Former deputy PM has walked a line between loyalty and interventionism since resigning last September

It is nearly eight months since Angela Rayner quit the cabinet because of her tax arrangements, but some might argue her influence on the government has not gone away. And soon she might return, whether as Keir Starmer’s saviour or, perhaps, his usurper.

There is increasing speculation that the prime minister could carry out a small-scale reshuffle, primarily to bring back Rayner, his former deputy and one of Labour’s political heavyweights.

Every World Cup, from Uruguay and Italy in 1930 and 1934, to Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022, has been to an extent about presenting an image to the world

• This was originally published in the newsletter The World Behind the Cup. Sign up for it here.

Football fans will be well aware that in 1930 Uruguay both hosted and won the first World Cup, but less well known is the diplomatic backstory of the country’s entry on to the international sporting stage. In the 1920s, Uruguay’s foreign minister, who led one of the country’s two rival football associations, coordinated with a diplomat serving in Switzerland to give his federation legitimacy by joining Fifa. The diplomat also entered Uruguay into the 1924 Olympic football tournament in Paris – which was emerging as the premier venue for global football. That provoked panic back in Uruguay: nobody had expected him to do that and nobody quite knew how they would afford it; a federation official ended up having to use his own house as collateral on a loan to pay for the team’s passage across the Atlantic.

Once they got to Europe, Uruguay quickly won admiration. First in nine friendlies as they travelled through Spain and then at the Olympic Games itself, where they became by far the biggest draw. The great novelist Colette was even dispatched to the villa where Uruguay were staying to record her impressions for the newspaper Le Matin. Playing brilliant, coherent passing football, Uruguay took gold at the Games.

This was originally published in the newsletter The World Behind the Cup. Sign up for it here.

As the actor turns 86, we rate his greatest screen performances and ask which Godfather was the best of the trilogy

With greased-back hair, dainty spectacles and bristly chops, Pacino is a former Little League baseball coach turned locksmith. But – symbolism alert! – who holds the key to his clenched heart? One scene gives good cringe: over a would-be romantic dinner with a bank teller (Holly Hunter), he starts reminiscing about his great lost love, oblivious to his date’s escalating indignation.

Moreangels Mbizah has blazed a trail in Zimbabwe as the first black African woman to found a conservation organisation in the country

The turning point for Moreangels Mbizah came in 2014. The conservation biologist was in Hwange national park in Zimbabwe, scanning the savannah to monitor the movements of lions for her zoology PhD research.

The GPS signal told her something was wrong. One of the lions had strayed into a nearby village, putting itself and the local community at risk. Mbizah and her team took off to try to herd it back into its habitat.

In the 1980s, Labour-controlled London built 52,000 council homes. During the Tony Blair decade, just 280. It’s brought this local-election catastrophe on itself

Over the week to come, journalists will repeat three things until they, and you, are sick: that local elections fall next Thursday; that the results will decide the fate of Keir Starmer; and that he is set to do badly. But just how badly, and where? Last week, Starmer’s own party dropped a big clue.

The most popular politician in Britain came down from Manchester to spend the whole day campaigning in London. As Andy Burnham went from Haringey to Brixton, he rallied Labour’s footsoldiers. “Don’t go into the last two weeks with your shoulders down,” he told them. “Get your shoulders up.”

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

My country has been under occupation, dogged by corruption and war. Yet even I’ve been bewildered by the way the US seems to be fracturing

• A version of this piece appeared in the Dial under the headline No Common Ground

In 2008, when I was a reporter for a leading Ukrainian TV station, I insisted on following Barack Obama’s campaign for US president. Few Ukrainian media outlets could afford to send a journalist to travel around the US to report on the election; even the newsrooms of those that could took some convincing.

As a media student in 2004, I had spent two months on the streets of Kyiv during the Orange Revolution, where people protested a stolen election and succeeded in defending their vote. The excitement of the fight for freedom and justice, combined with the energy of mass gatherings, was seductive. I recognised a similar momentum in the US during Obama’s campaign and wanted to see how things felt on the ground. As a Ukrainian, I could relate to Obama’s promises to restore respect for human rights and the rule of law, and his desire to mobilise people around the idea of “hope”. It also stood in contrast with what I knew of the US: I had studied foreign news reporting at the time of the US invasion of Iraq and the military’s crimes in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

Suleiman had been referred to scheme to try to stop people becoming terrorists in 2020 but case was closed the same year

• Full report: Golders Green attack suspect referred to Prevent scheme in 2020, say police

Here are some of the latest images from the newswires in Golders Green this morning:

A 45-year-old man, who is a British national, born in Somalia, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said he came to the UK lawfully as a child.

The Metropolitan police said he was initially taken to hospital after being arrested but has since been discharged. He was taken to a London police station where he remains in custody.

The Met commissioner, Mark Rowley, said the suspect has a history of mental health issues, drug use and convictions for violence.

Mojtaba Khamenei says Tehran will eliminate ‘enemy’s abuses of the waterway’ and guard its nuclear and missile programmes

• US politics live – latest updates

Iran’s supreme leader has broken his recent silence with a defiant statement hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait of Hormuz and vowing to guard the country’s nuclear and missile programmes.

“Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz,” Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement read by a state television anchor.

Former Tory home secretary turned Reform UK education spokesperson defends party leader over undeclared gift

On BBC Radio Merseyside the presenter, Tony Snell, put it to Kemi Badenoch that Merseyside was a lost cause for the Tories. He said that Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, had been on the programme yesterday. He said that Farage argued that Scousers were down to earth and the Tories they were seen as “aloof and remote”.

Badenoch said no one had ever described her as aloof and remote. When it was put to her that Farage was talking about the party, she said the Tories were the party of working people. Labour were only interested in welfare, she claimed.

Nigel Farage can say as much as he wants that he’s the one who’s down to earth. Someone just gave him a £5m gift to the other day. I don’t know what’s down to earth about that.

Who gets £5m is a gift. If I got £50,000 as a gift, I think people would raise their eyebrows. That’s a hundred times that. And he forgot to register it. He forgot that he’d been given £5m. I don’t think that’s down to earth. So I’m not going to be taking any lessons from Nigel Farage.

Nearly 60 countries back voluntary roadmaps to wean world off coal, oil and gas, at conference prompted by frustration with UN climate summits

• Business live – latest updates

• Europe live – latest updates

Governments have been asked to develop national “roadmaps” setting out how they will end the production and use of fossil fuels, after a landmark climate meeting involving nearly 60 countries.

The voluntary plans will form the bedrock of a new initiative to wean the world off coal, oil and gas, the focus of two days of intensive talks in Colombia this week.

Bank governor says latest MPC decision is reasonable given unpredictability of events unfolding in Middle East

• Business live – latest updates

• Why Bank kept rates on hold despite UK bracing for Trumpflation

The Bank of England has left interest rates unchanged at 3.75% but warned that the UK may need to brace for hikes later this year, as “higher inflation is unavoidable” as a result of the war in the Middle East.

The Bank’s rate-setting monetary policy committee (MPC) voted to leave borrowing costs on hold on Thursday, with its nine-member committee split 8-1 in their decision.

Experts put estimate for economic harm done by 200 years of chattel slavery at $2tn, but stress this is ‘not an invoice’

Britain stole 25 million years of life and labour through slavery in Barbados, according to research by a team of international experts.

Their report concludes that Barbados’s population of African descent have suffered damages estimated at up to $2tn (£1.5tn) from 200 years of chattel slavery.

A Russian commander who led troops during the Bucha massacre in 2022 was said to be the blast’s intended target

An explosion killed an army officer in a closed-off military town in Russia’s far east this week, in what appeared to be an attempt to target a more senior commander known as the “Butcher of Bucha”.

