Post your questions below to get insight from the Guardian’s politics live blogger on the future of Labour and the role of the political reporter

Q: Do you agree with the Tories about wanting more oil and gas drilling from the North Sea?

Davey says Kemi Badenoch claims she can get an extra £2.5bn in tax revenue by allowing more exploration in the North Sea. He says she is “just lying”. He says everyone knows that that is not realistic.

Bianca Devins was 17 when she was killed by a man who then shared photos of her mutilated body on sites like Instagram and Snapchat – something her mother Kim describes as ‘psychological terrorism’. Here, she reveals her battle to get them offline

Early on a Sunday in July 2019, police arrived at Kim Devins’ house in upstate New York with a story that made no sense. They were there to do a “welfare check” on Devins’ 17-year-old daughter, Bianca. They said they had received reports from people who feared she may have been “hurt”. Bianca had gone with her friend Brandon Clark to a concert in New York City, a four-hour drive away. “Did they mean that they’d been in an accident?” says Devins. “The police bodycam footage from that time shows how confused I was.”

Amid it all, Devins called her dad, who lived close by, to ask him to come over. Somehow, while making that call, she realised that something dreadful had occurred. “I always pinpoint it to that exact moment, even though we didn’t understand what was happening,” she says. Her body knew before she did that she had lost her daughter. “All of me shook. I could almost see myself from the outside. It was as if my brain shut down to protect me and I left my body. I don’t think I’ve fully returned since.”

Last April, the president unleashed a tidal wave of tariffs on ‘liberation day’. Analysts say the policy has failed, even by the Trump administration’s own terms

Before Donald Trump declared “liberation day” on 2 April 2025 and shocked the world by raising import tariffs on nearly every country the US did business with, he had spent almost three months causing chaos in Washington.

The wholesale slashing of government jobs under Doge (the “department of government efficiency”) and the defunding of US aid agencies had shown White House watchers that the US president was in a hurry to upset institutions he considered profligate or useless.

In week five of Rhik Samadder’s diary, our resident AI skeptic decided to let AI take the lead on a date. If uncanny valley was a conversational style, it’s this

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

I’m single. Is it because I am emotionally avoidant, waiting on a unicorn, or under 6ft tall? Perhaps a spicy meatball of all three?

Or could it be that I haven’t used the magic of AI yet?

Everything Korean – from K-pop and skincare to food and clothing – is booming in popularity in Chile, Mexico and Brazil

On the polished flagstones of a Santiago cultural centre’s forecourt, four Chilean girls dance in energetic union, counting their steps aloud in Korean.

In front of them, a YouTube video with 1.3bn views plays atop a speaker throbbing to the beat of How You Like That, by the K-pop megastars Blackpink.

Endo Kazutoshi spent decades climbing to the top of the culinary world, only for a devastating fire to threaten it all. I joined him in the aftermath as he travelled around his homeland, visiting the people that helped make him

Endo Kazutoshi was on the train to Paris when he heard about the fire. A few hours earlier, at 2am, he had left his restaurant – the tiny, Michelin-starred sushi counter, Endo at the Rotunda, in west London – and headed home, where he got changed and packed his bags for the 6am Eurostar, upon which he planned to sleep. As he boarded the train that morning, 6 September 2025, he was unaware that just after 3am, the fire brigade had been called to a blaze at the Helios building, where his restaurant was located on the eighth floor. The fire had started on a terrace and a few hours later had reached the restaurant’s dining room – built mostly from 200-year-old hinoki wood – the prep kitchen, everything.

Shortly after departure from St Pancras, the news began to reach Endo through early-rising friends; they reassured him and would keep him updated, though details were still unclear. The trip to Paris was intended as a moment of respite after a busy summer’s service. Instead, Endo cleared his schedule and booked the first train home. But there was one appointment he couldn’t bring himself to cancel.

French president defends Nato after Trump threatened withdrawal, and says strait could only be secured in coordination with Iran after a ceasefire

Trump has claimed that Iran was “right at the doorstep” of gaining a nuclear weapon.

Earlier on Wednesday the president said he did not care about Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium (HEU), arguing it was deep underground and could be monitored by satellite.

From the very beginning my campaign for president in 2015, I said I would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. This regime has been chanting death to America, death to Israel.

Effects of Iran’s blockade will depend on how long crisis lasts as disruption ripples through supply chains

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The closure of the strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil and gas shipping route that has been blocked by Iran since the US-Israeli attacks began, is having ripple effects around the world, with most industries already grappling with rising energy costs. If the strait is not reopened, transport blockages across the Middle East could cause significant shocks to food and medicine supplies.

No one knows how long the wider conflict will last, but governments are panicking about the implications. Yvette Cooper, the UK foreign secretary, is hosting a meeting with 35 other countries on Thursday to discuss reopening the strait. Here is what could happen in the UK if the blockade drags on.

Regime has long used the death penalty to suppress dissent but now appears to be withholding information on the killing of hundreds of prisoners, say rights groups

It has been almost three months since Peyvand Naimi, 30, was arrested in connection with the mass street protests that spread across Iran in January before being brutally suppressed. Since then, he has been detained for more than a month in solitary confinement, appeared in a televised forced confession, and has undergone two mock hangings, beatings, interrogation, psychological torture and starvation.

He has been accused of involvement in the deaths of security agents during the protests and of celebrating the death of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, but his family insist he has done nothing wrong and that no formal charges have been made. He has been denied access to a lawyer; his relatives fear he now faces execution.

Simon Dudley fired after his comments were condemned by prime minister and families of fire victims

• UK politics live – latest updates

Reform UK’s housing spokesperson has been sacked from his role after he described the Grenfell Tower fire as a “tragedy” but said that “everyone dies in the end”.

Keir Starmer had called on Nigel Farage to sack Simon Dudley, a former head of Homes England, after comments which were condemned by Grenfell families and others.

Funeral director Robert Bush had previously admitted to dozens of counts of fraud at hearing in October

A fraudulent funeral director has admitted giving families the wrong ashes, lying to them, stealing from them and also stealing from charities while he was “trusted by people at a time they needed him most”.

Robert Bush pleaded guilty to preventing a lawful burial after 30 bodies and a quantity of ashes were found at a funeral home in Hull in 2024, in a case that shocked an entire city.

Exclusive: Ryan Bridge is co-founder of Raise the Colours, which has been criticised for anti-immigrant rhetoric

The leader of a flag campaign group has been arrested on suspicion of causing religiously and racially aggravated harassment.

Ryan Bridge is the co-founder of Raise the Colours, which has put up hundreds of union and Saint George flags across England and attracted criticism for spreading anti-immigrant rhetoric. He was arrested on Tuesday and released on police bail the following day.

Met Office names fourth storm of the year, with weather warnings for parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and north of England

The Met Office has named its fourth storm of the year, which will bring very strong winds in the north of the UK on Saturday evening into Easter Sunday.

Storm Dave will bring wind gusts of 60 to 70mph in parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, north Wales and parts of Northern England, with a possibility of gusts of up to 90mph in some areas.

Dozens of videos have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram showing harassment of Palestinians and activists

TikTok has removed an account belonging to an ultranationalist, pro-settlement Israeli influencer for breaching hate speech and bullying rules after the Guardian flagged videos showing him harassing activists in the occupied West Bank.

The Guardian has reviewed dozens of videos posted by various social media figures that have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram documenting the harassment of Palestinians as well as physical attacks on Israeli and international activists.

Anger in France after US president puts on French accent and mocks Macron during private lunch in Washington

• Europe live – latest updates

Emmanuel Macron has said Donald Trump’s comments about his marriage were “neither elegant nor up to standard” after the US president put on an accent and mocked his French counterpart and his wife during a private lunch in Washington.

Arriving in South Korea on Thursday, Macron made clear his displeasure at Trump’s comments, which appeared briefly in a video on the White House YouTube channel before being removed.

Nasa mission enters second day, with crew hoping to become first people to orbit moon in more than 50 years

Four astronauts are preparing to leave Earth’s orbit and slingshot towards the moon as Nasa’s Artemis II mission enters its second day.

The high-stakes 10-day voyage is expected to mark the first time in half a century that humans will return to the vicinity of the moon. It is a crucial test of Nasa’s ambition to land humans back on the lunar surface this decade, and stay there permanently.

• New tickets released for some group games and final

• Fans attempting to buy tickets encounter glitches

Fifa has raised the top ticket price for this year’s World Cup final to $10,990 as it released a new batch of tickets for sale on Wednesday.

The news, which came after the 48-team field for the World Cup was set, will do little to quell claims that Fifa is pricing fans out of the tournament. The most expensive ticket for the 2022 World Cup final was about $1,600.

Director and producer is co-creator of You Are Here, a one-day immersive theatrical event traversing 75 years of youth culture

Out of chaos come great cultural movements, according to the director and producer Danny Boyle, who will inflict a little curated chaos on London’s Southbank Centre with what has been described as an “epic, one-off pop culture spectacular”.

Boyle, whose 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony drew on the rich thread of British culture, is the co-creator and director of You Are Here, a one-day immersive theatrical event traversing 75 years of youth culture and social movement: think teddy boys, Lovers’ Rock, punk, Ziggy Stardust, rave, acid house, the spoken word, Brit pop, ballroom to name a few.

Donald Trump’s primetime address on Wednesday evening provided little clarity on the US’s strategy in its war against Iran. Trump said that, while military action has made Iran ‘no longer a threat’, the US will continue to hit the country ‘extremely hard’ for several weeks and ‘bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.’

Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s global affairs correspondent, Andrew Roth.

From Watership Down and Fatal Attraction to Bambi and Python’s Holy Grail, rabbits are an unlikely constant in film – and often with sinister intentions. Here are the 20 best leporine movie moments

The mighty Alan Bleasdale wrote this razor-sharp farce set on New Year’s Eve in Liverpool, where rival Catholic and Protestant militants have accidentally booked the same venue. One of the acts going horribly wrong is Elvis Costello as a stage musician who says: “I’m a bit worried about me rabbit.” With reason, as it turns out.

Whether it’s a tiered tulle skirt or a hardworking Henley tee, our fashion expert’s Easter basket is brimming with joy

• The best women’s spring wardrobe updates for under £100

I am a big fan of Easter, which is an underrated holiday in my opinion: lots of joy and food, but better weather than Christmas (or at least more daylight) and less stress.

So my April shopping list starts, naturally, with a chocolate egg. More goodies include not one but two stormingly gorgeous new-season high-street skirts. Also, an umbrella to keep you smiling through the inevitable spring rain – and the shades you’ll want when the sun comes out. Because that’s April for you!

The most recent data shows stark levels of inactivity in one of the poorest areas in the country but the West Midlands is fighting back

“Being in nature and among the trees, getting some nice air and oxygen and exercise, that’s what clears the mind,” says Kelvin Gilkes, the human dynamo behind the Pendeford Community Bike Hub.

A place where he fixes old and abandoned bicycles and helps people ride them, Kelvin also hopes his hub can expand horizons. “I’ve got one lady who has ADHD and she’s a big woman,” he says. “When she comes back from a ride, she’s so tired, she’s like: ‘Oh, my legs hurt.’ But she also says: ‘Oh, I slept really good.’ I know it’s difficult for people to come from a stressful world and just do something calm and peaceful. But I tell her it ain’t gonna hurt that bad if you keep going and going.”

