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

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

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

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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

From cooking at too high temperatures to consuming too little fat, what and how we eat can have a big impact on the way we age. Here’s what you might be doing wrong – and how to fix it

One of the challenges with the sheer availability of food in today’s world is that lots of us end up spending many of our waking hours eating. Whether it’s full meals, snacks or desserts, scientists have found that it’s not uncommon for us to be mindlessly grazing at some point during all of our 16 or so waking hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Login method for apps and websites stored on users’ devices provides stronger security and is resistant to phishing and breaches

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has called time on the password – from now on, you should use a passkey.

The NCSC said this week it would no longer recommend using passwords where passkeys were available. They should be consumers’ first choice of login across all digital services because passwords were not secure enough to stand up to modern cyber threats.

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

• The best running watches, tested

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

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

Best running shoes overall:
Saucony Endorphin Azura

Best value running shoes for speed:
Kiprun Kipride Max

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

• UK politics live – latest updates

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

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

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

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

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

Home secretary indicates Whitehall talks about returns programme, a move that would shock humanitarian groups

Shabana Mahmood has refused to rule out sending rejected Afghan asylum seekers back to the Taliban-controlled country.

The home secretary said she is “monitoring very closely” talks between Kabul and EU countries about a returns programme for refused claimants. She also indicated that “additional conversations” about Afghan returns were happening inside Whitehall.

White House says its Middle East envoys will meet Tehran’s foreign minister in Islamabad

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump is sending his Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan to resume negotiations to end the war with Iran, which has lasted nearly eight weeks.

The White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed the travel on Friday, saying that Witkoff and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, would meet Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Islamabad.

Four accused of rape and one of aiding and abetting rape in connection with incident in Gravesend

Three boys and two men have been charged over the rape of a teenage girl in Kent, police said.

Kent police received reports on Tuesday that a girl had been raped at a private property in Gravesend between 25 March and 19 April.

Scientists and economists will help countries develop plans to reduce dependence on oil, gas and coal

A panel of global experts has been launched to provide scientific input for countries that want to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and manage the growing risks of high oil prices, geopolitical conflict and extreme weather damage.

The initiative was announced on the opening day of a groundbreaking climate action meeting in Santa Marta, where the Colombian hosts set out a draft roadmap for their own national energy transition.

Police investigating allegations Mandelson and former prince Andrew passed sensitive info to Epstein will struggle to make charges stick without files

British police investigating the former prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson are preparing to start interviewing witnesses in royal and government circles.

It comes as police fear that prosecutors will be “reluctant” to bring charges unless the Trump administration agrees to hand over the original documents from the Epstein files.

Small boat destroyed in video posted on social media as US campaign has killed at least 178 people since September

The US military announced on Friday that it killed two people in an attack on a boat in the eastern Pacific, part of a series of deadly strikes on vessels in recent months which it claims are targeting “narco-trafficking” operations.

The US Southern Command declared in a social media post on X that Gen Francis L Donovan directed Joint Task Force Southern Spear, the counter-narcotics unit that operates in the region, to carry out a lethal strike. The US military posted a video, which it labeled unclassified, showing a small boat being destroyed in an explosion.

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

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

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

Keir Starmer is fighting for his political life as the Mandelson vetting scandal threatens to end his premiership. With no end to the Mandelson saga in sight, and as Labour looks set to suffer major losses at the local elections, can the prime minister survive? Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s head of national news, Archie Bland

Brussels officials will draw up a plan on how to use the EU’s little-known mutual assistance pact in the event of a foreign attack – key US politics stories from Friday 24 April

EU leaders have agreed that the European Commission “will prepare a blueprint” on how the bloc will respond if the little-known mutual assistance clause is triggered, according to Nikos Christodoulides, the president of Cyprus, who is hosting the talks.

They discussed the mutual defence clause, article 42.7 of the EU treaty, on Thursday night, before reports emerged that the US was exploring how to suspend Spain from Nato.

Olly Robbins gave MPs a classic civil servant’s performance – and there are lessons from the past about how ministers should respond

The Whitehall satire Yes Minister was said to be Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV show due to its proximity to reality, as the programme’s loquacious top civil servant, Sir Humphrey, might have put it.

Yes Minister had a familiar groove: there would be a problem in response to which the mandarin would artfully deploy the most astonishing sophistry to avoid blame or get his own way. Jim Hacker, the largely clueless yet ambitious politician played by the late Paul Eddington, rarely won the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fans of both sides are feeling similar levels of stress at different ends of the Premier League table

Zadie Smith once wrote that “the square mile around Arsenal’s stadium could be a suitable surrogate for the whole wide world”. Perhaps you only really glimpse this on a match day, when the jerk chicken grills and paella pans fire up and belch delicious smoke across the rows of terraced houses, when the locals in weathered replica shirts brush shoulders with tourists bearing selfie sticks, when a small group of dedicated volunteers at a kiosk by the Ken Friar Bridge accepts non-perishable donations for the Islington food bank.