Three sources familiar with the incident said the bomb detonated at about 9am on Tuesday in a residential block in Knyaze-Volkonskoye-1, the home of Maj Gen Azatbek Omurbekov, who commanded Russian troops during the occupation of Bucha.

Winston Marshall, former member of Mumford & Sons, says people crossing are ‘economic migrants’ not refugees

The son of the Spectator owner, Paul Marshall, has said Britain should construct a mine-laden “floating wall” to stop small boat crossings on the Channel.

Winston Marshall, a former member of the band Mumford & Sons who is establishing himself as a rightwing online influencer, said that while the idea “might sound ridiculous”, it should be explored because previous attempts to stop the crossings had failed.

As well as penning a Sunday Times bestseller, the terrier had been a regular in the BBC comedy series since 2020

Sad news for fans of Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. Ted has died.

The dog, a patterdale terrier mix, first appeared on the BBC fishing series alongside Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse in 2020 and had regularly joined them on their river-based adventures since.

With voter loyalty a distant memory, the Lib Dems’ cost of living policies and criticism of Trump could gain them ground

It has been an election buildup dominated by the rise of Reform UK and the Greens, and the contrasting woes of Labour and the Tories. But there is a chance that on 8 May the Liberal Democrats, largely ignored in recent weeks, could wake up as the biggest party in English local government.

This is just one of several paradoxes for the party’s leader, Ed Davey, and his team. They are fifth in many national polls, with a rating barely changed from 2024. But Lib Dem bosses are sanguine, convinced that UK politics is now so different, so atomised, to make headline polling almost irrelevant.

A Canadian social enterprise hopes to help solve the urgent need for retrofits and shortage of skilled workers

John Mava was looking for work when a construction project started behind his house. When he visited the site and saw how different construction was in Canada compared with his native Nigeria, his interest was piqued.

“I said it would be great for me to have knowledge about this,” said Mava, who learned that in Canada, construction uses timber rather than bricks and has a focus on the environment.

A standoff between Gulf oil giants Saudi Arabia and the UAE could cause greater market volatility for years to come

The conflict in the Middle East has claimed Opec as the latest casualty of war. The United Arab Emirates’ shock exit from the oil cartel on Tuesday after 60 years is expected to weaken the alliance, which under the leadership of Saudi Arabia has helped to soothe volatility in the global oil market for decades.

Global oil prices reached the highest level in four years on Thursday, rising above $126 a barrel. But as the region grapples with the continuing conflict, a fresh war may be brewing in the international oil markets, which could lead to greater market volatility for years to come.

As she releases a clubby new album, Sweat, the former Sporty Spice answers your questions on her raver days, scouse cuisine and Sex Pistols covers

Your acid remix of Jessie Ware’s Free Yourself was a bit unexpected, I admit. Were you a hardcore raver back in the early 90s? Coopertapes
I absolutely was. I discovered raving on my first holiday without parents, just me and three of the girls I was at college with. This was the first environment I’d been in where I heard house music and everyone was dancing, and really expressing themselves. I was like, “Oh my God, I’ve found my people.” That’s where I got the bug. Then we’d also go to a club in Essex called Berwick Manor. I also remember going to the Cross, which was in King’s Cross. It was such a tiny little window of my late teens because the Spice Girls happened so quickly after it. I’d almost compartmentalised it and left it behind until I started DJing eight years ago.

Once the Spice Girls started and your schedule was much tighter, were you ever able to go out like that again? laurasnapes
Absolutely not. That was the thing, although all of my wildest dreams were coming true through being part of the Spice Girls, real life was put on hold. The schedule was brutal. There was very little time for socialising. Also, you remember those times in the 90s, right? The tabloid media and paparazzi were on you like a hawk. So we were terrified. Anything we ever did was usually published in a newspaper, so in our downtime we tried to keep it low key.

You’re not imagining it. Smaller portions. Higher prices. Worse service.

It’s easy to blame inflation, but that’s not the full story.

Over the last few decades, a financial model has quietly taken over huge parts of everyday life. From restaurants and retailers to vets and care homes, many of the brands we rely on are no longer being run as long-term businesses, but as investments designed to generate fast returns.

In this video, Neelam Tailor breaks down how private equity actually works, why it’s grown so quickly, and how it can reshape the businesses you interact with every day.

Six dancers who made bold career pivots reflect on ballet’s transferrable skills, what they miss about the stage – and what they were glad to leave behind

Lana Jones, midwife, former principal dancer at the Australian Ballet

Everyone is obsessed with the hit hospital drama – and the internet is abuzz with curious predictions and theories. Ghost medics, anyone?

It’s thrillingly intense. It’s obsessed with intubating. It’s occasionally infested with maggots or rats. And it has single-handedly made medical dramas cool again. With each episode covering an hour inside the hectic emergency room at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (PTMC), awards-gobbling HBO Max hit The Pitt has become the most talked-about show on TV.

And where there’s a hit series, you’ll find an obsessive fandom. Fully invested devotees of The Pitt are busy spotting details, making predictions and hatching theories. As season two approaches midway, here are 10 for your thorough medical examination. Let’s go save some lives …

Peonies, padel rackets and a genuinely good low-alcohol wine … whatever your plans this bank holiday, we’ve rounded up our top spring essentials so you can make the most of it

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

The weather may or may not play ball, but a spring bank holiday is a reason to kick back, get outside and get together with friends.

To help you make the most of the long weekend, we’ve rounded up some of our most-loved seasonal favourites. Whether it’s tools to spruce up your outdoor space, tipples to sip in the garden, a fake tan to jump-start your summer skin or fashion to take you from spring to summer, here are some of our favourite springtime products.

A new trailer depicts a normal meet-cute before setting it on the one night a year when single people can legally have sex

For the most part, the trailer for the upcoming film One Night Only looks like the sweetest possible version of a romcom. A handsome, sensitive-looking man (played by Callum Turner) flirts relentlessly with a big-eyed oddball in a sexy dress (played by Monica Barbaro). They bump into each other, nudge each other, roll their eyes at each other. As a YouTube comment underneath the trailer (that has been liked more than 3,000 times) says: “Romantic comedies are back.”

However, tucked away in this adorable little trailer is a premise that might just be the most confusing in living memory. As Turner’s character walks lovelorn through the streets of New York City, his voiceover says: “Finding love is hard enough. Try doing it on the one night of the year single people are legally allowed to have sex.”

Gothenburg promised to optimise school admissions with a piece of code. The resulting chaos showed how unaccountable systems are ruining lives

We like to imagine that injustice announces itself loudly. That when something goes wrong in the public system, alarms go off and someone takes responsibility or is held accountable if they do not. But in 2020 in Gothenburg, injustice arrived quietly, disguised as efficiency.

For the first time, the city used an algorithm to allocate places in its schools. After all, working out geographical catchment areas and admissions is an administrative headache for any municipality. What better than a machine to optimise distances, preferences and capacity? The system was designed to serve public efficiency: framed as neutral, streamlined and objective.

Charlotta Kronblad researches digital transformation at the University of Gothenburg.

With the US blockade cutting off oil, the island’s healthcare has been wrecked, access to clean water lost and babies put at risk

Four months into Cuba’s deepening energy crisis, the consequences are no longer abstract: they are visible in the rhythm of daily life. Streets fall silent before night has fully set in. Hospitals scale back operations. Small businesses close due to a lack of supplies. At dawn, exhaustion shows on people’s faces after long nights without electricity.

But the most serious toll is measured not in inconvenience but in health.

John Terry’s journey into the internet pipeline is by no means an isolated case – what makes footballers so susceptible?

And so we ask ourselves: how did it come to this? Did we miss the signs? Were there red flags that went unheeded, cries for help that fell on closed ears, forks in the road not taken? Or ultimately, for all our best efforts, was it always going to end like this? Is it, in fact, possible that John Terry was a far-right sympathiser all along?