From balloon arches at parties to mass balloon releases at funerals, these bits of floating rubber and plastic can have disastrous effects on wildlife. As some retailers are refusing to sell them, here are some alternatives

I remember, as a child, hanging on to one specific party balloon for what seemed like years. I don’t remember how or where I acquired it, but it had initially floated high, bobbing against the ceiling, and, over time, lost its buoyancy, coming to rest on the carpet. Yet, when a family friend asked if they should pop the now sad-looking balloon, I assumed they were joking – like when an adult asks, teasingly, if they should eat your last slice of birthday cake – and was distraught when they followed through. I didn’t care that it had become grubby and partly deflated – I’d had that balloon for what felt like for ever.

This, it turns out, is the problem with many balloons. Not that clingy young children might become over-attached to them, but that they are often a single-use plastic – and even biodegradable alternatives such as latex balloons do not decompose quickly, meaning they can pose a significant risk to wildlife and the environment. In 2019, scientists found that balloons eaten by seabirds are more likely to kill them than other kinds of plastic – yet they do not seem to have been earmarked in the same way as, for example, plastic straws. If anything, balloon-based decor has become more popular in recent years, with balloon arches or tunnels deployed not just at birthdays but at events ranging from baby showers to shop openings. Balloon drops are used at New Year’s Eve celebrations and graduation parties, and balloon releases have also endured – particularly at funerals, where the unleashing of helium-filled balloons signifies the letting-go of a loved one.

(Sub Pop)
The doomy duo strip back their sound to tectonic guitars and feedback, conjuring an immersive, strangely euphoric listening experience recorded in the wilds of Washington

Nearly seven years on from Sunn O)))’s last two albums, the Steve Albini-produced companion pieces Life Metal and Pyroclasts, the drone metal pioneers’ 10th album presents itself as a return to basics. Eponymously titled and released on Sub Pop – the label that put out drone metal’s ur-text, Earth’s 1993 debut Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version – it strips away Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson’s penchant for collaboration (Scott Walker, Merzbow) and much of the expanded musical palette that came with it. No church organ, no dulcimer, no vocals, no radical reassembly of their material courtesy of Nurse With Wound’s Steven Stapleton: closer Glory Black features a brief burst of piano, and there are apparently synthesisers somewhere in the mix, but for the most part, the album seems to deal almost exclusively in heavily distorted down-tuned guitars and feedback, the core of Sunn O)))’s sound since they formed in 1998.

But clearly the notion of a back-to-basics album should not be confused with that of an understated one. It’s not really an adjective that fits something that lasts the best part of 90 minutes, comes wrapped in a sleeve featuring two Mark Rothko paintings – by permission of the painter’s estate – and features somewhere between 130 and 180 tracks of guitar per song. (The latter comes thanks to a studio procedure that involved producer Brad Wood miking up not just the duo’s amplifiers but each amplifier’s individual speakers, and setting up what he called “the world’s largest stereo array of room mics” to capture ambient textures.) It also comes complete with sleeve notes from nature writer Robert Macfarlane, which variously quote the Greek stoic Epictetus, Walter Benjamin, 19th-century naturalist John Muir, author Patrick White and indigenous American environmentalist Robin Wall Kimmerer.

As the climate crisis intensifies the storms lashing south Florida, it is imperative to design spaces that soak up the water. The 19.4-acre Bayshore Park is an example of how to design spaces that protect from and connect residents to nature

If new claimants don’t meet strict criteria, they’ll lose half of the health element of universal credit. Don’t ignore that: in life’s lottery, that could easily be you

Look at the front pages or open a news app in the coming days and you’ll supposedly see the big events facing Britain. But here’s one that is likely to slip quietly under the radar: from next week, almost three-quarters of a million of the most severely ill and disabled people in the country could end up having a lifeline benefit cut in half.

Cast your mind back to last summer. As the nation sweated through a heatwave and Oasis reunited, ministers were trying to push through “welfare reform” – a nice euphemism for £5bn worth of cuts to disability benefits. A backbench rebellion meant that Keir Starmer was forced to halt his overhaul of personal independence payments (Pip), but MPs voted through a brutal universal credit cut. Ministers justified reducing support for people too disabled or ill to work by arguing it would remove the “perverse incentives” that discourage employment and trap people on long-term benefits, as if a twentysomething who is bedbound with ME just needs “incentivising” to get back to the building site.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist and the author of Who Wants Normal? Life Lessons from Disabled Women

I bought a book that might have helped – but I’ve already mislaid it. Am I a lost cause?

Does anyone want some bits of guttering? They’re zinc, I think. Free to a good, or indeed any home! I’ll send them to you or even, to be on the safe side, deliver them myself. Because it would be mad to keep them, although not quite as mad as throwing them away. Please help.

I get this a lot, which is why I’ve got too much stuff. There’s stuff I’ve bought that I shouldn’t have. There’s stuff that I’ve bought, used, and is now of no use, because it’s become obsolete or it’s conked out. In the case of the guttering it’s the leftovers from a renovation, so not entirely my fault. And always, all around the house there are random bits and bobs of all shapes and sizes which I could and should get shot of. As a cry to myself for help I bought a book about decluttering called Clutter’s Last Stand. It was quite good but then, with weary irony, I lost it among the clutter. Perhaps it’ll show up one day.

The event has signed up Ye, who has a penchant for antisemitic and sexist outbursts, to be its headline act. It’s not even as if his music is any good any more

In May 2025, Kanye West, also known as Ye, released his single Heil Hitler. It was the logical conclusion to several years of racist, sexist and homophobic outbursts, and the song ended with a lengthy sample from one of the Nazi dictator’s speeches. This was only a couple of months after he stepped out in his new swastika T-shirt, which he also made available from his website for $20. Merch is so important in brand-building these days.

An epic list of companies had already broken links with West after similar disgraces in 2022. After last year’s Nazi outrage, he was sued by his own talent agency, while the Australian government revoked his visa and blocked him from entering the country. By 2025, Russell Brand and Andrew Tate were among his last remaining allies.

Dan Hancox is a freelance writer and editor, and his latest book is Multitudes

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

A government that openly embraces violence against Palestinians has now enshrined into law a policy of lethal force

• Yuli Novak is the executive director of B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group

This week, Israel passed a law that institutionalises the execution of Palestinians. The country’s courts can now impose death sentences on Palestinians “convicted of fatal attacks”, expanding a legal system designed to target them, strip them of rights, subject them to systematic abuse, and, ultimately, shield Israeli perpetrators of crimes against Palestinians from accountability. While this legislation does not create a whole new reality, it marks the beginning of a troubling new phase of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians by enshrining into law a longstanding policy of using lethal force against them. Disturbingly, this reality is already normalised in Israel.

Long before this law, Palestinians were being systematically killed. In Gaza, mass killing has continued even after the declaration of a “ceasefire”. In the West Bank, Palestinians are killed on a daily basis by the Israeli military in raids, shootings and, increasingly, by violent settler militias aimed at driving them from their land and out of their communities. For some time, Israeli soldiers and settlers have been able to act with near-total impunity.

Yuli Novak is the executive director of B’Tselem

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

The government looks ill prepared for the coming stagflation storm – its ‘keep calm and carry on’ approach won’t survive a blast of reality

Britain is facing the most severe energy shock since the early 1970s, but have no fear: the government has a plan. Details of said plan are still a little sketchy, but will be unveiled in the fullness of time. No need to panic. Keep calm and carry on.

It remains to be seen whether the UK is better prepared to cope with the fallout from Donald Trump’s war with Iran than it was with the pandemic six years ago. To be honest, that wouldn’t be difficult. Yet it is not exactly comforting that ministers are sending out a “we have your back” message to the public while at the same time seeking to reassure the financial markets that any help will be limited and targeted.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

Mastery of banal style is losing its usefulness – but language is more powerful than ever. It’s up to the writer to do what machines can’t

I recently heard an exchange at a playground that should worry the executives at AI companies more than any analyst’s prediction of a bubble. A boy and a girl, maybe 10 years old, were fighting. “That’s AI! That’s AI!” the girl was shouting. What she meant was that the boy was indulging a new and particular breed of nonsense: language that sounds meaningful but has no connection to reality. The children have figured the new world out quickly, as they do.

Artificial intelligence is here to stay, neither as an apocalypse nor as the solution to all life’s problems, but as a disruptive tool. The recent scandal over Shy Girl, the novel by Mia Ballard, was doubly revealing. Hachette cancelled its publication amid claims it was reliant on AI generation (Ballard has said that an acquaintance who edited the self-published version used AI, not her). But the book was originally self-published. Apparently readers and editors didn’t mind until the use of AI was pointed out to them.

Stephen Marche lives in Toronto and is the author of The Next Civil War and On Writing and Failure

De-dollarization promises to reorder the world, reducing American power globally

The US-Israel war on Iran is expensive. It’s expensive in terms of human lives, first of all. It’s expensive too, in pure currency – about $12bn a week for the US. And it’s expensive in how it’s causing the tectonic structures that underpin our global economy to shift. De-dollarization, the name given to the process countries undertake in unwinding their reliance on the dollar, promises to reorder the world, reducing American power globally. Its impact will be felt domestically in what we pay to borrow and whether we can afford to borrow at all.

Iran’s near-total blockade of the strait of Hormuz has had a dramatic impact on the prices of oil and natural gas, which puts major inflationary pressure on the economy of every country in the world. Practically, inflation makes people and businesses poorer, a process that reinforces itself if it’s not stopped (which is partly why central banks exist).

Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace

Of course the vice-president is obsessed with extraterrestrials – look how bad things have gotten on Earth

I can’t fault anyone for looking around at the state of things on the planet Earth and pondering the existence of aliens. Who wouldn’t want to hop on the Starship Get-Me-The-Hell-Out-Of-Here right now? It costs me a vital organ to fill up my gas tank, everyone I know is unemployed and the cast of Bravo’s Summer House is crumbling before our eyes. Unfortunately, for alien observer JD Vance, he’s partially responsible for two of the three. Pretty sure the vice-president isn’t hooking up with Amanda Batula, so he’s off the hook for that one.

On a recent appearance on The Benny Show, a conservative podcast you’ve never heard of, Vance outlined his “obsession” with UFOs. He might not be fully read into the current state of extraterrestrial discourse, but he does have a theory. Vance said: “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion.”

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

As the world’s attention is drawn to the Middle East, Donald Trump’s assault on Iran has had damaging knock-on consequences for Kyiv

After meeting European Union foreign ministers this week, Volodymyr Zelenskyy voiced exasperation over the continued blocking of a €90bn EU loan to Kyiv by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. US financial support for Ukraine has dried up under Donald Trump, so the money is desperately required. But as Mr Zelenskyy bitterly observed, it is being delayed “because one person in Europe is standing against all of Europe simply to please Moscow”.

Trailing in the polls ahead of an election on 12 April, Mr Orbán is doubling down on attempts to mobilise his nationalist base by fuelling anti-Ukraine and anti-EU sentiment. Allegations also continue to emerge, dismissed by Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, that he has in effect colluded with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to undermine European decision-making during the war.

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

AI is interpreting journalism without regard for truth. The BBC must build the capacity to ensure its reporting is understood on its own terms

Appointing Matt Brittin, a former Google executive, as BBC director general is smarter than critics admit. Although he was on the board of the Guardian’s publisher, Mr Brittin was no journalist. He does understand platforms, scale and digital audiences.

Director generals come under scrutiny when crises hit, like this week’s sacking of Scott Mills over his “personal conduct”. It then emerged that police previously questioned the Radio 2 DJ over separate allegations, of serious sexual offences, closing the case due to lack of evidence. But the role’s underlying challenge is facing future threats to the corporation’s audience.