And you shall scoff, and you shall sneer, because there is a north London of the popular imagination, and Islington in particular, which has become a surrogate for something else entirely. A slur, an insult, a byword for privilege and entitlement and metropolitan effeteness, the place of Blair and Corbyn and Starmer and a shrink on every street corner. North London is elite, north London is out of touch, north London looks down on the rest of you while eating plates of £16 pasta.

After years in the wilderness, the Canadian’s artfully restrained Coachella performances – now known as “Bieberchella” – have seen him elevated to the status of pop elder

You could be forgiven for having lost touch with Justin Bieber. The defining teen idol of the 2000s was discovered on YouTube, anointed by R&B stars Usher and Drake and enormously famous by his 16th birthday. But Biebs’ monumental fame as a floppy-haired, baby-faced singer presaged a difficult coming of age in the spotlight and a string of very 2010s controversies. (Who could forget Mally, the pet monkey seized by German customs in Munich in 2013?)

In recent years, Bieber has pivoted to more mature R&B, kept a lower profile and focused on his health and family. But his headlining sets at Coachella this month – collectively dubbed “Bieberchella” – have sparked a renewed appreciation for Bieber’s music and his turbulent path to becoming a respected pop elder.

As domestic sales slow, manufacturers are investing in AI and seeking growth in technology and in overseas markets

At the world’s biggest car fair, which opened in Beijing on Friday, there were hundreds of manufacturers, more than 1,000 vehicles, hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts – and hardly anyone behind a wheel.

China’s car companies have cornered the domestic electric vehicle market, and are increasingly visible on the global stage. Now they are turning their attention to what they are betting is the future of mobility: autonomous driving.

Vítor Pereira had promised ­Nottingham Forest would approach this assignment with a “Champions League mentality” and his players did not disappoint him.

A fabulous attacking performance featuring four different scorers (plus an own goal) and a clean sheet not merely succeeded in denting a shell-shocked Sunderland’s European ambitions but also lifted 16th-placed Forest to 39 points.

• Alcaraz suffered injury in Barcelona Open first round

• ‘Tennis needs Carlos’, says fierce rival Jannik Sinner

Carlos Alcaraz has been forced to withdraw from the French Open due to the injury to his right wrist that he sustained last week in his first-round match at the Barcelona Open.

Alcaraz, a two-time French Open champion, had begun the clay-court season this month favoured to win his third successive title in Paris. After losing in the Monte Carlo Masters final to his great rival Jannik Sinner, who leapfrogged the Spaniard with his victory to reach No 1 in the rankings, the 22-year-old travelled to the Barcelona Open where he competed in his first-round match against Otto Virtanen two days later. The load on his body proved too much and he injured his wrist in the straight sets victory before withdrawing from the tournament a day later.

Spurs midfielder is not fully fit but will be on the bench at Molineux as his manager tries anything to lift his relegation-haunted players

It was quite the admission from Roberto De Zerbi as he prepared for Saturday’s game at Wolves, which has the feel of a must-win for Tottenham in their increasingly traumatic battle against relegation. The manager reported that James Maddison was “not available yet” as he goes through the final stages of his rehabilitation from the anterior cruciate ligament rupture that has wrecked his season. The midfielder “felt pain” during the week, De Zerbi added, albeit it was not a major problem. So, there has to be no room for him in the matchday squad, then? Well, actually …

“He will come with us on the bench because he is important,” De Zerbi said. “If he plays or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s better if he plays, for sure, but, as a guy, as a leader, he is positive. Inside of my dressing room I want to see nice people, positive people, and this is important also for his teammates.”

• Late leveller is fresh blow to Madrid’s faint title hopes

• RB Leipzig’s 3-1 win is marred by online sexism row

Héctor Bellerín struck deep into stoppage time to earn Real Betis a 1-1 draw against Real Madrid on Friday, dealing another blow to the visitors’ fading title hopes.

Álvaro Arbeloa’s side appeared on course for a narrow win after taking the lead in the 17th minute. Federico Valverde let fly from outside the box and the Betis goalkeeper, Álvaro Valles, could only parry the ball into the path of Vinícius Júnior, who reacted swiftly to guide a neat finish just inside the right post.

Fiftieth anniversary of an FA Cup win still central to their city’s identity forms an evocative backdrop to Saints’ semi-final against Manchester City

Two years ago, when sixth-tier Maidstone won at Ipswich to reach the fifth round of the FA Cup for the first time, their manager, George Elokobi, distilled the unique, enduring impact of an FA Cup giantkilling into five syllables: “This binds us for life.”

The same bond, only even more powerful, will be in evidence on the south coast in the next week. All connected with Southampton hope to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their only FA Cup final triumph having reached another final.

• Kenyan taking part in only his fifth career marathon

• Jacob Kiplimo and Tamirat Tola among his main rivals

They call Sabastian Sawe the silent assassin. And, whisper it, but the Kenyan may just take down the men’s world marathon record in London on Sunday.

