New hosts Grace Dent and chef Anna Haugh have shaken off the show’s crusty, stale feel. They’re a real improvement on John Torode and Gregg Wallace

MasterChef is back, emboldened by the strange and giddy euphoria of an enforced refresh. For nigh on 20 years, the BBC’s premier cookery contest was judged by John Torode and Gregg Wallace and was just sort of … there. Not bad, but not very exciting either. That the hosts might have become a little crusty and stale wasn’t widely noticed or discussed.

One unsavoury year of allegations, investigations and cancellations later, not one but both of the show’s long-serving overlords have abruptly departed. Yet there’s something freeing about an unplanned change and MasterChef, happily, has embraced that by hiring two relatively low-profile women to replace the old men: season 22 is brought to you by Myrtle chef patron Anna Haugh and Guardian restaurant critic Grace Dent.

Sacked civil servant told Commons committee there was pressure from No 10 to approve appointment of Mandelson

Well, what would you do? You’re a top civil servant with more than 25 years of government service. You’ve worked for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May. You went through Brexit hell as a lead negotiator. You were sacked by Boris Johnson and were then brought back by Keir Starmer.

You land a plum job as permanent undersecretary in the Foreign Office and do your boss a favour by appointing his man as ambassador to the US. You’ve already got a knighthood; that peerage is only a matter of time away. Then it all blows up in your face and the prime minister sacks you and trashes your reputation in parliament.

Analysts say next boss John Ternus should diversify tech giant away from iPhones and raise its game in AI

John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook as chief executive of Apple in September. A company insider, Ternus is moving up from his role as head of engineering to take control of the entire $4tn (£3tn) business.

Apple is a vast, successful tech company and one of the most recognised brands in the world. But it faces challenges nonetheless. Here is a look at Ternus’s in-tray.

Richard Gadd’s at it again. His unforgiving new drama tackles the damage men do to each other head on, by pulling out his insides and smearing them everywhere. Every man should watch this queasy masterpiece

We have known for some time, I think, that men are not OK. Richard Gadd’s new drama, conceived before his astounding, semi-autobiographical creation Baby Reindeer sent his reputation stratospheric, and now broadcast in the slipstream of that success, is a fiercely intelligent, unforgiving, harrowing attempt to show us how and why.

Half Man begins in the present, with two men circling each other in a dark barn. One, Niall (Jamie Bell), is in full Scottish wedding fig. The other, Ruben (Gadd), is stripped to the waist and has his hands wrapped like a sparring boxer. The fight that is surely about to come does not seem a fair one.

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.”

Our Legacies of Enslavement team has found humanity and dignity, not blame or guilt, are at the heart of the conversation

Guardian owner heralds next phase in Legacies of Enslavement restorative justice plan

There’s an image, a feeling, that I haven’t been able to get out of mind since my last visit to the Sea Islands, US, in March. That of living in a small box, compressed on all sides. From above, your basic services are being neglected or withheld; from the sides, your ability to find a job or make a living is cut away; from below, a steady assault on your self-esteem as you are criminalised, ignored, gaslit or made to feel invisible. And imagine having to raise a family, make ends meet, maintain your physical and mental health in that box. At some point the air is going to thin out.

Occasionally, a glimpse of something offers respite. A flock of birds against the sky. The sway of the Spanish moss on the oak tree that has binya (“been here”; a Gullah Geechee term used to describe Sea Islands natives) for hundreds of years, that has seen Jim Crow, Reconstruction and maybe even enslavement. You hear the flow of the water as it laps against the dock. The water that represents a passage to the motherland. And life feels worth living.

Declaration comes amid intense efforts to bring two sides together in Pakistan for new round of talks

Donald Trump unilaterally announced an extension of the two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday amid frantic efforts to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table.

Hours after announcing that he “expected to be bombing”, the US president said he would extend the ceasefire until Iranian negotiators submitted a proposal for peace.

Sacked civil servant tells select committee of ‘pressure’ to give clearance and ‘dismissive’ attitude to vetting

The civil servant sacked by Keir Starmer has given a devastating account of his government, saying Downing Street put huge pressure on the civil service to approve the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Washington ambassador despite the concerns of vetting officials.

Olly Robbins, the former top official at the Foreign Office, said No 10 took a “dismissive” attitude to vetting, and Mandelson was given access to the Foreign Office building and to “higher-classification briefings” before he was granted security clearance.

HMRC confirms it will fight London tax tribunal’s finding that it has been overcharging for years under the law

• EV charging shake-up looks to help UK households solve off-street parking problem

The UK’s tax authorities have decided to fight against a ruling that would cut VAT across all public electric car chargers, despite a judge finding they have been overcharging for years under the law.

Charge My Street, a not-for-profit charging company, last month argued successfully that VAT should have been charged at 5%, rather than 20%, in a case at a London tax tribunal that could have a significant impact on electric car drivers’ costs. HM Revenue and Customs on Tuesday confirmed it will appeal against the ruling.

Home secretary accuses protesters of trying to ‘delegitimise’ concerns people have over immigration

Shabana Mahmood told “white liberal” hecklers to “fuck right off” after being accused at an on-stage event of copying the policies of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The home secretary was barracked by a man who said he wanted to “personally thank you for out-Reforming Reform” during a live interview in central London on Monday. Two other audience members shouted “refugees welcome” as the man was removed by security.

Demographic also overrepresented when police officers use force such as handcuffs, firearms or Tasers, says children’s commissioner

Black children across England and Wales are almost eight times more likely to be strip-searched by police than their white counterparts, a report has disclosed.

Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, said Black children are also overrepresented when officers use force and were more likely to have their “size, gender or build” cited as justification.

Karex produces more than 5 billion condoms annually and is a supplier to leading brands like Durex and Trojan, as well as the NHS

The world’s top condom producer, Malaysia’s Karex Bhd, plans to raise prices by 20% to 30% and possibly further if supply chain disruptions drag on due to the Iran war, its chief executive has said.

Karex is also seeing a surge in condom demand as rising freight costs and shipping delays have left many of its customers with lower stockpiles than usual, CEO Goh Miah Kiat told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

Ministers hope tobacco and vapes bill, which will become law next week, will create a ‘smoke-free generation’

A bill banning anyone born after 2008 from buying tobacco in the UK has completed its progress through parliament in a move that ministers hope will create a “smoke-free generation”.

Under the tobacco and vapes bill anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be able to be legally sold tobacco across the UK, in an effort to save lives and reduce the burden on the NHS.

Robert Albon cannot be declared four-year-old’s father because he ran illegal sperm donation business, court rules

A prolific unregulated sperm donor described in the high court as a “highly dangerous man” has lost a legal fight to be named as the father of a child conceived using his sperm.

Robert Albon, who calls himself Joe Donor, was not entitled to be declared the father of a four-year-old child because he was running an illegal sperm donation business, Britain’s most senior family court judge ruled.

Podcaster admits he ‘misled’ supporters as his rift with the US president deepens over the Iran war

• US politics live – latest updates

Tucker Carlson, a conservative podcaster, has said he is “tormented” by his support of Donald Trump, issuing in an extraordinary mea culpa that called for “a moment to wrestle with our own consciences”.

Carlson delivered that comment in a conversation with Buckley Carlson, his brother and a former Trump speechwriter, on The Tucker Carlson Show on Monday that reviewed the sidelining of traditional conservative values in a Republican party now dominated by the president.

Sacked civil servant says No 10 pushed Foreign Office to find diplomatic role for Matthew Doyle without informing foreign secretary

Downing Street pushed the Foreign Office to find a diplomatic role for Keir Starmer’s communications chief over the head of the then foreign secretary, the former head of the department has revealed.

Testifying to MPs at parliament’s foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday, Olly Robbins said he had several conversations with No 10 about finding a role for Matthew Doyle, who was later suspended as a Labour peer after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children.

Keir Starmer’s decision to oust senior official may have knock-on effect for No 10’s relationship with civil service

Fury within Whitehall about the treatment of Olly Robbins remains white hot several days on from Keir Starmer’s decision to sack the senior Foreign Office civil servant.

“It’s just total self-serving, narrow, selfish, political-endgame stuff,” said one supporter of Robbins, who was dismissed for failing to tell the prime minister that the now disgraced former US ambassador Peter Mandelson had not passed UK security vetting.

Sacked civil servant says it was right not to tell PM that Mandelson had failed vetting – a view Starmer rejects

In the last 24 hours, the two men at the heart of the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal have given their version of events: Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and Olly Robbins, the man he sacked as the head civil servant at the Foreign Office.

Robbins’ testimony to the foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday completes much of the picture as to why Mandelson was given security clearance against the advice of vetting officials.

The Foreign Office chief sacked over the Peter Mandelson security vetting scandal has finally given his side of the story in an explosive appearance before MPs. Olly Robbins told the foreign affairs select committee that he faced ‘constant pressure’ to get Mandelson in post as US ambassador as soon as possible, and claimed Downing Street took a ‘dismissive’ attitude to vetting. It came a day after Keir Starmer accused Robbins of ‘obstructing the truth’ about the vetting process in a high-stakes appearance in parliament.

Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s political editor, Pippa Crerar

Protests are growing against moves to change Japan’s ‘supreme law’, a document written by the US that is now being challenged by Iran war

It may be a toy, but Gohta Hashimoto’s lightsaber is symbolic of the battle he and his fellow protesters face as they attempt to derail moves by Japan’s government to change the country’s pacifist constitution for the first time in its 80-year history.

“I’ve been interested in the constitution for about a year, ever since the rise of far-right parties in Japan,” says Hashimoto, a 22-year-old university student. “I wanted to be part of a movement that keeps my country peaceful and protects the constitution.”

Outgoing CEO took stood up for users in battle with FBI but concessions abroad undermine claims of protecting ‘fundamental right’

In his 15 years as Apple’s top executive, Tim Cook has projected an image of the company as a champion of privacy rights. As he prepares to leave that role in September, that legacy has come back into focus. Cook trumpeted the iPhone maker’s commitment to privacy at home in the US and the EU, calling privacy “a fundamental right” but his acquiescence to government demands abroad call his dedication to protecting users into question.

Cook cemented Apple’s pro-privacy reputation in 2015 when he resisted the FBI’s demands to unlock the iPhone of a mass shooter in San Bernardino, California. The company played up that public image in 2019 with playful ads that read, “Privacy. That’s iPhone”, positioning Apple as the obvious choice for people who cared about privacy. In 2021, Apple added a feature, App Tracking Transparency, that allowed iPhone owners to limit an app’s ability to track their mobile activity. Apps that tracked users without permission would be removed, Cook said.