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

Readers respond to a report that some pub landlords are banning children after incidents of unsafe, unruly behaviour

It’s fair to say the traditional British pub has always been seen as a wind-down space for adults (‘It dictated the whole atmosphere’: why some landlords are banning kids from pubs, 26 March). Adult conversations, a laugh and a joke with mates and, yes, getting a little tipsy and merry without having to worry about the responsibility of looking after, or even maintaining decorum in front of, the children.

As adults we don’t dive into the ball pits at McDonald’s, or invade playgrounds to go on the swings or see-saws, even for a laugh, because it’s not our space.

Readers respond to new government advice to limit screen time to under an hour for under-fives, and restrict it to ‘slow-paced’ media content

While I fully support the government’s guidance to parents of under-fives to keep screen time to under an hour a day (Keep under-fives’ screen time to no more than an hour a day, UK advice says, 27 March), this does not go far enough. Children do not only experience screens at home; they also encounter them in early childhood settings and schools.

Contrary to the advice given in the new guidance for parents, the government requires all children to complete a screen-based test within their first six weeks at primary school. The Reception Baseline Assessment takes up 20 minutes of their daily screen time. Teachers are not able to interact with the child while doing the test as they must follow a script. This contradicts the advice for parents, which suggests that the best form of screen use involves adults interacting with their children while using screens.

The case for cats wearing collars is compelling, and should be supported by veterinary organisations, writes Trevor Lawson

While Sir David Attenborough’s latest series might enrage cat lovers by recommending that cats wear bells to reduce wildlife mortality (‘We didn’t want to be preachy’: David Attenborough’s unexpected new show – which might enrage cat lovers, 31 March), a bigger question is why pet organisations including Cats Protection and the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) don’t do the same.

Even though quick-release collars have been available for years, these organisations recommend that cats should not wear collars. They claim – without statistical evidence of significant risk – that collars can snag, rub or trap paws. A study in the US found that only 3.3% of cats experienced these problems with collars, and these issues can be addressed by ensuring the collar is correctly fitted and the cat is given time to adjust to it. There was no evidence of actual serious injury or death.

Tracy Marshall describes how the worrying natter of her internal world, thankfully, fell silent

I was delighted to read Polly Hudson’s article on overthinkers like me (Faithful, sensitive, forgiving: overthinkers like me make the best partners, 29 March). I am 51 now and have spent most of my life at the mercy of my ability to “turn even the most pleasant, benign interaction into a horrifying encounter that definitely caused offence”.

Someone once described me as a sentinel – forever observing and analysing myself and, as a result, never actually living in the moment and enjoying the freedom from guilt and shame and self-loathing that the under- and perfect-level thinkers around me appeared to achieved without effort.

• Exit could spell end of Gennaro Gattuso’s tenure

• Ceferin: ‘Infrastructure is among the worst in Europe’

The crisis engulfing Italian football has deepened with the country’s football federation president, Gabriele Gravina, resigning and the Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, warning that it risks losing its co-hosting rights for Euro 2032.

Gravina announced his resignation at an emergency meeting of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) general council two days after Italy failed to reach a World Cup finals for the third successive time, losing on penalties to the outsiders Bosnia and Herzegovina. He had come under heavy scrutiny since their exit in Zenica, the country’s minister for sport, Andrea Abodi, intensifying the pressure by calling for “a renewal of the FIGC leadership”.

• Fifa has not agreed tax exemption with US government

• Burden will fall disproportionately on smaller nations

More than half the countries that have qualified for the World Cup are facing additional costs and potential losses due to Fifa’s failure to agree a blanket tax exemption with the United States government and significant variance in the host country’s international tax treaties.

As a not-for-profit organisation Fifa has had tax-free status in the US since the 1994 World Cup, but that exemption does not apply to all of the 48 qualifiers, whose national associations must pay a range of federal, state and city taxes on their earnings from the tournament this summer.

Visiting teams have won two of 24 last-16 ties, so it is no surprise players needing post-Six Nations rest skip trips

The odds on multiple away wins in this weekend’s Champions Cup last 16 are not terribly good. Since the single-leg concept was born three years ago there have been 24 matches, with the hosts losing only two. If that strike rate alters significantly this time it will certainly confound the bookmakers.

Bordeaux Bègles, the defending champions, have even been quoted at 1-100 to beat Leicester on Sunday, a remarkable price for a two-horse race. It might be slightly different if the Tigers were at full strength but, as the bookies are keenly aware, that is very much not the case with, among others, Ollie Chessum, Joe Heyes and Nicky Smith all non-runners.

Heavyweight fixture that featured icons such as Kevin Sinfield and Lesley Vainikolo returns after 12-year hiatus

It will almost feel as if Super League has stepped back in time on Friday night as the rivalry that defined the competition’s early years returns after a 12-year hiatus, and it will not just be across West Yorkshire that eyes will be on Odsal Stadium for Bradford Bulls’ derby with Leeds Rhinos. In a small corner of New Zealand, Lesley Vainikolo will interrupt his Saturday morning to watch the return of the derby he starred in for Bradford during the early 2000s, and he will probably not be alone.

Dubbed the Volcano thanks to his incredible try-scoring record, with 149 in 152 games for the Bulls, Vainikolo rarely gives interviews these days. But the lure of discussing one of Super League’s biggest fixtures returning was too much to resist. “There is no way I’d miss it,” says the 46-year-old, who is now director of rugby at Wesley College near Auckland, the school that forged the career of Jonah Lomu.

England off-spinner spent the Ashes carrying drinks but is determined to win back place with help of Mickey Arthur

A new season dawns and for Shoaib Bashir it represents a new beginning. Overlooked by England for the entire Ashes despite two years of investment, and having had a nomadic career up to this point, the former Surrey youth player has joined Derbyshire on a two-year deal in the hope of calling somewhere home.

Not that the off-spinner’s goals have changed. In his first media appearance since that winter carrying drinks, the 22-year-old is determined to win back his Test spot. Swapping Somerset for Derbyshire is a case of looking for regular game time, plus the chance to work with a decorated head coach in Mickey Arthur.

Rival fans have raged after 11 of Mikel Arteta’s players withdrew from action with their countries before the season finale

With the benefit of hindsight, Mikel Arteta’s response to a question before Arsenal’s victory over Everton last month about how the forthcoming international break might affect his squad was revealing. “We have really good communication with most of them,” Arteta replied when asked whether he was planning to speak to the various international managers that were expected to call up his players. “We’ll wait and see how everybody is and have those conversations and make the right decisions.”

Considering that Arsenal were still pursuing an unprecedented quadruple at the time, was this the most nervous he had ever felt going into an international break? “It’s a period that I don’t enjoy a lot,” admitted Arteta. “Especially when we have 18, 19 players playing. And especially with what happened in our recent history with very important players. But that is part of the calendar and we have to accept that.”

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The Championship – a league so chaotic it makes a piano falling down some stairs resemble a Zen garden – resumes with an old-fashioned Easter weekend double header. Automatic promotion, playoff places and the drop into the abyss all remain up for grabs, with only beleaguered Sheffield Wednesday’s relegation rubber-stamped as the contenders jockey for position on entering the home straight. Not a Stone Island jacket will go unworn as fans of all 24 clubs proudly get the badge in before heading off to support their teams over a hectic bank holiday schedule. At the top, Frank Lampard’s Coventry City are in the box seat for automatic promotion, with an 11-point cushion between them and Ipswich Town in third. They will fancy their chances of at least maintaining the gap in tomorrow night’s televised Geographically Quite Near Each Other But Not Really A Derby derby against, er, Derby County. With no Good Friday game due to Southampton’s weekend FA Cup appointment with Arsenal, Ipswich will have additional time to de-Farage Portman Road for Monday’s visit of Birmingham.

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The IBF and WBC welterweight champion on returning to the ring, boxing politics and her imminent wedding

A year ago, on a historic night for boxing when an all-women card of fights was held at the Royal Albert Hall last March, Lauren Price produced an imperious headline performance which should have led to a series of even more prestigious bouts. Her dominant display in outclassing the venerable Natasha Jonas appeared to be the ideal launching for a new stage of Price’s career as the IBF and WBC world welterweight champion.

But when she finally steps back into the ring on Saturday night in Cardiff to defend her titles against Stephanie Piñeiro Aquino, the little-known Puerto Rican challenger, almost 13 months will have passed since that high point. Only frustration and inertia have followed.

• Colapinto abused over Bearman’s crash in Japan

• Ex-Alpine driver Ocon clashed with Colapinto in China

Alpine have condemned on Thursday online abuse of Franco Colapinto for an incident in the Japanese Grand Prix as well as death threats directed at the Formula One team’s former racer Esteban Ocon over prior events in China.

They also dismissed suspicions from some fans of “sabotage” and claims their Argentinian driver was not being given the same quality equipment as his teammate Pierre Gasly.

Storm Erminio has caused widespread destruction across several regions of Greece, including the Attica region, where a man lost his life in Nea Makri. On the Mediterranean island of Crete, skies turned an eerie orange on Wednesday as winds of up to force 9 on the Beaufort scale carried dust from North Africa, forcing several flights to be rerouted

Daniel Kebede condemns Bridget Phillipson’s policies, telling NEU conference schools are ‘running on empty’

The leader of the UK’s biggest education union has torn into the government’s record on schools, accusing Labour of letting down the nation’s children and failing to deliver on its promises for education.

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, was unsparing in his criticism of education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s policies in a speech to delegates at the NEU’s annual conference in Brighton on Thursday.

Activists accuse Iran’s regime of crackdown on civil society as whereabouts of Nasrin Sotoudeh are unknown

• Is Iran using the war to hide a surge in executions?

The prize-winning Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been arrested in Tehran, according to her family, as activists accused the regime of cracking down on civil society under cover of the war with Israel and the US.

Sotoudeh’s daughter Mehraveh Khandan said her mother was taken from her home in Tehran late on Wednesday and that her whereabouts were unknown. Khandan suspected the arrest may be related to recent interviews about the war, in which Sotoudeh criticised the government.

Bank holiday traffic predicted to peak on Thursday, as petrol and diesel prices surge from fallout of Iran war

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UK drivers are being urged to look for the cheapest petrol and “to fill up as usual” as travellers prepare to make 21.7m journeys on what is expected to be the busiest Easter on the roads in four years.

The average price of a litre of unleaded petrol rose by 20p in March, from 132.83p on the 1st to 152.83p on the 31st, raising concerns about the cost of filling up for Easter journeys. The higher fuel prices have been triggered by rising oil prices as a result of the US-Israel war against Iran.

Ocasio-Cortez says Israel can fund its own defense and she will oppose any new US aid amid human rights concerns

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a US representative, said on Wednesday that she will oppose any future US military aid to Israel, including for defensive systems.

In a statement on social media, Ocasio-Cortez said that Israel was fully capable of funding “Iron Dome and other defensive systems”, and that “consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and US law”.

In the holiday hotspots of the Costa del Sol, the risks are rarely mentioned. But in neighbouring Cádiz, the country’s first tsunami-ready town is leading by example

Even on a wet, wintry day in Málaga, the Mediterranean looks benign. But only 25 miles (40km) south-west of its port, where half a million tourists disembark from cruise ships into the Costa del Sol each year, lies a system of tectonic plates and faults that fracture the seabed between Spain and north Africa.

Earthquakes are routine here. They are mostly too small to notice but sometimes strong enough to rattle glasses in cafes on the seafront. In December, a tremor with a magnitude of 4.9 off the coast of Fuengirola triggered more than 40 calls to Andalucía’s 112 emergency line.

