as NT Live and NT at Home are making UK audiences more adventurous

Theatre streaming services and cinema screenings of stage performances are not a threat to “in-person” attendance and are making audiences more adventurous, according to new research commissioned by the National Theatre.

Introducing the findings on Monday, the NT’s director, Indhu Rubasingham, said that the boom in filmed theatre had raised major questions including the concern that popular initiatives such as NT Live and NT at Home would have a negative impact on live attendance. The organisation commissioned research by the agency Indigo to learn more about audiences’ attitudes to filmed theatre.

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

• Bafta TV awards 2026: the full list of winners

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

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

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

Seventeen tech and finance CEOs to join Trump on China trip; it will be the first US presidential visit China since Trump went in 2017

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Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump reiterated that Iran’s peace proposal was “just unacceptable”.

The president went on to insist that he had a “very simple plan”, and maintained that Tehran could not have a nuclear weapon, without elaborating on the next negotiating steps.

Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas says Kremlin-friendly former German chancellor cannot be considered impartial

• Europe live – latest updates

The EU has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that the Kremlin-friendly former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder could serve as a European mediator in peace talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.

Over the weekend, the Russian leader put forward Schröder – a longtime ally – as a possible figure to help restart talks with Europe, saying he would “personally” favour the former German leader for the role.

Trump reportedly involved in securing visa for Zbigniew Ziobro, who is wanted in Warsaw on criminal charges

Poland has said it expects Washington to extradite a former justice minister wanted on criminal charges after reports emerged that he had fled to the US from Hungary, where the former prime minister Viktor Orbán had granted him asylum.

“You can’t hide these days. You can flee, you can delay it for a while, but eventually your options run out,” Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said on Monday in reference to Zbigniew Ziobro.

Jimmy Fallon will produce show, which will begin filming over the summer, based on New York Times’ hit word game

Savannah Guthrie is to present a TV game show based on the New York Times’ hit word game Wordle, the newspaper announced Monday.

It will be the first new onscreen venture for the host of NBC’s Today show since her return in April after the disappearance two months earlier of her mother.

Bond yields creep higher on concerns about potential for political instability and rising inflation

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The cost of government borrowing has crept higher as Keir Starmer’s crucial speech failed to dispel investor “jitters” in the bond markets over political instability combined with fears of rising inflation.

The yield, effectively the interest rate, on the benchmark 10-year UK government bonds (known as gilts) rose eight basis points (or 0.08 of a percentage point) to 5% on Monday.

Federal lawsuit against OpenAI says alleged gunman had extensive conversations with chatbot over months

The family of one of two people killed in an April 2025 shooting at Florida State University (FSU) has filed a federal lawsuit against the ChatGPT creator, OpenAI, alleging that the suspected gunman carried out the attack “with input and information provided to him during conversations with ChatGPT over a period of months, and specifically in the days leading up to the shooting”.

The lawsuit, first reported by NBC News, was filed on Sunday in Florida’s northern federal district court by Vandana Joshi, the widow of Tiru Chabba. Chabba was killed alongside the university dining director, Robert Morales, in the mass shooting on 17 April 2025 that also wounded five others.

Acquisition would result in combined company serving about 9.6 million households if given regulatory approval

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The German energy group E.ON has agreed to buy struggling UK rival Ovo in a deal that would create Britain’s biggest gas and electricity supplier by number of households served.

The combined company will supply about 9.6 million customers, overtaking the market leader, Octopus, which serves almost 8m homes in the UK.

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

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

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

The French actor steps into unfamiliar – and bracingly raw – territory with In-I In Motion after four decades reigning the international arthouse. You have to go out of your comfort zone, she says, ‘otherwise you become a prude’

Starring in more than 70 movies is all well and good, but Juliette Binoche can still get the jitters. Right now, the Oscar-winning actor is biting her lip on the third floor of a Manhattan high-rise. In 20 minutes, she will step into a sold-out movie theater to introduce her directorial debut at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Titled In-I In Motion, the vérité-style documentary follows Binoche’s late-2000s plunge into the world of contemporary dance for a series of daring and bewitchingly strange performances with the British dancer Akram Khan. “So,” she asks me, “how do you think I should present it?”

Which is how I find myself giving advice about public speaking to arguably the most celebrated French actor working today. She did a great job last night introducing the film at the buzzy Metrograph cinema downtown, I say. But it’s tough to know how to prepare an audience for the film’s poetic (and sometimes confusing), nonlinear narrative: maybe you just have to let them have at it. She smiles slyly. “Should I say: ‘This film isn’t going to hold your hand’?”

‘There was a lot of fighting and drinking at our shows. We played for bikers, for Hell’s Angels. We would break records for beer sales everywhere we played’

Before Bad to the Bone, we just played obscure blues songs from the archives. But when we toured with the Rolling Stones, I noticed the reaction to their Start Me Up. I said: “Man, we’d better hurry up and write an original song with a catchy intro or, five years from now, people will go, ‘Oh yeah, George Thorogood – wasn’t he good at playing Chuck Berry or something?’”