Russian oil can flow again, says Ukrainian president, leaving ‘no grounds’ for blocking €90bn EU package; warning of all-out Kremlin cyberwar. What we know on day 1,519

The Druzhba pipeline carrying Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia is ready to resume operations, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday, after Ukraine repaired the damage from a Russian attack. Kyiv now expects the EU to unlock a €90bn EU loan after Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, spent months blocking it. Orbán is about to leave office after losing badly in national elections.

“There can now be no grounds for blocking it,” said Ukraine’s president, referring to the loan. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, speaking after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, said she expected a positive decision on the loan within 24 hours. Reuters, quoting an industry source, said pumping oil through the pipeline would resume on Wednesday.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly called on Europe to diversify energy supplies and not resume flows via Druzhba from Russia. “No one can currently guarantee that Russia will not repeat attacks on the pipeline infrastructure,” he said on Tuesday.

Guns were fired as Ukrainian authorities arrested military draft officers in Odesa for allegedly snatching people from the street and extorting money using the threat of being sent straight to the frontline. The Security Service of Ukraine said four officers working for the local territorial recruitment centre – which carries out conscription and recruitment – were detained after agents including special forces shot at the tyres of a vehicle in which they tried to escape. The group was being investigated for extortion, said the SBU. “The perpetrators face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.”

Moscow is taking its Ukraine war tactics and techniques “beyond the battlefield” to target the UK and Europe in cyberspace, the head of Britain’s cybersecurity force at GCHQ will say on Wednesday. Richard Horne will point to “sustained Russian hybrid activity” and warn that companies must learn how it is done in order to defend themselves. Horne is head of the national cybersecurity centre at Britain’s signals intelligence agency. He is due to speak at the CyberUK conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

In recent months, Sweden, Poland, Denmark and Norway have all reported hackers linked to Russia have targeted their critical infrastructure including power plants and dams. Horne will say that in Britain the NCSC currently handles around four “nationally significant” cyber incidents a week with the most serious threat coming from cyber-attacks carried out directly or indirectly by other states. He mentioned Russia, China and Iran.

In a conflict, Horne will say, the UK would probably face cyber-attacks “at scale” but – unlike with ransomware deployed by organised criminal hackers – companies would not be able to pay their way out. For that reason, he will say, every organisation needs to understand the “full extent” of the risk they face and improve their cyber defences.

In his new book, Omer Bartov tracks how a liberatory strand of Zionism transformed into an extremist ideology that he sees as responsible for genocide in Gaza

Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.

Although the 2005 Gaza disengagement was perhaps less a change of heart than one of strategy, as his senior adviser later admitted, the lyric became a byword of Israeli politics, an oft-cited reminder that perspective is everything.

Adaptation of Stephen Merchant’s 2019 film about WWE champ Saraya-Jade Bevis ‘will be an absolute blast’, says one of the film’s stars, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson

Stephen Merchant’s wrestling film Fighting With My Family has inspired a stage musical. The new adaptation of the 2019 biopic about Saraya-Jade Bevis AKA Paige, who became a World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) champ, will feature a book and lyrics by Jon Brittain and music by Miranda Cooper and Nick Coler.

The film starred Florence Pugh as Bevis, who was born into a wrestling family in Norwich and became a WWE star in the US at 18 after a chaotic childhood. Written and directed by Merchant, it co-starred Dwayne Johnson in character as The Rock. Merchant said that when he was making the film he “always thought of it like a musical: a young woman from the ‘chorus line’ fighting to get her big break, surrounded by theatrical, larger-than-life characters and huge sweeping emotions”. Merchant said that he even approached each wrestling match in the film as if it was a new dance number, “building to a big show-stopping finale”. He added: “The team have captured the humour, grit and heart of the story in a way that feels both faithful to the film and completely fresh.”

Lightroom, London
This hour-long, 360-degree film may skip over some chapters of Bowie’s career, but what is here is irresistible – and thrillingly huge

For a decade now, the posthumous David Bowie industry has been in full, unremitting swing. There have been umpteen reissues, box sets, books, documentaries, exhibitions and an ever-expanding range of merchandise that occasionally makes you wonder if there’s anything on which that quote about not knowing where he’s going but promising it won’t be boring can’t be printed. After 10 years, the possibility that the public might be suffering from Bowie fatigue has been raised, but the appetite seems insatiable. Hence You’re Not Alone, an hour-long 360-degree film directed by Mark Grimmer – lead designer for the V&A’s blockbusting 2013 exhibition David Bowie Is – showing at London’s “immersive exhibition space” Lightroom.

A lot of what’s been produced since Bowie’s death is clearly aimed at diehard fans. You’re Not Alone sets itself a trickier task: keeping them onside while appealing to a younger audience, allegedly more resistant to Bowie’s allure than those who remember his imperial phases first-hand. You sense the desire to cater to the latter in the way it concentrates on Bowie’s biggest-streaming songs: you get a lot of Let’s Dance, but no mention of Ashes to Ashes or Sound and Vision.

Use of the illicit drug has plummeted in recent years among gen Zers, compared with their parents’ generation

Ever since cocaine first emerged as a popular party drug via the shores of Miami in the early 1970s, use of the stimulant has been inextricably entwined with the very essence of capitalist excess and what it is to be American: brash, bombastic and brazen.

The wide-scale use of cocaine in the US has left a trail of destruction in its wake, largely thanks to the illegal nature of the trade and the resultant US government policy of a “war on drugs”.

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.

When DeGeneres posted her A-list snap at the 2014 Academy Awards, it made a splash. But it was probably the end of monoculture – and now we’re all alone in our TikTok bubbles

Name: The Oscars selfie.

Age: Once upon a time (2 March 2014, to be precise), at the Oscars, the actor Bradley Cooper, who was nominated for best supporting actor, took a selfie with the host, Ellen DeGeneres, and a whole load of A-listers …

One way to pay for wildlife conservation is to allow the rich to bag a few animals for high prices. But critics see this approach as an exercise in neocolonialism

You can kill almost anything if you’re willing to pay. Big or small. Land, water or air. Ten a penny or one of the last of its kind. There’s nearly always a way, though it might not make you popular. The Niassa special reserve, a vast reservation larger than Switzerland, stretches for 190 miles along the northern rim of Mozambique, taking in 4.2m hectares of woodland and rivers. The reserve, one of the world’s largest protected areas, is home to elephants, leopards, hyenas, zebras and about 1,000 wild lions.

That word, however: protected. It applies to some, but not all, of its animal inhabitants. Each year, a specific number are set aside for sacrifice, for the greater good. Not long ago, I joined an expedition in Niassa, with one of Africa’s top game-hunting companies.

Olly Robbins’s testimony will have been painful for the PM. The No 10 omnishambles was publicly laid bare – and Keir’s fresh out of scapegoats

‘How dare Olly Robbins not have made me look like a chaotic, unprincipled plonker?” is an interesting defence for a prime minister to go for. But we are where we are. Never mind “this is the future liberals want”: this is the past that Keir Starmer wants. What follows is the alternative branch of history the endlessly victimised PM apparently wishes we’d lived through instead.

In this version, he chooses a career liability to be US ambassador, who is well known to have been big pals with a notorious sex trafficker of underage girls and to have spent years involved in questionable business associations, some with Russian and Chinese firms. He immediately announces the appointment. When that guy is deemed a risk by the famously stringent developed national security vetting process – seriously, who’d-a-thunk-it?! – then Starmer has to go out and tell the public that the wrong ’un isn’t actually going to be his US ambassador after all, for “reasons”. Not to be one of the many people who has to explain how basic politics works to the PM, but after that notional fiasco, we’d have spent a very long time indeed talking about his bad judgment. Just like we are now. It’s almost as if all branches of history lead to a discussion about Keir Starmer’s bad judgment. The only person who doesn’t judge this to be the situation is Keir Starmer, which is another instance of his bad judgment. Monday found him chuntering away at the dispatch box like an arsonist complaining about the price of matches.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

To survive, the house of Windsor must maintain with a straight face the elaborate illusions it once sustained. That is clearly no longer possible

The commemorative Queen Elizabeth II centenary teddy bear stands 30cm tall, is made from finest mohair and retails for £289, payable in three interest-free instalments. It comes dressed in the queen’s classic lime-green ensemble with a white handbag draped over its left paw, which, according to Nicolas Metz, the managing director at the collectibles retailer Galerista, “is how we all remember her”.

And once you get over the basic category absurdity of seeing a toy bear dressed up to look like a nonagenarian constitutional monarch, you realise he’s right. What better way to commemorate our late queen than with a piece of premium souvenir anthropomorphism: cuddly, relatable and yet entirely inanimate, a vessel for our unthinking veneration and overactive imagination?

Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist

A low approval rating will not cause the US president to hang his head in shame. He’s more likely to dig in

You’ll know the famous quote, bastardised from a 1926 column by the Baltimore journalist HL Mencken, that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” The rest of the quote, less often cited, is: “Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” It’s hard to disagree when you look at the polls. Because, despite everything, more than a third of Americans continue to think Donald Trump is doing a great job.

I’m not saying all is rosy for Trump: a new NBC News poll has found Trump’s popularity has plummeted to a second-term low. The cost of living in the US is rocketing and the country is embroiled in an immoral and economically disastrous war: two-thirds of Americans say the country is on the wrong path. But 37% still approve of Trump’s overall performance. That’s down from 42% in December but it’s still pretty damn high considering the US is being led by an adjudicated sexual predator who has started wars with both Iran and the pope recently, while making life at home harder. Trump can’t be blamed for everything, but there is evidence his policies have negatively affected growth, jobs and inflation.

The government’s plan to de-link gas and electricity prices will have a modest effect – more promising are plans on EVs and heat pumps

• Why are UK electricity prices linked to gas – and what does it mean for bills?

It’s a holy grail of UK energy policy – de-linking gas and electricity prices. After all, we’ve been told endlessly that one reason why our energy bills are so high is because “gas sets the price of electricity”. And here it comes: “decisive action” from the government to “break the link”. So, tell us, by how much can we expect bills to fall?

Energy secretary Ed Miliband and colleagues didn’t offer even a tentative answer. The big announcement was a prediction-free zone on bills for two reasons.

Trans athletes and those with DSD must be treated with respect, and the new testing regime must be run with sensitivity. But this is a step forward

The decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to exclude transgender women and most athletes with differences of sex development (DSD) from women’s Olympic sport has won praise from most major sports bodies but criticism from some activist groups.

It also closes the door on a period where often well-intentioned inclusivity came at the expense of sportswomen, and those who pointed out that the rules were not fair.

Tanya Aldred writes about sport for the Guardian

Sports bans have humiliated trans women and girls across America. Now, the Olympics joins in

Last month, the International Olympic Committee announced that transgender women athletes would be barred from competing in all Olympic events in the women’s category – but not the men’s events. In addition to trans women athletes, cisgender women with conditions known as DSDs – differences in sexual development – will also be banned from competition. The new rules effectively redefine womanhood – but not manhood – as a novel and previously unrecognized category consisting only of those with a specific set of genetic prerequisites. To comply with this new requirement, women athletes – but not male ones – will be made to submit to genetic testing, to determine whether their womanhood meets the committee’s standards. The rule will be in effect for the upcoming summer Olympics, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles in 2028.