The infrastructure is crumbling and the government shaky, but memories exist of an industry that once thrived off Venezuela’s vast reserves of crude – and could do again, despite the climate crisis

At Campo Boscán, a vast complex in western Venezuela, the drills, pumps and pipelines that extract crude oil operate amid decay: roads are broken, weeds grow everywhere and many wells run inside metal cages to prevent theft. Albenis Merchán, a drilling technician with 35 years’ experience, recalls better times as he drives his pickup through the desolate landscape.

“We used to receive maintenance and safety training all the time. Supplies and spare parts were never lacking. Many things need to improve here to tap the full potential of this area,” he says.

Britain’s swift population fell by two-thirds between 1995 and 2023. Make their lives a little easier with a bit more food and more places to nest

Swifts are wheeling, screaming endurance athletes. They don’t touch the earth for nine months of the year and fly about 14,000 miles annually – travelling from sub-Saharan Africa to nest in the UK, then back again. In Britain, they’re the sign that summer is coming or taking its leave. In between, they provide a heart-soaring display of beauty. No wonder they’re beloved.

“Swifts spark joy,” says Hannah Bourne-Taylor, a passionate swift advocate and author of Nature Needs You: The Fight to Save Our Swifts.

Waste of 700 Boomtown festival attendees used to produce 540 litres of fertiliser for native tree project

Scientists are aiming to grow 4,500 trees at a national park with the help of fertiliser made from festivalgoers’ urine.

The fertiliser was created by the Bristol-based startup NPK Recovery, which connected its unit to a block of toilets used by 700 revellers at Boomtown festival in Hampshire in July last year.

Author and academic says role is a chance ‘to make real, meaningful changes’ as trust confronts enslavement links

It’s a story that connects the inventors of the KitKat – the beloved British chocolate bar – with colonial history and its legacies.

Now, the ways in which enslavement, indenture and European imperialism fed supply chains for Rowntree’s, the confectioners who invented Fruit Pastilles and Smarties as well as KitKat, are being confronted.

Christopher Joell-Deshields was suspended last year, with £7,125 found to have been spent on items such as perfume

The boss of Pride in London, one of the world’s largest LGBTQ+ events, has been sacked after he was accused of buying luxury goods for personal use with vouchers intended for volunteers’ food and drink.

Christopher Joell-Deshields, who had been chief executive of Pride in London since 2021, was put under investigation last September and suspended the following month in response to claims of misconduct.

Former Labour mayor Jamie Driscoll aims to win central Newcastle ward after defecting to the Green party

“Thank you very much to all you would-be penguins huddling together for warmth,” said Jamie Driscoll to the dozen supporters braving bitingly cold, blustery weather to begin knocking on doors and delivering leaflets.

The former Labour North of Tyne mayor is one of the Green party’s highest-profile recruits. Standing for Newcastle city council in the central Monument ward, he was giving a pep talk to a group that would probably have been even bigger, were some not in London for a demonstration against the far right.

Exclusive: documents chronicle years-long campaign to make it easier to build intensive livestock units

Ministers are rewriting planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms despite concerns about water pollution, air quality and local opposition.

Documents obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act show that proposed changes to the national planning policy framework (NPPF) were discussed by ministers and officials in response to concerns of the country’s leading chicken producers, who have been lobbying on the issue for at least two years.

It’s unclear how he plans to fund the affected subagencies, and whether it would include ICE and border patrol

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During its brief pro forma session today, the US House took no action on the funding bill to end the historic DHS shutdown, after the Senate-passed legislation was sent to the lower chamber earlier today.

The House’s next procedural meeting will be on Monday, meaning the lapse in funding for several subagencies will continue until at least next week. However, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson may even wait until lawmakers return from a two-week recess to ensure the measure, that his party rejected last week, can pass.

Divers in race against time to unearth wreck of the Dannebroge before seabed becomes construction site

More than 200 years after being sunk by Adm Horatio Nelson and the British fleet, a Danish warship has been discovered on the seabed of Copenhagen harbour by marine archaeologists.

Working in thick sediment and almost zero visibility 15 metres (49ft) beneath the waves, divers are in a race against time to unearth the 19th-century wreck of the Dannebroge before it becomes a construction site in a new housing district being built off the Danish coast.

Deep divisions on Israel mean the union has failed to act over Lebanon, Gaza, or settler violence in the West Bank

The human costs of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon were plain to see when the Irish MEP Barry Andrews visited Beirut last month. He met people who had fled Israeli airstrikes and complied with evacuation orders in southern Lebanon.

At makeshift shelters – converted schools – conditions were even worse than during Israel’s last incursion in 2024, he was told. “There are dirty mattresses, dirty blankets, [people] are getting infections, they are getting rashes,” he said recalling a picture of misery compounded by swingeing aid budget cuts.

Workers allege abuse, visa fraud and medical neglect during the New Jersey temple’s construction – and say two died from lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust

In the center of the suburban town of Robbinsville, New Jersey, sits the largest modern Hindu mandir outside India.

What visitors from around the world see is a breathtaking display of craftsmanship – hand-carved stone from Rajasthan assembled across a sprawling 185-acre complex. The temple has gone viral on social media for its intricate designs, which took millions of hours to complete. Baps Swaminarayan Akshardham, the religious organization behind the site, has built similar temples across the globe. But some workers say these monumental structures came at a high cost.

Affected cars include models in Peugeot, Citroën, Vauxhall, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Fiat brands made since 2023

The European carmaker Stellantis has issued a recall for 44,000 UK vehicles after discovering a fault that could result in its cars catching fire.

The fault has been found in certain models across its Peugeot, Citroën, DS Automobiles, Vauxhall, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Fiat brands, produced between 2023 and 2026. Key vehicles affected by the recall include the Citroën C3, Peugeot 208 and Vauxhall Mokka.

Private credit investment firm’s move is latest sign of crumbling confidence in unregulated lending market

A major private credit investment firm, Blue Owl Capital, has imposed a cap on withdrawals after investors tried to pull $5.4bn from two key funds, in the latest sign of crumbling confidence in the unregulated lending market.

The New York-headquartered firm released filings on Thursday that showed a surge in redemption requests, with investors asking to take back 21.9% of the cash stored in Blue Owl’s $20bn (£15bn) Credit Income Corp Fund between January and March. Meanwhile, investors requested 40.7% of funds from its $3bn tech lending fund.

Those in US given chance to have more professional usernames without losing access to account

Did your McLovin!1976!@gmail.com email address seem funny at the time but less so now you are applying for dozens of jobs?

Google has said it is giving US users a chance to appear more professional by letting them change their Google account username – whatever appears before @gmail.com in an email address – without losing access to their account.

Hackney leaseholders feel council made the problem worse by leaving £850,000 debt uncollected for eight years

Leaseholders in east London have said they are “trapped in unsellable homes” because of an £850,000 debt owed by the building’s developer to Hackney council, who have let it go unpaid for eight years.

The 17 leaseholders, who live in a block of flats in Upper Clapton, have appealed to the council for help but their pleas, including requests for a meeting, have been ignored.

Since the regime quashed China’s version of the K-pop industry in 2021, an underground ‘alt-idol’ culture has emerged, championing freedom and experimentation

Over the past decade, “idol” culture has turned east Asia into a pop music powerhouse as global audiences have flocked to Japanese and especially South Korean groups. Formed and exactingly trained by big entertainment conglomerates, bands such as BTS and EXO have blown up internationally thanks to bombastic songs, sensational dance routines and marketing campaigns designed to build a parasocial relationship between performers – idols – and their fans. Their neighbour China, however, the population of which is roughly eight times that of Japan and South Korea combined, has produced few groups with similar fame.

Until 2021, Chinese versions of Korean idol-training shows – think The X Factor with considerably more challenging choreography – were gaining huge audiences. But the shows, and the fan culture they inspired, drew the ire of the Chinese government. It cracked down on “toxic” fandom, an initiative that included banning idol-development shows. “It was an excuse to regulate the internet,” says Emily Liu, who runs the popular idol newsletter Active Faults. The government has also unofficially prohibited Korean pop idols from performing in mainland China for the last decade due to geopolitical tensions.

The last heistmeister of ‘the largest burglary in English history’ oozes charisma as he tells his wild tale. Even his contempt for his accomplices is impressive

It is a truth I feel should be universally acknowledged – that a headline-grabbing crime, which still has one of its charismatic perpetrators alive and willing to talk about it now on camera, must have a documentary dedicated to it.

The last one was the three-part miniseries The Diamond Heist, from Guy Ritchie’s production company, about the Millenium Dome Robbery (although the best line came not from the villains but from one of the laconic police officers responsible for trying to track down members of the gang as they put their plan together. They got a lead on one when he went back to the venue without his daughter. “No one goes to the Millenium Dome twice.” This is what I pay my taxes for.)

Hatton Garden: The Great Diamond Heist is on Channel 4.

A new cohort of adventurers set off – but who will make it across Europe and Asia first? Plus: The Traitors star Harry Clark takes a pilgrimage. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, BBC One
Time to strap on the big rucksacks again, as the BBC’s globetrotting hit returns for a sixth series. The starting gun is in Sicily, where five duos psych themselves up for a 12,000km yomp through Europe and Asia without access to flights, phones or much in the way of funds. Their ultimate goal? Northern Mongolia (and a £20,000 prize if they are first). Graeme Virtue

From action thrillers to sci-fi flicks, a deluge of recent releases are riddled with self-satisfied smarm

The new Hulu movie Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice has been marketed as a genre-mashing wild ride, with plenty of South by Southwest festival reactions and even genuine full reviews delighting in its supposed mixture of sci-fi, action, romance and buddy comedy. That’s a hell of a lot of genres. While watching it, I found myself wondering if the number of elements in play is supposed to distract from how its comedy has three deadening and similar modes. One involves characters being unexpectedly familiar with seemingly incongruous elements of pop culture: it opens with a scientist tinkering with his time-travel machine while singing along to Why Should I Worry?, a niche Billy Joel song from the old Disney cartoon Oliver & Company; later, there’s a long conversation about a bunch of criminal types’ deep familiarity with the TV show Gilmore Girls.

If that doesn’t sound funny enough, writer-director BenDavid Grabinski finds the flip side equally hilarious: people not knowing things. Gags include a guy who hasn’t heard of Winnie-the-Pooh, a guy who doesn’t know the proper name of chloroform, and a guy who doesn’t know what the word “comeuppance” means. These are all different guys. The third, even less sophisticated strain of comedy in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, are characters who fuckin’ swear. Talk about fuckin’ comedy! Sometimes their names even swear: one guy is nicknamed, get this, Dumbass Tony! In every detail of the movie, you can feel the heavy hand of the screenwriter, straining for irreverence, desperate to show that he’s made something that’s not like the other, regular screenplays out there.

This isn’t just a retelling of the infamous drug lord’s life. His son shares a traumatic coming-of-age story plagued by chaos and violence – and it is like being in The Sopranos

You’d be forgiven for thinking that we didn’t need another TV series about the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s life, and that it’s been milked for all its worth in popular culture. Escobar’s murderous Medellín cartel was most ruthless in the 1980s and 90s – but this century alone, the Colombian druglord and politician’s biography has inspired numerous books, Hollywood films, the Netflix series Narcos, and even the title of Kanye West’s 2016 album Life of Pablo. The new Spanish language series Dear Killer Nannies, however, manages to find a new and unexpected way into the life of an archetypal villain, which focuses very little on the bloodshed that has made his life so ripe for movies and television. In terms of genre, the show – co-created by Escobar’s son Juan Pablo Escobar – is far more coming-of-age than action.