Yes, it’s been a chastening week for those who have been fighting Terry’s corner for more than a decade. Who steadfastly defended him against the racism charges, who accepted his explanation that he was simply repeating what Anton Ferdinand had been saying to him, who turned up at his trial in full kit, who lamented his failure to land the coaching jobs he so coveted, who right to the end just wanted to believe.

We are stuck in a deluge of meaningless content that threatens human creativity. Here’s a simple way to mitigate its harms

As the US midterm elections approach, voters are voicing concern about AI. According to an NBC News poll of registered voters, 57% believe the risks of AI outweigh the benefits. A rising political cohort is particularly concerned. A Pew Research poll showed that 61% of adults under 30 say more AI in society will make people worse at creative thinking. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that 74% of Americans think the government is not doing enough to regulate AI.

Can you blame them? The CEOs of the largest AI companies chose a curious tactic: scaring their prospective users into submission. “Use it or get left behind” is the narrative, buttressed by gleeful proclamations that AI will destroy whole industries and cultural institutions.

There is no such thing as the Bond Dealers party, but there might as well be – the people who trade in UK debt exert a stranglehold over our politics

The days of two-party politics are over. When voters go to the polls in England next week, they will have five main contenders to choose from. In Scotland and Wales, the nationalists make it a six-strong race.

This fragmentation reflects the deep discontent with Labour and the Conservatives. One thing in common between the Greens and Reform UK is that they are each benefiting from a sense that radical parties are worth a punt because nothing could be worse than it is now.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

The edifice suggests a Silicon Valley-style desire to protect the president from national crises of his own making

A self-declared “secretary of war” keeps committing war crimes; people are dying in Africa because of Musk’s cuts to USAid; farm bankruptcies in the US are surging; ICE keeps acting with impunity; measles is spreading … and we are worried about a ballroom? The ballroom is not just the president’s peculiar obsession, but a symbol for many of the character of Trump 2.0: the unprecedented corruption; the destruction of checks and balances (as Congress, with its power of the purse, keeps being ignored); the sheer desire for vandalism. The swift pivot of Trump and his acolytes from the assassination attempt to pro-ballroom propaganda in the name of security adds two new, disturbing elements: the ballroom-as-bunker is appropriate for a leader afraid of his own people; less obviously, it also aligns Trump with the Silicon Valley figures who are anticipating an apocalypse (which their own conduct is hastening) – and who seek refuge on private islands, in newly founded cities, and indeed in what has become known as “apocalypse bunkers”.

“It cannot be built fast enough,” Trump announced after the incident on Saturday night; but reasons for his ballroom obsession predate the White House correspondents’ dinner: his biographers have pointed out that catering and ballrooms have been one of his few successful business ventures; a ballroom, just as with the space at Mar-a-Lago, provides a stage for grand entrances and adulation by crowds whose composition can be perfectly controlled; and, not least, as other aspiring autocrats have shown, a huge edifice is a statement about power: it sends a signal to critics that the leader has triumphed over them, and that his legacy – at least what he has done to the built environment – cannot be undone.

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University

Her new film, Apex, may not be Citizen Kane, but how refreshing to see a middle-aged actor as a female action hero – and looking the part too

If you are in your 50s, 40s or even late 30s and feel as though things are rapidly heading south, might I point you in the direction of Apex, the 95-minute action movie that launched last week on Netflix and is currently parked at No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic. You may think Apex, which has almost no dialogue, a paper-thin script and plot holes the size of the Australian outback in which it was filmed, is not for you, but you would be wrong. Next time you make a noise when you get up from the sofa, you can visualise Charlize Theron free-climbing a cliff face in peak middle age and remind yourself these things are still possible.

What’s startling about this is that Theron, at 50, appears to have successfully outrun the Hollywood dead end that greets women on their 34th birthday. She could be unrecognisable from surgery while clinging to the reboot of some earlier role. She could be trapped in Yorgos Lanthimos-style whimsy, because what could be more whimsical and grotesque than an ageing female actor? She could be playing someone’s mother – specifically, the mother of a male actor some five years her junior. Instead, Theron has been everywhere in the past fortnight, dominating the social-media feeds, crowding out the increasingly desperate-looking publicity push from the cast of The Devil Wears Prada 2, and shinning up a wall in Times Square in New York to promote a film that is basically an instructional climbing video with a serial killer subplot.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Parliament’s failure to change the law on a difficult issue should be the spur to democratic innovation

The prorogation of parliament on Wednesday signals the end of the road for the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill. The proposal to allow some patients in England and Wales, under very specific circumstances, to have medical assistance in ending their own lives was still at committee stage in the Lords when the house rose. Since it was introduced as a private member’s bill, it cannot be carried over into the next session.

Campaigners for assisted dying are furious at what they see as procedural obstruction by unelected peers, bogging the bill down with heaps of amendments and running down the clock, thwarting the will of the elected Commons. Critics of the bill counter that the normal legislative process was followed and that the volume of amendments was a function of poor drafting, leaving practical and ethical problems that had to be addressed in the Lords.

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 world must accelerate the shift to renewables, regardless of the economic effects of Abu Dhabi’s decision

Opec appears to be the latest casualty of the Iran war. On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates announced that it was leaving the oil cartel after 60 years. The loss of a critical member is a blow to the group and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, in the midst of the biggest supply crisis in history.

This is a geopolitical decision, not merely an economic one. The UAE has built itself into an increasingly interventionist and unilaterally minded power, not only challenging Riyadh’s dominance but undermining its more cautious approach to regional affairs. The rift has become increasingly public and bitter – with Saudi Arabia bombing what it called a UAE-linked arms shipment in Yemen in December. Abu Dhabi, as the main target of Iranian strikes among the Gulf countries, is also enraged by what it sees as a feeble regional response to the current conflict, and has been privately pushing for counterattacks.

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.

It isn’t a story of villains and victims, but a housing system under strain, writes Nick Vernoum. Plus a letter from John Farquhar

Your article on landlords (I thought landlords were unchallengeable – until I met one of mine at a party, 22 April) paints them as shadowy figures wielding quiet power, but the reality is often more ordinary – and more complicated. I’m an “accidental landlord”. In my 40s, after working long hours to buy a modest home, I became seriously ill with chronic fatigue and had to move back in with my parents. Letting my house wasn’t about exploitation; it was about survival – covering a mortgage I could no longer sustain through work.

Over time, I reinvested carefully, and I now own a small number of properties. The income isn’t lavish; it has supported my parents and given me a chance to rebuild my life. I know my tenants well. They can contact me any time, and I sort problems quickly.

Readers respond to the British Medical Association’s warning that the increasing use of ‘non-doctors’ in medical roles is unsafe

I am an advanced clinical practitioner in acute respiratory medicine, and the British Medical Association’s (BMA) characterisation of practitioners like me as unsafe “substitute doctors” demands a response (Safety fears as UK hospitals use nurses to cover for doctors due to shortage of medics, 25 April).

Every shift, I assess and manage patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations, pulmonary embolisms, pneumonia and acute respiratory failure, taking clinical responsibility in a consultant-led multidisciplinary team, underpinned by a master’s-level qualification and over a decade of specialist experience. This is not doctor substitution. This is advanced practice: a distinct, evidence-based clinical role that enhances patient care rather than compromising it.

Peter Foreshaw Brookes says economic conditions and smartphone usage (and its effects on coupling) are more likely causes

The global drop in fertility has a number of causes, but rising biological infertility (infecundity) is not one (Toxins plus climate harms likely cause of reduced fertility, study finds, 26 April). Recent reports of a paper by Shanna Swan, the writer of Spermageddon, and others have claimed the paper shows that exposure to pollutants has been driving down biological fertility and may be contributing to the downturn of fertility rates in recent years. This is unlikely.