The move comes as increased political and media attention to the issue of trans rights and visibility over the past years – along with pressure from the Trump administration – has led athletic federations to ban trans women from sports competitions, a demand that has largely not been made for transgender men in women’s or men’s sports. The vitriol and intensity of this controversy has been acute. Twenty-eight states ban trans girls and women from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity; last year, the NCAA announced a ban on trans athletes competing in women’s collegiate leagues.

The US has failed to bomb Iran into submission. Now, from the strait of Hormuz to nuclear concessions, Tehran senses its position strengthening

Iran’s delegation to the first round of post-ceasefire talks with the US in Islamabad arrived on a plane named Minab 168 after the people – mostly young schoolgirls – killed in a US bombing early in the war. The name signalled both grievance and resolve, framing the talks as part of a conflict in which Tehran has already absorbed immense costs.

That framing helps explain how Iranian officials approached the talks and how they view the current impasse. Rather than negotiation from a position of weakness or urgency, they see diplomacy as an extension of a battle they believe they endured without losing their core advantages. With the ceasefire set to expire on Wednesday and no diplomatic breakthrough in sight, the risk of a return to war is sharply rising.

Olly Robbins exposed a deeper failure: when the prime minister’s decision came first, security vetting was left to catch up after the fact

It was a classic Whitehall performance: understated and explosive. Sir Olly Robbins did not bluster in front of MPs. The sacked Foreign Office chief calmly stuck to the language of process. He admitted clearing Peter Mandelson to be US ambassador despite UK Security Vetting (UKSV) – in his own words – “leaning against” approval. But the context was key: Downing Street had already set a “very, very strong expectation” that the peer would be in Washington fast and had a dismissive attitude to vetting. The decision to back the peer had effectively been made before the system could catch up.

On Monday, MPs skewered Sir Keir Starmer over appointing Lord Mandelson. The issue was not what the prime minister knew, but what he chose to do with the knowledge. By December 2024, he had seen Cabinet Office “due diligence” and was aware of the peer’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after the financier’s child sex conviction. Sir Keir went ahead anyway. Announcement, royal approval and US “agrément” swiftly turned that judgment into policy – before vetting had even begun. Sir Keir insisted that he should have been told Lord Mandelson was, in his words, denied security clearance for the role of US ambassador. Diane Abbott cut through this defence with a single question: “Why didn’t you ask?”

There is growing international concern as the fragile two-week ceasefire reaches its Wednesday deadline. Whatever happens next, the poor will pay

More than 3,300 Iranians, including 383 children, have been killed since the US and Israel launched their illegal war, authorities said this week. Asked about Wednesday’s ceasefire deadline, Donald Trump first said that he expected to resume bombing, then unilaterally announced that he was extending the truce “until discussions are concluded”. Whatever happens – or doesn’t – with the US-Iranian peace talks due to take place in Islamabad, the costs of this disastrous conflict will keep growing. The only thing that the sides have in common is that each needs peace, but thinks that it can force the other into significant concessions.

Iran has deployed its drones and missiles to punishing effect, but knows that its chief weapon is the economic pain it can inflict, primarily through control of the strait of Hormuz. The International Monetary Fund warned last week that a further escalation could trigger a global recession. Its head, Kristalina Georgieva, had already said that the crisis would remain a threat to the global economy even if it ended overnight. The costs mount over time. But while the pain is widely spread, it is far from evenly shared. The combination of higher energy, food and fertiliser costs will increasingly hammer poorer and heavily import-reliant nations.

Albania’s ambassador to the UK, Uran Ferizi, takes exception to media reports that he says selectively focus on the criminality of Albanians

• Report: Albanians in UK scapegoated by rightwing media and politicians, says ambassador

These are challenging times in Britain. Economic pressure has a long history of finding a foreign face to blame. For several years now, that face has been Albanian – caricatured by certain media outlets and politicians in ways that are neither fair nor, frankly, very British.

The statistics most often cited do not bear scrutiny. For example, the Telegraph’s claim in 2024 that one in 50 Albanians in the UK was in prison was derived by selectively narrowing the total Albanian population in the UK by multiple factors, producing a ratio designed to alarm rather than inform. When adjusted for age, sex, income and residency status, the figure collapses to the British average.

Readers respond to an editorial on difficulties with replicability of results in social science research

Your editorial on social science research (15 April) highlights the poor replicability of results, and the misuse of this by some to dismiss all social science. As was indicated, in a field as complex as human behaviour, poor replicability can be due to many factors: methodology, misused statistics, variations in sample characteristics and so on.

There is one factor underlying much of this, not much discussed, which is a dearth of observation of human behaviour in everyday environments in the same manner as scientists would observe any other species in order to find out what the behaviour is and so what needs to be understood.

Chris Huhne points out that the UK is not limited to a choice of North Sea drilling or more imports of liquefied natural gas

Nils Pratley is right to highlight the continuing role of gas in the UK energy system and the risks of growing dependence on imported liquefied natural gas (The UK needs more North Sea gas, not greater reliance on US imports, 14 April). As he notes, gas will remain essential for heating and power system resilience for years to come, and relying on volatile global markets leaves the UK exposed to price shocks and disruption.

But the choice is not limited to more North Sea drilling or more imports. There is a third, often-overlooked option that supports farmers and rural communities while using our waste to make secure homegrown energy. Produced from organic wastes and injected into the existing gas grid, biomethane is fully domestic, low carbon, storable and dispatchable when needed.

Dr Craig Reeves responds to a letter that said pensioners aren’t better off under Keir Starmer’s government

James Kyle writes “with a heavy heart” against Labour’s treatment of pensioners, seeing the personal allowance threshold freeze as a betrayal that shows the Tories are more on the side of “those who have worked hard all their lives” (Letters, 12 April).

I’m no fan of Keir Starmer, but the suggestion that this is an anti-pensioner move is beyond credulity. Today’s pensioners benefited from numerous public goods that they also statistically voted against: publicly owned infrastructure; publicly funded university education; council housing and affordable private rents and house prices; robust workers’ rights; free movement across Europe.

Perhaps time to celebrate Brighton’s achievements, though it would be hard not to view this windswept South Coast evening through the lens of Chelsea’s latest crisis. Following another grim chapter in the Liam Rosenior saga, his name taken in vain by angry away fans, Chelsea look on at Brighton as an example of responsible stewardship, of careful recruitment, a model they have failed to emulate and now lag behind in the Premier League table.

Brighton’s return to the European football enjoyed under Roberto De Zerbi is fully on the cards. Fabian Hürzeler, an appointment in which there was considerable doubt earlier this season, has revived his team. He has still never been defeated by an opposing English manager. Goals by Ferdi Kadioglu and Jack Hinshelwood had done damage to Chelsea, even if much of it was self-inflicted. The margin of victory might have been far more by the time Danny Welbeck scored the third in stoppage time to complete as convincing a win– and defeat – as it gets.

Ten years after a legendary, against-the-odds Premier League triumph, five years since winning the FA Cup, and a single season after dropping out of the top flight, Leicester City will be relegated to the third tier of English football.

For a club that experienced real tragedy not long ago it would be misguided to indulge in excessive hyperbole, but a second straight relegation is a sporting disaster, certainly one of the most spectacular falls in the recent history of the domestic game.

• Sky Blues are champions after 5-1 rout of Portsmouth

• Millwall leapfrog Ipswich; Southampton fluff lines

Ephron Mason-Clark scored a brace as Coventry clinched the Championship title with a convincing 5-1 victory over Portsmouth.

Haji Wright opened the scoring before Mason-Clark pounced on an error from Nicolas Schmid just 90 seconds after the break, which was compounded by Regan Poole’s own goal three minutes later.

• Rooney and Murphy question scenes after victory

• Guardiola: ‘They won. How can they not celebrate it?’

Pep Guardiola has hit out at criticism of Manchester City’s celebrations following Sunday’s victory over Arsenal, describing such comments as “stupid things”.

At the final whistle of the 2-1 win at the Etihad Stadium, one that took City to within three points of the Premier League leaders with a game in hand, Gianluigi Donnarumma jumped into the crowd behind his goal while many of City’s others players also celebrated in emphatic fashion.

F1’s latest world champion speaks with deep candour about overcoming his insecurities but questions about Max Verstappen and regulations? Off limits

There are always complications and difficulties in Formula One, as there are in life and even in this interview. On a beautiful evening at a lavish golf club in Surrey, Lando Norris and I are tucked away in an anonymous yet brightly lit room crammed with a television crew and representatives from his management team and Laureus, the global organisation driven by a belief that “sport has the power to change the world”.

At first Norris talks thoughtfully and honestly about his struggles with profound insecurity before becoming world champion last year. But we reach a low point when a young man from his management company feels sufficiently empowered to answer questions on the 26-year-old’s behalf, as a way of controlling our interview.

• Murphy beats Fan Zhengyi; O’Sullivan leads by five

• Judd Trump sees off Gary Wilson to reach second round

Shaun Murphy clawed back a 36-point deficit in the deciding frame to secure a nail-biting 10-9 win over the Chinese qualifier Fan Zhengyi in the first round of the World Snooker Championship.

The pair traded blows throughout a thrilling second session and Fan moved to the verge of victory after taking the first chance in the last – but Murphy, who won the title in 2005, drew on all his years of experience to nudge home with a superb break of 50.

Karren Brady, who is stepping down as vice-chair at West Ham after 16 years, leaves a questionable legacy

The “No More BS” campaign led by dissenting West Ham fans needs an update. One half of the double act has left the building but the protesters do not see it as job done. They are celebrating the departure of Karren Brady, who has stepped down as vice-chair after 16 years, and will not stop pushing for change in the way their dysfunctional club is run until David Sullivan has followed her out of the door.

That, though, is not happening yet. No sooner had Brady’s departure been announced than some fans started predicting that Sullivan would not be far behind. But a move by the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky to increase his West Ham stake by lining up a deal to buy a chunk of the Gold family’s shares is not expected to lead to Sullivan going. Kretinsky, it is said, is merely strengthening his hand. Sullivan, who is also planning to buy some of the Gold shares, is not going anywhere. Kretinsky will match the 77-year-old’s old stake, slightly diluting the era of Sullivanism, but the outcome could have been different.

• Injured Alcaraz out of event for second year in a row

• ‘It is different when Carlos and Novak are not in the draw’

Jannik Sinner described Carlos Alcaraz’s injury withdrawal from the Madrid Open as “tough to swallow” for the tournament and believes the absence of his greatest rival will make a big difference as he tries to win a record fifth straight Masters title.