Instead of following the usual beats that mark Escobar’s rise, fall and eventual death (during a shootout with Colombian special forces), our way into the story is seven-year-old Juan Pablo, also known as “Juampi”. Juampi is sweet, sensitive and soft around the edges in the way most boys are before being exposed to the ravages of patriarchy. We meet Juampi as his head bobs above the surface of a lake, beaming and soaking up the sun, when a speedboat zooms into frame, headed straight for him, causing him to panic. The boat swerves at the last minute, narrowly avoiding him. Enter: Juampi’s “nannies”. These are associates of his father, who double as childcare while he’s out of the country attending to cartel business. What could possibly go wrong in such an arrangement?

The author’s father-in-law died just nine days after his cancer diagnosis, inspiring this moving and sharply observed account of his last days

Novelist Sarah Perry’s memoir of her late father-in-law, David, chronicles the period from his first signs of illness, when he began to have trouble swallowing, to his diagnosis of oesophageal cancer, to his death at the age of 77 just nine days later.

We first meet David, a retired chemist from Norwich, on a day trip with Perry and her husband in the summer of 2022. The three of them have gone to Great Yarmouth where, seemingly in good health, David gleefully eats four hot doughnuts. She reveals him as an unassuming man who lives in a bungalow, drinks Yorkshire Tea, delights in telling bad jokes, and likes doing sudoku and watching Antiques Roadshow on TV. But right at the start, Perry notes that David’s death was only weeks away. Though his illness was mercifully short, the speed at which it progressed caught his family unawares, leaving precious little time to prepare.

The Norwegian singer-songwriter and the Chemical Brother have combined their talents, and names, to create a wildly inventive new band. The collaboration has gone smoothly so far – but will they soon need separate tour buses?

The two members of Tomora are contemplating their forthcoming debut live shows, a slate that includes an attention-grabbing slot at this month’s Coachella festival. “We’re still kind of working it out, and I’m getting a bit, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’” worries Tom Rowlands, best known as one half of Grammy-winning banger merchants the Chemical Brothers, and now one half of Tomora. Rowlands’ mindset, however, contrasts heavily with that of Aurora, his new musical partner.

“I don’t have any stress in my being,” the Norwegian singer-songwriter and pop experimentalist says cheerily, sitting on the floor of the duo’s north London label office with her shoes off. “I’m always like: it’s fine,” she shrugs. “Yes, the house is on fire, but we’ll work it out.”

The German composer, born 341 years ago, dominates the classical charts and concert platforms, especially at this time of year. Here’s to his life-giving zombie music!

The musical world’s present for Easter is Bach, Bach and more Bach. These next two days alone, there are performances of his St Matthew Passion in every musical city you care to name, from London to Leipzig, Rome to Rotterdam. In the classical charts, from the “official” one to the, er, other official one, and Apple Music’s, one composer dominates more than any other, from Yunchan Lim’s Goldberg Variations to Raphaël Pichon’s St John Passion. Why?

Two descriptions of his music have particularly struck me this past week. Bach the zombie and Bach the meat-grinder. The phrases belong to the violinist James Ehnes and the Guardian’s Clive Paget, reviewing Pichon’s new recording. Meat-grinding is how Paget describes the St John Passion’s opening chorus; a fantastic expression of the viscera of human feeling that Bach exposes especially in Pichon’s drama-filled recording. Bach’s composition in this chorus is made of obsessive repetitions in the churning figuration of the strings; there are the wailing agonies of the dissonances in the woodwind lines before the voices of the chorus make their first shocking appearance, not so much singing as screaming their demands to Christ to witness his passion in its “glory” and its “humiliation”. The opening chorus, all eight minutes of it, makes a gigantic cross shape in musical time: the surging, relentless rhythms are the horizontal planes, the harmonies that sear through them are implacable verticalities. And that’s just the opening chorus. This is the darkness of the Passion story.

The Lebanese singer’s patriotic song has returned repeatedly since 1976 to inspire hope amid catastrophe. But as it resurges during the US-Israeli war, some Lebanese are chafing against its optimism and nostalgia

When Leila Milki first heard Fairuz’s Bahebak Ya Lebnan, she experienced it as the song of Lebanese unity and resilience. Milki, a Lebanese-American singer-songwriter and pianist based in Los Angeles, has partly built her career on covering the catalogue of Fairuz, the 91-year-old Lebanese singer who has become a rare generation-uniting public figure in the small Mediterranean country. “I knew that, in terms of my parents’ generation and even my grandparents’ generation, the song was sort of this really cathartic, hopeful message of unity,” says Milki.

The old adage is that Lebanon and its people remain resilient in the face of tragedy, able to rebuild and be born again into a stronger, more stable nation. That was the message Fairuz conveyed with Bahebak Ya Lebnan, a song released 50 years ago that has since become the country’s de facto national anthem. “I love you Lebanon, my homeland, I love you / Your north, your south, your plains / I absolutely adore,” Fairuz sings in Arabic in the opening lines. When she released the song in 1976, it came against the backdrop of the early stages of a 15-year civil war, which resulted in the deaths of roughly 150,000 people, the mass exodus of nearly 1 million people and foreign occupation by Syria and Israel.

A new book by historian Annette Gordon-Reed explores the former US president’s writings on race throughout his life

Thomas Jefferson’s interactions with enslaved people bookend his life. The third US president and a founder of the United States was born into a slave-owning family in a society upon which slavery was the bedrock. A Black woman was probably his earliest nursemaid – evidence shows that his mother did not breastfeed her children, so it is probable that a Black woman was also Jefferson’s wet nurse. His earliest memory, which he relayed to his grandchildren, was of being carried on a pillow via horseback by a man his family enslaved on a 50-mile journey to Tuckahoe, Virginia.

Given his status as an enslaver – Jefferson owned more than 610 people in his lifetime – those he held in bondage may have been the last people Jefferon saw before he died. An enslaved man, John Hemmings, built his casket. The omnipresence of slavery in his life and its clear contradictions with regards to his views on liberty, create a point of which much of the existing literature on Jefferson must attempt to make sense. Scholars have long tried to analyze and parse the juxtaposition of bondage and freedom for the former president. But in a new book by Annette Gordon-Reed, a Pulitzer prize-winning historian and a pre-eminent Jefferson scholar, Jefferson speaks for himself.

A new book shows that the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar – as well as a new generation of artists – would not be the same without the New York island

In the summer of 2015, Leilah Babirye, a sculptor, left her home town in Uganda and arrived for an artist residency in the bohemian, beach-y queer splendor of Fire Island’s Cherry Grove. She tells the story in a new book, Fire Island Art: 100 Years, released this month by Monacelli. After Googling “LGBTQ+ artist residences”, she earned a spot at the Fire Island Artist Residency, established four years earlier to make the famed enclave more accessible. But the lesbian daughter of a conservative minister wasn’t prepared for just how queer the place was. With its roving clusters of people buzzing around the dunes and pool parties to show off the various currencies – physical, financial, interpersonal – they had to spend, she says, “I thought Cherry Grove was America.” Was she wrong?

The story of the modern Fire Island is, in some ways, a particularly American one, in which outcasts light out for the territories to make their dreams come true. In the case of the picturesque barrier island off the coast of Long Island, those dreams were both sexual and creative from the start. Edited by John Dempsey, island resident and president of the Fire Island Pines Historical Society, Fire Island Art: 100 Years traces a legacy begun by the pre-war trio of Paul Cadmus, Jared French and Margaret French, who, as part of the artistic collaboration PaJaMa, made beguiling paintings and photographs of the unconventional intimacies they formed while summering among the island’s nooks and crannies.

Riley has always skewered cruelty with shattering exactitude. What’s new in this story of two old friends in London is the delicacy she brings to moments of tenderness

In the opening pages of The Palm House, London is enveloped in a dust storm blown up from the Sahara. As old friends Laura and Putnam meet for a drink in a Southwark pub, a packet of crisps open between them, the occluded atmosphere renders the city unsettlingly strange: the sky is “dark yellow … like iodine”, while the pictures in the evening paper show a “blood red sun”, a “jaundiced” City square, a “prodigious cloud, menacing the Shard”.

Like a Saharan dust storm, Gwendoline Riley’s work recasts our relationship with the familiar, transforming ordinary, unremarkable lives of her characters into something startling and new. Her female protagonists, often writers themselves, struggle with bad relationships: in First Love, shortlisted for the 2017 Women’s prize, Neve grapples with an abusive marriage, while Bridget in 2021’s quietly brutal My Phantoms is caught up with her desperately self-involved mother. The mothers in Riley’s novels are mostly monstrous and persistent, the fathers mostly monstrous and dead. Her stories are not structured around linear plots – nothing much happens – but Riley’s disquieting acuity and her spare and unsparing prose makes them shimmer with tension. She has a phenomenal ear for dialogue, for the myriad ways in which people unknowingly lay themselves bare, both in what they say and, more agonisingly, in what they don’t – or can’t. She is the laureate of disconnection, her bone-dry humour edged with the vertiginous lurch of despair.

Sam Browne’s blend of brutal honesty and droll observation has made him a viral sensation. He talks about growing up in Southend, mental health and the healing power of poetry

On a cold night in east London, 21-year-old performance poet Sam Browne is telling a packed room of strangers about his second bout of psychosis. “I was in Morocco at 18, completely alone, and I started to feel that things weren’t real,” he says. “It got so bad that one day I turned to a random person and told him I was thinking of killing myself. He just said back to me: ‘Don’t do that – you’ll miss the sunset.’”

The room falls quiet and Browne breaks the tension by launching into a poem inspired by his Moroccan breakdown, You’ll Miss the Sunset. “The world is so beautiful, the least you could do is stick around to watch it,” he says with the hint of a smirk. “But it’s all shit, all of it, isn’t it?”

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, PC; Deck Nine/Square Enix
Max and Chloe, the two teen protagonists of the 2015 game, reunite as adults – giving players the chance to finally finish their journey

In 2015, Life Is Strange stood out for two reasons: its female protagonists, a depressingly rare feature at the time, and its unique brand of millennial cringe. The thirtysomething Frenchmen who created this series may not have had the best grasp of the 2010s teen lexicon, but they did have a good gauge on what’s important about any coming-of-age story, and that’s the relationships between the characters. Max Caulfield, the shy, time-travelling wannabe photographer, and Chloe Price, the traumatised, punk-rock tearaway, had a memorably intense friendship. It was the heart and soul of that game, and now, 11 years later, they are reunited as adults in this final chapter of their story.

For a lot of players, Max and Chloe felt like more than best friends. The game’s original developers were not brave enough to make this explicit in 2015, but newer custodians Deck Nine retconned a romantic relationship between Max and Chloe into 2024’s Life Is Strange: Double Exposure. You can still play Reunion as if the two really were just friends, resulting in some awkward ambiguity in some scenes. Whichever way you slice it, though, this is a game about first love, and how it always stays with you, even when its object does not. And damned if it didn’t make me feel something.

We are paying more for a PlayStation so that idiots can use ChatGPT to mislead people on dating apps – something is rotten in the state of gaming

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When the PlayStation 5 launched almost five and a half years ago, it was listed at £449 in the UK. If you were to buy one at the recommended retail price today, it would be £569.99, or £789.99 for the updated Pro model. Sony has just raised the price of its console by another £90, the latest in a series of hikes. This is unprecedented: consoles have always decreased in price over time (until they become retro collectibles – the other day, I saw someone asking £200 for a SNES on Vinted). So, what’s going on?

