There was time for Kemi to embarrass herself again as she explained how we were both at war and not at war

Taxi for Kemi. It’s only a matter of time before Tory MPs start thinking the unthinkable and hand their leader her P45. It could be happening even now. This week’s prime minister’s questions can only have concentrated a few minds. Buyer’s remorse has long since passed. Some have now moved through the five stages of grief.

First there was the denial. Despite evidence to the contrary, Kemi was doing better than expected. It didn’t matter that she had taken the Tories from the high 20s to the mid-teens in the opinion polls. She was destined for stardom. It was just a matter of the country keeping up with her brilliance.

What have we learned from release of files relating to former peer’s appointment – and sacking – as UK ambassador to Washington?

We now have the first tranche of documents promised by the government connected to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Washington – 147 pages from a mass of information believed to total in the hundreds of thousands.

Mandelson has previously denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyers have said he does not intend to make any further statement at this time. Here is what we have learned from the files – and what we do not yet know.

Who should win? Who’s been snubbed? Guardian film editor Catherine Shoard answers your Oscars questions

Guardian writers have been making their pitches for best picture winner at the 98th Academy Awards in our Oscars hustings series.

Has Chase Infiniti been snubbed? Should Train Dreams win for best cinematography? Who’s the bigger monster, Frankenstein’s or Marty Mauser? Guardian film editor Catherine Shoard answers your 2026 Oscars questions.

Thanks very much for all these really well-informed and thoughtful questions! I’ll try to get through as many as possible

1. Vicious circle of looming industry collapse fueling industry timidity.

2. Talent exodus to TV and streaming.

Parasite (2020) and Moonlight (2016) were good – but not the year’s best films. So perhaps 12 Years a Slave (2014).

The Oscar campaign trail is today a very precise, well-monitored and potentially lucrative business – which is why slip-ups such as the failure to police the social media of Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón are so surprising/glaring/dramatic.

Red carpet is important for this, but not the most critical part of the campaign by any means, unless something really unusual happens on the carpet. Interviews are far more important – note the Chalamet ballet slip, which occurred in the softest of spaces – as well as general glad-handing.

Experts share tips on dressing as the most authentic version of yourself and avoiding the draw of the latest microtrends

How would you define your personal style? Is it cottagecore? Tomato girl? Whimsigoth? Quiet luxury? Maybe you don’t know what these terms mean (congratulations) and maybe you do (my condolences).

Like unwelcome nose hairs, new microtrends seem to sprout from the depths of social media every other week. In some ways, their pervasiveness has made style seem more accessible than ever. They reduce aesthetics to mathematical equations that you can solve by buying up a bunch of fast fashion. By the time these cheap, mass-produced items dissolve into microplastics – which they will, quickly – other aesthetic trends will have replaced them.

Content creators claim they’ve escaped the 9 to 5, yet as Louis Theroux’s new show reveals, they are mere serfs to algorithms and audiences

Who wouldn’t want to be an influencer? You’re famous and maybe even rich, just for doing what you’d be doing anyway: working out at the gym, hanging out with your mates and mucking about on the internet. You get paid to say what you think (or are at least sent free stuff), and no one’s telling you what to do. Surely only a sucker would do anything else.

At least that is the influencing dream, and many young men are buying into it. “Content creator” has for years been cited as the most desirable career by generation Z and now gen Alpha. The preferred platforms might have changed over time, with streaming on Twitch and Kick now supplanting posting on Instagram and YouTube, but the aspiration remains the same: to escape the drudgery of a desk job.

Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left UAE since the US and Israel started bombing Iran two weeks ago, leaving beach bars, malls and hotels eerily empty

In the playground of the rich, nobody wanted this war. For decades, Dubai built itself up as a sanctuary of unadulterated consumerism visited by tourists the world over.

But now, the city in the United Arab Emirates faces an existential threat, as the war between the US and Israel and Iran has shaken the foundations of the “Dubai dream” that so many foreigners had bought into.

Iranian officials warn of ‘war of attrition’ and global economic chaos as energy supplies are throttled

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Iran dramatically escalated its strategy of striking civilian infrastructure and transport networks across the Gulf on Wednesday, attacking commercial ships and targeting Dubai’s international airport as US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on the Islamic Republic.

Senior Iranian officials struck a defiant tone, warning of a long “war of attrition” that would threaten global economic chaos as energy supplies from the region were throttled.

Qatar defense minister says nine missiles launched in its territory; Trump declares victory in Iran conflict but acknowledges the operation is not over

• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Over in Senate question time, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has confirmed embassies in Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv and the consulate in Dubai all physically closed in the last week.

Wong said the government’s number one priority is to “keep Australians safe at home and abroad”.

She continued:

“The dangerous and destabilising attacks by Iran put civilian lives at risk, including Australian lives.”

More than 3,200 Australians over 23 commercial flights have returned to Australia since the US and Israel attacked Iran, setting off a regional conflict and grounding thousands of international flights.

Wong criticised Nationals senators for “winding up people and stoking fear” to panic buy fuel.

The senator said:

“Petrol companies are telling us that fuel stock continues to arrive as expected and on time but there has been a large change in the pattern of demand and that is having an effect on the supply, particularly in regional communities. We have seen jerry cans coming off the shelves at Bunnings and lines at the pump.”

One of the two members of the Iranian women’s football teams provided with a humanitarian visa to stay in Australia has changed her mind and contacted the Iranian embassy, according to the country’s home affairs minister.

In Australia, people are able to change their mind, people are able to travel. So, we respect the context in which she has made that decision.

Unfortunately, in making that decision, she had been advised by her teammates and coach to contact the Iranian embassy and get collected … As a result of that, it meant that the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was.

Strike that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, reportedly due to targeting mistake by US military planners

• Minab school bombing: a visual guide

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A preliminary US military investigation has reportedly determined that Washington was responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school in February that killed scores of children.

According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners.

Despite rare act of multilateralism, there is no guarantee the IEA’s release of 400m barrels from reserves will depress prices

• IEA orders largest ever release of stockpiled oil to reduce crude price

• How the Iran conflict could affect energy prices – video explainer

When the global economy was still in the grip of the devastating 1970s oil crises, exposing the chokehold exerted by a few important oil states, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was created, in the hope of limiting future shocks.

Almost half a century on, the IEA’s 32 members have drawn up plans to hit the emergency button, for only the fifth time in its history.

Crew of Thai-registered bulk carrier forced to flee fire, as US says it has destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Three merchant ships have been struck in and around the strait of Hormuz, including a Thai registered bulk carrier that caught fire after leaving a port in the UAE, forcing crew members to evacuate for their safety.

The Mayuree Naree was struck on Wednesday by “two projectiles of unknown origin”, its owners said, as it sailed about 11 nautical miles north of Oman, marking the end of a four-day lull of attacks in the strategic waterway.

Newly released documents also show Peter Mandelson was offered highly classified briefings before formal vetting was complete

Keir Starmer overruled officials who warned of a “reputational risk” in making Peter Mandelson US ambassador, despite being handed a dossier of evidence about the peer’s relationship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, documents reveal.

The disclosure in newly released files will raise fresh questions about Starmer’s judgment – as well as about the vetting procedures at the highest levels of government.

Mandelson was offered a severance payment of £75,000 after initially asking the Foreign Office to pay him more than £500,000;

Starmer was warned before appointing Mandelson that he remained in contact and stayed with Epstein after the financier was first convicted of procuring an underage girl in 2008;

Powell told an investigation that he thought the appointment was “weirdly rushed”;

Starmer was reassured about Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein by Matthew Doyle, his former communications chief and a friend of Mandelson. Doyle said he was “satisfied” with Mandelson’s explanation of the relationship.

Federico Valverde was the Real Madrid hero who wrote himself into this storied club’s folklore with a first-half, 22-minute hat-trick that decimated Manchester City and cast Pep Guardiola as a tactical novice.

Each of Valverde’s goals were a diagram of his supreme skill and City’s chump-like defending that leaves their hopes of a quarter-final berth near extinct. If Vinícius Júnior had netted a second-half penalty Real could all but celebrate progression yet if City score early in Tuesday’s return who knows.

PM says UK would ‘be at war’ now if it were up to Tory and Reform leaders and accuses both of changing position

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has attacked Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage over their stance on the war in Iran, accusing both of U-turning on their support for Donald Trump.

At a raucous prime minister’s questions, Starmer accused the leader of the opposition of making the “mother of all U-turns” and furiously trying to backpedal after on Tuesday she denied calling for the UK to join the US president’s war on Iran, after previously saying Starmer should do more to “stop the people who are attacking us”.

Green party leader has said he immediately apologised for comments made in 2013 Sun interview, but footage six days later shows him standing by claim

Zack Polanski’s claim to have immediately apologised for offering hypnosis intended to increase a woman’s breast size has been cast into doubt by the emergence of a 2013 interview with the Green party leader.

In 2013, before he entered politics, Polanski was approached by a Sun journalist to see if a hypnotherapy session could make her breasts bigger. This experience was then written up as an article.

More than 500 lending products pulled in biggest single upheaval since Liz Truss’s mini-budget in 2022

• How will war in the Middle East affect your finances?

• Business live – latest updates

Average mortgage rates in the UK have flown past 5% as lenders scramble to respond to growing turmoil in the home loan market caused by the Middle East war.

Nearly 500 mortgage deals have been pulled in the past 48 hours in the biggest upheaval since the aftermath of the 2022 mini-budget.

Richard Kemp tells high court former Sinn Féin leader would have authorised attacks carried out in England

A former British army commander has told the high court it is “inconceivable” that Gerry Adams was not involved in the authorisation of IRA bombings.

Richard Kemp said there was evidence from “a multitude of intelligence” spanning 20 years about the former Sinn Féin leader’s membership of the paramilitary organisation.

‘Male by default’ clinical guidelines do not acknowledge sex-based differences, says Lancashire University research

Women are receiving worse treatment for back and neck pain because their experiences are not factored into “male by default” clinical guidelines in the UK, research has found.

The NHS fails to acknowledge sex-specific considerations such as pain being more common among women in its model of care for non-surgical management of chronic neck and back pain, according to research from the University of Lancashire.

Grammy-winning singer is in advanced talks to lead an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s novel for Oscar-winning writer-director

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Billie Eilish is set to make her big screen acting debut in an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.

According to Deadline, the 24-year-old will take on the lead role for Sarah Polley, the writer-director who previously won an Oscar for her Women Talking screenplay. Eilish is reportedly in advanced talks for the part.

Latest sculpture titled ‘King of the World’ includes plaques with pointed commentary on pair’s past association

A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets. The appearance of a golden statue depicting Donald Trump and the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as doomed lovers from the movie Titanic is confronting Washington with a murkier mystery.

The nearly 12ft sculpture, unveiled on Tuesday on the National Mall, is the third piece of guerrilla art satirising Trump’s past relationship with Epstein attributed to The Secret Handshake, a shadowy collective whose members remain anonymous.

Unite union began all-out strike more than a year ago and city remains without full waste collection service

It has been more than a year since Birmingham’s bin workers began their all-out strike that has left residents without a fully functioning waste collection service – and there is still no end in sight.

The strikes have attracted global media attention as pictures emerged of towering waste and overflowing bins on the streets of the UK’s second largest city.

Recent attack on plants led to fears of escalating strikes, but Iran knows drought has left it equally vulnerable

• Middle East crisis – live updates

In 1983, the CIA determined that the most crucial commodity in the Gulf was its desalinated potable water.