It is an imposing target, set by Kelvin Kiptum in 2023, which stands at two hours and 35 seconds. But Sawe believes he is in similar shape to when he went for the world record in Berlin last September, only to be thwarted by temperatures in the mid-20s centigrade.

In a reversal from previous tournaments, companion tickets come at significant cost for the 2026 World Cup. Accessibility advocates are raising their concerns

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Football fans with disabilities are struggling to buy companion tickets for World Cup games with some seats that had been assigned for caregivers appearing to be put on general sale.

The Guardian has uncovered significant issues with the World Cup ticket sales process for fans with disabilities, including:

Wheelchair users who have secured a match ticket being unable to buy an accompanying ticket for a caregiver

Companion seats being made available to buy in isolation, without proof of a prior wheelchair or accessible purchase, in stage four of Fifa’s sale process earlier this month

Wheelchair and accessible seating being priced higher than general admission tickets on Fifa’s official resale marketplace across a wide range of matches

An inability by Fifa to guarantee that fans who have bought companion tickets will be seated next to the wheelchair user they are accompanying

Recent European quarter-final was a classic and champions’ Prem trip to the Midlands will likely produce similar

Was this the greatest game ever played, people were asking in the aftermath of that quarter-final of the Champions Cup a fortnight ago in Bath. Victory by the odd try in 11; home team roared on to successful comeback victory with that 11th try in the last five minutes; Northampton, the away team, 28-7 up after barely 20 minutes, playing rugby of the gods.

A personal opinion is that it certainly was the greatest game ever played … this month. Without wanting to prick any bubbles of enthusiasm that may have swelled in the moments after the latest epic, yes, the match was incredible – and if it had happened in the amateur era would have been consecrated as legend long ago – but have we already forgotten France v England not even a month earlier? What about Scotland v France a week before that? We could go on.

• Furyk set for second stint as US captain

• Woods steps aside after arrest and treatment

• Europe chasing third straight win in Ireland

Jim Furyk is returning as US Ryder Cup captain for the 2027 matches in Ireland, the PGA of America announced Friday, as the Americans try to get back on track against a European team that has dominated the last three decades.

Furyk is the fourth US captain to get a second chance dating to 1979, considered the modern era of the Ryder Cup when continental Europe became part of it.

He is not a programme-maker or a politician, but he must rapidly develop a feel for both disciplines – and the stakes could not be higher

This panel comprises extracts from Letters to Matt Brittin: The New Director-General of the BBC, edited by John Mair and Andrew Beck, and original material

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

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

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

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

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

There is a way to bring this back to parliament. We owe it to the brave terminally ill people who have been so let down to try

• Kim Leadbeater is Labour MP for Spen Valley

Today has been a sorry day for democracy in this country. After more than 220 hours of debate in both Houses of Parliament, a small minority of unelected peers has defied not only the clear will of democratically elected MPs, but perhaps more importantly the wishes of a large majority of our constituents.

The terminally ill adults (end of life) bill has failed becauseit has run out of time and it will no longer be able to go through the required stages to pass it into law. Seven lords tabled more than half of the amendments of the 1,280 total and have used up the allotted time to debate the bill.

Kim Leadbeater is Labour MP for Spen Valley

Swerving the child abuse allegations, the new Michael Jackson film is yet another revisionist music movie in a long line. We know what’s in it for their subjects. What about the viewers?

As a giant glittering ferris wheel dissolves into a closeup of Michael Jackson’s face, legendary producer Quincy Jones explains to him that what people want is “pure escapism”. Michael, a new biopic about Jackson’s rise to fame directed by Antoine Fuqua, is certainly that: a fantastical greatest hits playlist scrubbed clean of the darkness that tarnished the singer’s reputation. The songs, which were licensed by Sony and the Jackson estate, remain glorious, transporting and indelible.

Michael is the latest addition to a new canon of authorised music biopics including films about and featuring the official music of Elton John, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Bob Marley, Robbie Williams, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. The genre was revived by the success of the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which was made with Queen’s involvement and took home four Oscars and $911m at the box office. Never mind that it was dismissed by critics; the boost it gave to the band’s streaming figures set a new precedent for hungry estate holders keen to cash in – and to control the narrative.

As Trump lurches from tariffs to wars and Farage makes unrealistic pledges about immigration, their impunity needs to end

Rightwing populists always promise they will get things done when they get into power. Immigration will be halted. Government waste will be eradicated. Traditional values will be revived. National decline will be halted. National greatness will be restored. Relations with the outside world will be redrawn.

Great tasks that, for decades, have been beyond the capability and will of conventional, compromising politicians will be accomplished – and fast. Populist governments will respond decisively to voters’ accumulated frustrations, cut through bureaucracy, and avoid the delays, U-turns and half-finished projects that usually blight democracies. The business of government will be straightforward and highly productive – even heroic – rather than complicated and disappointing.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Diplomats poke fun at Donald Trump, while elsewhere Madonna loses her corset off the back of a golf buggy

The one upside to a rolling international crisis is that it can give backroom people a rare chance to shine. Witness, this week, the breakout stars of the Iranian diplomatic corps, who from two different diplomatic missions managed to poke fun at Donald Trump while maintaining the base-level decorum that so eludes the American president.