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

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

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

The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their favourite comfort films is an ode to Brad Pitt and Aaron Sorkin’s lovably human baseball drama

The older I get, the more I want to hear people talk. I want films in which recognisably human characters interact in recognisably human ways. No one need die; nothing great need be at stake. I just want to be treated like an adult. Moneyball treats its audience like adults.

Though it was released in 2011, it’s a very 1970s film: its theme is analogous to the paranoid thrillers of that decade. In Moneyball, an American institution is in the hands of an elite, and a lone man who doesn’t trust the system is trying to change things. Yes, it’s about baseball rather than the CIA, but I don’t think it’s coincidence that this is the film where Brad Pitt finally looked like the inheritor to Robert Redford.

An aggrieved caller puts the host of Sarah Cares to the test, examining the limits of her ideas by threatening to kill her husband’s lover

If the initial phone call from Scream lasted an entire film, the result would be something like this halfway-decent B-movie thriller. Jessica Morris stars as the presenter of Sarah Cares, a call-in radio show/podcast in which she solves listeners’ emotional dilemmas, often in tough-love, no-nonsense fashion. On the verge of signing a big-time New York contract, her week goes awry when her studio falls victim to a bomb scare. Then on the following day her phone lines are blockaded by Edward, an aggrieved and apparently abusive husband; Sarah had previously told his wife to ditch him.

Edward says that all he wants is moral consistency. Sarah, the supposed font of all wisdom, is living in a sham marriage and he has the proof locked up in his shed: her husband’s new lover Alice (Carly Diamond Stone). Unless Sarah wants Alice’s death on her conscience, she has to abide by two rules: no cops, and complete honesty when Edward asks a question. After the insipid setup involving Sarah’s radio colleagues, and then the hypocrisies of her home life with husband David (Adam Huss) and daughter Maya (Aliza Kate Barlow), Killer on the Air becomes increasingly compelling the more minimalist it gets; a duel between the unravelling DJ and the malevolent green waveform on her screen.

Diego Céspedes’s striking debut mixes magic realism and melodrama in a tender tale of an LGBTQ+ community facing fear and superstition in 1980s Chile

Here is a beautiful, raw debut from young Chilean director Diego Céspedes, a film that is part queer western, part beguiling fable, with some glorious scenes straight out of a Latin soap opera, magic-realist effects and moments of heartbreakingly tender emotion. It’s set in the early 1980s, in a mining town on the dusty edge of nowhere where a ramshackle establishment, something like a bordello in a spaghetti western, is run by a small LGBTQ+ community. By day, they serve up food to worn-out, dust-covered miners; by night, cabaret is performed in drag.

The club is also raising a child, 11-year-old Lidia (Tamara Cortes), who was abandoned on the doorstep as a baby (possibly by parents who saw how well the club looks after its own). When Lidia is bullied by transphobic local boys, the women of the club come out in force to beat the crap out of the gang. Lidia’s adopted mum is Flamenco (Matías Catalán), a transgender woman in love with a Marlon Brando lookalike miner called Yovani (Pedro Muñoz), a man with an angelic pout and murder in his eyes. They both have a disease that local people are calling “the plague”. Yovani blames Flamenco and shows up with a gun.

Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
The polka-dotted phenomenon land their spaceship in Leeds for an ecstatic show that balances supremely complex musicianship with ridiculous good fun

The proud tradition of bands performing in barmy masks ranges from the Residents’ giant papier-mache eyeballs to Slipknot’s scary gimp ensembles, but Quebec duo Angine de Poitrine’s polka dot outfits may just take the biscuit. Double necked guitarist/bassist Khn de Poitrine sports a giant upside down pyramid head with a Pinocchio-style long nose. Drummer Klek de Poitrine’s bonkers outsize head makes him look like Monty Python’s Black Knight, but has its own dangly proboscis which flails around as he plays, and a tiny gold pyramid on top. The stage, the drum kit, the merch stall and several of the fans are also swathed in polka dots. One particularly inspired group have even turned up sporting Klek’s gold pyramids.

If it looks like a phenomenon, that’s exactly what it is. Although the band formed in 2019 and have jammed together much longer, Angine de Poitrine went viral early this year when a US radio station published a video of the duo performing at a French festival. This first ever UK gig was completely sold out – as are several much bigger shows this autumn – and the madcap duo are greeted like conquering heroes before they play a note. Before they even come on stage, fans are taking photos of Khn’s complex pedal board setup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dudley Town Hall
With bits about Prince, Tiswas, his Jamaican family and his long career, the standup treads familiar ground and the home-town crowd love it

In this new standup show – his first tour since 2010 – Lenny Henry says he generally turns down reality TV offers. He said yes to Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters (no, me neither) because he wanted to pay for an extension.