Although the loss of a single plant could be handled, “successful attacks on several plants in the most dependent countries could generate a national crisis that could lead to panic flights from the country and civil unrest”. And the greatest threat to the region’s water supply? “Iran.”

Warmer days are coming, but it’s not bare-leg weather yet. Our fashion writer put 25 pairs through their paces so you can wear your spring dresses now – and stop wasting money on bad tights

• 50 women’s spring wardrobe updates for under £100

Tights are a staple in most women’s wardrobes, yet they’re also one of the most frequently discarded. It’s not unusual to leave the house wearing a new pair, only to realise by lunchtime that they’re laddered and ready for the bin.

Tights’ tendency to rip so easily comes down to the delicate nature of the fabric. Once damaged, it usually can’t be repaired, meaning most tights end up in landfill, where the nylon and elastane can take up to 200 years to decompose. An estimated 8bn pairs of tights are bought and discarded each year, according to the brand Swedish Stockings. To make matters worse, producing traditional nylon tights releases nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

Best black tights overall:
Snag 50 denier

Best shapewear tights:
Calzedonia Strong Sculpt tights

In the wake of discourse surrounding Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia in One Battle After Another, a familiar debate has resurfaced about what happens when Black women play morally ambiguous characters on screen

In one scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Teyana Taylor’s character, Perfidia Beverly Hills, is more focused on seducing Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson (then still known as “Ghetto Pat”) than on the bomb exploding just feet away from them. In another scene, she holds Sean Penn’s Steven J Lockjaw at gunpoint while simultaneously provoking an erection. These are some of the perceived brazen, morally slippery choices Perfidia makes that have unsettled some viewers since the movie’s premiere.

“I absolutely hate what this means for the representation of Black women in Hollywood,” YouTuber and cultural commentator Jouelzy said in a video posted a day after Taylor won the Golden Globe award for best supporting actress. “So often the institutional powers that be only reward us for portrayals that are stereotypical characters of Black women. One Battle After Another was such an offensive film.”

No longer under the tyranny of compression fit leggings, today’s athleisure is something looser, with a wink of nostalgia

Athleisure is not to be confused with serious fitness wear. No one is running a marathon or playing a game of football in the shoes pictured above. Notice how, in a made-up noun that is a compound of athletics and leisure, the first has been shrunk to three letters. The only personal best that concerns you here is having an optimal Saturday morning.

Athleisure is fashion, not kit, so it moves with the times just as much as it moves with you. And it looks very different now than a few years ago, when every outfit was anchored by snazzy leggings. Tight legging sets with dazzling graphics were the parade uniform of the imperial age of Lycra. Under the cheerful tyranny of compression fit, starburst-pattern leggings with matching sports bras ruled the roost. These were outfits designed to be watched in a mirror with a rousing soundtrack: perky and sculpting, lingerie-like in their obsession with matching two-piece sets and with bottoms.

In a survey of 1,000 professional women, more than half said they felt less motivated to progress in their jobs than they did two years ago

Name: Promotion burnout.

Appearance: Disturbingly feminine.

Hemmed in by the sea and poor transport links, many young people from the Yorkshire town feel trapped, but there is also a pride in the area

It’s the morning after a wet and stormy day in the Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough. The waves, which the previous day had been crashing dramatically on the harbour walls, have calmed and a few brave souls have entered the water with surfboards. There is a man throwing a ball for his dog on the beach and a kayaker bobbing on the waves.

Just up from the seafront in the centre of town, Jack and Charlie, both 17, are leaning forward listening to a story from 19-year-old Keane about his recent visit to a drama school in London, where he is hoping to apply for a place on an actor training course once he has saved enough money.

Scarborough, on the North Yorkshire coast, was one of England’s first seaside resorts

The author tells how chronicling the sex lives of African women led her to many examples of openness around the body grounded in love and care

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I first met Nana five years ago. The Ghanaian writer had just published The Sex Lives of African Women, a book I still think about often for how surprising and eye-opening its accounts of contemporary, quietly radical sexual practices in parts of the continent are.

She is back with Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals and Sankofa in the Bedroom. When I spoke to her, I found a writer in transition who is still as surprising.

Authors like me are being targeted by AI-powered accounts promising exposure and fake reviews

• Self-publish and be scammed: Jon’s tale of heartbreak highlights boom in fraudsters using AI to supercharge book swindles

My latest book had been out for less than a month when the emails started to arrive.

One came from “Elena”, with the tantalising subject line, “When history flutters its wings and reveals a crime too beautiful to ignore.” Then followed a long, florid message about how it was “one of those rare true stories that makes you question everything you thought you knew about history, museums, and human obsession”.

When I heard ‘Rachel’ answer the helpline number in her metallic voice, my soul felt as empty as the batteries of my malfunctioning car

Something went wrong. The car charger wouldn’t work. Terrible, enervating, life-shortening faff ensued. It was to do with the wifi to which the car was linked having to be changed. I find this stuff so boring that I have been known to simply slump to the floor and fall into a deep sleep.

But this wasn’t an option, as I had to drive miles to work and my car’s batteries were as empty as my soul. I’d already been on the road for five hours listening to Antony Beevor’s history of the second world war. Man’s inhumanity to man is so very disappointing, even more disappointing than a malfunctioning EV charger on a wet and windy day. I resolved to dig deep. The human spirit would prevail. If only I could find another human to help me out.

The US president’s doctrine of lawless military adventures harms American interests and boosts Vladimir Putin

Waging war with no fixed purpose means victory can be declared at any point. Donald Trump’s motives for launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran were incoherent at the start. They are no clearer now that he has declared it “very complete, pretty much”.

US and Israeli bombs have caused death and destruction, shaking but not toppling the government in Tehran. Among the targets was the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. He has been replaced by his son – an “unacceptable” candidate in the US president’s evaluation.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, ahead of the May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss the threat to Labour from both the Green party and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

It’s called the Dahiya doctrine – and the IDF and US air force are using it to destroy domestic support in Iran

• Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University and author of Losing Control: International Security in the 21st Century

Given the wall-to-wall coverage of the US and its war on Iran, it looks very much like Trump is the key player. He is not. The United States may have far more military power than Israel, but the key player is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Moreover, the Israeli prime minister has fallen into a trap of his own making, and is dragging Trump and the US military into that same trap. For Israel, and indirectly for the US, the war has to end in total victory. Anything less is pointless.

Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University and author of Losing Control: International Security in the 21st Century

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

Britain’s whole energy economy needs to be reformed – decarbonising the grid is only part of the mix

Britain is once again paying the price of an energy system that is more effective at extracting profits than delivering security. Illegal war and geopolitical disruption are sending fossil fuel prices soaring – and because our electricity market turns volatile gas prices into higher electricity bills, families here risk paying the cost. The government is already unpopular. How it responds to this crisis, and the wider crisis of affordability, will define its legacy. Its instinct has been to double down on clean power. That has strong merit – but understanding that strategy’s limits shows why deeper reform is urgently necessary.

The government’s goal is clear: achieve stable prices by removing gas from the grid. Britain’s electricity market uses a marginal pricing system, which means that the price paid for all electricity at any moment is set by the most expensive source needed to meet demand. Even though gas produces only about a quarter of our electricity, it sets the price around 85% of the time. That means even when renewables are generating most of the country’s power, your bill doesn’t reflect the cost of solar or wind. And because gas is a global commodity with the price set by the international market, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz translates into rising electricity bills in Hull – even as the horizon grows thick with wind turbines and the share of clean power on the grid grows every year.

Mathew Lawrence is the director of Common Wealth

Little did I know this cheerful animal had just died. Ever since, my algorithm has been serving me up more of the same ...

I’m arriving at the social media party so late that the lights are on and the floor is being swept. As a result, I’ve only recently learned that if you look at anything for two seconds, it teaches your algorithm that this is all you want to see. A cheerful dog was the gateway drug. Now, I am accidentally on Death Instagram. It is not very LOL.

The lengthy caption on Fido’s joyful, tail-waggy photo unfortunately revealed that he’d just crossed the rainbow bridge. This information was not delivered succinctly, though, meaning I lingered long enough to inform Mark Zuckerberg that this was very much my jam.

The Tories and Reform UK have abandoned British interests to become ideological satellites of radical US conservatism

Britain is one of many countries that would benefit from the replacement of brutal theocracy with democratic government in Tehran. The Iranian people would be the biggest beneficiaries. It does not follow that British interests are served by the current US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, which claims regime change as a goal but includes no credible strategy for achieving it.

The distinction was never hard to grasp. Sir Keir Starmer understood it and kept his distance from Donald Trump’s war. The leader of the opposition was not so judicious. In the first week of the conflict, Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of indecision and cowardice. She thought the absence of a legal mandate for war was irrelevant and called for the RAF to be more involved. The Conservative leader no longer holds that view. Or, rather, she denies having held it. She says that she did not call for Britain to join the US-Israeli action, but did call for British forces to strike targets inside Iran and that those are different things, although she struggles to explain how.

On the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations, the Scottish philospher is still invoked by the right. Yet he worried about inequality, monopoly and the power of wealth

This week 250 years ago, Adam Smith published An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – and invented economics. The anniversary has been marked by opinion columns, new books and academic conferences. How different it was 50 years ago. The 1976 bicentenary produced the definitive scholarly edition and helped cast Smith as the father of free-market economics. This was an easy sell during the 1970s slow collapse of the postwar economic order. Smith was useful as a symbolic figure for the revival of free-market ideas. Yet the truth is more complicated.

Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate, recruited Smith as the patron saint of neoliberal economics in his 1980 book and television series Free to Choose – a manifesto that anticipated Reaganism in the US. He reduced Smith to two claims: that a voluntary exchange benefits both parties and that self-interest is led by an “invisible hand” that unintentionally promotes the public interest. In short: greed is good. In fact, Smith used the phrase “invisible hand” only once in The Wealth of Nations, to describe whether merchants invest their capital at home or abroad – and not, as Friedman claimed, as a general theory of markets.

Readers respond to an article by John Lanchester and a report on gen Z’s views on marriage

I enjoyed John Lanchester’s article on the generation gap (Did baby boomers eat all the pies? John Lanchester on the truth about the generation gap, 8 March). As a university lecturer, I spend a lot of time in class unpicking statistics and received wisdom, including narratives such as intergenerational rivalry, which is more complex than it first seems. I often feel that we are too shortsighted in our intergenerational discussions.

As a gen Xer, I’ve often discussed my experiences as a young adult, which, as Lanchester points out, share many parallels with today’s gen Z. In heritage management classes, I ask students about their parents and grandparents. We compare experiences with those of the first and second world war generations, then that of our great-grandparents. Mine were born in 1879, were lacemakers in Essex, had a pea field, made turnip dollies and sent their sons to Haberdashers’ School in London to better themselves.

Alan West recalls a high-level meeting prior to the Iraq war. Plus letters from Spencer Hines and Margaret Squires

At the final meeting prior to the invasion of Iraq between UK chiefs of staff (of which I was one), the then prime minister Tony Blair, the defence secretary, senior Ministry of Defence officials and the foreign secretary, in the Old War Office building in March 2003, I asked what the plans were for phase four of the war that was about to start (ie what were the plans for actions after we had won).

We were told by the prime minister that the Americans had this all in hand. I asked if we could see their plans and was told we would. I saw nothing before or after the war started. Beating Iraq was clearly going to be relatively easy – what happened then was much harder and not clear. The same seems to be true of Donald Trump’s war against Iran.
Alan West
Labour, House of Lords

It is hard to believe that attacks which started on 28 February can have had such a huge impact on oil that must have already been in the country, says Graham Judge

Hilary Osborne (UK households that use heating oil face ‘frightening’ surge in bills over Iran war, 10 March) highlights that rural households are facing huge rises in the price of something that is a necessity.