Defenestration has become the modus operandi in politics, instead of MPs working through the real issues of the day

Does the United Kingdom really need a new prime minister? In particular, does it need Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband, reportedly lining up to replace Sir Keir Starmer?

The answer is surely no, not now and not after whatever the May elections may indicate. A change of government not even two years in office cannot be in the national interest. Yet Britain’s political community appears to be cohering round just such a defenestration. It seems the only way it knows how to hold power to account, giving it the seventh leader inside a decade. Parliamentary democracy is dysfunctional.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine ‘actively developing’ regional security arrangements for defence, food and energy, Zelenskyy says; Russia and Ukraine swap prisoners. What we know on day 1,522

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Azerbaijan on Friday for talks on “security and energy”, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP. Kyiv and Baku enjoy warm relations, with Azerbaijan repeatedly expressing support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sending humanitarian aid since the Russian invasion in 2022. Ties between Moscow and Baku have soured over the past year, after an Azerbaijani passenger plane was mistakenly hit by a Russian anti-aircraft missile in 2024, killing 38 people.

The trip follows one to Saudi Arabia, where Zelenskyy met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as the Ukrainian leader seeks to share Kyiv’s drone expertise with the Gulf countries affected by the war in Iran. Zelenskyy said Ukraine was “actively developing” its strategic security arrangement across three key areas, including exports of Ukrainian military expertise and air defence capabilities, energy cooperation to help Ukraine, and food security.

US weapons deliveries to Ukraine haven’t stopped despite the Iran war, and Ukrainian long-range strikes continue to hammer Russian oil production and manufacturing plants, Zelenskyy said on Thursday. “Of course, we are hitting what is painful for Russia, and it is very painful,” Zelenskyy said in voice messages to reporters, adding that Russian losses in the strikes have reached tens of billions of dollars. Russian officials have reported that attacks have struck infrastructure in regions more than 1,000km (600 miles) inside Russia.

Russia and Ukraine on Friday swapped 193 captured soldiers each, the second exchange this month in one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv. The two countries have exchanged thousands of PoW throughout the four-year war – with the swaps often the only result of otherwise stalled peace talks. Photos of Ukrainian prisoners getting off buses at the scene of the swap in northern Ukraine showed them looking pale but relieved and wrapped in blue and yellow flags, embracing each other, or crying on the phone to loved ones.

Ukraine’s defence ministry has fired a top commander after photos emerged of a group of emaciated soldiers who have been left on the frontline for months without proper food and water. The scandal erupted after the wife of one of the soldiers posted the images on social media. The four men appeared pale and visibly malnourished, with prominent ribcages and thin arms. Ukraine’s general staff said it had replaced the commander who was responsible for feeding the soldiers. The brigade acknowledged there were logistical problems and said deliveries were only possible by air because their location was extremely close to enemy lines.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Friday there was no prospect of Ukraine’s “immediate accession” to the EU, but suggested Kyiv could join meetings of the bloc’s members without voting rights. Ukraine is pushing to speed up its bid to join the 27-nation European Union as it fights Russia’s invasion on the battlefield. Kyiv’s progress has been blocked by Hungary’s nationalist premier Viktor Orbán, but his defeat in elections earlier this month raised hopes it can move to the next step.

German prosecutors Friday launched a spying investigation into phishing attacks targeting lawmakers on the Signal messaging app, with an MP saying the latest Russia-directed plot against Germany was a “wake-up call”. Germany, Kyiv’s biggest provider of miliary aid, has been battling a surge of cyber-attacks, as well as espionage and sabotage plots since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Moscow denies being behind any such actions.

Amjad Youssef is one of most-wanted fugitives in relation to slaughter of estimated 288 civilians under Assad

A Syrian former regime official suspected of leading a notorious civilian massacre revealed by the Guardian – and who became one of the country’s most-wanted fugitives after the fall of Bashar al-Assad – has been arrested by security forces, Syria’s interior ministry announced.

Amjad Youssef was captured in the Ghab plain area about 30 miles (50km) outside the city of Hama and had “been taken into custody following a carefully executed security operation”, the interior minister, Anas Khattab, said in a social media post on Friday.

Former Scottish Labour leader says she understands that expressing respect for author caused ‘worry, anger and upset’

The incoming chair of the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall says she is “truly sorry” after she expressed “huge respect” for JK Rowling in an interview with the Guardian. Kezia Dugdale, the former leader of Scottish Labour, said she understood that her words had caused “worry, anger and upset and I am truly sorry about that”.

In an interview for the Today in Focus podcast in Edinburgh to mark her appointment as Stonewall’s chair, Dugdale was asked what she thought of the way in which Rowling has talked about transgender people.