“It’s a very tough thing for the tournament,” said Sinner. “Last year he didn’t play, so twice in a row is tough. And also Novak [Djokovic] is not here, it’s tough to swallow for the tournament. It is always different when Carlos and Novak are not in the draw. I would say [this situation is] unique because we have shared since last year a lot of tournaments.”

• Heavyweight vows to clear his name with bout cancelled

• Fighter cites elbow treatment and hopes ‘sense prevails’

Lawrence Okolie has pledged to clear his name after a failed drugs test that has led to the cancellation of his heavyweight bout against Tony Yoka this weekend.

The British fighter, a former cruiserweight world champion who moved up to heavyweight, had been scheduled to face the Frenchman in Paris on Saturday. Okolie is the No 1-ranked contender by the WBC, whose belt is held by Oleksandr Usyk.

Seven held over alleged plot to commit another attack and man held over drone incident near Israeli embassy

Detectives investigating a series of attacks on Jewish targets have arrested seven people for allegedly plotting a further new firebombing, as a teenager pleaded guilty to an arson attack on a synagogue on Saturday.

The arrests by counter-terrorism officers follow fire bombings or attempted arson of synagogues and other Jewish targets across London.

Ministers also asked to alter compensation rights and suspend emissions trading scheme amid Middle East war

Airlines are lobbying the UK government to relax environmental and noise rules, modify passenger rights and cut taxes on flying, as they prepare for higher costs and a possible shortage of jet fuel because of the war in the Middle East.

A list of policy requests submitted to ministers and the aviation regulator includes suspending the emissions trading scheme and relaxing limits on night flights, it has emerged.

Exclusive: Victims’ commissioner makes formal complaint after committee session left one attender ‘shocked, upset and extremely distressed’

Victims of rape and sexual violence have told parliamentarians they felt anxious and distressed during a Westminster evidence session, with one stating that witnessing “pugnacious” questioning had resulted in her “breaking down, sobbing and struggling to breathe”.

The victims’ commissioner has made a formal complaint to the chair of an influential group of MPs after a highly charged evidence session carried out by the public bill committee for the courts and tribunals bill about controversial changes to jury trials.

Jose Ramos-Horta urged by opposition to explain diplomatic passport given to businessman behind resort project, who denies any involvement with organised crime

Timor-Leste’s opposition has questioned how foreign investors in a proposed cryptocurrency resort obtained prime beachfront real estate in the country’s capital, and has called on the president to explain why he issued a diplomatic passport to a Chinese businessman involved in the project.

Speaking in parliament in Dili on Monday, Fretilin opposition party MP Florentino Ximenes da Costa “Sinarai” raised concerns about the proposed AB Digital Technology Resort, which was the subject of a months-long investigation by the Guardian and Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Analysis finds 53 workplace harassment allegations against 30 lawmakers amid wave of resignations in Congress

Fifty-three allegations of workplace sexual harassment have been made against at least 30 House and Senate lawmakers over the past two decades, an advocacy group said in a study that was released Tuesday amid a spate of ethics-fueled resignations in Congress.

Most of the lawmakers from 13 states and Guam who have faced allegations have since left office, but nine continue to hold seats, the nonpartisan National Women’s Defense League (NWDL) said.

About 500 farmers challenge Green Gen Cymru in high court over alleged disregard for landowners and biosecurity

A group of 500 Welsh farmers have brought a landmark legal claim to the high court over the alleged conduct of a green energy developer planning to build electricity pylon routes across their land.

The court will hear allegations that Green Gen Cymru “unlawfully sought entry to private land, intimidated landowners, and showed disregard for biosecurity and basic rights”, as well as examine laws that force landowners to sell property to utility companies, in a hearing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Exclusive: Report finds Natural England has created no new SSSIs, which protect areas from development, since 2023

The government’s wildlife watchdog for England is failing to save nature because it has stopped giving protection to rare wildlife and habitats, according to a new report.

No new sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) have been designated by Natural England since 2023. SSSIs are nationally or internationally important places for rare wildlife and habitats. Without the designation, endangered species can be at risk of being lost to development.

While wildlife populations crash globally, research finds designated areas enable recovery of threatened species

Wildlife and humans are thriving within sites recognised by Unesco, research has found, allowing for the recovery of threatened species and habitats around the world.

While wildlife populations have crashed globally by nearly three-quarters since 1970, those within Unesco-protected areas have remained largely stable.

The country is seeing an increase in human-wildlife conflict as the number of megafauna, including rhinos and tigers, grows. But there are efforts to tackle the problem around Chitwan national park through education and training

The tourists lining the steep embankment buzzed with excitement, phones out, snapping away in the twilight as a wild Indian rhinoceros grazed below the Nepali village of Sauraha. Climbing to the main street, the rhino ambled down the middle of the road.

Local people warned tourists to give it plenty of space. All manner of wheeled vehicles slowed, then passed. The rhino turned its horn at a cyclist passing too close, triggering gasps from the assembled crowd.

A manager uses torchlight to guide a wild Indian rhinoceros through the grounds of his hotel in Sauraha

Police bring criminal case over alleged manipulation of party database in Croydon East constituency

Four Labour activists have been charged over allegations that a party database was manipulated to increase a candidate’s chance of selection.

The four include Joel Bodmer, 40, who ran as a potential candidate for the Croydon East constituency in south London but later withdrew. He is charged with perverting the course of justice for allegedly altering phone records.

John Ashby, 32, admits using Islamophobic slurs during attack on Sikh woman he thought was Muslim

A man who racially abused a Sikh woman as he raped her has pleaded guilty to the assault after being confronted in court by a member of the public.

John Ashby pleaded guilty to rape, religiously aggravated assault, intentional strangulation, robbery and religiously aggravated assault of the woman at her home in Walsall.

UK representatives from Meta, Roblox and TikTok also tell MPs they believe under-16 ban would be ‘unenforceable’

Executives from three social media companies have denied their platforms are inherently addictive to children and young people, in a combative appearance before MPs in Westminster.

Representatives from Meta, Roblox and TikTok faced robust questioning from the cross-party education select committee about the impact of screen time and social media on children.

In a letter to the Guardian, Uran Ferizi criticises ‘obsession’ with demonising Albanians

Albanians in Britain are paying the price in schools and workplaces of being scapegoated by rightwing media and politicians, the Albanian ambassador has said.

Uran Ferizi also criticised Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, for comments in parliament where she singled out Albanians when discussing problems with immigration.

Human rights campaigners say honour for Avraham Zarbiv endorses ethnic cleansing and war crimes

• Middle East crisis – live updates

An extremist rabbi known for razing civilian homes in Gaza will light a torch at Israel’s independence day celebration on Tuesday, a role human rights campaigners said marked the embrace of genocide as the official “spirit of the nation”.

Avraham Zarbiv is one of 14 people chosen for their “extraordinary contribution to society and the state”, alongside a scientist, a Michelin-starred chef, a leading doctor, members of the security forces and entrepreneurs.

State attorney general said inquiry will look into whether AI tool offered ‘significant advice’ to campus shooting suspect

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Florida’s top prosecutor is to launch a criminal investigation into how the tech company OpenAI and its software tool ChatGPT may influence users’ threats of harm to themselves or others, including whether it “offered significant advice” to a gunman accused of conducting a mass shooting in the state last year.

State attorney general James Uthmeier said at a news conference on Tuesday that his office is expanding an examination of OpenAI, saying a “criminal investigation is necessary” and the state had issued subpoenas to the $852bn California-based tech firm.

Lai Ching-te abandons visit after Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar revoke overflight permission

Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, has cancelled his trip to Eswatini, the democratic island’s only diplomatic ally in Africa, after his government said several countries had revoked overflight permits because of “intense pressure” from China.

Lai was to leave on Wednesday for the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession.

Weinstein switched legal teams for this retrial, but his new attorneys are echoing their predecessors’ themes

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Prosecutors once again portrayed Harvey Weinstein as a one-time Hollywood power player who used his sway as a tool of sexual assault, painting a now-familiar picture on Tuesday at a rape retrial nearly eight years after the former movie tycoon’s arrest.

“This case will come down to power, to control and to manipulation,” said Candace White, a Manhattan assistant district attorney, to jurors as opening statements began in the bellwether #MeToo case, with Alvin Bragg, the district attorney, watching from the audience.

Researchers find model starts to mirror tone when exposed to impoliteness – sometimes escalating into explicit threats

ChatGPT can escalate into abusive and even threatening language when drawn into prolonged, human-style conflict, according to a new study.

Researchers tested how large language models (LLMs) responded to sustained hostility by feeding ChatGPT exchanges from real-life arguments and tracking how its behaviour changed over time.

Inquiry launched after Ofcom received evidence that suggested illegal content was being shared on messaging platform

Ofcom has launched an investigation into whether the Telegram messaging platform is failing to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) under the UK’s Online Safety Act.

The communications regulator carried out an assessment and decided to launch an investigation after receiving evidence from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection that suggested child sexual abuse material was allegedly present and being shared on Telegram.

Lords told sales of Scottish shellfish among areas that may benefit – but agreement will not erase all paperwork

• Europe live – latest updates

A new agriculture agreement with the EU will not wipe out all Brexit paperwork but might pave the way for sales of Scottish langoustines and oysters, the House of Lords has heard.

The UK and EU are close to finalising a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement to reduce Brexit trade barriers, and while it will have “modest” impact on the UK economy the agreement will be significant, peers on the European affairs committee were told on Tuesday.

Bank of England expected to keep interest rates on hold as Iran war casts shadow over labour market

• Jobs market was in fragile state even before Iran war

• Business live – latest updates

Unemployment in the UK unexpectedly fell in the three months to February, according to official figures – but the fallout from the conflict in the Middle East is expected to cause a rise in job cuts.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate of unemployment was 4.9% in February, the lowest level since last summer. This compares with 5.2% in the three months to January, a rate that economists had expected to also see in February.

Male incels have been plentifully depicted on screen, while few film-makers have explored the varied controversies of toxic female radicalisation and the ‘womanosphere’. But a handful of movies have been treading a brave path

Most people would agree that mainstream media has now comprehensively (if not entirely successfully) covered “incel” culture. The small screen has delivered the likes of Adolescence and Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere; the movies have offered multiple meditations on male radicalisation such as The Beast, Manodrome, Don’t Worry Darling, Joker and even Barbie’s Kens.