Sadly, not all the rises can be laid at the door of Donald Trump and his foolish war. Some of the increases are simply down to unashamed profiteering. On 2 March (48 hours after the war started) I had to pay 86.6p per litre of oil. This was 10p higher than the price on Friday 27 February.

Long Covid | Mother’s advice | Newspaper influence | Measuring Manhattan | Scuba diving

I was surprised to see that your article (The Covid-19 inquiry is sounding a clear warning. If it’s not heeded, yet more lives will be lost, 5 March) speaks of those who suffered during the pandemic in the past tense, and does not mention the hundreds of thousands, like myself, who still suffer from long Covid. It is a devastating condition that is too often forgotten when the pandemic is discussed. Meanwhile, long Covid clinics are underfunded and many have closed. To many, the pandemic must feel like a nightmare that is thankfully in the past. For me, it never ended.
Julia Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink
London

• I remember two pieces of advice from my mother (My mother’s best advice: learn to raise one eyebrow at the world, 11 March). Always air your underwear. And never marry a clergyman – she had and I did! I still keep to the first and have never regretted ignoring the second – 60th anniversary this year.
Felicity Randall
Fakenham, Norfolk

After silver medal success with his guide Robert Poth, the British duo aim for more glory in the slalom events

Neil Simpson and his guide Robert Poth won silver at the Winter Paralympics on Tuesday, the first medal for Great Britain at these Games. But to watch the athletes in visually impaired alpine skiing descend the slopes of the Dolomites at speeds of up to 100km/h is to be strongly reminded that everyone needs at least another medal, just for being brave enough to do it in the first place.

Talk to the 23-year-old Simpson, however, and the concept of taking one’s life into one’s hands doesn’t come into the equation. Born with the condition nystagmus, which causes involuntary eye movements, he has been skiing since he was four, first on the dry slopes in Aberdeen, then at the Glenshee resort, before competing in national competition aged 16. “I think it’s something that’s never really fazed me”, he says. “It’s just a really fun sport to participate in.”

• Ukrainian team claim athletes have been mistreated

• Allege they had to remove flag from Paralympic village

Team Ukraine have launched a ­stinging attack on the International Paralympic Committee and Winter Paralympics organisers, claiming they have been under “systemic pressure” to reduce their presence at the Milano Cortina Games.

The Ukraine National Paralympic Committee has made four specific allegations against the IPC and the Milano Cortina organisers, alleging mistreatment of its athletes and a “systematic” attempt to remove flags from the team base and spectators.

We take a look at the best images from day three of the Games, including curling, cross-country skiing and ice hockey

The Winter Paralympics return to Italy for the second time in 20 years. From the fashion capital of Milan to the dramatic peaks of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Milan Cortina will take place across northern Italy, marking the 50th anniversary of the first Paralympic Winter Games.

The Paralympics open on Friday 6 March in the Arena di Verona and the Games will will showcase around 665 athletes competing in 79 medal events across six sports – para alpine skiing, para biathlon, para cross-country skiing, para ice hockey, para snowboard and wheelchair curling. The results of these events will be searchable on this page.

At least there was no public humiliation for Filip Jörgensen from his manager. But while Liam Rosenior did not do an Igor Tudor and hook his goalkeeper, this hurt. It is why a goalkeeper passing out from the back only looks clever until the moment it goes wrong.

Above all, it was tough for Chelsea to take. They impressed at the Parc des Princes, twice pegging Paris Saint-Germain back, but there was no escaping the reality that the focus was on the moment Jörgensen’s stray ball out gifted the European champions the advantage in this last-16 Champions League tie.

Whoever runs Bayer Leverkusen’s social media accounts obviously meant it as a joke. But even they could not have predicted that a cheeky post hours before kick‑off would almost end up being such a good omen for Kasper Hjulmand’s side. “No corners allowed,” it read in a clear dig at Arsenal’s favoured modus operandi this season, before adding. “Worth a try …”

Nonetheless, the plan seemed to be working for almost the entire cagey first half when neither side managed to muster a single corner until injury time. But everything changed at the start of the second half when Leverkusen’s captain, Robert Andrich, headed home their second corner of the evening. “Well, this is awkward,” the Leverkusen social media team piped up.

• Interim manager has lost four out of four

• Harry Redknapp rules himself out of return

Igor Tudor will fight on with Totten­ham against Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday in a desperate bid for any positivity before the rele­gation six‑pointer at home against Nottingham Forest the following week.

The interim manager, who is under contract until the end of the season, is not expected to last that long as his tenure lurches from one horror performance to the next, the latest being the 5-2 defeat at ­Atlético Madrid in the Champions League last‑16 first leg on Tuesday.

There were £210,00 deals for Sophie Devine and Beth Mooney in what was meant to herald a new era, but it was still mostly men making decisions

It’s Piccadilly Circus. It’s candy pink and dayglow green. It’s 19‑year‑old Davina Perrin being bought by the Birmingham Phoenix for £50,000 a couple of years after she has graduated from Ebony Rainford Brent’s ACE programme. It’s the former Leicestershire fast bowler Charles Dagnall in skinny jeans with an iPad and an interactive screen.

It’s Hero Players. It’s Vitality Wild Cards. It’s Sophie Devine and Beth Mooney being signed for £210,000, which is more than the entire women’s squad earned between them when the Hundred launched in 2021. It’s English cricket’s first player auction.

• Irish amateur and British jockey argued at race start

• Il Etait Temps triumphs in Champion Chase

The Cheltenham festival was mired in controversy over alleged racial abuse on Wednesday evening after Declan Queally, an Irish amateur jockey, claimed the leading British rider Nico de Boinville had subjected him to a series of verbal attacks before the start of the Turners Novices’ Hurdle.

Queally and De Boinville could be seen exchanging words on ITV ­Racing’s coverage as 21 runners and riders jostled for position before the start of the opening race.

• Participation ruled out after killing of Khamenei

• Trump said to have told Infantino Iran are welcome

The prospect of Iran playing at this summer’s World Cup appears remote after the country’s sports minister, Ahmad Donyamali, said on Wednesday that “under no circumstances can we participate”.

Donyamali is the first Iranian government representative to address the issue of the World Cup since the US, one of the co-hosts, began bombing the country with backing from Israel 10 days ago.

• Anniversary kit marks 120 years of fixture

• England to wear their traditional white

England’s Six Nations finale in Paris on Saturday could descend into farce with France poised to wear a special edition pale blue kit that threatens to clash with the white strip worn by Steve Borthwick’s side.

Fabian Galthié’s team have confirmed they will don the anniversary kit, which is significantly lighter than their traditional blue strip, for a match that marks 120 years of rivalry between France and England. It is understood, however, that England will still wear their white kit despite the potential for a clash. Match officials are also understood to have given both kits the green light.

• Withdrew from Arnold Palmer Invitational on Saturday

• ‘I’m taking it hour by hour, but it feels better’

Rory McIlroy will make a last‑minute call on Thursday over whether to defend his Players Championship title, with the Northern Irishman still feeling the effects of a weekend back injury. McIlroy will wait until his pre-round range session to determine whether he is fit enough to play.

McIlroy arrived here on Wednesday afternoon, having withdrawn shortly before his third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He hit shots for around an hour before walking the back nine with wedge and putter in hand. McIlroy sustained a muscle problem in the gym on Saturday morning, which left him basically inactive for three days.

• Danish IT supplier Netcompany is new title sponsor

• Team to be renamed and have a new kit

Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Grenadiers cycling team will be renamed and rebranded with a new lead sponsor and kit before the start of this year’s Tour de France in Barcelona on 4 July.

The Guardian understands that while Ratcliffe and the Ineos head of sport, Dave Brailsford, will retain ownership and management of the British team, the new title sponsor will be the Danish IT supplier Netcompany.

UK union cutting contributions as talks with Birmingham council fail to reach resolution over bin strike

One of Britain’s largest trade unions is cutting membership fees to Labour by more than half a million pounds over the Birmingham bin strike.

The move by Unite, one of the three largest unions affiliated to Labour and a key financial donor to it, comes ahead of a conference next year when members will consider whether they want to maintain ties to the party.

Strike in Shukeiri killed schoolgirls, teachers and healthcare workers in latest incident in three-year war

At least 17 people, most of them schoolgirls, were killed on Wednesday when an explosive-laden drone blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces struck a secondary school and a health care centre.

At least 10 people were wounded in the strike in the village of Shukeiri in the White Nile province, according to Dr Musa al-Majeri, director of Douiem hospital, the nearest major medical facility to the village.

Nathan Chasing Horse found guilty on 13 of 21 charges in case that affected Indigenous communities across US

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Nathan Chasing Horse, the actor known for his role in Dances With Wolves, is scheduled to be sentenced next Wednesday after being convicted of sexually abusing Indigenous women and girls, bringing to an end a case that deeply affected Native American communities across the country.

The sentencing comes about a month after a Nevada jury found him guilty on 13 of the 21 charges brought against him. Many of the convictions stemmed from allegations involving a victim who was 14 years old when the abuse began. The jury cleared him of several other sexual assault counts. Chasing Horse has denied all accusations.

Users posing as would-be school shooters find AI tools offer detailed advice on how to perpetrate violence

Popular AI chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks including bombing synagogues and assassinating politicians, with one telling a user posing as a would-be school shooter: “Happy (and safe) shooting!”

Tests of 10 chatbots carried out in the US and Ireland found that, on average, they enabled violence three-quarters of the time, and discouraged it in just 12% of cases. Some chatbots, however, including Anthropic’s Claude and Snapchat’s My AI, persistently refused to help would-be attackers.

Trio held on suspicion of ‘terrorist bombing’ that caused minor damage but no injuries

Three Norwegian brothers have been arrested on suspicion of a “terrorist bombing” at the US embassy in Oslo that caused minor damage at the weekend but no injuries.

The police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference that the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and that police were investigating the motive.

Reaching up to 100ft, these massive piles contain tonnes of salt that keep roads clear – but pose environmental risks

Most mountains take tens of millions of years to form. Toronto’s newest mountain took just days.

Towering atop the crowns of evergreens, it has no skeleton of limestone or granite. There are no spires, cornices or headwalls. It is simply piles upon piles of snow, mixed with a toxic cocktail of road salt, antifreeze, oil, coffee cups and lost keys. It is the final resting place for the forces of nature that have battered the city in recent weeks – and a daunting environmental hazard.

Former US secretary of state says oil shock driven by war in Iran highlights dangers of reliance on fossil fuels

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Countries must seek energy independence through renewable resources and nuclear energy for their national security, and to avoid the “choke points” of fossil fuel supply, the former US secretary of state John Kerry has warned.

The war in Iran has sent oil prices soaring, as refineries and fields have closed down in several Middle Eastern countries and many tankers are stranded in the strait of Hormuz, with economic impacts beginning to be felt around the world.

Analysis has found more than 3,000 mining operations within the most naturally precious areas of the planet, a much bigger footprint than previously thought

Weda Bay is just one example of a global trend that could see the mining industry expand into some of Earth’s last areas of wilderness in search of minerals and materials to feed the global economy.