A meta-analysis published last year, which controlled for regional variation, found that sperm counts increased in the US in recent years. Although there are other mechanisms by which biological fertility could be affected, time to pregnancy (TTP) directly tracks how quickly couples conceive. TTP increased in Britain in the late 20th century, and has been stable between 2002 and 2017 in the US for women under 30, only increasing by about 4% for women who already had a child. Meanwhile, infertility has been staying around the same or decreasing in developed countries in recent years.

Westminster drinking culture | Cocking things up | Fragile over-60s? | Victory over Trump | Jobs for Neets | Heavy lifting

The Labour MP Alex Sobel says he has never “actually seen anyone smell of booze” (Hannah Spencer riles fellow MPs with attack on parliament’s drinking culture, 27 April). That’s a relief, otherwise I would have wondered whether we were all living in a strip cartoon in The Dandy or Beano.
Pete Lavender
Woodthorpe, Nottinghamshire

• Now we know why they make such a cock-up of everything.
Michael Fuller
Ampthill, Bedfordshire

• PIF ends investment after five years and $5bn

• LIV announces new independent board in funding push

LIV Golf has launched its search for fresh investment in a race against time to save its future after official confirmation Saudi funding would cease at the end of the 2026 season.

Hours after LIV announced the creation of a new independent board minus Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a PIF statement formally substantiated the rumours that it was pulling the plug on the start-up after around $5bn (£3.7bn) of investment.

The earnings from the tournament in the US, Mexico and Canada will make it the most lucrative competition in the history of sport, even if some of the 48 competing countries say they are struggling to make ends meet

A World Cup that Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, billed at the draw last December as “the greatest event that humanity has ever seen” will certainly be the most lucrative competition in sporting history.

Fifa has spent the last few years upgrading its revenue projections, with the most recent financial report stating that the world governing body will make $13bn (£9.6bn) from the four-year cycle culminating in this summer’s tournament, almost $9bn of which will be brought in this year.

• United to prioritise midfield but also looking at left flank

• Mainoo gets deal to 2031 after being restored by Carrick

West Ham’s El Hadji Malick Diouf has emerged as a target for Manchester United as they weigh up a summer move for a left-back.

United are looking at bringing in competition for Luke Shaw and are one of the clubs monitoring Diouf after his promising first campaign in English football. The Senegal international joined West Ham for €22m (£19m) from Slavia Prague and has recovered from a difficult start to become one of the side’s most important players.

• Former Lionesses forward will depart this summer

• England, 31, has seven WSL goals this season

Bethany England, the Tottenham captain, is to leave at the end of this season, the striker has confirmed in a tearful video message published by the club.

It is understood it was the club’s decision not to renew the 31-year-old’s contract as they seek to evolve their squad with younger players and multiple sources have emphasised that Tottenham are expected to be aggressive and highly ambitious in the transfer market.

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

When Scott Parker led Burnley out of the Championship and into the Premier League last season, he did so with a side showcasing the kind of defensive resilience more readily associated with a medieval fortress, although with more expensive haircuts and less reliance on cauldrons of boiling oil. His team lost just two of their 46 matches, were unbeaten at home, kept a quite remarkable 30 clean sheets and notched up a combined total of 20 1-0 wins and scoreless draws. So while attending one of their games was about as exciting as reading an air-fryer instruction manual, they were devastatingly resolute. To nobody’s great surprise, they were immediately installed as the white-hot favourites to go straight back down before a ball had even been kicked.

I read with interest that David Brent School of Management’s Glenn Hoddle was fishing for the Tottenham job (yesterday’s Quote of the Day). Is that a sign of how far Spurs have fallen, or was he trying to pay for sins in a prior life?” – Neale Redington.

Can I point out Football Daily’s arrogance in dismissing the entertainment value of a proper match (sans £ billions), in which the mighty Vale handed out a schoolin’ to the resurgent Stockport County on a sunny evening in Edgeley (yesterday’s Football Daily)? I haven’t watched the pompfest in foreign climes you referenced, but it couldn’t have been a patch on what Pep Guardiola was fortunate enough to choose” – John Timmins.

Your reader Ken Muir’s observation that Hearts teams are sweeping all before them this season (yesterday’s Football Daily letters), brings to mind an old chestnut. An Englishman goes into a pub in Edinburgh and asks a local: ‘What colour do Hearts play in?’ ‘It’s maroon …’ comes the answer. ‘Thank you! I’ll have a gin and tonic please!’ And I’ll get my coat …” – Allastair McGillivray.

Bordeaux Bègles lock says Champions Cup holders are primed for Sunday’s clash of cultures against Bath

There are in truth few Bordeaux Bègles players better qualified to explain just how it feels to be in the eye of the storm with European rugby’s newest force quite like Adam Coleman. Three years ago their paths collided in almost perfect timing, with Bordeaux mid-table and Coleman unceremoniously dropped into rugby purgatory.

Coleman’s career looked to be over when London Irish went out of business in the summer of 2023 before a move to France with Bordeaux. It has proven to be an inspired decision for both parties, with Coleman playing a pivotal role in UBB’s rise to the top of the club game, culminating in their Champions Cup final triumph over Northampton last year.

Before her first Miami Grand Prix in charge, Nowak opens up on F1’s boom time in the US and flying the flag for women in the sport

There is an air of buoyant confidence about Katharina Nowak that is striking but also understandable given the robust state of Formula One in the United States and at the Miami Grand Prix, where the 29-year-old who is at the helm of the race believes the sport only has more to come.

“F1 is at its strongest right now that we’ve seen, the interest in F1 is still going up and will go further,” she says in the buildup to this weekend’s meeting in Florida. “From my seat at the table, we are seeing the interest continue to grow.

Manager was fuming after semi-final draw but also needs a gameplan that can deliver more chances in Champions League second leg

Mikel Arteta has felt the walls closing in on the domestic front in recent weeks. And it was surely a part of the reason why the Arsenal manager went on the offensive about refereeing decisions after his team’s Premier League win over Newcastle on Saturday.

Arteta insisted that the Newcastle goalkeeper, Nick Pope, ought to have been sent off rather than booked for a foul on Viktor Gyökeres, which he argued represented the denial of a goalscoring opportunity. And, while he was at it, Arteta went back to the previous league game – the 2-1 defeat at Manchester City – and made a similar point: he believed the City defender Abdukodir Khusanov should have been dismissed for a last-man foul on Kai Havertz.

Trent Alexander-Arnold has gone, Andy Robertson and Mo Salah are going, and Alisson and Virgil van Dijk may soon follow. Just how much experience are Liverpool losing?

By Opta Analyst

Liverpool have had some fantastic players and enjoyed plenty of success in the last decade. In recent years, they have gradually said goodbye to Georginio Wijnaldum, James Milner, Jordan Henderson, Fabinho, Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino, but they have also retained a number of their established stars.

Alisson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah would all be in the conversation when it comes to selecting an all-time Liverpool XI. That is quite the achievement considering the club’s rich heritage and, as recently as last season, all five were still at the club as Liverpool strolled to the Premier League title.

Global Sumud Flotilla describes interception as ‘violent raid’ as IDF urges activists to deliver aid via ‘established channels’

Israeli forces have intercepted and detained the crews of at least 22 boats near the Greek island of Crete from a flotilla that is attempting to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian aid.

The Global Sumud Flotilla, consisting of about 58 vessels carrying people from across 70 countries, departed from Italy on Sunday.

Mid and West Wales fire and rescue service has been trying to extinguish fires in Elan valley since Sunday

Firefighters are struggling to control wildfires raging though the scenic Elan valley in mid-Wales for a fifth day.

The Mid and West Wales fire and rescue service has been working to extinguish fires in and around the Powys beauty spot since Sunday. It is not yet clear how much damage has been done to the valley, 80% of which is designated as sites of special scientific interest, raising fears for flora and fauna.