‘Coalition of the willing’ gathers in Colombia to try to bypass petrostate blockages of Cop summits and chart fresh path

The world’s first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, takes place in Santa Marta, Colombia, from 24 to 29 April. A “coalition of the willing” – including 54 countries and various subnational governments, civil society groups and academics – will try to chart a new path to powering the world with low-carbon energy.

The climate crisis is accelerating the frequency of devastating events across the world, displacing millions and disproportionately affecting women

The water mark on Naira Santa Rita’s wall told the story before she could find the words for it. High and brown, like a scar, it was the line left by the floodwater on 15 February 2022 – the night Petrópolis drowned.

Within minutes, the mountain city she called home became a war zone. From her window, she watched bodies float past in the streets below. More than 230 people died that night, in what was until then Brazil’s worst climate disaster.

Divers are installing waterproof speakers in the ocean to help pull a coral reef near Jamaica back from the brink

The northern coast of Jamaica once served as the backdrop for scenes in the James Bond thriller No Time to Die. But today, beneath those same turquoise waves, a real-life mission is unfolding: the race to pull a dying coral reef back from the brink.

However, the tools a team of divers are carrying to the seafloor are not what you would expect to find in a marine biologist’s kit. They are installing waterproof speakers at the bottom of the ocean, and the man leading the team is not a scientist.

Green groups say European Commission is ‘chief roadblock’ to its own plans, as report finds poor progress four years on

Harmful compounds in children’s nappies and toxic “forever chemicals” in everyday products are among 14 hazardous substance groups hit by lengthy delays to EU pollution controls, according to report findings described by scientists as “extremely frustrating”.

The European Commission sought to push broad categories of dangerous substances off the market with a “restrictions roadmap” in April 2022 that was hailed at the time as the largest-ever ban of toxic chemicals.

Green party leader attacks Keir Starmer’s ‘silly games’ after prime minister accused him of playing down recent incidents

Zack Polanski has called on politicians to treat antisemitism with “consideration, care and nuance” as he accused Keir Starmer of trying to play political games with the issue.

The Green leader’s comments come after the prime minister accused him of playing down recent antisemitic incidents. Polanski’s party is facing increasing scrutiny over recent comments by some candidates and members.

James Kempster’s DNA was found on dead barn owl and kestrel rammed into door handles of volunteer store

A man has been found guilty of possessing the bodies of wild birds of prey that were dumped alongside 50 dead hares outside a village shop in Hampshire.

Traces of James Kempster’s DNA were found on the bodies of a barn owl and kestrel that were rammed into the handles of the volunteer-led shop in Broughton.

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

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

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

John Ashby, who subjected woman to prolonged assault in her home, a ‘deeply unpleasant racist’, says judge

A white man “filled with hatred” has been jailed for life after racially abusing a Sikh woman as he raped her.

John Ashby, 32, followed the woman home after spotting her on a bus in Walsall, West Midlands, in October last year, and subjected her to a 24-minute ordeal after breaking in armed with a metre-long stick.

Top commander fired after wife of one malnourished soldier posted shocking images on social media

Ukraine’s defence ministry has fired a top commander after photos emerged of a group of emaciated soldiers who have been left on the frontline for months without proper food and water.

The scandal erupted after the wife of one of the soldiers, Anastasiia Silchuk, posted the images on social media. The four men appeared to be pale and visibly malnourished, with prominent ribcages and thin arms.

Four men face murder charges in case of 16-year-old Roxanne Sharp, whose body was found in a wooded area

Four people have been arrested in connection to the 1982 killing of a Louisiana teenager, investigators announced on Friday.

State police troopers said tips generated by a true-crime podcast they were involved in making – along with improvements in investigative technologies – helped them make arrests in the killing of Roxanne Sharp, 16, about 44 years earlier.

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

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

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

Judge orders release of woman and her five children, who endured the longest family detention under Trump’s second administration

A woman and her five children, whose immigration detention of more than 10 months marked the longest family detention under Donald Trump’s second administration, were released on Thursday hours after a judge’s order, their lawyer said.

US district judge Fred Biery of the western district of Texas ordered the family’s release.

Carriers will retain airport slots if they cancel services as passengers are urged to continue with travel plans

Penalties on airlines that cancel UK flights because of jet fuel shortages have been eased, it has emerged, as the government issued fresh advice to reassure the public they can still fly and should stick to travel plans.

Airlines that cancel owing to a lack of fuel will not lose their rights to valuable takeoff and landing slots at busy airports, which can be forfeited when flights fail to operate over a period.

Sources say German group may struggle to recoup its investment as titles shift to less profitable models

Axel Springer did not complete due diligence on the Telegraph before sealing its £575m takeover, with sources saying the German media company could struggle to recoup its eye-watering investment as the titles shift toward less-profitable digital subscribers.

To wrap up the deal quickly, Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of Axel Springer, decided to forgo the usual extensive due diligence process to vet the value and prospects of a company, according to multiple sources.