The irony of women being overlooked feels almost too obvious to flag, yet we are definitely suffering a dearth of onscreen “femcels”. This lack of representation is all the more glaring amid the rise of tradwife culture and the wellness to “alt-right” pipeline – largely made up of female influencers dubbed the womanosphere – and the fact that around 50% of white US women voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

Rammed with every music-movie cliche, an almost mute supporting cast and a Michael who only produces endless smiley blandness, this is a frustratingly shallow film

Antoine Fuqua’s demi-biopic of Michael Jackson gives you the chimp, the llama, the giraffe … but not the elephant in the living room. It’s like a 127-minute trailer montage assembling every music-movie cliche you can think of: the producers’ astonishment in the recording studio, the tour bus, the billboard chart ascent, the meeting with the uncool corporate execs in their offices.

The film skates through Jackson’s life from the early days of the Jackson Five, terrorised by belt-wielding dad Joe, to his emergence as a stunningly original, globally adored solo act, culminating in the colossal Wembley Stadium concert in 1988, at which stage he was 30-years-old. And there we leave it, with the baffling surtitle flashed up on screen before the end credits roll: “The story continues”. It certainly does. Does this mean a second, darker movie is in the works? Maybe. Producer Graham King and the Jackson family estate are reportedly considering a “Michael 2”; if this happens, they will have to find a very different film-making style, something other than this bland, slick, corporate hagiography. And there is certainly no clear commitment to anything. All concerned might well think it’s best to exit here, and avoid the controversy, like the stage show MJ: The Musical.

Ragnhild Ekner’s documentary weaves together breathtaking collective displays around the world, but soft-pedals its less photogenic aspects

Here is a visually epic and surprisingly positive documentary about a maligned subculture: football ultras. Director Ragnhild Ekner is an IFK Göteborg fanatic, but she is even more of an ultra for ultras overall, and covers impressive ground here – from Sweden to Morocco, Italy to Indonesia – to stress what a universal phenomenon they are. While acknowledging ultras’ collective force – what Martin Amis once called “the Jupiter of the crowd” – her main line of argument is that becoming a super-fan is an act of individualistic rebellion against the suffocating political and economic status quo.

Ekner also insists that, as much as an act of opposition, this hardcore fandom is primarily about family. She, and others here, testify to the strength of this solidarity, to which the football itself can almost be incidental, and where belonging gives rise to a fervent creativity. A long sequence is devoted, threaded through the film, to the creation of tifos, giant banners unfurled by the crowd featuring club insignia or fantastical tableaux. The Göteburg effort shown here took an estimated 2,200 man hours, €30,000 worth of labour, all the work and materials donated out of love. The synchronised performance by the supporters of Java’s PSS Sleman – turning a terrace into a quasi-pixelated display by brandishing sheets of paper – is jaw-dropping.

A theatrically released movie about glossy magazines, released at a time when there are minimal audiences for either, has ordered up a no foam, extra shot, venti facepalm

It might, of course, turn out to be a masterpiece. Yet there has been something intangibly depressing about The Devil Wears Prada 2 ever since it was first announced. Somehow, the timing of the film and its subject matter have combined in such a way that you can’t help but feel bummed out to the point of exhaustion just to think of it.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is, of course, a theatrically released movie about glossy magazines, released at a time when nobody goes to see theatrically released movies or buys glossy magazines. And just to really sell the point that the film exists in a vacuum of unrealistic nostalgia, it has just announced a brand partnership with Starbucks.

Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film, which secured Kidman an Oscar for her depiction of Virginia Woolf, is a groundbreaking depiction of queer sexuality across the 20th century

Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer prize-winning book The Hours – inspired by Virginia Woolf’s seminal 1925 novel, Mrs Dalloway – imagines one day in the lives of three women separated across time periods. The triptych follows Woolf in the throes of writing Mrs Dalloway; Laura Brown, a depressed housewife who is reading Woolf’s novel in postwar America; and Clarissa Vaughan, a New Yorker who acts as a contemporary embodiment of Woolf’s titular character.

Cunningham’s 1998 text, though widely acclaimed, was initially deemed unadaptable due to its nonlinear structure and stream-of-consciousness approach that paid homage to Woolf’s pioneering style. However, since its publication, The Hours (which takes its name from Mrs Dalloway’s working title), has been reinterpreted as an opera and, most notably, a 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry.

As details of this year’s concert series are unveiled, here are some of the most exciting lineups – from a Bach recital by Notre-Dame’s organist to Thomas Adès conducting the National Youth Orchestra in his own ballet

If 19th-century repertoire thrives on scale and scope, baroque and early music is all about intimacy: the husk of bow on gut strings, the purity of an unaccompanied voice. It’s music that often struggles to find a place at the Proms, but clever choices make for an intriguing lineup this year.

The New Zealand composer burned pianos, sampled earthquakes and recorded Belfast’s peace walls. And at 86 is still invested in her life’s work: to appreciate the music in everyday sound

A broken upright piano, tilted like the sinking Titanic, stands part-buried in a garden at Glasgow’s Counterflows festival. Experimental composer Annea Lockwood swipes a hand across its exposed strings and beams at the metallic clang. “Great piano!” she says, inviting other musicians and the audience to make their own strange noises by scratching and tapping it with garden debris.

It’s one of many pianos Lockwood, 86, has buried, burned or drowned since the 1960s, exploring their changing sounds as they are destroyed – though she says “transformed”. A pioneer of field recordings, her work has ranged from “sound maps” of entire rivers to music made with the peace walls demarcating areas of mid-Troubles Belfast. As she revisits two significant works at Counterflows and prepares a new release of 1975’s World Rhythms, she takes me through her radical career from the very start.

The comedians are back with a fifth series of their Weirdo’s Book Club. Plus, a fascinating look into some stories filed away in America’s National Archives

If IRL book clubs can feel a little twee (why is there always someone who hasn’t finished the book?!) Sara Pascoe and Cariad Lloyd’s podcast might be a better way to get your lit fix. Season five kicks off with a recommendation for Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, which gave new life to its women, and Pascoe “butchering” the plot of Ulysses, while guests this time round include author Maggie O’Farrell and musician/writer Kae Tempest. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

The Charlatans frontman plays Kate Bush deep cuts in his car and loves a bit of Abba, but which scary industrial noiseniks soundtrack his sexy time?

The first single I bought
I remember seeking out Long Haired Lover from Liverpool by Little Jimmy Osmond when I was six. I bought it from Rumbelows on Northwich High Street – it sold washing machines, TVs, blenders and the Top 40 7-inch singles at the back.

The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
I’ve long been obsessed by Steve Ignorant from Crass. I’ve had various stalls at record markets over the years, and at one, this guy came up and said: “Do you really know the lyrics to all Crass songs?” He tried to catch me out by singing Do They Owe Us a Living?, but I knew them from start to finish.

From a haven for intellectuals fleeing Hitler to the HQ of the feared Abwehr, the changing fortunes of a Parisian icon

The word “hotel” is cognate with “hostel” and “hospital”, and for a few short years in the middle of the 20th century, one Paris establishment functioned as all three. Hôtel Lutetia sits on the city’s Left Bank and exudes a certain nonconformist swagger. Opened in 1910 and built in a style that bobbed between art nouveau and art deco, it soon attracted an artistic and bohemian crowd. Hemingway hung out there in the 1920s, as did Picasso, Matisse and André Gide. James Joyce, resident in the city for 20 years, wrote a chunk of Ulysses sitting at one of its tables.

In this outstanding book, which has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize for nonfiction, Jane Rogoyska reports that by the mid-1930s the Lutetia had become headquarters to German political dissidents fleeing Hitler. “The Lutetia Crowd”, as the Nazis disdainfully dubbed them, comprised the intellectual cream of the Weimar Republic. Heinrich Mann, novelist brother of the more famous Thomas, was the head of the organising committee that worked to bring down the Nazi regime from a distance. To this end, fake tomato-seed packets were sent into Germany containing a diatribe against the Third Reich and The Communist Manifesto was rebound into classic literature and pumped into the Fatherland.

The bright young things of 1992’s Brightness Falls are now in their 60s in this verbose, clunky novel that seems more interested in lifestyle than inner lives

More than 40 years ago, Jay McInerney’s debut novel, Bright Lights, Big City, captured the glamour and desperation of 1980s New York. The book’s spectacular success launched its author’s career, earning him comparisons to F Scott Fitzgerald, another midwesterner with a complicated relationship with the US’s fantasies of wealth and social mobility. In 1992, Brightness Falls introduced readers to a fresh cast of young New Yorkers, but was primarily focused on a central couple, Corrine and Russell. McInerney returned to these characters in two subsequent novels; See You on the Other Side completes the tetralogy.

The book opens at the start of 2020 with the bright young things now in their 60s, coping with erectile dysfunction and marital woes, and fretting about the job prospects of their twentysomething children. In addition to the eternal problem of ageing, Corrine and Russell are about to confront the events of that tumultuous year: the pandemic, protests for racial justice and a bitterly fought presidential election campaign. Russell is the book’s main character, although we spend time with Corrine and make excursions into the points of view of their daughter, Storey, an aspiring chef, and her biracial boyfriend, Mingus.

What’s it like to lose your partner of more than 40 years? The novelist and essayist reflects on going from ‘we’ to ‘I’

It wasn’t quite Beatlemania, but, at the height of Paul Auster’s fame in the 1980s and 90s, screaming fans clambered on to the hood of a car after a reading in Buenos Aires. Admirers mobbed him at bookshop events in Paris, the city where he had once eked out a living translating French literature. He was offered big money to make ads promoting American beef to Japan. He was hailed as a rock god, a literary superstar, a postmodernist with leading-man looks.

Little of this is of much consequence or consolation to novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt who, before he died of cancer in 2024, had been married to Auster for more than 40 years. As she tells it in Ghost Stories, her memoir of their life together, she was a tall blond PhD student in a jumpsuit when she met him – “a beautiful man in a black leather jacket” – at a poetry reading. He was separated from the mother of his child, living alone in a gloomy Brooklyn apartment, yet to publish anything of substance. Literature bound them: he was just 15 when he decided his future was in writing; she had come to the same insight at an even younger age.

From the secret gay life of a British-Caribbean man to that controversial shared Booker win, the author has blazed a trail across the literary landscape. Here are seven of her top titles

Even by Evaristo’s experimental standards, this book is a highly ambitious mash-up of forms and stories. It takes a mismatched couple, strait-laced Stanley and ebullient Jessie, on a road trip across Europe where they meet the ghosts of black historical figures, from Alexander Pushkin to Mary Seacole. We learn a lot along the way, but the real engine of the story is Stanley and Jessie’s combative relationship. Told in a blend of prose, poetry, scripts, memos, legal documents, budget spreadsheets … and road signs, Soul Tourists ultimately wobbles under the weight of both its own good intentions and its skittish variety, but it has charm and energy to burn.

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.