Surprise coordinated attack by jihadists and separatists last weekend has rattled the regime and its security ally Russia

“The Grand Ball of Bamako”, as organisers tagged the Saturday evening soiree at the Hotel de l’Amitié in the Malian capital, was meant to provide one of the west African country’s biggest headlines last weekend.

Many sponsors including Orange Mali, the local subsidiary of the French telecoms company, had bankrolled the show, which organisers hoped would demonstrate Mali’s capacity to put on big cultural events in the teeth of a security crisis raging on multiple fronts. On the eve of the concert, a convoy of cars picked up the main attraction, Grammy award-winning Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, from the Modibo Keita international airport.

Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 18, accused of mischief and public nuisance over alleged stunt in mall

A French teenager has been charged with committing mischief and public nuisance in Singapore after posting a video on social media of himself licking a straw from an orange juice vending machine and then putting it back.

Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien, 18, was charged on 24 April and has not entered a plea, the city-state’s largest English-language newspaper, the Straits Times, reported. He allegedly committed the offence at a shopping mall on 12 March, and his video spread rapidly when it surfaced, the report said.

Order last week is only partial rescheduling, making ‘an already complex process more confusing,’ expert says

The Trump administration is making good on its promise to reschedule cannabis, but only partially – raising plenty of questions for those in the cannabis industry.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, signed an order last week that removes products sold under state medical cannabis licenses and FDA approved cannabis products from schedule I – defined as substances with no accepted medical use, to schedule III – which includes legal but regulated substances including certain doses of Tylenol with codeine and ketamine.

Elusive nightingale ‘doing well’ at Northward Hill, Kent, but experts cite concerns around loss of habitat

The dawn chorus at RSPB Northward Hill in Kent is a riot of sound: the melodic robin, the two-tone cuckoo, the whitethroat’s scratchy warble. Even the garbling geese and mooing cows from the neighbouring Thames marshes add to the symphony.

But in late April one energetic singer hogs the limelight. For a few weeks after arriving from West Africa, the nightingale spends the night – and early morning – in complex song. As it searches for a mate and marks its territory, its song is at times as sweet and tuneful as a soul singer, at others as frantic as a car alarm.

Colombia president Gustavo Petro tells 57-country talks on a green energy transition that fossil fuel interests could destroy humanity

The world is threatened by a “suicidal” model of capitalism that is leading to war, fascism and the potential extinction of humanity, Colombia’s president has said, as he convened 57 governments to address the climate crisis.

Gustavo Petro blamed fossil fuel interests for taking ever more desperate measures to prevent a transition to green energy. “There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy – fossil fuels – that lead to death. Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life,” he said. “The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”

Pace of sea-level rise has turned Outer Banks coastal area into a ‘canary in the coalmine’ for other east coast communities

Moving house has a more literal meaning on Hatteras Island, the slender hook of land that juts off the coast of North Carolina. After a slew of houses toppled spectacularly into the Atlantic Ocean recently, entire buildings are now being lifted on to wheels to flee the rapidly eroding coastline.

Since September, 19 homes have been lost to waves that tore them from their pilings, sending them crashing into other structures like bumper cars before breaking up in the ocean. Spooked homeowners have turned to the unusual services of Barry Crum, a lifelong Hatteras resident who has become the island’s main house mover.

Artist posted social media video showing large sculpture being towed into Waterloo Place in middle of night

A new Banksy statue, featuring a man with his face covered by a flag, was this week erected in the dead of night in central London.

His new work of art was first spotted on Wednesday, and the artist’s signature was scrawled at the base of the statue’s plinth.

FT branch of NUJ say there is not ‘compelling case’ for mandate for editorial staff to be in office four days a week

Journalists at the Financial Times are at loggerheads with the publication’s management over plans to order staff back to the office four days a week by the end of the year.

Members of the Financial Times’ union have unanimously voted to invoke the company’s dispute procedure over the proposals, arguing that management have “not made a compelling case” for the need to move from the current three office days.

Some travellers spent hours in lines at airport, with kiosks not working, little seating and few staff on hand to help

Some travellers passing through the new EU entry-exit system (EES) have faced huge delays at border checks, with some waiting for up to three hours, airports say.

The new rules have gradually been introduced in Europe since October 2025, and came into effect on Friday in the Schengen countries – 25 of the EU’s 27 states plus Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

Polling puts Reform, led in Scotland by former peer Malcolm Offord, neck and neck with Labour for second place

Reform UK represents an acute threat to Scottish self government, John Swinney has warned, adding that nationalist victories in Scotland and Wales in May could “irrevocably change” the dynamics of constitutional debate across the UK.

While the Scottish National party enjoys a comfortable polling lead ahead of the Holyrood elections next Thursday, recent polling has put Reform, led in Scotland by the millionaire and former Conservative peer Malcolm Offord, neck and neck with Scottish Labour for second place.

Hope that sessions of MDMA-assisted therapy could help soldiers fight longer by helping them process trauma

As the war on drugs approaches its end, a new doctrine could soon take hold: psychedelic drugs for active-duty soldiers suffering from PTSD.

In two studies funded by the Department of Defense (DoD), 186 service personnel with PTSD will likely next year undergo multiple sessions of MDMA-assisted therapy.

Fadi Saqr is accused of mass killings of civilians in Tadamon, Damascus, where people say he must face justice

A Syrian rights commission is preparing a case accusing Fadi Saqr, a militia leader within the Assad regime, of involvement in crimes against humanity and war crimes, a senior Syrian official has told the Guardian.

Saqr is a former commander of the National Defence Forces (NDF) militia and is widely accused of involvement in the mass killing and forcible disappearance of civilians in the Tadamon neighbourhood of Damascus, as well as other parts of the Syrian capital.

Cryptocurrency ATMs also face ban, after public inquiry found Canada lacked anti-money-laundering strategy

Canada is to establish a new and powerful law enforcement agency to investigate financial crime, in stark contrast to the US, where weakened federal investigators have struggled to pursue fraudsters and the White House has pardoned convicted money launderers.

A bill to create the Financial Crimes Agency (FCA) completed its first reading in parliament this week. The legislation was introduced by the governing Liberals and with their parliamentary majority, the party is likely to move it through both levels of government quickly.

Arrest of potential next leader found hiding in drainage pipe highlights renewed tactics – and fears of cartel infighting

• US politics live – latest updates

The golden coffin of “El Mencho”, the late leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), had barely been lowered into the ground when the Mexican military dealt a second blow to the very top of the organisation this week.

As special forces descended on a ranch in the state of Nayarit, grainy drone footage showed El Mencho’s possible successor, Audias Flores, alias “El Jardinero”, being hauled from a drainage pipe he had tried to hide in, all without a shot being fired.

First quarter output, driven by AI investment and government spending, rose as oil shock fuels inflation fears

US gross domestic product (GDP) accelerated 2% in the first three months of 2026, though consumer spending is slowing as the war with Iran continues to impact energy prices.

The last GDP reading for the fourth quarter of 2025 showed that US economic growth slowed to a 0.5% pace, largely due to a contraction in government spending after massive layoffs of federal workers last year. The federal government is down 355,000 workers, or 11.8% of the workforce, since October 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Move comes as airline industry reacts to uncertainty over Iran war and increase in price of Brent crude

• Business live – latest updates

Air France-KLM has cut its capacity growth forecasts for this year as the Iran war drives up its fuel costs by billions of dollars.

The French-Dutch airline expects its fuel bill to increase by $2.4bn (£1.8bn) this year as a result of the surge in costs since the Middle East conflict began. In response, it has trimmed its expectations for capacity growth to between 2% and 4% this year, down from 3% to 5% previously.