Unfortunately, this is another case of artificial intelligence ruining things for everyone. AI data centres need lots and lots and lots of computing power to be able to present you with lies whenever you Google anything, and this has pushed up demand and pricing for RAM and storage. This isn’t the only reason prices are rising – the wars in Ukraine and Iran have caused global economic disruption, and rampant inflation has eaten into many companies’ bottom line. But AI is the cause that’s easiest to get angry about, because it doesn’t need to be this way.

From an interactive session of Sex With Friends to improvised Robot Karaoke, the Friday Live celebration of play and performance amid the museum’s venerable halls was a reminder of gaming’s cultural clout

In the grand entrance of the Victoria & Albert Museum, beneath a looming dome with ancient statues visible through nearby arches, a programmer/DJ is busy live-coding a glitchy electronic music set. Either side of her, large LED displays show streams of code and strobing pixellated images as the bass pounds. She’s part of a group named London Live Coding, an experimental collective that makes music by writing and manipulating audio programs. It is loud, disorientating and brilliant, and I can’t help wondering what Queen Victoria and her husband would have made of it.

The set is part of the museum’s long-running Friday Late evening series, a collaboration with the London Games Festival. It showcased a range of independent video games and immersive interactive experiences, focusing on the link between play and performance. Visitors were given a map and left to wander the halls, corridors and galleries looking for installations. You could play the Bafta-winning comedy game Thank Goodness You’re Here! on a giant screen beneath a 13th-century spiral staircase. You could wander down the darkened Prince Consort’s gallery and find groups of giggling pals playing the hilarious erotic physics puzzler Sex With Friends, in which ragdoll-like characters have to be guided into (consensual) sexual encounters – much to the amusement of spectators.

Retail sims aren’t my thing, but the tactile, nostalgic pleasures of hit indie title Retro Rewind have me yearning for the era of physical media, smoking indoors and uncomplicated geopolitics

It’s early doors, but 2026 may be the biggest bin fire of a year in my lifetime. Wars starting, then ending, then starting again in the course of a week. People running their cars on hopes and dreams because a tank of petrol costs more than the vehicle. Manospheric morons making millions. Several depressing celebrity deaths before I’ve so much as eaten my first Creme Egg of the year.

I had no idea that the antidote to my anxiety and rage would be a cheap little title, made by two French blokes, in what I usually regard as the most turgid gaming genre. Retro Rewind is the moment’s indie darling, selling more than 100,000 copies on Steam in a week. In it, you run a video rental shop in the 90s. You need to buy videos. Display them well. Drop flyers. Serve your customers. Buy more stuff. It’s no different from any other retail sim out there, and I normally shun them because I play video games to escape the boring world of work and into an exciting one of dragons, aliens, and being brilliant at sports.

Unicorn theatre, London
The Unicorn and RSC’s accessible adaptation is at its best in comic set pieces – even if the pared-down plot still feels cluttered

How to make Shakespeare accessible to a young audience? Cut out the tricky bits or throw them headfirst into the original? Co-directors Rachel Bagshaw and Robin Belfield have gone for a bit of both. This is a tightly trimmed version of the Bard’s romantic comedy with the original language intact. Playful captions have been fully integrated into the design and slapstick comedy woven throughout. It’s fun in fits and starts, although, like so many of the characters in this woozily magical play, it feels caught between two worlds.

This is the Unicorn’s first major co-production with the RSC and it feels like the start of a brilliant venture, still finding its feet. Belfield’s editing is smart but could have been more radical. The framing story in Athens – lots of complicated business with dukes and betrothals – has been cut down but not excised, which only makes it harder to understand.

Tron, Glasgow
The life-and-death choices that a stressed-out nurse faces on a short-staffed weekend are taken to gothic heights in this intense, atmospheric play

The standard colour scheme for hospital dramas is clinical white. You expect gleaming walls and antiseptic surfaces, institutionally bright. Mai Katsume takes the opposite tack.

In this co-production between Vanishing Point from Glasgow and Teater Katapult from Aarhus, Denmark, the designer dresses nurses, doctors and patients in black and lines them up across an ominously dark stage.

National theatre, London
A queenly Lesley Manville steals the show in this dark, rageful tale of seduction as contact sport

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was serving as an artillery officer while writing his epistolary novel about a cold game of seduction in the salons of 18^th-century France which backfires on its conniving architects. It shows: love is a fight for power and control in his story, every bit as strategic as a military campaign.

Popularly known through the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich (and also the teen version of it, 1999’s Cruel Intentions), this production is directed by Marianne Elliott and uses an adaptation by Christopher Hampton – whose play of the novel, first staged in 1985, was also the basis for the film starring Close.

Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester
Sparring lovers play a capricious game in Blanche McIntyre’s revival – but the cut and thrust is kept witty, rather than curdling into danger

In director Blanche McIntyre’s take on Private Lives, love is a dizzying thing. Staged in-the-round, Noël Coward’s vicious comedy of desire and spite is spun around like the records its sparring lovers play on the gramophone. From the moment that acrimonious exes Amanda and Elyot collide on their honeymoons, the revolve starts to turn, gradually accelerating to the point of nausea.

This queasy effect is apt for Coward’s play, which slowly peels back the ugliness of its central couple’s destructive bond. Opening in the luxurious surroundings of a French holiday resort – rendered in sleek, monochrome minimalism by designer Dick Bird – the first act is all pre-dinner cocktails and witty dialogue. The reunited Amanda and Elyot quickly ditch their respective new spouses, pompous Victor and vapid Sibyl, and escape to Paris. But in Amanda’s cluttered apartment, surrounded by booze and half-eaten plates of food, the rekindled romance starts to sour.

Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic features interviews with cast members and will air on 5 April

HBO has more of Harry Potter magic up its sleeve – today, the company announced a standalone, behind-the-scenes special to accompany its upcoming TV adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic will offer “an in-depth look at the making of the first season”, including plenty of production footage and details on the lengthy, UK-wide casting process for Harry, Ron and Hermione, played by Dominic McLaughlin, Alastair Stout and Arabella Stanton.

Prosecutors unveil priceless artefact in press conference after it was taken from Netherlands museum in January 2025

A priceless ancient golden helmet from Romania that was stolen last year from a museum in the Netherlands has been recovered, Dutch authorities have said.

Under the guard of balaclava-wearing police, prosecutors unveiled the 2,500-year-old Coțofenești helmet during a news conference on Thursday in the eastern Dutch city of Assen.

A new book celebrating four decades of fashion photography duo Inez and Vinoodh features celebrity portraits, surrealist visions and a meditation on love itself

Could AI write an entire sitcom series? That’s the plot of the new season of comedy drama The Comeback. Its co-creator explains why it’s ‘very possible’ – and why the world needs to catch up with AJLT

TV veteran Michael Patrick King has had a long, lively career, writing, directing and producing on shows including Murphy Brown, Will & Grace and 2 Broke Girls. He’s best known, though, for his work on the Sex and the City franchise, serving as its showrunner for the bulk of its run, writing and directing its two films, and masterminding its controversial 2020s revival And Just Like That. But this month sees the return of one of his most loved, and perhaps most underwatched, shows: The Comeback.

Co-created and co-written with Lisa Kudrow, The Comeback first aired in 2005, telling the story of a gormless sitcom star named Valerie Cherish, played by Kudrow, trying to return to stardom through the then-new format of reality TV. The show had an awkward, blackly hilarious tone that was a hit with critics and the Emmys, but failed to find much of an audience. Nine years later, in 2014, it returned for a masterly second season in which Valerie – now playing herself in a gritty HBO dramatisation of the events of season one, and filming the whole thing as an audition tape for The Real Housewives – confronts her failing marriage and relationships.

If a food is labeled ‘functional’, what does that mean? Not much, experts say

You’re at the grocery store, looking for a sweet snack. But these days, the chocolate aisle promises so much more than that: mental clarity, a stronger immune system, PMS relief and even sexual stamina – all in a few squares.

Chocolate is hardly the only treat to be reborn as a wellness product. Supermarket shelves now boast chips with added protein, gut-friendly sodas and collagen oatmeal – all part of the fast-growing “functional foods” market, which is expected to reach $586bn globally by 2030.

It sounds like you are so concerned about losing him, you are considering losing yourself, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. This bit is the mistake

• Read more Leading questions

I just discovered by chance, and to my complete surprise, after more than 20 years of what I thought was a happy and faithful marriage, that my husband has had a year-long and passionate affair with an accomplished, charming, brilliant career woman whom I also regarded as a friend. I am accomplished too, but not nearly at her level, and I am also a bit older and I have less panache than her. I don’t think I can compete with her, and in any case I feel too proud to try.

Here is the thing: he says he doesn’t want to give her up, though he also says he does not want to marry her (she is in any case married though, it seems, in an open marriage). He also says he loves me and wants to remain married to me. I think if I demand he gives her up, he will end up unable to love me. I also think I will barely, or possibly not at all, be able to bear the pain of him continuing to see her. I am so unsure what to do or indeed what I can bear doing. I so don’t want to lose him. I have been deeply in love with him ever since we first met. Do I give him the world in return for half his heart?

Once a corporate trademark, the half-zip sweater is now fashion’s hottest look. Want to avoid cosplaying Rishi Sunak when you wear one? Our menswear expert reveals all

• Men’s spring wardrobe updates for under £100

You’ve probably noticed more quarter-zips around. This time, it’s not the City boys to blame. Rather, it’s that the fashion industry’s attitude has shifted. Once dismissed (not least by GQ, who named it “a joyless jumper for the joyless grind”), the style has been reclaimed by the very people who deemed it uncool – I even wore a Vivienne Westwood design to attend London fashion week.

In menswear circles, the rise has been slow and steady. IYKYK labels such as Mfpen and Amiri introduced them into their autumn/winter 2025 collections, before luxury houses Dior and Louis Vuitton followed suit for spring/summer 26. A few A-list celebs have been spotted wearing them (including People magazine’s sexiest man alive for 2025, Jonathan Bailey). The popularity is measurable, too – in the latest Lyst Index (a quarterly report of the world’s most coveted items in fashion), Polo Ralph Lauren’s cable-knit quarter-zip was named the top menswear buy.

Unlucky in love? Maybe ditch the apps. This new twist on Victorian-era ‘flirtation cards’ could spark your next meet-cute

• How do romance novelists celebrate love?

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Tired of swiping, singles are attending flirting parties and even dating-oriented run clubs in hopes of meeting their future partner in real life.

But even those lack the romanticism of a true meet-cute. The Brooklyn-based stationery brand No Particular Order is offering a more serendipitous option: its new acquaintance cards that encourage more spontaneous connections.

For some, it’s a meat thermometer or a knife, for others a roasting tin, a reliable peeler or, yes, a teapot (gravy, anyone?). Let the cooking perfection begin

Crispy roast potatoes, golden yorkshire puddings and perfectly cooked meat (or a vegetarian centrepiece) – there’s nothing like a good roast dinner. But making a roast can be quite a balancing act in the kitchen. There’s a fine art to juggling all the elements: you want to make sure nothing is over- or under-cooked, and that everything is still warm when you come to serve it.

To refine your techniques and help you feel like a pro in the kitchen, we asked top chefs from around the UK about the cooking equipment they rely on to make the perfect roast. Featuring life-changing peelers, roasting tins that make the crispiest potatoes and a temperature probe to help you cook to perfection, these are their recommendations.