As sales soar, some say trackers can help animal anxiety or weight loss while others advise leaving diagnoses to the vet

Pet health and activity trackers are bounding on to the market but experts are split on whether they are the cat’s pyjamas or barking up the wrong tree.

As owners monitor their own step count, heart rate, skin temperature and calorie burn via wearable tech, a host of companies have developed devices to do the same for pets. According to a report by Future Market Insights, the market for pet fitness trackers is expected to grow to $450m (£333m) by 2035.

Sarah Breeden predicts ‘adjustment’ due to elevated risk including private credit and highly valued AI stocks

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Record-high global stock markets do not reflect the risks in the global economy, and will fall back, a deputy governor at the Bank of England has said.

Sarah Breeden, the deputy governor for financial stability at the Bank, fears that macroeconomic risks are not fully priced into equity markets. She cited concerns about private credit markets, highly valued artificial intelligence stocks, and other “risky valuations”.

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

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

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

If Avengers: Endgame is being recut to segue neatly into Doomsday, the saga wasn’t a spandex spider web of smartly linked super-stories after all. So why did we watch Loki and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law?

Marvel’s Multiverse saga, the run of more than a dozen films and umpteen TV shows that have emerged since Avengers: Endgame seven years ago, was intended to be many things: a bold new kaleidoscopic chapter, a narrative playground playing out across infinite parallel realities, a chance to prove this celebrated franchise could keep regenerating like an irradiated interdimensional gecko. But if Marvel Studios really is bolting new Avengers: Doomsday material on to Avengers: Endgame ahead of the latter’s rerelease in multiplexes this September, the somewhat less-successful Multiverse phase now seems like something the studio wants to forget.

Speaking at the Sands international film festival in St Andrews at the weekend, director (of both films) Joe Russo revealed that Endgame is being recut and rereleased in September, apparently with some sort of neat segue to the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday. In comments reported in Deadline, Russo said: “It’s critically important to rerelease the movie, and, in fact, we’ll be rereleasing the film with footage that is set in the Doomsday story that we have added to Avengers: Endgame. It’s an opportunity to create a bridge from Endgame to Doomsday in a unique way and, because the movie was so successful, we have an opportunity to rerelease it.

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

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

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

Oscar winner set to produce, and possibly star in, film of war game series with Christopher McQuarrie at the helm

Michael B Jordan is following up his Oscar win with the announcement of another new project: a big-screen adaptation of the hit video game series Battlefield.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Sinners star will produce, and possibly star in, a film based on the long-running war series which is being hyped as the year’s most in-demand project to date in Hollywood

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

The four-part docuseries Hulk Hogan: Real American shows the almighty rise and bleak fall of a one-time wrestling hero who became closer friends with Donald Trump

It’s an interesting move that Netflix has taken recently, buying the rights to WWE programming while simultaneously commissioning documentaries about how fundamentally flawed its stars are. Nevertheless, after the success of its Vince McMahon series, it was only a matter of time before it made a series about wrestling’s biggest and most complicated star. And now it is here, in the form of Hulk Hogan: Real American.

Few wrestlers have risen quite as high or fallen quite as low as Hogan, born Terry Bollea. For a considerable stretch of time, Hogan was the WWE; a bundle of imminently marketable tricks and quirks that gave him the nod over all the other grunting men in pants who made up the sport.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bahari/Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra/Rouvali
(Alpha)
In this all-Sibelilus disc, violinist Ava Bahari’s account of the Violin Concerto has heft and exuberance, while Rouvali’s dramatic nous suits the drama of the Four Legends of Lemminkäinen

Santtu-Matias Rouvali continues his Gothenburg SO Sibelius survey with this latest instalment pairing a bracing account of the Violin Concerto by Swedish violinist Ava Bahari with the proto-symphonic Lemminkäinen Suite.

Bahari is an enthralling storyteller, investing every phrase with musical intention. The opening Allegro moderato is a silvery toned tour de force supported by Rouvali and the Gothenburgers’ gossamer textures, yet there is plenty of heft and a suitable darkness to the collective sound when required. The slow movement is a lyrical oasis before conductor and soloist kick up their heels in a chuckling account of the exuberant finale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kiln theatre, London
Tom Wright’s play explores how the Fab Four, and a rumoured affair with John Lennon, helped shape the manager’s tragically short life

At the age of 30, the Beatles’s legendary manager, Brian Epstein, published his autobiography. At 32 he was dead, and his passing is widely considered the beginning of the end for the band. Tom Wright’s fascinating new play is less concerned with Epstein’s effect on a group of messy haired, leather-jacketed Liverpudlians than with their effect on him. In particular, it focuses on the relationship with John Lennon that would come to define the life of a Jewish gay man who, for all his success, always felt an outsider.