Whitbread to call time on restaurants in UK and Ireland blaming higher costs and taxes for latest strategic reset

Premier Inn owner Whitbread is to cut about 3,800 jobs in the UK and Ireland and shut its remaining Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants as it resets its five-year business strategy amid tax rises and pressure from a US activist investor.

The cuts will affect about 12% of Whitbread’s 30,000-strong workforce in the UK and Ireland working in its Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants, which are usually located next to, or inside, Premier Inn hotels. The company said consultations with affected employees would begin immediately.

Taiwanese officials have accused firms in China of attempting to evade import restrictions by rerouting vegetables through neighbouring Vietnam

Taipei has accused China of smuggling vegetables into Taiwan via Vietnam in a bid to evade import restrictions, with officials vowing to crack down on a practice they say amounts to “origin washing”.

Taiwan, which bans the importation of more than 1,000 Chinese agricultural and fishery products, said firms in China were evading restrictions by rerouting vegetables like Napa cabbage and shiitake mushrooms through neighbouring Vietnam.

A timely exhibit at NYU celebrates the anti-fascist folk artist – despite the university’s recent suppression of campus protests

Bea Esteves Mendez knew as much about Woody Guthrie as most people her age – which is to say, she knew This Land is Your Land – when one of her professors put on a recording of All You Fascists last semester. It’s an upbeat folk anthem written at the height of the second world war that connects the forces of oppression abroad with those, like Jim Crow, that festered at home. “Well I’m a gonna tell you fascists, you may be surprised, people in this world are getting organized,” Guthrie sings, shouts, whoops and whistles in his distinctive Oklahoma twang. “You’re bound to lose. You fascists bound to lose.”

“It was our first time really sitting down to listen to a Woody Guthrie song, and we were like, ‘Wow,’” said Mendez, 19, a sophomore at New York University. “‘This could have been written today.’”

In 2022, Aneil Karia won an Academy Award for his short starring Riz Ahmed. Now, he’s skewering Reform-style parliamentary candidates with the help of Jack Lowden and an unlikely online platform

Some film-makers have unrealistic expectations for their work; Aneil Karia is not one of them. “I’m not deluded enough to think that it’s going to bring down the government,” he says of his new film, Vote Gavin Lyle – but you never know, it just might. A funny, clever, superbly acted, small-but-perfectly-formed satire, Vote Gavin Lyle stars Jack Lowden as a wannabe Reform-style parliamentary candidate for the fictional middle-England constituency of Fletcham and Wold. At just 16 minutes long, it absolutely skewers the far-right mindset; not the minority-bashing, flag-hoisting street thugs, but the cannier, well-spoken Farageists who dominate the tendency’s leadership.

Without wanting to give away the film’s final flourish, it’s fair to say that there’s an element of empathy, even sympathy for its central character. Karia says: “I don’t think it’s interesting or useful to look at these people – far-right politicians, councillors, prospective candidates, whoever – and just say what nasty bastards they are. I think what strikes me about them is they’re just as vulnerable and scared as the rest of us.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is formidable in Netflix’s take on the thriller novel Denzel Washington turned into a noughties action movie. But it’s a great lesson in why shows don’t normally have a glum high-octane hero

Who doesn’t love a thriller in which a lone wolf takes down an all-powerful criminal network? Jack Reacher, Ethan Hunt, whatsisname from The Night Agent – however adverse the circumstances, these capable chaps will prevail. Hand-to-hand combat against a highly trained ninja henchman? No problem. Breaking into a phenomenally secure facility, stealing the valuable thing, then striding out again? Easy. Defeating a warehouse full of men with Kalashnikovs, armed only with sunglasses and string, all while rescuing a screaming female civilian? All in a day’s work.

These yarns are healthy, silly fun and we enjoy them. But, Netflix’s new six-parter Man on Fire asks, what if we kept the core idea but made it less silly and fun, more sad and serious? Wouldn’t that be even better? Well, it seems it wouldn’t be a complete disaster, but in this case it makes life more difficult for everyone, the viewer included.

Preposterous time-romp, starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery, is highly enjoyable if you’re prepared to meet it on its own terms

The sheer barking madness of this fantasy time-travel adventure from co-writer Gregory Widen and director Russell Mulcahy, now on re-release for its 40th anniversary, can best be described as Terry Gilliam meets James Cameron. The chiselled features of its Franco-American star Christopher Lambert – a kind of VHS Marlon Brando – are a minor source of diversion on their own and his Scottish accent has to be heard to be disbelieved. And Celia Imrie’s small role as the sexy but duplicitous 16th-century Scottish villager seals the deal on Highlander’s cult status.

Forty years on, this depends more than ever on appreciating its trace of deadpan black comedy. Highlander’s wacky story concerns Connor MacLeod, smoulderingly played by Lambert, a fiery young warrior in the Scottish Highlands in the 1530s, who appears to have been killed during a war with the opposing Fraser clan. But he comes back to life, leading the excitable community to think he’s possessed by the devil. Driven out of the village, his only ally is his great love Heather (Beatie Edney), but the couple are astonished to encounter what appears to be an effetely dressed Spanish nobleman, played by Sean Connery, who incidentally displays in this film some very useful horsemanship. He informs Connor that he is one of a secret race of immortals, a disclosure which Connor receives coldly: “You look like a woman, you stupid haggis!”

What’s not to love about Izuka Hoyle and Tahar Rahim’s action-packed drama Prisoner? Plus, the Indian version of The Traitors. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
A lean, Line of Duty-esque police drama finds a fresh-out-of-idyllic-maternity-leave prison officer Amber (Big Boys’ Izuka Hoyle) on her way to pick up Tibor Stone (The Serpent’s Tahar Rahim). He plays a prisoner so dangerous he can’t even be trusted with his own insulin pump. Despite his heinous crimes, the police need his testimony to bring down an organised crime syndicate. Sleek storytelling, plus Eddie Marsan playing against type – what’s not to love? Priya Elan

This entertaining profile of Paul Di’Anno – the heavy metal band’s lead vocalist from 1978 to 1981 – is dragged down by its subject’s irascible nature

This respectful but (to its credit) not entirely reverential documentary profiles Paul Di’Anno (born Paul Andrews in 1958), the lead singer of heavy metal act Iron Maiden between 1978 and 1981. Fans of the band, and rock historians, will know that, while there are plenty of admirers of Di’Anno’s work in concert and on the first two Iron Maiden albums, the group went supersonic only after they parted ways with him. Their breakthrough album, The Number of the Beast, had Bruce Dickinson on lead vocals, so that sort of makes Di’Anno the Stuart Sutcliffe or Pete Best of Maiden lore, although the group have cycled through so many musicians and collaborators over the years comparison with the Beatles doesn’t map neatly.

Either way, archive footage of the once studly looking Di’Anno in his prime, belting his heart out with a pleasingly gravelly voice that shaded more towards punk than classic metal crooning, is entertaining, even for total Maiden newbies. Nevertheless, you can see why he didn’t go all the way because, as viewers get to know him through the original footage shot for this film, it becomes clear that Di’Anno could often be an obstreperous, difficult-to-love character.

Paul Watkins/Alessio Bax
Signum Classics
Cellist Watkins’ career-long immersion in the composer pays dividends in his pairing with Alessio Bax’s unfussy virtuosity

As cellist of the Nash Ensemble and the Emerson Quartet, Paul Watkins has immersed himself in almost all the chamber music Beethoven wrote. Now he brings those years of experience to his first recording of the cello sonatas. He approached the pianist Alessio Bax for this project after hearing him play the Moonlight Sonata, and his instinct was good: their playing here seems to come from a shared impulse, unflaggingly eloquent without ever seeming to strive for effect.