I initially dismissed the Wind Waker’s cartoonish visuals as juvenile. But now I try to carry the game’s sense of joy into all aspects of my life

I had a complicated relationship with video games when I was a teenager. I had straightforwardly, wholeheartedly loved the Nintendo games that I’d grown up with, tumbling around primary-coloured dreamscapes in Super Mario 64 and having the time of my life. But as I grew into a pretentious young adult in the early 00s, I started to want more from games, and I wasn’t finding it. So many of them were mindless, or juvenile, or needlessly violent. So few seemed to have anything to say. I started to wonder whether games might really be a waste of time, like the judgy adults in my life kept telling me.

My response to this was to relentlessly intellectualise the games I played, in order to justify the time and attention I was expending on them. I mainlined highbrow gaming magazines and wrote grandiose blogs about serious adult themes in Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid and the ancient Fallout computer games. My childhood love of Nintendo, with its bright hues and unselfconscious approach to play, felt embarrassing. Then I switched on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and had a realisation about the nature and importance of play that would shape my life.

Role-playing adventure and superhero comedy among big winners on a varied night in London

With 12 nominations, acclaimed role-playing adventure Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was expected to be the runaway success at the 2026 Bafta games awards, held in London on Friday evening.

And while it couldn’t quite match its nine wins at the Game Awards back in December, it was still the joint biggest winner on the night, taking best game and debut game as well as the performer in a leading role award for Jennifer English.

PC, Xbox; Sad Cat Studios
This pulpy sci-fi thriller is a beautiful, if deferential, homage to the genre greats, with a poignant real-world echo

For all of cyberpunk’s cautionary tales of shady corporations and transhumanist folly, it is the genre’s arresting imagery that looms largest in the pop culture imagination. Petroleum flares light up the perpetually rainy Los Angeles of Blade Runner; in the novel Neuromancer, the sky is the “colour of television, tuned to a dead channel”.

Replaced, a new 2D action-platformer from Belarus-based outfit Sad Cat Studios, leans into the steel and sprawl that the genre is famed for. The game also offers a wrinkle to cyberpunk’s longstanding, somewhat overfamiliar visual palette: it floods the screen with softly diffusing sepia and warm primary colours, particularly in the densely populated residential areas you’re able to explore. The mood is comforting rather than ominous, cosy rather than clinical, as if this dystopian sci-fi has been touched by an unlikely hand – that of cottagecore godfather Thomas Kinkade.

Replaced is out now; £16.99/$19.99

Royal Court theatre, London
Yousef Sweid shows wit and charm as he tackles his divorce and custody battle, while the larger struggle closes in around him

This is not a political show, Yousef Sweid announces at the outset, despite the provocation of its title and the heap of protest banners on stage. Sweid, an Israeli Palestinian living in Berlin, is just here to talk about his divorce, he says.

The Israel-Palestine conflict can’t help but raise its head nonetheless in Isabella Sedlak and Sweid’s play, staged at Edinburgh last year. Sweid is a Christian Arab Palestinian who grew up in Haifa with an Israeli passport and friends on either side of the divide. He is divorcing his second wife, who is Israeli, and has children who are half-Jewish Berliners with Austrian blood from descendants of the Holocaust.

An interest in spiritualism drew the escapologist and the Sherlock Holmes author together but, as actor-playwright Haig’s drama Magic shows, also threw them into conflict

It’s the question most often posed to artists: where do you get your ideas from? David Haig’s answer is: I ask Google. Preserve the mystique, man! Haig is celebrated both as an actor (Killing Eve, The Thin Blue Line) and playwright, whose 2004 hit My Boy Jack was adapted for TV and whose follow-up Pressure is now a forthcoming Hollywood movie. His mouthwatering latest play dramatises the friendship between writer and spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle and escapologist and rationalist Harry Houdini. It’s such a fascinating double act, one assumes Haig must have long nursed an interest in their story. The truth is more prosaic. “I mundanely Googled ‘interesting unusual relationships in British history’,” he tells me. “And that’s what came up.”

Should we admire the man’s honesty (What do you think of AI Overviews? “It’s unavoidably useful”) or deplore his lack of romance? Not coincidentally, these are the same questions raised by Magic, opening in Chichester this month, and probing the friendship-then-friction between Conan Doyle, convinced he can communicate with the dead, and Houdini, unsentimentally calling a fraud a fraud. “For these two dissimilar men to meld together when they meet, it was like a chemical bonding, then to find this critical element that tests and challenges their relationship, I thought that was absolutely fascinating.”

Jeu de Paume, Paris
The peerless chronicler of everyday absurdity did not live to see this exhibition, but it is a dazzling final chapter, showing his irresistible good humour growing darker

I didn’t know Martin Parr very well, but the last time I spoke with him, two months before he died in December last year, he told me about his forthcoming exhibition at Jeu de Paume. He wasn’t subtle in adding that the Guardian never reviewed his exhibitions. I wonder now if he knew that the exhibition, titled Global Warning, would be his swansong. I wonder whether he knew he’d never get to see it.

Parr was always popular in France. It might be because the French loved his ability to mock the English, but in the end Parr mocked everyone, including himself. When his work was criticised in the UK as classist or sneering, Parr could cross the channel and seek refuge in a nation where no one seemed to read his work that way. The show at Jeu de Paume is set to be the museum’s most visited on record.

Barbican, London
Antonio Pappano’s dramatically charged interpretation of this religious oratorio landed powerfully with a hair-raising performance from David Butt Philip as the titular soul

Elgar’s greatest oratorio is that rare thing, a complex religious text that explores core tenets of the Roman Catholic faith and yet is set to music that sweeps away any sense of dusty philosophical debate in a blaze of transcendent beauty. As the composer’s most operatic score, Gerontius responds readily to a theatrical approach, which was one reason Antonio Pappano’s dramatically charged interpretation landed so powerfully.

Take the prelude. Seldom has the music’s Wagnerian ache and the sense of time running out felt so palpable. Elsewhere, he was unafraid to pull back, teasing out Elgar’s chamber-like textures with a gentle elasticity. Most rewardingly, his conductorly attention to the protracted expressive arc ensured that the work’s twin climaxes – the great chorus of Praise to the Holiest and the soul’s searing glimpse of the Deity – felt properly earned. This, he seemed to say, is where we have been heading all along.

Microsoft has also reduced the price of its Xbox Game Pass video game subscription service, Microsoft Gaming boss Asha Sharma has announced

Microsoft’s gaming subscription service Xbox Game Pass will be coming down in price from today, but future Call of Duty titles will no longer be available on the service at launch. Other games from Microsoft-owned studios will still be playable on Game Pass from the day of their release, and older Call of Duty games will remain available, the company has clarified.

Last October, Microsoft increased the price of its top-tier Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription by almost 50%. From today the price will reduce from £22.99/month to £16.99/month in the UK, and from $29.99 to $22.99 a month in the US. PC Game Pass will also drop from $16.49 to $13.99/£13.49 to £10.99 a month.

Alongside siblings Donny and Marie, the musician was a 1970s teen idol with family hits such as Crazy Horses

Alan Osmond, the eldest sibling of the Osmonds family band, has died aged 76. A spokesperson confirmed that he died at 8.30pm local time in Salt Lake City, Utah. His wife and eight children were by his side.

“My brother has now stepped into the presence of our Father in Heaven with honor and peace,” Merrill Osmond, his brother, wrote on Facebook. “He gave everything he had to the Lord, to his family, and to all of you … He truly was a saint.”

Aldeas, The Final Dream of Pope Francis is being screened to commemorate the first anniversary of Francis’s death

Martin Scorsese’s documentary about Pope Francis is to have its world premiere in the Vatican today as one of a set of events commemorating the first anniversary of Francis’s death.

The screening of the film, titled Aldeas, The Final Dream of Pope Francis, is being staged by Scholas Occurrentes, an international organisation aiming to “to encourage social integration ‎and the culture of encounter through sports, arts and technology”, which was set up in Argentina by Francis in 2001 while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and made into a foundation when he became pope in 2013.

Four auctions in June will allow fans to bid for clothing and personal objects owned by the Oscar-winning actor – as well as the original, untitled script for Annie Hall

Six months after the death of Oscar-winning actor Diane Keaton, four auctions have been announced to sell items from her personal collection.

Keaton died in October 2025, aged 79, from pneumonia. This June, a series of sales in New York and Los Angeles will allow fans to purchase Ralph Lauren clothes worn by Keaton, as well as the original, untitled script for 1977’s Annie Hall.

From quick and easy roasts to warming curries and a centrepiece wellington, these dishes make for filling dinners, with plenty left over for lunch

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Cauliflower looks like the ghost of broccoli, or a human brain that has been drained of blood. As is the case with many overlooked vegetables, boiling is the absolutely second-worst way to cook it (we do not talk about cauliflower rice), while roasting is best, to coax out its sweet and nutty flavours. A whole head is very good and affordable in Australia at the moment and can easily feed a whole family.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basic they scrimp on? The designer talks feminist prints, wine gums and full-fat Coke with the Filter

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Anya Hindmarch founded her eponymous luxury accessories business in London in 1987, and she now has 15 stores worldwide. Her I’m Not A Plastic Bag and I Am A Plastic Bag projects ignited the debate over the use of plastic bags and contributed to the decision to charge for plastic bags in UK supermarkets. In 2021, her brand launched the Universal Bag, a collaboration with supermarkets to rethink the reusable shopping bag, and Return to Nature, a collection of bags that are intended to biodegrade at the end of their useful life.

Hindmarch opened the Village on Pont Street in London’s Chelsea in 2021, a community of neighbouring stores clustered around the Anya Cafe. That same year, Anya published her first book, the Sunday Times bestseller If In Doubt, Wash Your Hair.

Our writer has found a meal kit for every home cook, along with smart ways to make the most of leftovers. Plus, how to clean your mattress and vitamin C serums, tested

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Can I interest you in 23 sachets of soy sauce and half a kilo of golden linseed? If not, they’ll probably live quite happily in the back of my cupboard until a clear-out in 2032. The glut of organic potatoes, tomatoes, beetroot and aubergines I was left holding after my test to find the best recipe boxes and meal kits had a more limited shelf life.

Reduced waste is one of the top benefits of recipe box services, especially those that deliver only the exact measures of ingredients you need for the recipes you choose. But I tested nine of these services at once – including some that attempted to curry favour by sending me multiple boxes containing multiple recipes.

The best wedding guest dresses for every budget and dress code

The best rums: 10 tasty tipples for daiquiris, mai tais and mojitos – tested

‘Perfectly textured – moist, fluffy’: the best supermarket falafel, tasted and rated

Ready, set, ride! Everything you need to cycle with kids

The best secateurs to save you time and effort when pruning your garden, tested

The best hot brushes for a salon finish at home, tried and tested by our expert

The best vitamin C serums for every skin type and budget, tested

The best juicers for blitzing fruit and veg – tested

Wedding invites piling up? Whether you need town hall-ready or black-tie chic, we’ve got looks for every type of nuptial – and beyond

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Few social events are as fraught with sartorial anxieties as weddings. From the strict no-white-dresses rule (fair enough) to the semantics of black tie and the even murkier casual codes, dressing for someone else’s celebration can feel even more stressful than dressing for your own.