Spring has officially sprung, but your March favourites tell us you’ve still got one cosily socked foot in bed

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March claims to be spring – and some of it even reckons it’s British summertime – but even the sunniest days are “summer in the sunshine, winter in the shade”. Judging by the products you loved most, you haven’t decided whether to emerge from hibernation yet, either.

Pillows and bed socks accounted for a quarter of all your favourite things this month, and your fashion must-have was a snuggly hoodie. But your enthusiasm for a glow-up eye cream and a legendary hot brush suggests you’re harbouring an itch to get out.

Eid, Nowruz, Passover and Easter each tell their own story, but all are bound by generosity, memory and hope

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Spring has a way of bringing us together. Light stretches into the evening, markets brim with green shoots and, across kitchens, tables begin to fill again. Over these weeks, four festivals – Eid, Nowruz, Passover and Easter – bring something distinct in story and ritual, yet all four are threaded with food, family and the quiet insistence of renewal.

Eid arrives at the end of Ramadan with a particular kind of joy – one sharpened by restraint and softened by generosity. The table is abundant but never careless: dates to break the fast, fragrant rice dishes, slow-cooked meats, sweets soaked in syrup or dusted with sugar. In many homes there is maamoul, a delicate semolina biscuit filled with dates or nuts, and whole spreads of celebratory dishes tied to memory as much as to taste.

Cannelloni made with sheets of fresh egg pasta are a treat, especially on a feast day, and they can be made the day before

Fresh sheets smelling of fresh air or fabric softener (or both) with hospital corners are one of life’s great pleasures. As are fresh sheets of egg pasta – the sort that comes in squat boxes protected by clingfilm and found in the fridge section alongside ravioli. They are also one of the most useful and certainly the most multi-talented of all the pasta shapes.

That they are labelled lasagne is limiting; of course, they can be lasagne, but they could just as easily be numerous other shapes. The most easy-going of which is maltagliati, meaning badly cut, which tells you everything you need to know about the approach required as you cut them (using a knife, pizza wheel or pair of scissors) into uneven bits that are ideal in all sorts of soups, but especially those with beans. With slightly more precision, the sheets can be turned into 1cm-wide ribbons (short tagliatelle, if you like) for meat or vegetable ragu. Similar ribbons, made with a fluted pasta cutting wheel, can be mafalde, while thicker ribbons create a sort of ersatz pappardelle. All ribbons, though, can be cut into quadrucci (little squares) – another shape ideal for soup. Larger squares can be mandilli de sea (silk handkerchiefs), which are great dressed with pesto. If the pasta is fresh enough, rectangles can also be pinched into farfalle (butterflies), although I think bow ties is a better description.

Few combinations tickle the flavour palate like booze and chocolate, it’s no wonder they mix well

Among my minor childhood traumas was the time my dad returned from a business trip to Belgium with a smart box of assorted chocolates (cue tiny violins). Expecting caramel, I bit into a truffle and was met by an explosion of very boozy liqueur. The box seemed to be an exciting change from the usual duty-free Toblerone, but after this incident, truffle assortments have always struck me as deeply unsafe. (I have tried liqueur-filled chocolates since, but still remain flummoxed by them.)

So you can imagine my feelings about chocolate-infused liqueurs. Personally, I think some things don’t need to mix, but in this era of edible collabs (see the recent Flying Goose sriracha x Heck sausages), brands can’t resist a dabble. Enter Bailey’s x Terry’s Chocolate Orange Irish Cream Liqueur, which will send fans of both products aflutter. Most creamy chocolate liqueurs use a neutral grain spirit as their base, which is mixed with dairy, sugar and chocolate flavouring – the base for Bailey’s, for example, is Irish whiskey. Waitrose is less specific about the base of its No1 Blonde Chocolate Cream Liqueur, which is inspired by the supermarket’s chocolate bar of the same name and made in partnership with a distiller in Burgundy. Apparently, it has “notes of caramelised white chocolate”, though I found it cloying. Such things are better served ice-cold, however – Waitrose recommends serving it on the rocks or over ice-cream; I might use it to spike a bread-and-butter pudding or chocolate tart.

An easy and enjoyable Sunday supper made up of a cheesy fish dish and a biscuity iced dessert

Sometimes all you want is a hot, bubbling dish and a spoon, and for me today’s cheesy haddock is that dish – a 15-minute supper to be enjoyed in front of the telly with a salad or a large bowl of hot buttered peas. Add a lemony, biscuity iced dessert, and you have a light, very easy and enjoyable supper that’s almost the perfect close to a long Easter weekend.

The Guardian aims to publish recipes for sustainable fish. Check ratings in your region: UK; Australia; US.

These recipes are edited extracts from The Racine Effect: Classic French Recipes from a Lifetime in the Kitchen, by Henry Harris, published by Quadrille at £40. To order a copy for £36, go to guardianbookshop.com

With public houses increasingly restricting or banning children, we asked for your thoughts on adult-only pubs

A growing number of pubs in the UK are restricting or banning children, citing safety concerns, changing atmospheres and lost trade. We asked people their thoughts on adult-only pubs.

Many who contacted us supported child-free pubs, believing adult-only spaces were important, but a good proportion said they would change their mind if children were “properly supervised by parents”.

Henry says Maggie is constantly losing them; she thinks her son is making a lot of noise about nothing. It’s up to you to give them a fair hearing

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

Mum doesn’t look after her headphones because she knows I’ll always be there to buy her new ones

I’m 76, and don’t like online shopping. It only takes Henry 30 seconds to buy a new pair

If I can trust my boyfriend with my dog, the most important thing in my life, then I guess I can trust him again with my bruised and idiotic heart

Recently I got down on one knee and presented my boyfriend with some jewellery, and asked if he would commit to caring for a very long, cute, stinky boy.

While this is an apt description of me, I was not asking him to marry me and I was not presenting a ring – I was asking him an even more important question: would he consent to having his phone number engraved next to mine on my long stinky dog’s collar, complete with a cute little heart tag featuring our digits?

When Merlin came to live with me, his only job was to clear the weeds from my fields. But his calm, affectionate nature has made him a vital part of my therapy practice

Merlin the sheep came to me by chance four years ago. A friend of mine had a lamb she was bottle-feeding, but she couldn’t look after it any more so she asked me if I could take care of it. I live in Moortown, Leeds, and rent about three hectares (seven acres) of land in Eccup, a small village nearby, where I’ve kept horses for about 13 years. I needed some help clearing the weeds that the horses wouldn’t eat and sheep seemed like the best solution because they’ll eat anything – so I said yes.

The lamb was called Bambi and when I came to collect her, my friend offered me another lamb, Merlin. Shortly after, Bambi died and it was just Merlin left. It wasn’t long until he started to show his special powers.

Only way to avoid missing a flight because of EES rules: squeeze everything into a cabin bag and skip luggage check-in

Travellers to the EU risk missing their flights because bag drop-off times don’t allow for the long queues to get through a new security system.

My family of four missed our easyJet flight home from Málaga because, although we followed advice from the airport and arrived three hours before departure, the bag drop-off didn’t open until two hours before.

Calls for tougher laws as network stretching from Caribbean to Georgia generates riches for offshore tycoons by appearing to prey on the vulnerable

Immaculately groomed and beaming from ear to ear, Andres Markou looks every inch the golden boy of the gambling sector. The youthful boss of MyStake, a fast-growing digital casino, has been pictured shaking hands with the Brazilian football legend Ronaldinho over a lucrative branding partnership.

Elsewhere, he can be seen collecting industry awards, or offering “visionary” insights to interviewers. There is only one hurdle blocking Markou’s ascent to the very top of his trade: he does not exist.

Snappy performance, high-quality screen, best-in-class keyboard and trackpad show cheaper can still be great

Apple’s brand new entry-level laptop is powered by the chip from an iPhone and offers more than just the essential MacBook experience for a great price, putting the PC industry on notice.

The MacBook Neo is the first of its kind from Apple. A 13in laptop that runs on an A18 Pro chip and brings the starting price for a brand new MacBook down to £599 (€699/$599/A$899) – £500 or the equivalent less than the MacBook Air.

From council tax to water, broadband to stamps, the annual round of price rises starts on 1 April … and that’s before any fallout from Iran war

• UK savers told to act now before Easter Sunday cash Isa deadline

Britons will typically see more than £200 added to their household bills this year as “awful April” price increases kick in.

The annual rises are particularly unwelcome as the financial turmoil caused by the Middle East conflict has pushed up mortgage rates, fuel prices and energy bills for rural households.

Cannabis policy still divisive two years in, with SPD hailing it while CDU minister says it is risk to young people’s health

It was a landmark piece of legislation passed by Germany’s previous, centre-left-led government: a measure that legalised the personal recreational use of cannabis for over-18s despite warnings from critics it would cause a steep rise in the drug’s use, including by teenagers, and boost criminal gangs.

Two years on, controversy over the move has still not been stubbed out, with critics and proponents at odds over its impact on consumption, youth welfare and organised crime.

One of the fastest-growing fitness trends is also one of the most divisive. To its fans, it promises a stronger, healthier body; to its critics, it’s another way to make women feel insecure. Time to sort fact from fiction

I have noticed something new in my London neighbourhood. Amid the sea of nail salons, vape shops and purveyors of fried chicken, sleek, opaque-fronted premises are popping up everywhere. There are several within 15 minutes of my home.

At weekends, you can spot clusters of devotees heading to these mysterious, vaguely aspirational temples of self-care, AKA reformer pilates studios. Many of these devotees conform to an aesthetic popularised on TikTok via hashtags such as #pilatesprincess. There is definitely a uniform: pink athleisure, Rhode phone cases and oversized pastel-coloured Stanley tumblers, jokingly referenced on Instagram as “emotional support” bottles. It is a trend that prompted New York magazine to run an article under the headline “Why Pilates Keeps Pissing People Off”: the workout has become inseparable from a very strict idea of womanhood.

Claims of benefits have been amplified by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. How does the evidence actually stack up?

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Influencers are telling their audiences that injectable peptides are the “glow up potion” they need for everything from clearing up hormonal acne, thickening hair, relieving back pain and even treating chronic UTIs.

These peptides, intended for research purposes (as some influencers do point out) and not approved for human use, are being increasingly sold through unregulated online channels.

‘Zombie filler’, or using cadaver tissue that’s been sterilized and branded as Alloclae, is the latest cosmetic surgery rage. Is it safe?

The residential block at 655 Park Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is so storied it has its own Wikipedia entry. It has housed luminaries from bestselling romance author Danielle Steel to esteemed yachtsmen and the 20th-century heir William Kissam Vanderbilt II. A more recent resident, on the ground floor, is Alpha Male Plastic Surgery, a clinic offering a broad menu of elective procedures catering to the needs of the modern man.

On a coffee table in the waiting room, fanned-out brochures tout facelifts, non-surgical penile implants, and Tesamorelin – an FDA-approved peptide injection targeting stubborn visceral belly fat. Flatscreen monitors mounted behind the front desk shuffle through ads for a “Full Male Model Makeover”, proprietary procedures like BodyBanking® and the 360 TorsoTuck®, and for the gym rat who habitually skips leg day, even “Amazing New Calves”.