Together these five sonatas span Beethoven’s composing life. The earliest two date from around the time of his first piano concertos, and they find Beethoven breaking new ground in the way he writes for cello and keyboard as equal duet partners. Both sonatas have slow, serious introductions leading into extended movements showcasing the virtuosity of the pianist, to which Bax rises with a light, crisp touch. The expansive third, Op 69, which Beethoven worked on alongside the Fifth Symphony, centres on a perky middle movement akin to a symphonic scherzo; it’s nicely weighted here, the momentum continuing through all the changes in texture. The final pair of sonatas harness Watkins’s full powers of expression, in particular No 5, the only one of all these to have a full-blown slow movement. It begins in reticent, almost hymn-like style and blooms into something deeply felt; Watkins and Bax handle its closing passages with tightly controlled restraint, then gently clear the air with the introduction to the wrangly little fugue of the finale. It’s all beautifully done.

The author reads her account of her time as a senior executive at Facebook with a mixture of dark humour and astonishment at the working culture in which she finds herself

Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir documenting her seven years working at Facebook opens, unexpectedly, with a shark attack. The New Zealander was 13 years old and swimming in the sea when the shark bit her torso and shook her from side to side. She lived to tell the tale, but her near-death experience awakened in her a desire to leave the world better than she found it.

Wynn-Williams went on to take a job at Facebook’s public policy department in 2011, having seen the potential of the platform as a global meeting place. But what she found was a senior staff high on power and untroubled by ethical concerns such as privacy or the dissemination of hate speech and misinformation. All were resistant to political interference and dedicated to rapid expansion, no matter the consequences, claims that Meta has called out of date and false. The author also encountered a working culture where employees enjoyed perks but had to be available around the clock – a situation that led to her responding to emails while in labour.

Companies such as Chaotic Good are confecting social media buzz to promote Geese, Oklou and other indie darlings. Industry insiders reveal how widespread the practice is – even if no-one is sure it actually works

Did you get more fomo than usual from last year’s Glastonbury? Did you see a video of Overmono or Lorde or Self Esteem that made you seethe with jealousy? That may have been because more of your friends genuinely did attend the festival last year – or it could be because those acts, and 25 others including Fatboy Slim, Charli xcx and Doechii, paid a digital marketing agency that sent influencers and content creators to watch their sets and upload organic-looking clips to social media.

Take a quick look at Your Culture’s Instagram page and you’ll find that the boutique UK agency had a hand in disseminating some of 2025’s most viral live music moments: the Last Dinner Party’s raucous “medieval sleaze” album launch party; Chappell Roan’s headline set at Reading festival. If you saw video from Calum Scott’s surprise set at St Pancras International last year, or Alex Warren’s outside Warren Street, it’s likely because of Your Culture. An Instagram post from January boasts that the brand “worked with 55% of the nominees” of the most recent Brit awards.

OVO Hydro, Glasgow
From So Sick to Smack That, this double-headliner provides major millennial nostalgia – but goes to show how varied their respective careers were at their peak

For pop-R&B leaning millennials, the pairing of Ne-Yo and Akon on this co-headlining tour certainly has a heavy dose of nostalgia, which kicks in almost immediately with the smoke that billows around Ne-Yo’s black fedora and Michael Jackson-inspired moves. But there’s an undeniable magic beyond that, as the two artists pull from careers that produced eight UK No 1 singles and 410 weeks in the Top 40 between them in the mid-00s to early 10s.

Over the course of just under three hours, the duo take turns in the spotlight, the mood seesawing in line with each of them. Beginning with a snippet of Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel before segueing into his 2008 hit Miss Independent, Ne-Yo is smooth and suave in his vocals and dextrous choreography, an effective contrast to Akon’s all-out charisma and party-starter energy which arrives with classics like Smack That – the first time, of many, that the crowd fully loses it.

Luke Kennard, Sophie Ratcliffe and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

This is a really good year for new fiction. I don’t think anyone writes about contemporary Englishness as astutely, mercilessly and affectionately as Claire Powell, and her latest novel, All In, puts her perfectly observed characters in the pressure cooker of an all-inclusive holiday. It’s a kind of meta-beach read, and I loved it.

The premise of this novel about a ballet dancer who baits love scammers into conversation is great – but the story feels overwritten and underfelt

Martina Hefter’s Hey, Good Morning, How Are You? has caused much argument in German literary circles. It won the country’s most influential fiction award in 2024, and quickly sold 80,000 copies. But critics were divided: Die Zeit compared the book’s seductive power to the love scammers it depicts, while Deutschlandfunk Kultur criticised its shallow characters and monotonous dialogue.

I was instantly drawn in by the premise: a feisty middle-aged dancer trolling romance scammers, only to connect with a Nigerian man on the other end of the phone. Juno is a ballet dancer whose obsessions with ageing, death and her body have crippled her personality. With her career waning and most of her time spent caring for her ailing husband, Jupiter, she yearns for meaning. But she’s depressed, full of unexamined anger and guilt. Everywhere, through her scathing lens, she sees decay and deception. Unable to sleep, she baits love scammers into conversation. “Go ahead and write to women who are dumb enough to fall for that,” she thinks. “The main thing is that I have a counterpart.”

This portrait of everyday life in an Istanbul neighbourhood buffeted by change has far wider relevance

Thankfully, the attack left only black eyes and bloodied faces. It was in Karagümrük, a tough neighbourhood in Istanbul’s old city, once known for mafia types and Turks on the hard right. But, as Suzy Hansen explains, it had been transformed by an influx of Syrian refugees – until the locals apparently decided they’d had enough, and came for them with sticks, baseball bats and knives for carving doner kebab.

So begins From Life Itself, in which Hansen traces a story that illuminates a politics of mass migration and nationalist backlash that has resonances far beyond Turkey. It is a more ambitious book than that, too. An American who lived in Istanbul and visited Karagümrük for more than a decade – during which Turkey’s enfeebled democracy came under ever more sustained assault – she hoped to convey “how ordinary people experience authoritarianism in the 21st century – how our era feels”.

This ‘nonfiction thriller’ takes us through exactly what would happen if Nigel Farage won his dreamed-of majority

For some years now, mainstream British politics has revolved increasingly obsessively around the question of how to stop Nigel Farage. What started a decade ago with Brexit may yet end in a general election that boils down to one question: do you or don’t you want to risk putting this man in Downing Street? That said, we still know surprisingly little about what a Reform government might mean in practice.

Of course, it might never happen. But if it did, what exactly would Farage do with a majority that enabled him to fulfil his wildest dreams? And how well would an unwritten British constitution, still heavily reliant on good chaps voluntarily being good chaps, cope with full-fat populism?

Hitman developer IO Interactive’s pluralistic take on the British secret agent – his first video-game outing in almost 15 years – promises a Bond for all eras. Here’s what you need to know

If you want to tell the tale of a young James Bond, you first need to pick which James Bond he’s going to grow into. This was the task handed to Hitman developer IO Interactive, the studio taking digital custody of the spy in 007 First Light, Bond’s first video game in almost 15 years. So what’s it to be? Will their agent take baby steps towards Sean Connery’s gruff masculinity, or is he practising Roger Moore’s arched eyebrow in the bathroom mirror? That’s if he’s a “movie” Bond at all. For a generation of gamers, the character exists most vividly as a hand at the bottom of the screen in GoldenEye 007.

As it turns out, 007 First Light’s Bond, depicted by Patrick Gibson (cornering a specific market, having played the serial killer-to-be in the Dexter origins show) is an amalgam: the facial scar is an Ian Fleming detail, but the sweet-talking charm is straight from the Pierce Brosnan playbook, and the second you barge a goon into a bookcase you know someone’s been studying Casino Royale on a loop. Trying to devise a Bond for all fandoms could risk satisfying none, but in the demo we played, the performance works. Crucially, Gibson brings an outsider’s unease that’s all his own, anchored by the arrogance that’ll one day be weaponised by MI6.