Weddings are rarely a one-size-fits-all kind of event, with a range of dress codes depending on the venue and formality levels. Summer weddings offer breathing room: florals, bright colours and lighter fabrics that shimmer under the sunlight feel perfectly at home. Town hall ceremonies suit classic tailoring, while country weddings embrace a more rustic romance. Casual weddings allow for a little more experimentation, with statement skirts and coordinated separates fair game. The trick is balance: show respect for the occasion, but rules and regulations are often outdated.

Our gardening expert puts 19 bypass secateurs to the test to find the best for comfort, sharpness and tackling tough stems

• The best pressure washers, tested

Secateurs are the single most valued tool in the gardener’s trug, an implement as personally prized as the bricklayer’s trowel. With time, their weight and shape wear familiarly into the hand, becoming a companionable tool for all garden tasks, from pruning woody shrubs and cutting back perennials to slicing twine and preparing cut flowers.

There are two main types of secateurs, bypass and anvil (see below for their differences explained), and I’ve focused on the former here. If well looked after (we’ve included care instructions at the end of this article), a quality pair can last decades; as a result, gardeners declare staunch loyalties to particular models.

Best secateurs overall:
Burgon & Ball bypass secateurs

Best secateurs for tough stems:
Felco Model 2

Herbs, spices and love may be the secret to great falafel, but which supermarket versions hit chickpea perfection and which are over-processed duds?

• The best tinned and jarred chickpeas

It was surprisingly hard to find good, traditional falafels in the supermarkets for this test. While most of those on offer were delicious, many had long, complex ingredients lists, other than two standouts made with just chickpeas, herbs, spices and sodium bicarbonate.

Even some of the better falafels had unnecessarily long ingredients lists, despite being relatively minimally processed, but at their worst, some of these falafels were much more processed and included dehydrated potato flakes, pea protein, refined soya bean oil and stabilisers. The best, however, were delicious and contained lots of herbs, spices and even love.

Publicans say celebrity-backed brands have helped the take-up of a ‘slightly lighter alternative’ to the classic G&T

A crisp gin and tonic has for many British people been just the ticket as the weather gets warmer, but new consumer data shows tequila is overtaking gin for the first time as a summer tipple of choice.

Spicy margaritas, which are a piquant twist on the classic tequila, lime and triple sec cocktail, have taken the UK by a storm in recent years and now the country is firmly hooked on tequila, with many ordering a tequila and tonic instead of a G&T.

Smoky peppers, spices, soy and oil all help with that fatty, salty, deeply savoury flavour, breadcrumbs and mushrooms add texture

I’ve recently given up eating pork, but I’m struggling to compensate for its umami. How can I recreate the taste and texture in, say, carbonara or my beloved chorizo dishes?
James, by email
For Joe Woodhouse, author of Weeknight Vegetarian, there’s just something about white beans: “Whether cooked from dried, then dropping chopped onion, garlic, sage and thyme into the broth, or just dumping a jar or tin into a pan with fried garlic and sage, the smell that fills the kitchen is like that of sausagemeat,” he says. “It tastes a bit like it, too – or at least the memory of it, bearing in mind I haven’t eaten the stuff for 30 years.”

The quest for that umami savouriness could start with soy sauce, Woodhouse says (“or Slow Sauce’s oat shoyu”), while chef Mike Davies’ first port of call would be Totole’s Chinese mushroom seasoning powder: “It’s super-effective in replacing the richness and fattiness that comes from cooking with any meat, and especially pork,” says the chef-director of the Camberwell Arms, south London. “Honestly, it’s such a cheat-code ingredient.”

Poppadoms masquerade as tortillas in these tostadas topped with a striking pink mole, and grilled mushroom tortillas smothered in melty cheese and a sharp salsa

Costra, meaning ‘crust’ in Spanish, is a classic dish from the north and centre of Mexico that’s traditionally made with tender cuts of beef and finished with a melted crust of semi-hard cheese (usually Chihuahua or manchego mixed with Oaxaca cheese for texture). The cheese is grated on a plancha grill and allowed to melt and crisp up, and is then draped over the meat. Here, though, I have substituted the steak for mushrooms. Then, tostadas are traditionally made with crisp corn tortillas that are either baked or deep-fried, a technique that was first invented to preserve the tortillas for longer. They’re commonly used to serve lean, light preparations, like ceviches, aguachiles and salsas. Here, I’ve used poppadoms to achieve a similar texture and starchiness; use ready-cooked ones to make this even quicker.

Cutting UPFs from our grocery list was expensive, laborious and time-consuming

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Grocery shopping looks different these days. On Saturday mornings, instead of the local supermarket, I’m at our local San Diego farmers’ market, loading up on fish, meat, apples, cheese and berries – enough for a family of four.

But it’s not a cheap excursion; our weekly grocery spend is now higher than it was when we decided to try to cut ultra-processed foods (UPFs) from our diet five years ago.

In 2021, we spent $158.63 on cereal; in 2025, the total was $34.34.

Our yoghurt costs went from $260.29 in 2021 to $24.27 in 2025.

We no longer buy protein bars, which cost us $261.04 in 2021.

Our peak expenditure on frozen chicken tenders was in 2020, when we spent $159.76. For the past two years we haven’t bought any.

Butter more than quadrupled between 2021 and 2025, to $234.22.

The total in the sugar column went from $9.47 in 2021 to $83.10 in 2025 (I did a lot more baking last year).

The biggest leap was for fruit and vegetables: $2,578.32 in 2021 became $5,706.36 last year.

In 2021, we started buying meat that was humanely raised by farmers and ranchers using regenerative agriculture practices. We spent a lot in this category, almost $2,500 on raw beef and chicken (the previous year, we spent about $1,500). The following year, 2022, we dropped our meat expenditure down to about $1,000 by eating a lot less of it, and more dried beans.

Globally, the number of single people is on the rise. Rates of marriage and cohabitation are on the decline, and in some countries, even sex itself is down. In this new series we're on a journey around the world to find out why people seem to be coupling up less, and what could be causing this dating crisis. In this episode, we’re in the UK

Psychiatrist Amir Levine’s first book explored different types of attachment. In his follow-up, he explains how anyone can become more secure

Amir Levine has been quietly working towards a second book for 16 years. When Attached, which he co-wrote with Rachel Heller, was published in 2010, it brought the categories for how we behave in relationships – AKA attachment styles – into the public consciousness. According to attachment theory, you could be anxious (often resulting in social hypervigilance), avoidant (independent, suppressing difficult emotions), fearful-avoidant (craving closeness, but often retreating in fear) or secure. Knowing which you were and where significant others sat on this spectrum provided helpful insights for self-awareness and relationship harmony.

Since then, Levine has received countless emails from readers around the world either seeking his advice or telling him how the book changed their life. “I got an email from a woman from Iran,” he recalls. “She said that she realised she was with someone very avoidant. She was able to cut off from him and she found someone else who was secure.” Also, because she felt better equipped “to communicate her needs with this new partner, she reached an orgasm for the first time”. From all of these stories, as well as research into the neuroscience of attachment and neuroplasticity and working with therapy clients, Levine has now compiled the tools needed to help anyone become more secure.

Sol and João had a whirlwind romance and now have a baby on the way – which has changed their sexual connection for better and worse …
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

João has been turned on by the changes pregnancy has brought so far

Sol’s pregnancy has changed the way we have sex, but I’m also attracted to the changes

Tomas Telegramma had a platonic chemistry with his colleague Steph Vigilante. But one night as the heaven’s opened, so did his emotional floodgates

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2019, I started a job as a junior editor for an online city guide in Melbourne. I was struck by the social media coordinator, Steph, who worked quietly and diligently in a corner of the office, but had a surname that was at odds with her vibe. She was Vigilante by name, but not by nature.

Our shared Italian heritage was an instant bonding agent. We had chemistry, sure, but it was purely platonic. Even when lockdown put a pin in all things in real life, work’s instant messaging app helped our friendship survive working from home. I’d write stories about the city; Steph would cleverly bring them to life on social media. The synergy was real.

Government has shaken up the way electricity is priced as British costs are among the highest in the world

• Electricity generators threatened with higher windfall taxes in bid to ensure stable prices

The second global energy crisis of this decade has reignited questions about Britain’s grid strategy, specifically: why does it continue to have one of the most expensive electricity markets in the world?

Despite the growing role of domestically generated renewable power, electricity wholesale prices in the UK have more than doubled since the war in Iran triggered a global squeeze on seaborne gas shipments from the Gulf.

Fraudsters are using the promise of fake roles to trick job-seekers out of money, personal information or both, and with the help of AI they are more convincing than ever. But there are ways to spot them

There were clues from the start that it was too good to be true. A headhunter emailed me with a job prospect – a journalist role with “a leading US technology and markets editorial team”. The opportunity, she said, was part of a confidential expansion and hadn’t been publicly posted.

My spidey-sense was tingling, but the timing was auspicious. I was on the lookout for new work as my maternity leave was coming to an end. Initially, the email seemed legitimate. When I Googled the sender, I found a headhunter with the same name and profile picture on LinkedIn, and the message was clearly tailored to me: It referenced several roles I’d previously held and identified my specific areas of expertise. “Your focus on the real-world impacts of AI, digital culture and the gig economy aligns perfectly with an internal, high-priority mandate I’m managing,” the headhunter wrote.

I was forced to lose all the £609 I had paid, although Booking.com couldn’t contact our host, either

A friend and I paid Booking.com for an apartment in Paris. The next day we received an email informing us our “request” had not been confirmed and advising us to contact the owner.

Our many attempts failed, and so did Booking.com’s. A call centre manager suggested we travel to Paris, knock on the door and contact Booking.com if nobody answered. Otherwise we would not get our booking refunded.

He said he was forcibly stopped from picking it up and promptly issued with the fixed-penalty notice

My son was fined £500 after dropping a cigarette butt in Southwark, London. He says the enforcement officer physically prevented him from picking it up, and told him he would escape a fine if he provided ID, and the police would be called if he didn’t. He complied and was promptly issued with a fixed-penalty notice (FPN).

However, £500 is more than a typical fine for a dangerous offence such as speeding.

Social media users have been extolling the virtues of going to bed early and giving yourself lots to do there before you drift off. But should our beds just be reserved for sleep and sex?

Name: Bedtime stacking.

Age: Of the moment.

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.