Nevermind the trends, want to know how to dress for actual spring weather? Then read on

It all came to a head, as matters of getting dressed so often do, over black tights. I had wanted to wear my silver skirt, you see. It was a rare blue-sky day and the sunshine was making me crave reflective surfaces to maximise the light. Anyway, you know how it is when you just get a yen to wear something. So I pulled out said silver skirt and then realised I didn’t want to wear the black opaque tights I wear with it in winter, but it wasn’t anywhere near warm enough to wear it with bare legs as I do in summer. I was completely stumped. And it made me realise: I need a refresher course in what to wear at this time of year. Spring has sprung, but I have forgotten how to hop to it.

So here we have it: your pocket primer on how to dress for spring. I’m talking about the spring that happens every year, an actual real-world meteorological phenomenon, not about the fashion trends of this particular moment. The lengthening days, daylight commuting, the juicy greens and yellows of the landscape, the maverick unpredictability of rain. Whether zebra stripes are the new leopard does not concern us today. We don’t need fashion to provide the newness when newness is in abundance in the world. So we can flick back through the pages to remind ourselves of spring’s fashion classics.

Doctors warn viral off-label use lacks evidence, with unknown long-term risks and possible systemic absorption

Vaginal estrogen cream is prescribed to ease genital dryness, irritation and discomfort that results from the loss of estrogen during menopause.

The name tells you exactly where to put it. Yet a new trend has been making the rounds on social media. People are calling vaginal estrogen cream the new “filler” for the face and other body parts, claiming it can smooth wrinkles, reduce dryness and sagginess and plump up the skin.

Armani revamps a favourite, Clarins adds a tint to its serum and a new base from Carisa Janes will suit anyone who hates powders

Three very big hitters have new foundations: one risky reformulation of a cult classic; one addition to a wildly popular skincare franchise; and one to launch a new brand from a beauty legend.

Let’s start with Armani’s Luminous Silk (£49 for 30ml), loved by many for its buildable, versatile coverage, and perhaps the most worn bridal foundation of all time. While I’m not against a reformulation in principle (technology, regulations and ingredients move on, and that’s all for the better), Armani does seem to have reformulated here for little discernible reason beyond Google Analytics.

Prepare for bouclé jackets, quilted chain-link bags galore and an outfit formula that is proving to be consumer catnip

Just six months after Matthieu Blazy unveiled his debut collection for Chanel, and a week after it landed in stores, excitement over the new designer has reached fever pitch. There have been queues outside shops, grapples at the tills and dozens of social media posts bragging about purchases. Now, Blazy’s Chanel effect is coming for the high street. Prepare for bouclé jackets and quilted chain-link bags galore.

“It is a good sign that it has become immediately a reference point for the high street,” says Mario Ortelli, a managing partner at the luxury advisory firm Ortelli & Co. “When a new product and new creative direction is successful it is copied by the high street. If not, it means it is not relevant or is only relevant for a niche set of consumers.”

Explore wild scenery, empty beaches and beautiful villages on the 110-mile Corfu trail, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year

The riverside was heaving. Families spilled from cafes. A marching band trooped on to the bridge, their tasselled metal helmets dazzling in the sun. Priests with bushy beards delivered ageless chants from beneath their cylindrical kalimavkion hats. Men let off shotguns, terrifying the air. Easter Monday in Lefkimmi.

We hadn’t planned this. Simply right place, right time. The capital of southern Corfu, Lefkimmi is a working town, untroubled by tourism. There are Venetian-style houses – variously neat, tatty and decrepit – but no “attractions” to speak of. Just Corfiots doing Corfiot things: chewing the fat in their finest for this religious celebration – Greek Orthodox Easter, which falls on 12 April in 2026 – plus zipping about on scooters, drinking coffee, buying baklava and ice-creams.

With its never-ending street theatre and labyrinthine medina, this timeless city swallows you whole – and reveals new secrets with each visit

The rising sun sets fire to the snow-covered caps of the Atlas mountains. Within moments, the shadowy gorges are gleaming with warm terracotta hues. I turn my back on north Africa’s highest peaks and look north where Marrakech – nicknamed the Red City – rests like a jagged ruby amid the jade swathes of palms and the silvery sheen of olive groves.

Swinging 800 metres (2,625ft) above the stony desert in a giant wicker basket, I try to imagine what this scene would have looked like when camel trains trooped this way, loaded with salt, spices and enslaved humans bound for Marrakech’s souks.

It’s a quintessentially Welsh experience of castles, cockles and cawl when you explore the south-west of the country by train, bus and a new footpath opening this week

Sit on the left when you catch the train from Swansea to Carmarthen, and you can watch huge sandy estuaries unspool outside the window. There’s a curlew standing by the water, an egret-haunted pool in the wetlands, and a boardwalk along the foreshore, part of the 870-mile Wales Coast Path. It has been a six-hour, four-train journey to get here from Essex, but I’ll soon be on foot.

Carmarthenshire has picturesque railways, a network of buses, and some epic long-distance paths, so it makes for an ideal car-free break. The 13-mile Tywi Valley Path (officially opening in time for Easter) will link Abergwili near Carmarthen and Ffairfach near Llandeilo, helping walkers and cyclists access some lovely scenery. I’m visiting just before Saint David’s Day, and there are daffodils everywhere. Carmarthenshire offers a quintessentially Welsh experience, packed with castles, cockles and cawl (stew).

Beyond the Belgian capital’s more obvious sights lies a thriving district known for its classic Belgian cuisine, alternative art scene and gigantic flea market

The Brusseleir dialect that’s still spoken in much of the Marolles dates back to the middle ages, a symbol of the independence of this proudly working-class neighbourhood in central Brussels. Located between the Palace of Justice and Halle Gate, it’s always been an inclusive refuge for immigrants from Europe and north Africa. The must-see Brussels tourist attractions of the Grand-Place central square and Mannekin-Pis statue are within walking distance, but the Marolles offers a very different experience: fashion, antiques and bric-a-brac shopping; alternative creative centres and provocative graffiti; characteristic estaminets (hybrid pub, cafe, bistros) specialising in hearty local dishes; and artisan breweries.

After being pushed to ‘distress’ by people trying to film and take selfies with the cattle in Kent, the fold has had to be taken away from public view

Name: Highland cows.

Age: More than 1,000 years old.

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

It is time for the Thursday news quiz, where, thanks to our illustration from Anaïs Mims, you must decide whether you are gliding serenely across the waters of knowledge, your elegant neck forming a perfect question mark, or paddling furiously beneath the surface, one wrong answer away from an undignified flap. Fifteen questions on topical headlines, pop culture and general knowledge await. There are no prizes, but we always enjoy hearing how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 241

Nettlecombe, Dorset: Logging is typically a job for a machine, but French Comtois are highly manoeuvrable and have just the right amount of horsepower

A heave and a grunt and a sudden rush as the felled tree trunk starts to move, dragged on a chain behind Etty’s stocky chestnut hindquarters.

Etty is a 12-year-old mare who works with Toby Hoad of Dorset Horse Logging. Their partnership requires mutual understanding and constant communication, as he explains: “You’ve really got to build up a relationship; you’ve got to build up trust. I can drop the reins, and she will pull out the log out for me if it’s in a tight spot.”

I had grown up dreading introductions, with the inevitable mangling of my name. Suddenly, in India, we were both getting the respect we deserved

I had five names on the day of my Hindu naming ceremony, but my given name was Priti, a name that came to shape me.

Like most children with “unconventional” names, I dreaded the first day of each school year. I would squirm in my chair as my new teacher worked their way through the class register, and my stomach would drop as they attempted to say my full name: Priti Ubhayakar. I would be sitting there thinking: “If the first name doesn’t get you, the last name will.”

Abel Ortiz was brought from Mexico to LA when he was just two months old and has been​ living undocumented​ ever since. Now 38, he has a full life​ cutting hair, building a community, loving​ a city that has never fully loved him back.​ ​In a time of escalating ICE raids and the ache of uncertainty, Abel has made a radical decision: he’s leaving – not because he has to, but to escape perpetual limbo and be free to see the world

Content creators love the built-in camera; sceptics call them ‘pervert glasses’. Do we really need any more hi-tech wearables, even with a voice assistant that sounds like Judi Dench?

Lately, I’ve been hearing Judi Dench’s voice in my head. She tells me tomorrow’s forecast, when to turn right, that there’s been another message in my group chat. Day or night, Dame Judi is eager to assist. When I ask the eight-time Academy Award nominee what I’m looking at, she answers: a residential area, a person in a pub, daffodils. “They are a bright yellow colour and are often associated with spring.”

This isn’t a delusion. This is, apparently, progress. I am test-driving Meta’s smartglasses and Dench voices its integrated AI assistant: “Here to chat, answer questions, create images and provide advice and inspiration,” said “Judi” when I selected her over the actors John Cena and Kristen Bell. “Shall we begin?”

Within the lunar dirt is a type of helium so rare on Earth that a palm-sized container is estimated to be worth millions

• ‘This was the real thing’: Meet the woman who alerts the world when an asteroid could hit

• ‘This feels fragile’: how a satellite-smashing chain reaction could spiral out of control

In the silent vacuum of space, five autonomous robots churn through the lunar surface, digging up a loose layer of rock and dust and leaving rows of uniform tracks in their wake.

Stopping only to recharge at a central solar power station, the car-sized machines process the lunar dirt internally to extract a type of helium so rare on Earth that a palm-sized container is estimated to be worth millions. Once processed, the precious resource is loaded into a launcher and ejected back to Earth.

Rightwing parties are using parliamentary queries, legal traps and policing to target NGOs and stifle dissent

• Revealed: Five EU governments found to ‘consistently’ dismantle rule of law

Pauline Voss, the deputy editor of Nius, a fast-growing rightwing media outlet whose ambition is to be Germany’s Fox News, believes progressive civil society groups in Germany are engaged in a coordinated campaign to “act against their own population”.

That may be why, according to research this year by the progressive pressure group Campact, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) filed 295 parliamentary queries targeting left-leaning NGOs last year – more than twice as many as in 2024.

Do you agree with the guidance? Have you been limiting screen time for your child? How is that going?

Children under five should spend no more than an hour a day on screens and under-twos should not be watching screens alone, according to UK government advice.

The guidance was developed by a panel led by the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, and the children’s health expert Prof Russell Viner.

We’d like to hear from volunteers who have experienced a charity closing

Across the UK, many small charities face increasing financial pressures, forcing some to shut their doors. When this happens, it can leave the people who relied on those services without support - and volunteers and communities trying to step in and keep things going.

We’d like to hear from volunteers who have experienced a charity closing. Have you or others tried to continue the work informally and what were the challenges of doing that? Did you try to keep it going - and what difficulties did you face? What happened to the people who depended on the service?

We want to hear from owners of dogs, cats or other pets who have tried these trackers

With a growing number of pet fitness trackers on the market, owners can monitor the stats of their companions as never before. But these devices can be costly, and their necessity is debated.

We want to hear from owners of dogs, cats or other pets who have tried these trackers to hear if such health monitors have proved useful, neutral or problematic.

We would like to hear about your experiences of caring for elderly parents and how this has affected your life

In a recent Guardian opinion piece, Lucinda Holdforth described her experience of caring for her late mother, and her complicated feelings after she died.

It is a common human theme that good parents can never really rest for worrying about their children. But it seems to me that a reciprocal burden exists for good children. We are never entirely free from the psychic weight of our parents’ needs, love and ambitions for us in our youth, and increasingly we now find ourselves taking on guardian-style responsibilities for them during their prolonged old age.

I finally understood the accumulated heaviness of the burden I had carried about a year after my mother died. At 59, I was at last an orphan, which meant I could turn off my phone each night. I woke up one day with the most complete feeling of creative liberty and personhood I’d ever experienced. That feeling has not left me since.

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