Analysis produced for the Guardian by a group of academic researchers found more than 3,267 mining operations within key biodiversity areas (KBAs), accounting for nearly 5% of the mining sector’s global footprint. China, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico top the rankings for total surface mining area within key biodiversity areas, the most naturally precious areas of the planet.

Climate change committee finds move to renewable energy would also bring health, economic and security benefits

Achieving the UK’s net zero target by 2050 will cost less than a single oil shock and bring health and economic benefits while insulating the country against future costs, the government’s climate advisers have forecast.

Eliminating the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels by adopting renewable energy and green technologies, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, would be the best and most cost-effective option for the future economy, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) found.

Judges uphold decision to dismiss case against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh for allegedly displaying Hezbollah flag at gig

The Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh will not face a terrorism charge over allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a gig after the high court in London upheld a decision to throw out the case.

Ó hAnnaidh, 28, who performs under the name Mo Chara, had been charged with the offence for allegedly displaying the flag of the proscribed group during a performance at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, north London, in November 2024.

Police say 16-year-old being questioned and teenage girl taken to hospital with minor injuries

A 16-year-old boy has been arrested after a teenage girl was allegedly stabbed at a school in Norwich.

Police were called to the school in Thorpe St Andrew, in the east of the city, at 10.24am after reports that a teenage girl had been stabbed. Emergency services attended the scene, including firefighters and paramedics.

Leaked memo dates from shortly after Labour Senedd members raised alarm devolution is being rolled back

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer warned his cabinet against an “overly deferential” approach to the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish governments, according to a leaked memo.

In the document from December, obtained and published on Tuesday by Plaid Cymru, Starmer said ministers should be prepared to make spending decisions “even when devolved governments may oppose this”. It came shortly after Labour Senedd members wrote to the prime minister over concerns his administration was rolling back devolution powers.

Cheshire police and CPS say they were not told about inquiry into Prof Peter Hindmarsh before he gave evidence at nurse’s trial

The police force behind the prosecution of the former nurse Lucy Letby has said it was not informed by a key expert witness before he gave evidence at her trial that he was under investigation over serious concerns in his medical work.

The Crown Prosecution Service also told the Guardian it was not aware that Prof Peter Hindmarsh was subject to the formal investigation by the hospital that employed him, before his first appearance as a witness on 25 November 2022.

Cybercriminal reportedly accessed a server at the FBI’s New York field office, according to a source and DoJ documents

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A foreign hacker compromised files relating to the FBI’s investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a break-in at the bureau’s New York field office three years ago, according to ​a source familiar with the matter and recently published justice department documents reviewed by Reuters.

The details of who accessed a server at the FBI’s New York field office, ‌including the allegation that a foreign hacker was involved, are being reported here for the first time.

Decision to shield pro-Bolsonaro truck driver sentenced for 8 January 2023 attack could inflame Brazil election politics

Argentina has granted asylum to a Brazilian fugitive convicted for his role in 2023 pro-Bolsonaro riots – a decision that analysts say could reverberate in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election.

A week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, took office, hundreds of people ransacked Brazil’s congress building, presidential palace and supreme court on 8 January 2023, in an attempt to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat. Investigators later concluded the attacks were the culmination of a broader plot aimed at staging a coup.

Man in his 60s from Berne area had been reported missing before incident, say authorities in Fribourg canton

Police investigating a bus fire that killed at least six people in western Switzerland have said they believe it was started by a “marginalised and disturbed” Swiss man onboard who set himself ablaze.

The vehicle, operated by a service that transports passengers and mail, went up in flames on Tuesday evening in Kerzers, a town of about 5,000 people about 12 miles (20km) west of Berne in the canton of Fribourg.

Experts documented murder, torture and disappearances under Nayib Bukele’s policy targeting gangs

The draconian mass incarceration policy of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, may have led to crimes against humanity, according to a new study by legal experts.

By locking up 1.4% of the population without due process, Bukele turned El Salvador from one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its least violent – but at the cost of human rights and the rule of law.

Payment for Inditex founder, the world’s 15 richest person, tops last year’s dividend of €3.1bn

The billionaire founder of Zara is to receive a company record €3.23bn (£2.8bn) dividend this year from the world’s biggest fashion retailer.

Amancio Ortega, who still controls 59% of Spain’s Inditex and whose daughter Marta Ortega Pérez is now chair, will receive half his dividend in May and half in November – as will other shareholders.

Company also launches tools to spot scammers as Thai police arrest 21 people

Meta disabled more than 150,000 accounts and Thai police arrested 21 people in a sweeping international crackdown on south-east Asian criminal scam centers that targeted people around the world, the social media company said on Wednesday.

The operation was led by Thailand’s Royal Thai police anti-cyber scam center, alongside the FBI and the US justice department’s scam center strike force, with Meta investigators acting on intelligence shared in real time by law enforcement.

Company at heart of global maritime cover fends off criticism over cancelled policies and sharp price rises

• Middle East crisis – live updates

There is a price for everything: even the cost of insuring a ship travelling through the strait of Hormuz.

Donald Trump’s proposals for the US to provide political risk insurance for seaborne trade in the Gulf may have given the impression a lack of cover was the reason why traffic through the key waterway has almost halted.

Group lodged application in 2021 but had to overcome accounting issues and reputational concerns

Revolut can finally launch as a fully fledged UK bank after a five-year wait for regulatory approval.

The fintech said it had received the all-clear from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) for a full banking licence, allowing it to offer accounts for retail and business customers.

‘In 1976, Nottingham’s Victorian buildings were being torn down to make way for newer council housing. I’d go to the park and regularly bump into this man. To me, this picture seems very English’

This was taken 50 years ago by my 20-year-old self. I was away from Baltimore for the first time, where I had been at art school while still living at home. My tutor at Maryland Institute College of Art, and his friend, a tutor at Nottingham Trent University, had decided to set up an exchange programme. So I spent one spring semester in Nottingham with no classes to attend: it was strictly photography and strictly on my own, which was kind of new.

I stayed with a young family – I lived on the third floor in their Victorian house. They had a baby boy who turned one when I was there. I have pictures of the birthday. I was really embedded, as they’d say today, with this family. We had dinner together. I remember we made marmalade, using the pips to get the pectin.

Andris Nelsons is to leave the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The shock decision is strongly opposed by the players. What is going on, and what, should a music director’s role be? Plus: why Timothée Chalamet is an eejit

The Boston Symphony Orchestra ending its contract with Andris Nelsons, its music director since 2014, has come as a shock to players and conductor alike. “The BSO and Andris Nelsons were not aligned on future vision,” read a terse statement released last week by orchestra’s board and Chad Smith, its president and chief executive. Nelsons will leave the orchestra after the summer 2027 Tanglewood season. In the glacial world of conductorly handovers and orchestral music programming, where decisions are often taken years in advance (look at the LPO), this feels disconcertingly hasty.

The BSO is one of the US’s most distinguished and celebrated of orchestras, one of the so-called “Big Five”. Nelsons won two Grammys with the Boston Symphony players just last month (for Messiaen and Shostakovich), so why has the board decided to end the relationship? Is this a board v players and management spat? There’s no suggestion of any misconduct or breach of contract; perhaps the face-value interpretation is the right one: artistic differences over the orchestra’s “future vision”.

The third big screen adaptation of the BookTok-loved author’s novels is ludicrously plotted yet slickly made and easily consumed

Nearly two years on, it seems we’re still futilely chasing the high of summer 2024. Charli xcx’s hedonistic Brat-era mockumentary just flopped on the big screen. Espresso still plays at the grocery store but doesn’t hit the same. Kamala Harris is maybe considering a run for something. And the movie It Ends With Us, the glossy adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel that became a somewhat surprise late-summer blockbuster, refuses to die.

That film, directed by Justin Baldoni and starring Blake Lively, should have been a Hollywood success story: a deceptively sharp melodrama that proved that frankly sentimental, female-led, 90s-style studio fare could still draw audiences to cinemas, that schlocky BookTok material need not necessarily beget schlocky movies and that Lively could appeal to the Target demographic. Nevertheless, it cast a dark shadow. The legal mudslinging over Baldoni’s alleged sexual harassment on set has tainted primarily her reputation, and extinguished any box office glow. (Lively v Baldoni – her case, not his, as the latter was dismissed – will go to trial in May.) And then there’s the inevitable pipeline of follow-ups with near-guaranteed diminishing returns, the first of which, a dreadful grief/love quadrangle/YA mess called Regretting You, threatened to kill the buzz for CoHo adaptations entirely last October.

Glen Powell tries his best as a desperate serial killer in this update of Kind Hearts and Coronets, but it’s a mere pretender to the original’s throne

Remaking Robert Hamer’s 1949 British classic Kind Hearts and Coronets – the greatest Ealing Studios comedy and, in my own fevered opinion, the greatest film of all time – needs the chutzpah of Cecilia Giménez, the amateur Spanish artist who “restored” a painting of Christ and left him looking like a gibbon. This remake isn’t actually quite as gibbony as it could have been. But as with the Coen Brothers’ uneasy version of Ealing’s The Ladykillers, or indeed Todd Phillips’ heavy-handed remake of Hamer’s School for Scoundrels, the question is: why do it at all, especially when the new American setting means losing the all-important element of class-consciousness and class shame?

The original starred Dennis Price as Louis, an Edwardian draper’s assistant who is distant heir to a dukedom, and who is living in genteel poverty because his late mother was cruelly rejected by her snobbish family for marrying beneath her – for love, in fact. Louis vengefully sets out to murder all the family members that stand between him and the coronet – and all of them are expertly played by Alec Guinness, a Fregoli nightmare in which all Louis’s enemies are the same entitled monster. Joan Greenwood plays Sibella, the cynical minx whose snobbish cruelties trigger Louis’s plan, and Valerie Hobson is Edith, the refined widow of one of his victims with whom he falls in love.

It may not be in pole position, but Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski’s sleek, technically inventive ode to motor racing definitely qualifies for the Academy podium

Could, should, would F1 the Movie win the best picture Oscar? Well, we have to be realistic here: F1 is currently a massive outsider, at 200-1 along with The Secret Agent, which has no chance either but for very different reasons. It’s not hard to see why: this is a swaggeringly mainstream film, where tech and branding dwarf the human input, with the film itself acting as a front-end battering ram for a sports organisation desperate to break into the promised land of the US auto racing circuit. (I mean it’s right there in the title.) So even the most reactionary, conservative Academy voter is going to find it hard to mark F1 with their tick. So no, I don’t think it could win.

That’s not to say F1 doesn’t have quite a bit going for it. The Oscars, as we know, have historically had a problem with so-called “popular” films; Oppenheimer, in 2024, was the first best picture winner in two decades to finish in the Top 10 box office of the year. Whether or not that is a reflection of Hollywood itself, which since the mid-00s has concentrated its money and marketing into increasingly elaborate FX films to the detriment of drama and performance, is a question expanded on endlessly elsewhere. Suffice to say, F1 is definitely in that league, though not actually Top 10 (14th in the North American list for 2025); its ownership by Apple TV+ may have complicated things, denting its impact as a movie theatre spectacle.

Kei Ishikawa’s take on Ishiguro’s first published work is frustrating and bland, undermining its fascinating characters’ emotional truths

Kazuo Ishiguro has long been a subtle and potent figure in the movies, with his distinctively Anglo-Japanese melancholy. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s adaptation of The Remains of the Day for director James Ivory was a heart-rending study in regret; Alex Garland and Mark Romanek’s treatment of science-fiction novel Never Let Me Go was an excursion into strangeness and sadness and, as a screenwriter himself, Ishiguro’s script for Living, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, was a wonderful transformation.