At first one wonders what home improvements Still at Large might be funding: it is difficult to get a handle on its purpose. In a first half of pure standup, there is some new material but also old ground being re-trodden. He does a bit about his family discovering the signs for the Black Country when they arrived from Jamaica; many first heard the joke in 1989 in Live and Unleashed, when he told us that his father declared, “the queen has set aside some land for me already.”

Touring until 3 November

Brighton festival
Combining words devised for Shakespeare’s female characters with music from composers old and new this was a Bardic treat with teeth

The two groups behind me who (it emerged at the interval) were all expecting a greatest hits concert by 90s pop duo Shakespears Sister, might have been startled by what they got instead: a Shakespeare-themed song recital. But you can hardly move for lovers and their lasses hey-nonny-no-ing their way across the UK’s concert halls these days, and it takes something extra to set one apart.

Sophie Bevan and pianist Christopher Glynn found it by combining Shakespeare with speeches from actor Harriet Walter’s 2024 book She Speaks! Walter’s wry, often acerbic, occasionally dagger-wielding verse fills in the gaps where women – whether witches, wives, nurses or ingenues – should speak, but don’t. Paired with a brilliantly unexpected selection of Shakespeare songs, many by female composers, it made for more than a simply pretty recital.

UEA Drama Studio, Norwich
A scientist sees the climate crisis in action when she returns to her mother’s flooded home, while the mum just fancies a trip to see the penguins

In these days of ever-encroaching climate crisis, we desperately want scientists to be the heroes. Alice, a glaciologist just back from Antarctica, knows that. After all, she wants it too: “To find the answer. Invent something. Discover something. Flick a switch and solve it all.”

Playwright Martha Loader, who won last year’s George Devine award for The Town, has spent two years interviewing Antarctic researchers not just on their work, but the impact it has had on their personal lives. In Albatross, the home Alice returns to is one where her mother Eve has been caring for her five-year-old daughter. And their tense middle-of-the-night reunion – made comically awkward by the presence of Eve’s new boyfriend, Martin – allows Loader to explore the moral dilemma of what each generation owes to the next, and whether the greater good outweighs personal, even maternal, obligations.

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

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

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

Visiting galleries was fine when my son was asleep in the sling – now he’s a boisterous explorer. It’s made me wonder: should we be sticking to exhibitions aimed at children?

Oh, for the days of the sleeping babe in the sling. It must have driven more seasoned parents mad when I waxed lyrical about how easy, how special, it was to bring my son with me to a gallery or museum. Now he’s a toddler who can change direction like a squirrel and is rather taken with the word “no”. And I’m beginning to wonder: should we be sticking to exhibitions and events targeted at children?

I’m not a joiner, and the thought of stay-and-plays and singalongs is enough to send me running. And yet, here I am, parking the buggy, unbuckling my son and walking with him, with some trepidation, towards a “family-friendly drop-in” at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Toon Kelder artwork from famed Goudstikker collection resurfaces with descendants of Hendrik Seyffardt

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An artwork looted by the Nazis from the renowned Goudstikker collection has resurfaced in the home of descendants of a notorious Dutch SS collaborator, according to an art detective.

Portrait of a Young Girl, by the Dutch artist Toon Kelder, is believed to have hung for decades in the home of Hendrik Seyffardt’s family, Arthur Brand said, describing it as “the most bizarre case of my entire career”.

Paul McCartney hails plans for 3 Savile Row, which include access to rooftop where the band played their final gig

The address may not sound familiar, and the street name is best known as the heart of British tailoring. But 3 Savile Row is one of the most iconic buildings in British pop and rock: the former home of the Beatles’ record label Apple Corps, and the location of the band’s final public performance when they took to its rooftop in 1969.

Apple Corps has now re-acquired the building in Mayfair, central London, and plans to open it to the public as a new tourist attraction in 2027.

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

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

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

A tiny bird with a giant ego, Crispin was a remarkable singer – especially if you told him how talented, intelligent and gracious he was

I was around four years old when my parents bought me Crispin, my first pet. A handsome yellow canary, Crispin was bad-tempered and behaved like an alpha male. He would spend hours preening. I thought he was enchanting.

A gentle female canary, Mariflor, arrived soon after. She became Crispin’s other half and the mother of their chicks, Maribel and Quintin. Having a canary family compensated for my lack of siblings and extended family. It gave me a sense of responsibility and filled my life with joy.

I was isolated and nervous when I decided to roll up my sleeves and start volunteering. But I shouldn’t have been intimidated. It’s brought so much happiness and community into my life

I live in a fairly average town in Oxfordshire, and despite having friends and family nearby, I never felt as if I was properly a part of the community. I didn’t feel rooted, or that I knew my neighbours beyond a quick hello. I moved here in my late 20s with my partner and spent a lot of time at home. In my 30s, I got a dog, had children and started working from home.