We first meet Brian as a young man in his father’s record shop, replacing Bruch’s violin concerto with Elvis’s Hound Dog. His dad is happy to encourage his instincts in the baffling new world of 1960s pop – “Which Richard is the little one?” he’s forced to ask – but as the play’s breakneck opening makes clear, his son’s homosexuality is a source of shame and danger. Tom Piper’s mobile set of spinning closets (the shop also sells furniture) tumbles him down menacing corridors and alleyways; a shadowy Cavern Club reinforces the sense of a life concealed and buried.

People born after 1997 are now the most frequent cinemagoers, defying fears that digital natives would lose interest in the big screen

Rumours about the imminent demise of moviegoing may have been overstated, with 2026 now forecast to be the best year at the global box office since the start of the pandemic. And it is generation Z at the forefront of the cinema revival. According to a US-based survey by Fandango, gen Z are now the most frequent cinemagoers, with 87% saying they have seen at least one film in a cinema in the past 12 months. Millennials are close behind at 82%, followed by gen X at 70% and boomers at 58%. Gen Z also go more often than other cohorts, averaging around seven trips a year.

Gen Z – people born between 1997 and 2012 – grew up with near unlimited streaming and social media as their default entertainment. But after spending their lives in algorithm-driven digital spaces, many are beginning to tire of them. “As the internet becomes ever more pervasive, and in many ways ever more annoying, gen Z are looking for experiences beyond the black mirror,” say Benedict and Hannah Townsend, hosts of the film and TV podcast Talk of the Townsends. What gen Z are looking for is a “third space”: a social environment away from home and work. And for many, the cinema can fill that role.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

As a career-spanning documentary hits cinemas and the band eye two nights at Knebworth, they revisit their path from pubs to stadiums – but how did they get through their crisis-filled 1990s?

When I ask Iron Maiden bassist and founder Steve Harris about the fact his band have lasted for more than half a century, he sounds bewildered, as if he’s put something down then forgotten where he’s left it. “It’s gone so quick. You go on tour for a few months and it seems to fly, but so much happens. Our whole career is an extension of that – for 50 years.”

He’s looking back on how he steered one of the most influential – and deeply idiosyncratic – British bands in history. Catapulted to the premier league of 80s metal on the back of galloping, theatrical, multi-platinum LPs including The Number of the Beast, Powerslave and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Iron Maiden not only survived the mid-90s slump that befell many metal bands, but got even more heavy and ambitious.

Actor and writer who confronted his motor neurone disease diagnosis in his work, and went on to play Richard III

When Michael Patrick became the first actor in Ireland’s theatrical history to portray Richard III as a wheelchair user, he was determined that neither his nor his character’s disability be seen as part of the play’s inherent tragedy.

Instead, as he explained in an interview with the Guardian at the time, he used his still recent diagnosis of motor neurone disease to inform a new understanding of one of the greatest plays in the canon. “It’s less about the disability being the tragedy, and it’s more about people’s reaction to the disability being a tragedy, if that makes sense. Because, you know, in an ideal world, Richard could be in a wheelchair and he could still do all the things he wants to do,” he told me ahead of opening night.

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

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

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

The chances of that happening? Over 24 trillion to one

I have played the lottery since I was 18. I always felt I was going to win big one day. When my children were born, I started using regular numbers based on their birthdays and birth weights. In June 2018, I was doing a client’s colour at my hair salon in Talgarth in mid-Wales, where I live. While we waited for the colour to take, I got my lottery ticket and popped next door to the shop to check if I had won anything.

The shop was busy. It’s a small town, and as a hairdresser I knew everyone in the queue, so we started chatting away. The woman behind the till scanned my ticket. She said, “I’ll have to give you the ticket back. I can’t pay it.” The person from the Post Office counter said, “I can pay up to £50,000 if he wants to come here.” She replied, “No, it’s more than that.” Everyone in the queue was asking, “What’s he won?”

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

• The best IPL and laser hair removal devices tested

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

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

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

Best budget fake tan:
Boots Glow tanning milk

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

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

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

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

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

• The best hair dryers, tested

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

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

Best hair straighteners overall:
GHD Chronos Max

Best budget hair straighteners:
Remington Shine Therapy S8500

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly every European country has its own fruit brandy. Some are a bit agricultural so here’s a taste of the best

“I’ve had people burst into tears tasting these – it takes them straight back to a moment in their past.” I have come to visit Barney Wilczak, an unusually soulful spirits producer, at Capreolus Distillery near Cirencester. We are surrounded by stainless-steel vats of his eau-de-vie, the clear, fragrant brandy that he distills from apples, gooseberries, cherries, pears, plums, raspberries, grapes, quince and various other fruits grown within a 35-mile radius of this sunny English hilltop.

I say “distillery”, which might make you imagine something vaguely industrial, but we are in fact in his dad’s garage, while the still itself is in the shed. But the liquids? My goodness. Each 60-litre container represents around 4,000kg of fruit, all picked within a day of ripeness, wild-fermented over months into fruit wine, then triple-distilled to exacting specifications that vary fruit by fruit and batch by batch. Obsessive doesn’t cover it. When Wilczak made his first batch of raspberry eau-de-vie, he reckons he hand-graded 2m raspberries, rejecting any with even the slightest imperfection.