But A Pale View of Hills, adapted by Japanese writer-director Kei Ishikawa from Ishiguro’s 1982 debut novel, is somehow frustrating and disappointing. It is a bland, soggy film whose contrived and anticlimactic surprise ending is not delivered with a clear satisfying twist and, for me, undermines our expectations of what we thought we would be told about the emotional truth of the main character and her life story.

This month, Ella Langley and Megan Moroney became the first pair of women in country music to top both the US albums and singles charts

Country radio still has a gender parity problem. That hasn’t stopped Ella Langley and Megan Moroney from achieving historic success. Last week, Langley and Moroney became the first two women in country music ever to top the all-genre Billboard 200 and Hot 100 charts simultaneously. Langley’s Choosin’ Texas unseated Taylor Swift’s Opalite to claim its second non-consecutive week atop the singles chart, while Moroney’s album Cloud 9 reached number one thanks to Target exclusive physical editions and strong streaming numbers.

“These aren’t flukes or one-off viral hits,” said Leslie Fram, co-founder and CEO of FEMco, a Nashville-based consulting collective. “Megan Moroney built her base through relentless touring and social buzz. Ella Langley’s incredible song has real staying power and even non-country crossover appeal.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, London
Peter Whelan conducted a performance of Bach’s oratorio that was full of driving cinematic excitement and touching humanity

Some believe that the narrator of Bach’s St John Passion – the tenor who sings the Evangelist, the voice of the gospel-writer himself – is telling the story as one who witnessed the events firsthand; some say that’s impossible. But the urgency that the conductor Peter Whelan drew from the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in this performance was certainly something to reinforce the idea.

Perhaps drawing on his operatic experience, Whelan’s feel for the music’s drama was evident from the opening moments, with the violins digging deep into their turbulent, restless accompaniment. The scene having been set, when this music returned later in the same movement it was more reserved, which built the tension even further. This was typical of a performance that played up the almost cinematic aspects of the work – the way in which Bach takes us directly into the midst of the courtroom and then cuts away for a moment of contemplation in an aria or chorale.

Championed by the BBC’s John Peel and signed to Rough Trade, the band were punk when that meant DIY, psychedelia and prog as well as screaming chords. What’s more, they loved Pink Floyd …

Swell Maps were a punk band, but only because that word meant something different when they started making records in 1977. It didn’t mean bands called Knuckleheadz or Gimp Fist; it meant unfettered freedom, curiosity rather than rage. Theirs was a music that wandered off in unexpected directions, where songs barely hung together before falling apart, punctuated by peculiar sounds made by whatever happened to be around. It was psychedelia and it was prog and it was krautrock, every bit as much as it was punk. Most of all, it was DIY.

So Swell Maps’ descendants weren’t the kind to get sleeve tattoos and don leather. They, like Swell Maps, were nerds. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore described them as “part of my upbringing”. Stephen Malkmus noted that Pavement formed, more or less, as a tribute to Swell Maps and their kindred spirits Desperate Bicycles. Now add all the bands who have tried or still try to sound like Pavement or Sonic Youth, bands who may never have heard of Swell Maps. That’s how you map the scope of their influence.

The Bavarian band known for a love of tinkering embraced a fresh ethos, ditching remote collaboration for a collective recording done in a week

‘It all went so fast,” Markus Acher says. “We’ve never been this fast at making a record.” He is sitting at the far end of a sofa in the Notwist’s Munich studio. On the other end is his brother Micha Acher; next to them, Cico Beck, who joined the band in 2014, balances on a stool. For a group known for meticulous studio craft, speed is an unfamiliar sensation. For most of their career, the Notwist have worked slowly, layering, revising, rethinking, as if wary of committing too soon to anything at all.

Formed in 1989 in the Bavarian town of Weilheim, the Notwist began as a heavy metal trio before evolving, over the next decade, into one of Germany’s most distinctive bands. Their breakthrough album, Neon Golden (2002), married indie songwriting to electronic textures, shaped largely by then-member Martin Gretschmann, also known as Console or Acid Pauli, in a way that felt inward-looking and strangely expansive. Its influence travelled far beyond Germany, securing the band a place in the canon of early-2000s indie experimentalism. Pitchfork named Neon Golden one of the best albums of the 2000s.

The philosopher offers a measured and reasonable argument against assisted dying

In this admirably clear and cogent book, the philosopher Kathleen Stock sets out the case against state-sanctioned assisted dying. Her immediate objection is to the end of life bill currently before the House of Lords, but her opposition extends to the principle in general. This is a polemic, but a polite one. Stock says she hopes that by the end of it we will share her objection to the ‘‘institutionalisation of death”.

It is not a popular place to start. Polls over the past few years consistently show that around three-quarters of Britons are in favour of assisted dying for terminally ill people. But Stock has never been afraid of swimming upstream. In 2021, she resigned from the University of Sussex following protests by some staff and students over her views, set out in the book Material Girls, that sex is binary and immutable and that this, rather than gender identity, should be the basis of laws to protect women.

From Peter Sellers dressing like a Nazi, to having to manage her mother Judy Garland’s addiction, jaws will drop at Minnelli’s anecdotes

Tuesday marks the publication of Kids, Wait Til You Hear This!, the enormously entertaining memoir by Liza Minnelli, and that title – gossipy, confiding and with no small measure of Broadway panache – sets the tone from the off.

As well as coming across as kind and politically aware, Minnelli is quite heroically unburdened by tact, and as she sketches her life from gilded Hollywood to scrappy New York and on through addiction, ill health and multiple marriages, everyone – most of all herself – is assessed with bracing honesty.

Lady Gaga and David Gest are among those who get ferocious dressings-down in this brutally candid memoir

Liza Minnelli’s father, the film director Vincente Minnelli, used to joke that his daughter’s career in show business was preordained. She was certainly familiar with the dark side of the industry from a young age through her mother Judy Garland, who was on the MGM payroll aged 13, before shooting to fame as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Garland was famously depressive and addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol. When her daughter was six, she shut herself in the bathroom and made the first of many suicide attempts. Minnelli soon learned to monitor her mother and hide her pill bottles when she saw darkness descending. By 13, she was “my mother’s caretaker – a nurse, a doctor, pharmacologist and psychiatrist rolled into one … Just as the MGM studio system robbed Mama of her childhood, she robbed me of mine.”

In her memoir, Minnelli – who turns 80 this month – recounts how she broke free from her dysfunctional family at 16 and moved to New York to make it as a singer and actor. Little surprise, given her parentage, that her ascent was swift. “I was the original nepo baby,” she observes, gleefully. But if show business was in her DNA, so was addiction. In her 20s she became hooked on Valium, diet pills, cocaine and alcohol. Later, as her career faltered and her private life imploded, her sister Lorna staged an intervention and got her into the first of many rehab programmes.

A teenage girl dreams of escaping her controlling father, in this sparkling coming-of-age romp haunted by trauma

Alex Kadis establishes a jaunty tone from the very first pages of her debut about Connie Costa, a music-loving teenager stuck at home in east London in the mid-1970s, longing to break free from her smothering Greek Cypriot extended family, and in particular her restrictive father. Dubbing him “the fat murderer”, she has dreamed endlessly about killing him ever since the car accident a year before that took the lives of her mother and younger brothers. Lively, opinionated, and slightly chubby in her groovy 70s gear, Connie has two imaginary friends in the form of Marc Bolan and “bloody David Bowie”, with whom she communes via the posters on her bedroom wall. Marc she adores, but Bowie can be a bit snide, as well as having dubious taste in fashion.

She’s starting to develop a keen interest in the male trouser region (Marc’s is placed at eye level). In the case of her father’s friend, Peter Pervy Roy, who wears “trousers so eye-wateringly tight that they squashed his knob and bollocks into a weird flat patty”, actual proximity can be off-putting. Far more appetising is her childhood friend Vas, similarly suffering from growing up while Greek. Vas displays his willy on demand: “It’s definitely getting bigger.” Everyone else assumes he’s gay because he reads poetry.

The revival of this 90s favourite is a retro-futuristic fever dream that is first incomprehensible, then thrillingly evocative. Plus, Donald Glover’s Yoshi debut

Back in the mid-1990s, when I was a staff writer for Edge magazine, Marathon was our multiplayer shooter of choice. We all worked on Apple Macs, not PCs, so Bungie’s sci-fi opus was one of the only networked shooters we could all play together. At the end of every day, staff from magazines around the company loaded it up and played for hours (usually with Chemical Brothers or Orbital blasting from the stereo). This was the era in which video games discovered club culture – Sony employed the legendary Sheffield studio the Designers Republic to create its box art and licensed the latest dance tunes for its marketing and game soundtracks. Western developers swooned over cyberpunk anime, newly available thanks to video distributors such as Viz Media and Manga Entertainment, and the internet was emerging as a weird, wild global meeting place. It felt, for a while, as if we were living in a William Gibson novel.

I’m reminded of these things while playing the new version of Marathon, released this week by Bungie and heavily inspired by 1990s futurism. It’s now an online sci-fi extraction shooter in which players beam down to the planet Tau Ceti IV to scavenge for loot, carry out missions and potentially blast each other in the process. Its closest rival is Arc Raiders, which makes a similar use of stylised retro-futurism. In a recent Twitter exchange, Bungie’s global franchise director, Philip Asher, namechecked Sony’s Wipeout game, its Mental Wealth ads for PlayStation and its translucent Dual Shock controllers as inspirations.

PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5; Tribute Games Inc
A treat for nostalgia fans and completists, but there’s little new in this rehashing of a classic that feels like an add-on rather than a fully fledged adventure

It’s 20XX, and unrepentant slacker Scott Pilgrim and his friends are revelling in the throes of young adulthood. They’re skint, but in a cool way that’s unrecognisable today (not least because nobody can afford to live near downtown Toronto). For many readers, the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels were a cultural touchpoint, a story about emotional immaturity, growing as a person and ultimately defeating youthful arrogance. Having cemented itself as a cult classic with an Edgar Wright movie, a 2010 tie-in game and a Netflix miniseries, it’s now back in the form of a raucous action-adventure game, Scott Pilgrim EX.

This is a homecoming of sorts for developer Tribute Games, which was formed by ex-Ubisoft employees who worked on the 2010 Scott Pilgrim game. Having established themselves as beat ’em up revivalists with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion, the team has stepped up for another crack at this essential coming-of-age tale. Scott Pilgrim EX feels like a passion project, so they have the Powers of Love and Understanding on their side.

Nintendo Switch 2; Game Freak/Omega Force/Nintendo
Work together with a bunch of lovable Pokémon to restore a long-abandoned town in this novel, absorbing game that’s quite unlike others in the series

Bear with me here: Pokémon has always had an environmentalist subtext. As you wander its verdant, creature-filled worlds, collecting species like an acquisitive David Attenborough, you are constantly shown that people and Pokémon should live in harmony. The bad guys in these stories, from Team Rocket to Bill Nighy in the Detective Pikachu film, are always the ones who want to abuse these creatures for personal gain. Otherwise you are shown that people must have respect for Pokémon; both the critters you catch and the ones that exist in the wild. There is a delicate independency between humans and the natural world.

In this new spin-off from the series, we see what happens when there are no humans around. You, a shapeshifting blob of jelly called Ditto, awaken in a half-demolished wasteland that was once, presumably, a lively town. There are some other Pokémon around, confused and lonely, and together you work to restore the place and make it beautiful again. Taking the uncanny humanoid form of your half-remembered former trainer, you learn useful talents from the Pokémon around you: how to water parched grass, dig up weeds and grow flowers, punch rocks until they crumble to clear all the old paths.