Bottlenecks in the system and parents’ suspicions mean doctors expect another serious outbreak soon

By 10am on a spring day, the corridor of the clinic in the Transylvanian town of Săcele was already crowded with parents and children. They were all waiting to see Dr Mirela Csabai, one of just seven general practitioners serving a population of more than 30,000.

Most of the cases that morning were routine: colds, checkups, chronic conditions. The calm, however, is recent. In 2024, a measles epidemic tore through this community and left one unvaccinated toddler dead.

Researcher Valentina Bianchi says holding in information can take a mental toll. Here’s how to manage it

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Usually nothing makes me happier than receiving a message that starts with “don’t share this, but …”. Yet as I played the voice note on my phone, my gleeful anticipation turned to dismay.

It was a juicy bit of gossip, but one I ultimately would have preferred not to know. Now I also had to conceal it from others.

I’m an adult. Why do I regress under my parents’ roof?

I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

People say you’ll know – but will I regret not having children?

Ex-Mattel boss behind Barbiemania pivots retailer towards more premium fashion after reopening UK stores

From the 80s through to the early noughties it was the go-to high street store for casual hoodies and jeans, before falling out of favour. Now almost 30 years after its heyday, Gap is hoping to turn things around. Key to its comeback strategy? A pivot to more premium fashion.

On Friday the retailer will unveil a collection with the luxury fashion designer Victoria Beckham. The collaboration is the next step in the luxification of Gap being led by Richard Dickson, who joined Gap Inc as its president and chief executive from Mattel, the US toymaker, in 2023.

Resurgence of 90s minimalism has caused an explosion in the popularity of denim, but can a pair ever be worth £800?

Denim mania is surging across the fashion spectrum. At one end is the luxury brand Alaia with an Aegean blue, comfortable yet flattering £800 pair. At the other is JW Anderson’s collaboration with the high street brand Uniqlo and a £34.90 price tag. Both are proving wildly popular.

Alaia’s line has only just launched, so there are no sales figures yet, but demand for its Japanese denim is such that customers are advised to reserve certain styles in store or call ahead before visiting. At Uniqlo, the straight cut are said to be the most popular, on the front row of the most recent fashion weeks, and routinely sell out online. Blame the resurgence of 90s minimalism.

Once the preserve of childhood underwear, the patterned knit is now bringing nostalgia and comfort to adults in a fast-changing, unpredictable world

In this very on-brand April, where sun and showers jostle for supremacy and a chill wind is making 16C feel like 9C, you might have spotted pointelle popping up everywhere. On her recent world tour, Rosalía appeared on stage in Paris wearing a pointelle bodysuit. Then Sabrina Carpenter appeared on the cover of Perfect magazine hanging backwards off a bed wearing cyan eyeshadow and a pointelle underwear set. It’s peeping out from underneath shirts and jumpers in air-conditioned offices and on buses. For spring, the heritage knitwear brand Herd is offering “featherlight yet warm” jumpers in its signature pointelle. John Lewis, which said yesterday that online searches for pointelle were up 60% week on week, is selling bandana-scarves and pyjamas made of the same material.

The fabric, more associated with girls’ vests, thermal-wear and underwear, is, according to Merriam-Webster, “an openwork design (as in knitted fabric) typically in the shape of chevrons”. Sometimes peppered with hearts, florals, diamonds or zigzags instead, you probably had a pair of pointelle ankle socks, possibly with a little cotton ruffle. Or maybe you remember that era in the 00s when Whistles churned out lacey pointelle camisoles that grazed bellybuttons inches above Juicy Couture track bottoms.

Got denim overwhelm? Go back to basics with a simple pair of straight leg jeans

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?

The Highlands and Islands are rightly lauded for their superb seafood – but these days it’s not reserved for fine dining and can be found at the simplest waterside shacks and inns

The best oysters of my life arrive on a polystyrene tray, eaten elbow-to-elbow with strangers at a table littered with empty shells and damp paper napkins. We huddle beneath a tarpaulin, sheltering from the fine spray of rain rattling on the roof, the wind whipping around the hulking CalMac ferry moored metres away, and the beady-eyed scavenging gulls.

“Have you tried this? You have to,” says a woman who has driven from Glasgow just to eat here, pressing a rollmop herring into my hand. I take a bite, the thick skin giving way to sweet and salty flesh, juices running down my chin. Elegant dining this is not, but all the better for it. This is Oban Seafood Hut, tucked beside the ferry terminal for boats heading into the Sound of Mull. Diners shuffle around a shared table, listening for order numbers, with plates piled high with langoustines, crab and oysters. It’s cash only. In the back room, a team of women butter thick slices of soft white bread for crab sandwiches, wrapping them in clingfilm without ceremony, to be sold within minutes.

Holiday park firms say such bookings are on the rise because of impact of Iran war on aviation

Holiday companies have predicted a surge in bookings for UK summer breaks after a jump in interest from Britons fearful of flight cancellations linked to the Iran war.

Summer bookings are expected to rise in the coming weeks amid warnings of possible jet fuel shortages and resulting cancellations by airlines across Europe.

From a beachside bothy to a Highland bunkhouse and lochside inn, here are some of Scotland’s bonniest boltholes

With its cheery, cherry-red tin roof, you can’t miss the sturdy stone bothy on the Ben Damph estate. The family-owned 5,868-hectare (14,500-acre) estate nudges up to Loch Torridon, and the bothy, constructed from the ruins of an old black house (a traditional thatched home), has views over the loch to the mountains beyond. Restored by a team of stonemasons, it has two rooms (each sleeping two) warmed by log burners. The furniture has been made from the estate’s timber by a local cabinet maker. Between the two rooms is a “sitooterie” with picture windows framing views over to Ben Alligin. There’s no electricity, but there is running water and a gas-powered hot shower next to the bothy; a compost loo is in the garden.
Sleeps 4, from £342.50 for two nights, bendamph.com

‘Overnighting’ water in a wide-mouthed container does get rid of chlorine, and your sensitive plants will thank you for it

The problem
Rainwater is the gold standard for houseplants, but not everyone has a garden, a water butt, or the inclination to collect it. For those relying on tap water, the question is how to make it as plant-friendly as possible. Chlorine is added to tap water as a disinfectant, and sensitive plants like calatheas, ferns and carnivorous varieties can show it in their leaf edges and general mood.

The hack
Plenty of plant owners leave jugs of tap water on the counter overnight, and the chlorine evaporates, leaving something softer and kinder for your roots. It costs nothing, requires no equipment and has been passed around plant communities for years.

In the summer of 1971, I left behind my comfortable family home with a tent, rations and a Women’s Weekly cutting of Princess Caroline of Monaco

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At 15 I proved the maxim: “Hire a teen while they still know everything.”

That summer of 1971, I judged the world and concluded that civilisation was meh, and surely doomed. So with the zeal of the truly clueless I resolved to try living off the land, and left behind my comfortable family home and smirking parents.

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I found Benny and his brother, Buster, when they were three months old. I was besotted with them both, but it was Benny, with his quirky ways and loving nature, who really stole my heart

I suppose you could say I got Benny from the shops. In 2006, he and his brother ambushed me outside a supermarket in Bahrain. They were trying to climb into the bags of shopping I was carrying to get at the food they could smell. Immediately smitten, I took them in.

It was the start of a 16-year relationship that saw Benny and Buster accompany me to Kenya, Qatar, back to Bahrain, then finally to Manchester. I used to say they had seen more countries than most people. I was an advertising creative director and followed the work where I could get it. It was an interesting but lonely life and my new pals, who were about three months old, immediately made a difference. I was besotted with them, but it was Benny, with his endearing quirks, who really stole my heart.

Amanda Barry’s dad had always wanted to return to the continent, where he worked in 1948, but died before he had the chance. She fulfilled his ambition, and felt closer to him than ever

Amanda Barry was rummaging for something in her mother’s loft when she came across her father’s trunk. Delving beneath the old blankets, she uncovered a trove of photographs, letters and journals that would set her on his trail, all the way to the Antarctic.

Barry’s father, George, had died suddenly after a heart attack when she was nine. Her mother had kept alive the sense of him; his pipes and cigarettes were still in a drawer of the sideboard. Like her four older siblings, Barry owned a photograph, taken at Port Lockroy in Antarctica, where in 1948 he was base leader. “He always wanted to go back,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, Dad, I’m going to go. For you and for me.’”

Mousehole in Cornwall once had a butcher, post office and general store. Now it doesn’t even have an ATM – and one of its crucial bus services has been cut. Can residents save this vital resource?

It’s early April and the sun is shining over Mousehole, Cornwall, as an older couple trudge up the hill to their nearest bus stop before sinking into two of the plastic chairs that have been lined up on the side of the road. Until recently, buses would come right to the centre of the fishing village, the couple are soon explaining to a pair of Australian tourists also waiting for the bus. But when the bus route was taken over by the Go-Ahead transport group in February, the small, ice-cream-van-like buses that had been used by the previous bus company, First Bus, were swapped for full-size buses – some of them double deckers – that wouldn’t be safe to drive through Mousehole’s narrow streets. So the route, which has been taking passengers down to the harbour since the 1920s, was cut short, and now ends at the edge of the village.

You don’t have to spend long in Mousehole, described as “the loveliest village in England” by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, to learn of residents’ dismay over this change. “Save Our Stop” flyers have been stuck in the windows of houses and businesses, while a banner adorns the railing next to where the old stop used to be, inviting passersby to sign the petition to have it reinstated and “make Mousehole accessible to all again” – a petition that now has more than 5,000 signatures.

Yanar Mohammed’s assassination comes amid a number of killings as fellow campaigners warn women’s rights are going backwards

In early March, two unidentified gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on Iraq’s most notable women’s rights activist, Yanar Mohammed, as she stood outside her home in the north of the capital, Baghdad. She had long been the target of death threats from Islamic State and other armed groups.

Her death was the latest of several killings of well-known female figures in Iraq in recent years, who were either prominent advocates for women’s rights or notable individuals. In early April, soon after Yanar’s death, a female lawyer known for supporting girls was also murdered.

Speaking to the Guardian and Jummar Media, women in Iraq say the murders have had a chilling effect on their ability to speak out at a time when women’s rights and freedoms in the country are going backwards.

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 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.

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We would like to hear from people who have been so concerned about the behaviour or actions of a child they know that they have considered contacting the authorities

Has a child you know displayed behaviour or done things that have made you consider going to the authorities?

We would like to speak to people who have faced this very difficult dilemma.

Tell us about a great place to eat or drink on the beach – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

What’s the one thing better than finding the perfect beach? Finding one with a perfect cafe, bar or restaurant, where even the simplest of meals is elevated by a sea view and a soundtrack of crashing waves. We’d love to hear about your favourite finds in the UK and Europe, whether it’s a laid-back chiringuito in Spain, a seafood shack on a UK beach or an archetypal Greek taverna.

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

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