This soft, whey‑born staple slips effortlessly from savoury suppers to indulgent celebratory desserts while keeping its cool, milky charm

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My record for making ricotta and lemon ring cake is three minutes and 42 seconds. That doesn’t include heating the oven or baking, or finding a recipe, which is in my head. It does include getting out the utensils (bowl, spatula, grater, scale, ring tin) and the ingredients (ricotta, olive oil, flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, lemons), then speed-mixing everything in one bowl, scraping the batter into the tin and getting the tin in the oven via a discus throw. The timer is stopped as the oven door is closed. This is not relaxing cooking, it is entertaining cooking. And it is gratifying, having proved my partner wrong when he said it would take me at least five minutes.

I was disappointed, then, to find myself on terrible form the other day, when a chocolate-chip version of the same ring cake took me five minutes and 19 seconds. In my defence, I had difficulty getting the glass bowl out of an impractical stack, and we had run out of chocolate chips, which meant I had to find a knife and chop up a bar instead. Even so, it was an absymal performance. There was some consolation in the cake itself, which is not only the quickest, but one of the best cakes I know. The ricotta adds creamy depth and the olive oil provides fat, and together they make for a tender, moist, everyday cake that is best eaten warm, when the bits of chocolate are still hot enough to be little pools.

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

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

The answer: burn it down.

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

• Read more Leading questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Tell us: do you use AI for fitness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Light as a feather and bouncy as a marshmallow, cushioned shoes have gone from marathons to daily commutes

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Floaty foam-based footwear has been spotted on celebrities for years, from Aubrey Plaza in Hokas and Harry Styles in New Balance to Zendaya’s ongoing deal with On running shoes.

A desire for “practical functionality” has driven technical sportswear to street pavements, says streetwear reporter Lei Takanashi from the Business of Fashion in New York.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tucked away in a remote valley, these cosy off-grid cabins come with a wild-swimming pond, loads of wildlife and a farm where kids can run free

Holidaying as a single parent is a tricky balance. You want to ringfence the kind of extended one-on-one time that can be difficult to find during term time; but too much of that and you know you’ll drive each other a little crazy. Kids need other kids, and you could do with some adult company too. You also need a break. It’s a nice idea to pack the car with camping gear and head out into the wilderness, but it can be a lot of work – and you end up in a field, attempting to put up a tent, alone.

Friends of mine have suggested holiday parks, some of them with bars and restaurants and a daily schedule of kids’ activities. That all sounds a bit overstimulating. I’d been dreaming about sinking into a quiet landscape. But would there be enough to do?

A lovely brick wall at the end of my garden has become a stage for other plants’ shadows

In the Japanese floristry practice of ikebana, the concept of ma is crucial. The term refers to negative space – in this case, what is left between the stems, leaves and flowers in an arrangement. It’s considered a pause or a breath; a moment to stop and let the eye rest. A break to enable even greater appreciation of the other parts of the arrangement.

An ideal ikebana arrangement will have a perfect balance between negative space and the stems being arranged.

The Marches, Shropshire: Recently I had wondered how long this great lime would stay standing. The next day, I had my answer

How quickly something that defines a landscape for centuries becomes the absence that redefines it – so it is with ancient trees. The trunk snapped like a carrot at the roots and crashed, its bony branches splintered. Now it lies like a shipwreck stranded in an open field, its hulk of twigs an animal pelt stilled.

A day before, looking at its 300-year-old architecture of mostly dead wood yet so vividly alive, admiring its form and persistence through years and trouble, standing alone with spring coursing through the land and its timbers, I wondered how long, in tree time, it had left.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

It is time for the Thursday news quiz, where you must cling on to knowledge with both hands – even if, thanks to our quirky illustration by Anaïs Mims, they seem to have curled themselves into question marks. Like our primate friend above, you may find yourself swinging wildly between certainty and guesswork. Fifteen questions on the week’s news and culture await. There are no prizes, but we always enjoy hearing how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 244

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

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

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

Before the war on Gaza, the seed of Israel’s strategy of wholesale destruction was planted in a 2006 war on Lebanon. Today, the playbook repeats itself

Shortly after 2pm on 8 April, it seemed that Beirut was hit by an earthquake. Within 10 minutes, multiple apartment buildings were obliterated, leaving in their wake mounds of rubble and shattered glass, pulverized concrete and twisted metal – and hundreds of dead and wounded bodies.

In those minutes, Israel had carried out one of the worst mass killings in Lebanon’s history. Dozens of Israeli warplanes dropped bombs and missiles on 100 targets across a country roughly the size of Connecticut, striking Beirut, the Bekaa valley and southern Lebanon. By the time rescue crews finished digging out mangled remains from the rubble two days later, the Lebanese health ministry’s toll stood at 357 dead and more than 1,200 injured. But even that is not a final accounting of the day’s casualties because health officials were still struggling to identify remains and conduct DNA tests.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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