Pokémon Pokopia is out 5 March; £59.99

From the ghostly Shutter Story to road trip adventure Outbound and strategy puzzler Titanium Court, here are the titles we enjoyed the most from this year’s Steam Next Fest showcase

These days, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that every new indie game is either a co-op extraction shooter or a roguelike deck-builder – fortunately that’s not quite the case. Each February, the week-long Steam Next Fest is a vast and varied showcase of forthcoming titles, all with downloadable demos, and only a minority of them adhere to those dominant genres. It’s a lovely chance to dig into the sometimes bewildering Steam store and pick out interesting treats – and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Here are five of my favourites.

Displayed in a redesigned space, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert’s expansive collection of decorative items is not only gorgeous, at last it boldly tackles the question of where these valuables came from

We periodically hear when a masterpiece is “saved for the nation”, usually when a museum is obliged to raise eye-watering sums to prevent the export or sale of an artwork deemed of national significance. Museums also occasionally purchase at auction for the same purpose. They are, however, swimming in a pool among the superwealthy, with many news-making record sales subsequently disappearing into someone’s private yacht or bathroom.

It is this marketplace that makes it a momentous occasion when an entire private collection is bequeathed to the nation, usually upon the benefactors’ death. From the Wallace Collection in the 19th century to the 2025 acquisition of the Schroder treasure by the Holburne museum in Bath, museums are willing custodians of collections of such quality as can only be acquired through capital vastly exceeding their own. How they choose to present that gift is a curatorial issue in itself.

Serpentine North, London
The artist has stitched together 100 iPad paintings into a vast digital frieze – but the results risk undermining the pleasure in simple beauty which was his great gift to British art

David Hockney reassured postwar Britain that it was OK to take pleasure in beauty and freedom. Emerging in the late 1950s, when the energy released by the artistic revolutions of half a century earlier had dissipated into dull academicism or tiresome machismo, his unabashed celebration of conventional forms of beauty revitalised modern painting. These coolly sentimental double portraits and domestic scenes celebrated the liberated (if not uncomplicated) lifestyles made possible by the economic and social reforms of the period, without the angst or irony afflicting the work of those peers for whom these changes were more ambivalent. (If you were working-class and gay, after all, what wasn’t to like?)

To call Hockney a gifted sentimentalist is no backhanded compliment. In this he resembles Andy Warhol who, for all that he is painted as some arch manipulator, was distinguished by the purity of his love for the fruits of the capitalist US and his genius for communicating that love to those who shared it. Hockney’s work, for a decade after about 1963, should likewise be treasured for disproving the lie (maintained by those who prefer to read about paintings than look at them) that great art must be difficult to comprehend, despise the everyday world, and remain inaccessible to a wider public.

Live theatre, Newcastle
When Maeve becomes a sexagenarian she rethinks her identity – and her 40-year marriage – in this surprisingly breezy drama

You can imagine a Victorian melodrama in which a respectable wife causes consternation by eloping with a woman. It would have provocative themes about feminism, fulfilment and hypocrisy. The Lord Chamberlain would almost certainly ban it.

Fast forward to Tynemouth, 2021, and the same story has no such clout. On her 60th birthday, Maeve (Phillippa Wilson) is reminded of her first kiss – not with the amiable Jocka (Dave Johns), her husband of nearly 40 years, but with the long lost Helen (Charlie Hardwick, appearing on screen). The memory is the jolt Maeve needs to upturn everything and pursue her true sexual identity.

At Live theatre, Newcastle, until 21 March

Leeds Grand theatre
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s choreography keeps a tight hold on the narrative and the erotically charged pas de deux between the lovers packs real heat

Northern Ballet’s new show is both progressive and conventional. Progressive because this could be the first lesbian love story in a major ballet. It is based on the life of Anne Lister, the 19th-century Yorkshire landowner also known as Gentleman Jack. Conventional because, in terms of form, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa keeps a tight handle on narrative and plays into what ballet dancers can do – the long arabesques and fluency of motion. It’s an accessible, stylish production that happens to put the love between two women (three, actually) centre stage.

Gemma Coutts plays Lister in top hat, frock coat and flat ballet shoes. Like the choreography, she is strong and straightforward. She has a cocky motif, a flick of the hip and the leg, that brims with self-confidence. She raps her cane on the floor and men fall in line. But we also see her romantic side. There’s an erotically charged pas de deux on a dining table with her great love Mariana (Saeka Shirai). It’s not X-rated but has real heat and tenderness and desire. Lister holds up the bell she uses for bossing her staff around and weaves it around Mariana’s body without touching her: Mariana shivers. She brushes it down Mariana’s spine. This is some of the sexiest choreography I’ve seen in a while.

The director’s first play – an 1830s ‘rambunctious comedy of deception and disguise’ – is planned for early 2027 opening in London

Since Quentin Tarantino announced last year that he had written his first play, it has remained as mysterious as the contents of Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction. But on Wednesday it was announced that the play, which Tarantino will also direct in London, is to be a “rambunctious comedy of deception and disguise” set in 1830s Europe.

According to publicity material, The Popinjay Cavalier is inspired by the “swashbuckling epics of stage and screen” and is a “sweeping celebration of theatre and its heightened romance, told with Tarantino’s signature style and unmistakable wit”. Rumours recently circulated that the play would be a “classic British trouser-dropping” farce. The Popinjay Cavalier, presented by Sonia Friedman Productions and Sony Pictures Entertainment, will be developed this year with a planned opening date of early 2027 in a West End theatre yet to be announced.

The Michigan band satirically adopt Muslim stereotypes in their songs, pushing back against post-9/11 hate. As their incendiary debut is reissued, they explain their ‘evil’ music

‘I’m the motherfucker who took down the towers,” screams Prostitute’s Moe Kazra on All Hail, opening their nightmarish, theatrical debut album Attempted Martyr. Over crushing fusions of industrial punk with elements of Middle Eastern, African and east Asian music, the band explores the vilification of Arabs in a post-9/11 US by inhabiting vicious characterisations – ones levelled at their Arab-majority community in Dearborn, Michigan. “A lot of Arabs in the area are coming to us and being like ‘that was very potent’, or ‘that was beautiful’. I didn’t really expect that,” says Kazra, who is Lebanese American. “The music is evil.”

The album’s lyric sheet, written by Kazra and drummer Andrew Kaster who join me on a call, is a flurry of violent fantasies, paranoid ramblings and literary references ranging from The Arabian Nights to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Written when they formed in 2020 but only self-released in late 2024, it became a sleeper hit with punk fans. Now signed to Mute, which will reissue the record this week, they are among the most exciting, unorthodox breakthroughs in recent American rock.

After starting out as a child actor, the US artist found music. Now co-writing with Phoebe Bridgers, Haim and Kim Deal, her dogged, DIY career has been powered by conviction

The title of Morgan Nagler’s solo debut, I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It, speaks to the sort of wisdom you can only accrue after several decades in the game, the kind that compels you to put your name to an album for the first time at the age of 47. But Nagler’s MO was there from day one, as an 11-year-old child actor going for a bit part as a popular girl on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. “I showed up and there were 200 girls there,” says Nagler. “I remember thinking, I’m never gonna get this. So I decided to read the lines as a super-nerd.” The producers rewrote the part and hired her to kiss Carlton.

Today, Nagler lives in the same neighbourhood as Will Smith himself – not Bel-Air but a semi-rustic enclave of Malibu, California, albeit in the guesthouse of her friends’ place rather than a celeb mansion. She started acting around age five, after her family moved from rural Oregon to California. She did it for two decades, taking parts in shows including Frasier, Star Trek and Clueless. But, at 26, Nagler jacked it all in to pursue music after realising how fulfilled she was playing guitar in her trailer between takes. Some people told her she was making a mistake, but she knew otherwise. Music, says Nagler, “is the only thing that makes me feel connected in any meaningful way. For me, that’s way more important than comfort or stability. I’ve always had this blind faith.”

I used to hide away in all-black sport-core until I allowed myself to wear space-age silver dresses or a large-collared, lemony faux-fur coat

Maybe adolescence wasn’t the ideal time to receive my mother’s advice to wear an array of colours. What better way to express how you feel on any given day, and convey that mood to the world, she would say. It was important to the eye, to the soul.

It really isn’t the best advice to give any teenager, especially a sulky one who’s hoping to disappear in baggy, all-black sport-core. I’d cringe when she would try to push big, loud colours on me on shopping trips, talking in what I thought was mumbo jumbo about mood-lifting lilacs, energising reds and skin-warming oranges.

Corporate employees said Amazon’s race to roll out AI is leading to surveillance, slop and ‘more work for everyone’.

When Dina, a software developer based in New York, joined Amazon two years ago, her job was to write code. Now, it’s mostly fixing what artificial intelligence breaks.

The internal AI tool she’s expected to use, called Kiro, frequently hallucinates and generates flawed code, she says. Then she has to dig through and correct the sloppy code it creates, or just revert all changes and start again. She says it feels like “trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused”.

Whether you’re looking for memory foam, wool, cooling or firm, we reveal the toppers we rate – and whether they can really rescue a bad mattress

• The best mattresses: sleep better with our seven rigorously tested picks

A mattress topper is like a slice of cheese in a burger: not strictly necessary, but potentially transformative, especially if your bed has all the cosiness of stale bread. Strap a comfy topper on to a hard mattress, and it could transform the quality of your sleep at significantly less cost than a new mattress.

That’s the promise, anyway. In my neverending quest for a decent night’s kip, I slept on nine bestselling toppers – not all at once, Princess and the Pea style, but for a few nights, each on top of a firm mattress. I was surprised to find so many topper types available, from thick slabs of memory foam to airy cloudbanks of hollowfibre, with one even containing springs.

Best mattress topper overall:
Simba Hybrid Topper (double)

Best budget mattress topper:
Silentnight Airmax 1000 (double)

Now’s the perfect time to sort your outdoor space, and we’ve got the whole thing covered with our roundup of the best online nurseries. Plus, gardening pros reveal their go-to kit

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With the first signs of spring and that tantalising sense of sap rising, it’s time to venture into the garden. If it’s looking a mess, then don’t despair: these days the received wisdom is to let it stay scruffy over the winter, providing a much-needed habitat for all kinds of wildlife. So the good news is that you’ve been doing your bit, however unwittingly.

Now, though, it’s time to tidy up dead leaves, straggly growth and all those precocious weeds that are trying to get a head start. And if 2026 is the year that you want to up your gardening game – whether that’s planning a new border, or just plugging some gaps – you might be thinking about buying some new plants. We’re here to help.

The best LED face masks, tested

The best Mother’s Day gifts for mums, grannies, aunties and friends

‘I’m going to be very cautious about buying gnocchi from now on’: the best (and worst) supermarket gnocchi, tasted and rated

The best pillows for every type of sleeper, tested

Whether it’s merino socks, martini glasses or sustainable wool blankets, we’ve handpicked 82 thoughtful gift ideas to make the mother figure in your life feel truly special

• The best flower delivery for every budget

Not everyone is lucky enough to have their mum around, or have a good relationship with them, but Mother’s Day can be for any mother figure in your life – from grannies to aunts to mentors to family friends.

But how can you show your appreciation? For Mother’s Day (15 March), a handmade card and a hug are probably top of most people’s lists. If they don’t like physical gifts, a day out together, like a long walk, spa trip or afternoon tea, could be a winner – and we’ve suggested a few options below.