As a result, I spent a lot more time in my local area, but I still felt like an outsider. At this point in my life, where I was focused on building a family and setting down my own roots, this lack of connection made me feel isolated – until I started volunteering.

Our writer has a wardrobe wake-up call. Plus, top tips for sustainable plants and Kim Cattrall’s shopping secrets

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How many pieces of clothing do you own? Dozens? Hundreds? The average UK adult’s wardrobe contains 118 items, including underwear, according to environmental charity Wrap. That shocked me until I started counting my own clothing mountain and reached number 237, at which point I had to stop and write this newsletter.

When the Filter asked me to spend March testing six ways to consume less, I didn’t expect fashion to feature much: I work from home wearing boys’ joggers from Asda (they’re cheap, and they fit my sub-5ft frame perfectly). But after auditing my belongings as part of the challenge, I have to ’fess up, not least to myself: I’ve been over-buying clothes for years.

Start small, pick perennials and go peat-free: how to buy plants sustainably

Busy boards, bath buddies and Tonies: the best toys and gifts for two-year-olds

The best face moisturisers for every budget, season and skin type, tested

Jess Cartner-Morley’s May style essentials: summer totes, chic shirts and the best shoes of the year so far

The best blenders for smoothies, soups and frozen desserts, tested

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

• Jess Cartner-Morley’s May style essentials

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

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

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

• The best (and worst) supermarket coffee

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

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

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

• The best wedding guest dresses for every budget

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

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

Enjoy this 30-minute cheesy polenta for dinner, then chill the excess polenta and get an even quicker meal the next day

I love polenta, but very often forget about it in favour of pasta or rice. However, for those transitional spring evenings, it’s perfect comfort food: warm, filling, and cooks in under two minutes when you buy quick-cook. But the very best thing about making a pan of polenta is that with barely any extra effort, it’ll give you the basis for a meal the next day. Try pouring half of it into a tray – studded with olives, or with extra cheddar stirred through, perhaps – and chill overnight. The next day, cut it into squares, chips, or even star shapes, and fry until crisp – a cook once, eat twice win.

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

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

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

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

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

Prep 25 min
Cook 45 min
Makes 8 large balls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you are looking for a new account, there are some good rates around, but also pitfalls to watch out for

Earning as much as 7% on your savings sounds great – but what’s the catch? The top-paying accounts often come with strings attached, which could mean your money is not working as hard as you thought.

That’s important because there is a lot of cash sitting in fixed-rate savings accounts that are about to reach the end of their term. The total amount in accounts maturing between April and June is £90bn, according to the savings app Spring – and that money will need to find a new home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answers to today’s pronunciation puzzles

Earlier today I set you these two word puzzles. Here they are again with solutions.

1: Pronounced the same, spelt differently.

(Second option) (Switch back and forth)

(Suitable) (Commandeer)

(Satisfied) (Components)

(Conference attendee) (Assign)

(Price reduction) (Disregard)

(Way in) (Enrapture)

(Incorrect) (Disabled)

(60 seconds) (Tiny)

(In attendance) (Give)

(Fruit and vegetables) (Generate)

(Deny) (Rubbish)

(Distress) (Surprise victory)

Alternate

Appropriate

Content

Delegate

Discount

Entrance

Invalid

Minute

Present

Produce

Refuse

Upset

A big shot earned a triumphant snare drum roll with a resolving crash. My timing was often slightly late, occasionally wildly inappropriate

Music came to me very early on. I’m told that as a baby I would fall asleep to opera – arias would stop me crying. By age six I was enrolled at the local conservatory of music in Athens, learning classical guitar and moving, quite seriously, through music theory and the fundamentals. By my teens, I was in a band with friends, covering everything from Avril Lavigne to Muse, aiming for precision over hours of rehearsal. My music practice was very disciplined and far removed from anything resembling “entertainment”.

Sport, on the other hand, barely registered for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you have been affected by the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, we would like to hear from you

Twenty Britons from a cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak continue to be offered practical and emotional support as they isolate at a UK hospital.

Along with the 20 British nationals, a German who is a UK resident, and a Japanese passenger, were taken to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral on Sunday after the MV Hondius docked in Tenerife.

We’d like to hear how you’re adapting your expenditure as the cost of living rises amid the conflict in the Middle East

Rising prices and economic uncertainty linked to the conflict in the Middle East are putting pressure on household budgets across the world.

The International Monetary Fund has warned the conflict is pushing up the cost of energy and food, increasing borrowing costs and weighing on economic growth. Surveys suggest millions of households are already making changes to cope – cutting back, dipping into savings or taking on debt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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