Whether you want bulbs or bare roots, perennials or houseplants, we asked experts for the online nurseries they trust for reliable, beautiful greenery

• The best secateurs, tested

As winter turns to spring and the days warm and lengthen, we’re so keen to get out in the garden, do some work, and also go shopping for lovely new plants.

It’s great to get acquainted with your local garden centre to see what’s on offer, but nurseries with an online presence can be a horticultural lifeline if you don’t have a good one nearby, or you’re (or want to be) car-free. Online stores often provide a wider range of inspiring plants because they have more growing space or specialise in particular types of plant, such as shade lovers or hellebores, enabling you to track down the perfect plant for your space.

A tasty and easy way to give a small bunch of drooping herbs a new lease of life

Compound butter is simply butter that’s been mixed with flavourings, both sweet and savoury, and is a tasty and easy way to give a small bunch of tired herbs new life. It can be melted over vegetables, stirred through pasta, grains or pulses, basted over meat or fish, spread on toast, or frozen in slices to use a little at a time. Think of this less as a recipe and more as a framework: taste as you go and decide whether you want something bold and explosive or a more gentle experience.

A springy riff on leek-and-potato soup and a flavour-fuelled batch of finger-licking wings

March is a tricky pin in the seasonal calendar, with energising winter citrus fading and spring’s stars yet to emerge. It’s a time when I find pleasure in reappraising ingredients that are routinely overlooked. Spring onions, say, which are often considered a garnish, but which are good for so much more. Their contrasting colourway is a clue to their varying intensity, with the white roots holding pungency and the greens more akin to especially bolshie chives. Today’s recipes harness the properties of both, bridging the gap between the current need for comfort and the warmer weather ahead.

My goal: a perfect 10 from Rate My Chives, the ‘number one authority on chives worldwide’. Why is this so hard?

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Chopping chives, I notice my weak wrists for the first time. My knife is connected to my hand which is connected to my wrist, which is flopping about like an overcooked piece of asparagus.

“You’ve got to keep them more sturdy,” says chef Trisha Greentree. “Lock in that line.”

High heat and low moisture are key to avoiding a soggy or stuck-to-the-pan mess

When I fry fish, the skin never goes crisp, and instead either sticks, rips or goes limp. What am I doing wrong?
Emily, by email
“The secret to perfectly crisp fish skin is heat,” says Mitch Tonks, founder of Rockfish in south-west England. Well, heat plus a little bit of prep. Fish are, of course, moist things, and moisture is the enemy in the quest for that golden-brown crust, so the first thing Emily is going to need to do is dry that skin out. “If the fish has any moisture on it, it will create steam while it’s being cooked, which, in turn, will make the skin go soggy and inedible, rather than crisp and delicious,” says British fish guru Nathan Outlaw, whose latest book, On Fish: A Seafood Handbook, is published next month. And the best way to do that, Outlaw says, is to wipe and dab the skin with some kitchen paper or a clean tea towel.

Rick Toogood, head chef and co-founder of Prawn on the Lawn in London and Padstow, Cornwall, and Jack Stein, chef director of Rick Stein Restaurants, are simpatico, but Outlaw then goes that one step farther: “Take a second piece of kitchen paper [or another clean tea towel], wrap up the fish in it and leave for a couple of minutes,” he says. “This allows any remaining moisture to be absorbed.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

It took almost a year of practice and then I was too embarrassed to show off my talent. But finally, during a stage performance, I elevated a solitary brow and the crowd went wild

When I was about 10, my mother mentioned something to me about the advantage of being able to raise one eyebrow. I can’t remember quite how she put it – I think she described it as an actor’s trick, a useful skill for conveying inner thoughts.

We both spent a couple of minutes trying to lift one eyebrow without the other following it. Neither of us could manage it. It was harder than Mr Spock made it look, and possibly not so much an acting skill as a genetic predisposition, like being able to roll your tongue.

Pessimism can be a form of self-protection, so it might be helpful to reflect on where this pattern started

I am a 38-year-old woman with three kids and a husband. I often find myself expecting people to disappoint me, and make appointments anticipating that they will back out at the last minute. I then start to play the role of the victim, the friend who has been let down, and this whole narrative begins in my head.

I may invite a friend to something, but then come up with all the reasons why the thing is stupid and they wouldn’t want to come. I downplay it, saying: “Oh, it’s nothing fun”, and “Don’t worry if you can’t come”, even though I know I would have a great time.

I was leaving behind my friends and family and contending with the loss of my beloved dad. When I boarded, I really fell apart

• Read more in the Kindness of strangers series

A long-haul flight in economy is never an appealing prospect but this one felt especially tough. I was leaving California after the death of my father to return to Australia, where I live. I was exhausted, emotional and prone to bursting into tears. It was always hard leaving my birthplace, friends and family behind, and this time I was also contending with the loss of my beloved dad.

I was desperately hoping I might have a spare seat next to me on the plane so I could get some sleep, or at least a little privacy. There would be no such luck. When I checked in, the desk staff told me the flight was completely full; worse still, I was in the very last row. Mine was the aisle seat, right beside the toilet and the galley – the busiest, most public place on the plane, when what I really needed was peace.

Psychologist Leanne ten Brinke has spent decades studying toxic personality traits. What are the red flags to look out for among workmates, politicians and potential partners?

Coming face to face with a probable psychopath was enough to make Dr Leanne ten Brinke rethink her career choices. Early in her 20s, while studying forensic psychology in Halifax, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, Ten Brinke was volunteering at a parole office, which would hold weekly group meetings for released sex offenders. “Most of the men showed contrition,” says Ten Brinke. “They really seemed to recognise the damage that they had done.” Except for one. The treatment programme seemed “like a game to him”, she says. One week, in a discussion about the impact their crimes had on victims, this rapist stared at Ten Brinke and, smiling slightly, started to say how much his victim looked like her, “and how I was ‘his type’. Clearly he was trying to scare me, and he did.”

It put her off a career working with convicted criminals, but she remained fascinated with “dark personalities” – psychopathy, mainly, but also narcissism, machiavellianism (manipulating and exploiting others) and sadism. From politics to business to the media, it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of people to study. There were selfish, callous, impulsive and manipulative people everywhere, often presenting as gregarious and charming. “It started to occur to me that these traits aren’t just confined to an underworld. These traits appear in all aspects of our lives,” she says.

From railcards to route tweaks, here’s how to stop your daily train or car journey breaking the bank

• Revealed: new affordable commuter hotspots in Great Britain

• Homes for sale in new commuter hotspots in England – in pictures

For regular rail travellers, season tickets remain one of the biggest cost savers. A weekly, monthly or annual season ticket will work out much cheaper than paying daily fares, especially if you commute most days.

Faster laptop-level power, rapid wifi and 5G, plus much-improved multitasking make the middle iPad highly capable beyond just watching TV

The latest iPad Air is faster in almost all facets, packing not just a processor upgrade but improvements to most of the internal bits that make the tablet work, providing laptop-grade power in a skinny, adaptable touchscreen device.

The new iPad Air M4 costs from the same £599 (€649/$599/A$999) as the outgoing M3 model from last year and again comes in two sizes. One with an 11in screen, which is the best size for most people and a more expensive 13in screen version, which is ideal if you want a second TV or a laptop replacement.

Screen: 11in or 13in Liquid Retina display (264ppi)

Processor: Apple M4 (8-core CPU/9-core GPU)

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iPadOS 26.3

Camera: 12MP rear, 12MP centre stage

Connectivity: Wifi 7, 5G (eSim-only), Bluetooth 6, USB-C (USB3), Touch ID, Smart Connecter

Dimensions: 247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1mm or 280.6 x 214.9 x 6.1mm

Weight: 464g or 616g

Airline has refused refund after our flight was diverted because of bad weather and we were left on the plane for six hours

I was on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Dublin that took off during Storm Amy in October last year. It was unable to land at Dublin after two abortive attempts and was diverted to Manchester, where we sat on the plane for six hours, with no complimentary refreshments, before being unceremoniously ejected at nearly midnight.

We were told Ryanair staff would organise taxis and hotels, but no crew disembarked with us, and the terminal was deserted.

It’s a grim time to be in your 20s, no doubt, but don’t blame it all on older people: being chopped up into ever smaller rivalries only serves the market

Intergenerational relations, or lack of them, is a subject I’ve been thinking about, on and off, since the financial crisis. I’ve read up on it, too – things such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report on intergenerational earnings mobility, which is wonky but full of fascinating information which needs some parsing. (Example: “While the educational attainment of ethnic minorities growing up in families eligible for free school meals is often higher than that of their white majority peers, their earnings outcomes show no such advantage.” Why not?) Another good source of data is the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s (OBR) report on intergenerational fairness – which, interestingly, is about the bluntest statement of fiscal unfairness that you can find. The OBR makes the point that “a current new-born baby would make an average net discounted contribution to the exchequer of £68,400 over its life-time, whilst future generations would have to contribute £159,700”. In plain English, people’s lifetime contribution to the state is going to double. That number is from 2011, and will definitely have got worse. In 2019, the House of Lords published a report on “Tackling intergenerational unfairness”, which doesn’t even bother pretending that the problem doesn’t exist. Mind you, not everyone agrees. A 2023 report from Imperial College Business School argues “there is more solidarity between generations than the ‘Millennials versus Boomers’ narrative would suggest”.

So this is definitely a question you can address through data – though there is a risk that you can use numbers to cherrypick your way to a conclusion you already held in advance. The other way of thinking about it is through lived experience. Not necessarily just your own. I often find myself thinking about the range of experiences and expectations in my own family, going no further than one generation back and one generation forward. I’m on the cusp between boomers and generation X. My children, both in their 20s, are firmly in generation Z. My parents were born in the 20s, in the west of Ireland and in South Africa. Between us, it’s a wildly different set of life stories, and chucking it into the capacious carpet bag labelled “generational differences” seems to me to be a violent oversimplification.

Since the US has no federal mandate for hearing aid coverage, I found myself in a quandary – I couldn’t communicate with the hearing or the deaf

At the end of my second American Sign Language (ASL) class, during which I had fingerspelled my name Deborah as “F-E-B-O-R-A-H”, I thought it prudent to type a question into my Notes app rather than trying to fingerspell it. “How do I sign, ‘I’m hearing impaired?’” I wrote, showing the typed sentence to my teacher, Courtney Rodriguez. Then I pointed to one of my hearing aids.

Sixty percent of ASL, Courtney had just taught us, consists of non-manual markers, meaning most of the communication in ASL comes from facial expressions. Puffed cheeks, for example, indicates something big. Pursed lips means small. From the puffed cheeks and pained look on my deaf teacher’s face, I could sense I had hit a big nerve.

Researchers working to unpick whether daily multivitamin results in people staying healthier as they age

Taking a multivitamin every day for two years appears to slow some markers of biological ageing – albeit to a small degree, research suggests.

While chronological age is based on how long a person has lived, biological age reflects the state of the body. Estimates of the latter are often based on changes in patterns of DNA methylation – modifications to DNA that accumulate with age and affect how genes function.

Huge improvements in prevention, diagnosis and treatment have driven the fall, Cancer Research UK says

The rate of people dying from cancer in the UK has fallen by almost a third since the 1980s amid seismic progress in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, a report has found.

About 247 in every 100,000 people die from cancer each year, a 29% drop from the peak in 1989 of about 355 per 100,000, according to an analysis by Cancer Research UK (CRUK).

Doctors share healthful habits for managing urination and debunk misconceptions about trips to the bathroom

Urination is a vital human function and often occurs without much fanfare or thought – but age, sex, medications and a host of other factors can influence how you use the bathroom. Because there can be so much variation, patients must not ignore what seems out of the norm for their bodies, says Dr Vannita Simma-Chiang, a board-certified urologist and associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

“If something seems strange to you, one of the best things you can do is just go in and chat with a medical professional about it,” says Simma-Chiang.

It’s good news for those of us who aspire to a brisk, windswept British aesthetic over the bronze California beach babe

Allow me to be the first and possibly last person to tell you that mauve is fashionable.

Yes, the purply-pink hue of a 1990s mother-of-the-groom’s duster coat is now the height of chic on cheeks, lips and even eyes. It’s just euphemistically called “cool toned”, which in practice translates as traditional nude makeup tones such as dark brown, caramel, taupe, pink and beige, customised with a mild mauvey tinge to reduce their respective temperatures.

New designer’s kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm is evident in confident colours and loosened silhouettes

A building site, but make it chic: that was the set for Chanel’s Paris fashion week show. Cranes in Meccano-bright colours towered over the catwalk, their reflection shimmering sequin-bright on an opalescent floor that was inspired by Monet, according to the designer Matthieu Blazy. Monet has been a backstage buzzword at Dior and Chanel this week, as the two giants battle for bragging rights over French culture.

Fashion week loves a visual metaphor. Blazy, who arrived at Chanel last year, is rebuilding the designer, and having fun with it. The invitation for the show was a tiny stainless steel tape measure on a pendant. He has immersed himself in house history – Cocology? – and after the show, greeted reporters clutching a folded printout of an interview Coco Chanel gave to Le Figaro in 1955. Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and a grandee of the brand since 1990, remarked that he had never come across this interview before Blazy brought it to him. Blazy’s kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm is infectious, and the city’s Chanel boutiques have been packed all week. A simple cotton shirt embroidered with the Chanel name is sold out, at a price of €3,900. New season bags are limited to one per customer – a policy designed, the company says, to limit resale at even higher prices.

It is estimated that every year more than one million bald people fly to Istanbul. They go for two reasons – hair transplant quality and competitive costs

“I used to look at my father and understand that I was destined to go bald,” says James McElroy. He smiles when he thinks back to his trip to Istanbul a year ago. “I had a few doubts at the beginning, but today I’m happy and satisfied. Yes, I had a hair transplant, I don’t hide it and I’m not ashamed of it. It was a somewhat intense experience, but I’d do it again – especially now that I’m single. I’m happy to talk about it and I’m happy to receive compliments. That wasn’t the goal, but I appreciate them.”

A patient is reading the terms and conditions of his contract before the transplant begins at Sule Hair Clinic.

Influencers are doing their best to recreate Bessette’s deeply individualized style, which ironically was a refusal to follow along with what was popular

While US pop culture has a long-held fascination with the Kennedys, much of the recent fervor around FX’s newest hit show, Love Story, has been aimed at the style of Carolyn Bessette, who worked as a publicist at Calvin Klein before marrying into America’s most storied political family.

Open up TikTok and you’ll see influencers doing their best to recreate her looks and makeup routines. Brands are invoking Bessette to promote their products; hair care brand Schwarzkopf posted about a highlighting technique the brand called “foiled cashmere, inspired by Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy”.

From jazz in Rotterdam and hip-hop in Paris to brass bands on the beach in Blackpool, the Guardian’s music editor chooses the best European festivals that can be reached by rail

Paris has some great festivals, such as Cercle (22-24 May), with dance music stars against the backdrop of planes and rockets in an outdoor aerospace museum, but the most accessible and democratic is Fête de la musique, which began in Paris in 1982 but is now popular across the country. It is a loose event encompassing dozens of free, semi-impromptu outdoor performances all over each host city, including plenty in Lille, which is even cheaper and quicker to get to than Paris on the Eurostar from London.

From packrafting in Luxembourg to cycling in Slovenia and eclipse-spotting in Spain, here are some great ways to get the kids into the wild

Several companies offer affordable multi-activity trips for families in Greece, but if you’re looking for something less frenetic, and a bit more challenging for teenagers, how about Greek island-hopping by sea kayak? Running on regular dates through the summer months, Trekking Hellas’s three-day, two‑night odysseys in the Ionian Sea start in Nidri, on Lefkada, and paddle on past Skorpios to Meganisi, camping out at Lakka before continuing the next day to Mikros Gialos for a second night under the stars before turning for home. There are stops for swimming, resting and barbecues along the way, and some thrilling cave detours, but with about six hours of paddling a day, the minimum age is 14.
From €352pp including kayaking and camping equipment, guiding and meals (trekking.gr)

On a tight budget, we stayed in a bothy, climbed a mountain, looked for Nessie and – best of all – made memories that money can’t buy

‘There! There – I can see it!” The cries of my four-year-old echoed around the ruins of 13th-century Urquhart Castle, causing a group of US tourists to come running over to the corbelled bartizans (overhanging turrets) where we stood. “It’s Nessie, I saw her,” he insisted, pointing at the ripples spinning out from the back of a sightseeing vessel on Loch Ness.

This was day four of a budget, week-long Scotland adventure for the two of us, and we were spending the day in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the country’s most famous body of water, looking for the fabled monster.

Mountain hikes, river swims and centuries-old traditions appeal to the whole family on a trip to the Balkans

‘Uno, Uno, Uno No Mercy!” the six-year-old son of our hosts for the day bellows while leading my boys, 10 and 12, into his dimly lit corrugated iron home. I let out a little sigh of relief. The popular card game is a much-needed icebreaker as ominous clouds close in on the remote stan (the Albanian word for a shepherd dwelling). Despite the language barrier, much laughter and consternation soon spill out of the darkness, just as hail hammers down on the tin roof. Dogs bark, chickens cluck and sheep bleat as the thunder grows louder, and we all – our eight hosts, seven guests and one guide – shelter in the tiny kitchen, the living room-cum-bedroom (now Uno parlour), or on the veranda.

It’s day two of a seven-day trip with Undiscovered Balkans, crisscrossing between Albania and Montenegro on foot and by car. Having always wanted to hike the Peaks of the Balkans trail, a 119-mile (192km) hike linking Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania, I jumped at the chance to sample this new guided itinerary. Combining some of the region’s most famous hikes with gentler excursions for kids, such as a day experiencing life as a shepherd, or visits to remote swimming spots, it seemed a novel alternative to our usual “get a map and hope for the best” approach to hiking holidays.

Until that point, all my life’s dreams revolved around becoming a saxophonist. But with sudden and significant hearing loss, I had to face up to a new reality

The first sign that something was wrong was a static noise that emerged suddenly in my left ear. It was 2008 and a doctor had just syringed my ears, washing out the antibiotic drops she had prescribed a week earlier, and which had rendered my world temporarily muffled. I was so relieved the drops were out that I didn’t question the strange new noise. I simply thanked her and left.

As I lay on my pillow that night, trying to ignore the new whooshing sound in my ear, a puzzling crunching noise caught my attention. My brain tried to unscramble the disturbance until, confused and now wide awake, I lifted my head up, only to realise it was our grandfather clock, chiming away the hour. My left ear, I realised, was no longer hearing sounds as they really were.

They will soon be looking for nest sites to begin the huge effort of raising their brood of between eight and 10 chicks

If there were an award for the most underrated British garden bird, the blue tit may well come out on top. Feisty and fascinating, this colourful little creature is so common and familiar that we often take it for granted.

This could be because of the blue tit’s ubiquity. In both the main garden bird surveys in the UK – the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch and the long-running BTO Garden BirdWatch – the species is always in the top five. With roughly 3 million breeding pairs, blue tits are as common in urban and suburban gardens as they are in rural ones.

Most people fail with AI because they don’t understand what it actually is – if you treat it as a skill, not a shortcut, you’ll get the best results

• Sign up for AI for the People, a six-week newsletter course, here

Training teams to use AI at work has given me a front-row seat to a new kind of professional divide.

Some people hand everything over to the machine and stop thinking. Others won’t touch it at all.

Got a keyboard, something heavy and a desire to put your feet up during office hours? This could be the scam for you. But beware – employers are fighting back

Name: Keyboard jamming.

Age: Being workshy isn’t new. Diogenes the Cynic was famous not only for living in a barrel, but also for his rejection of ambition and employment.

Experts argue sensor and satellite data reveal targeted attacks on farming communities by the Rapid Support Forces were intended to prevent villages producing food

There is strong evidence that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed a war crime by depriving the villagers of north Darfur of the means to produce food, legal experts argue in a new analysis published today calling for the Humanitarian Research Lab’s (HRL) revelations to be used in international courts.

The destruction of the villages, farming equipment and infrastructure all provide strong evidence of a “starvation strategy” against a population already struggling with food insecurity because of the war, says Tom Dannenbaum, a professor at Stanford Law School and a leading expert on the use of starvation in war.

Young people hope green light to build eco attraction’s northern outpost will change theirs and the town’s fortunes

In the Lancashire coastal town of Morecambe, there has been talk of Eden Project’s futuristic biomes being built beside the shoreline overlooking the bay for a decade.

But this summer, spades will finally break ground to make the project a reality, with the visitor attraction expected to open in less than two years.

Remember the iPod? How about the Pippin? In the half-century since it launched its first PC, Apple has given us some amazing innovations. We round up its biggest triumphs and flops

Fifty years after Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded the company in Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, Apple has become a behemoth, and billions of us use its products every day. From the first successful home computers with colour screens, to the iPod, to the smartphone that set the template for the modern mobile era, the company has repeatedly reset consumer expectations.

As a result, the firm occupies a central position in the tech world, initiating trends and popularising products. Here are five of its most influential products from the past half-century – alongside some unusually big misses.

With shipping routes disrupted and tensions rising across the region we want to hear from maritime workers, sailors and port workers and others working at sea who are affected

The conflict in the Middle East is disrupting shipping across the region, including in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes.

Maritime traffic through the strait, the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, has effectively been closed since strikes on Iran began. Some vessels have been diverted or delayed and ports and shipping companies are dealing with heightened security concerns and uncertainty.

If you’re living or working in the region and have been impacted by the US-Israel conflict with Iran, we would like to hear from you

As the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate, we would like to hear how people living, working or travelling in the region have been affected.

Whether you are in the region or impacted in other ways, please get in touch.

We would like to hear your story of serving a nightmare patron

A diner in a Sydney restaurant has been caught on CCTV sprinkling armpit hair into their food “in attempt to get a free meal”. After confronting the head chef, the man allegedly then left without paying, having ordered the most expensive items on the menu.

With this delightful story in mind, do you have a story of dealing with a rude or generally bad customer while working in hospitality?

We would like to hear your experiences as a practitioner or someone who has tried this procedure

At the end of February, a report by the Women and Equalities Committee recommend that “high harm” procedures such as the liquid Brazilian butt lift (BBL) should be banned.

The government is “not moving quickly enough”, MPs said, stressing the need for a licensing system for non-surgical cosmetic procedures, noting that a “lack of timely action is fostering complacency in self-regulation” within the industry.

The report warned of a wild west in which procedures have reportedly taken place in Airbnbs, hotel rooms, garden sheds and public toilets. Individuals without any formal training can carry out potentially harmful interventions, placing the public at risk, MPs concluded.

Share your experiences as a practitioner or someone who has tried this procedure.

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