PC; Grey Alien Games, Night Signal Entertainment
An innocent-looking charity shop find draws you into a compulsive world of demons, ogres and retro delights

For a while in the mid-1990s, meta horror movies were the genre everyone was talking about. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream, the Blair Witch Project – these films simultaneously examined and exploited genre conventions, seeking to scare audiences while also distancing them from the narrative action. You didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp in shock, you weren’t sure what was story or what was framing. Did that just happen or was it a dream sequence? You just had to go with it.

Now developers Grey Alien Games and Night Signal Entertainment have brought this multilayered approach to the card game solitaire, infusing a straightforward puzzler with a bloody gush of meta meaning and a dollop of nostalgia just for the self-reflexive hell of it. In Forbidden Solitaire, lead character Will Roberta picks up an old 1990s game called, yes, Forbidden Solitaire, in a charity shop vaguely recalling some internet myth about it being cursed. He discovers that the game is a sort of narrative card-battler set in a haunted dungeon filled with monsters and treasure – and then you, the player, are transported from his computer desktop into the game. So you’re both him and you.

Pragmata, Saros and Vampire Crawler bring together aesthetics, responsiveness and creative opportunities in joyous ways that can’t be defined, only experienced

Game feel is one of the most elusive concepts in the glossary of interactive entertainment, at once perfectly clear and difficult to define. Obviously, it refers to what a game feels like to play, but where does that feeling come from? How does it manifest? Or consider it from a different angle. When the chef Samin Nosrat started her career at the renowned Chez Panisse in California, she began to understand that what diners really responded to in their food were four key factors – salt, fat, acid and heat – and how these elements interacted. This idea formed the basis of her bestselling cookbook. It perhaps also inspired a video game audio director to once compare game feel to eating a potato chip: the salt and fat are part of it but so are the crunch and the sensation of the chip dissolving in your mouth (pdf). Game feel is a combination of elements – the responsiveness of the controls, the intuitiveness of the action, the aesthetics of the world and the creative opportunities they engender – all coming together in the right quantities.

I’m thinking about this a lot right now, because three games released in the last few days illustrate the idea of good game feel beautifully. The first is Pragmata, Capcom’s sci-fi action adventure in which you explore an abandoned colony base with the help of a child-like android, who lets you hack robotic enemies, lowering their defences before you blast them to pieces. The hacking mini-game takes place on a grid with nodes that add power-ups to your hack attack. As you progress, you add new types of nodes, as well as new weapons, and the interplay between these elements is complex, multifaceted and fun. This takes place in a linear world filled with hidden areas, so exploration is guided but discovery is possible. You run, jump and glide – it all feels seamless. It is joyous simply to be there.

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

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

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

Donmar Warehouse, London
Two couples, both of whom have lost sons, meet in Fran Kranz’s unflinching look at restorative justice

Fran Kranz’s 2021 film Mass, featuring two sets of parents whose sons have died in a high-school massacre, was originally written as a play. Restored as such, in Carrie Cracknell’s production, it takes place in the backroom of a church where their across-the-table encounter encapsulates a pained instance of restorative justice.

Gail (Lyndsey Marshal) and Jay (Adeel Akhtar) are the parents of Evan, one of 10 children murdered by the teenage shooter, Hayden, the son of Richard (Paul Hilton) and Linda (Monica Dolan), who then killed himself.

Royal Festival Hall, London
Featuring music that inspired the designer, this show brings together Le Gateau Chocolat, dancers in body stockings and a formal orchestra to mild effect

The small print tells us this show has no connection to the fashion house of McQueen, nor does it feature any of Alexander McQueen’s designs. You could think it’s a cynical attempt to get bums on seats for classical music, but it is created by McQueen’s longtime musical director, John Gosling, alongside Robert Ames, conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra. The LCO plays music that inspired the designer, all run together like a DJ mix with theatrical lighting and multi-genre guest performers.

Far from “unnatural”, most of the harmonies here are as concordant as Classic FM, mostly film soundtracks (The Hours, The Piano, a couple of John Williams’) and tearjerkers (Dido’s Lament, Barber’s Adagio for Strings). The friction, however, is all in the combinations. For example: two dancers posturing in nude body stockings – one has hooves instead of hands and tights over her face – and then behind them, the cello section in formal white tie and tails. Hearing Handel cut with the Rolling Stones in a jaunty string arrangement, or a blast of Nirvana, feels like your GCSE music teacher trying to be cool, although the blaring siren of Armand Van Helden’s Witch Doktor is genuinely unsettling.

The Gloucestershire-based troupe, created 26 years ago by the late Nell Gifford and her husband Toti, is back with a new performance blending traditional skills with cutting-edge theatrics … and the dreaded Wheel of Death

‘Everything you see has been built by us,” Toti Gifford informs me with a sweep of his arms. I’m being shown around Fennells Farm in Gloucestershire, home to the much-loved Giffords Circus since 2014, with the company deep in rehearsals for its latest production, Waterfield. There’s an awful lot to see. The landscape is green and lush and scattered with livestock, with the site still functioning as a farm and brewery. The company headquarters sits inside a huge repurposed cattle shed and the farm is peppered with makeshift barns, all built by hand and rammed with props, paints and all manner of circus mementoes and mysteries (including, quite brilliantly, a human cannonball).

There’s a new winter venue and a restaurant and hotel under construction, with both scheduled to open over the next few years – the dreaded planning permission pending. The area surrounding the famous circus tent, topped with twinkling lights, has also been spruced up. Sick of wading through mud whenever it rained, Toti Gifford – who also runs a successful landscaping business – decided to dig up the field and replace it entirely with pebbles.

Goodwood Art Foundation, West Sussex
The late great land artist’s alfresco metal and concrete works are richly engaging and elemental – but the gallery material indoors lacks some heft

It pays to think big if you’re an artist. You know, zoom out and try to get away from the minutiae of life, the tedium of the everyday, and think on a bit more of a universal scale instead. Land artist Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a master at it; at using her work to place the body, and wider humanity, in a global, cosmic context. Holt and the other land artists of her generation – people like Michael Heizer, Richard Long and her partner, Robert Smithson – wanted to break out of the restrictions of paint and canvas, stone and chisel, gallery and museum. Land, nature, the world itself, was the medium.

Goodwood is a fine setting for the biggest UK exhibition of her work to date – an expansive, lush estate in the middle of the rolling West Sussex countryside. There are two big sculptural installations placed around the grounds, Ventilation System and Hydra’s Head. In the first, a huge metallic mechanism pokes out of the vegetation around the main gallery; big tubular aluminium pipes, all interconnected, snaking their way around the place and back into the building.

Recruited to Magnum Photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1977, the veteran photographer, who has died aged 83, made defining images of grand and intimate Indian life for five decades

Once the Madrid museum’s biggest draw, The Year of the Famine in Madrid fell out of favour for political and aesthetic reasons

No trip to the Prado these days is complete without a visit to room 12 of the Madrid museum, where Diego Velázquez, a five-year-old princess and a sleepy mastiff stare down from the enormous canvas of Las Meninas.

Two hundred years ago, however, the must-see exhibit at the newly established museum was not Las Meninas, but a gigantic allegorical work that sought to remind Spaniards of their heroic resistance to the Napoleonic occupation and their loyalty to King Ferdinand VII.

Highlights of this year’s international photography festival in Kyoto include Linder Sterling’s exclamatory collages, a retrospective of groundbreaking Daido Moriyama and a journey though apartheid South Africa with Ernest Cole

Kyotographie is Japan’s foremost festival of international photography. Held each spring since 2013, each edition has a different theme – and this year it is “Edge”.

It is a broad enough theme to allow for some freedom in the curation while evoking a sense of tension across the 14 exhibitions in the main Kyotographie festival.

An untitled image by Daido Moriyama that exemplifies his use of are-bure-boke. © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation

Sotheby’s said collection of billionaire Spurs’ owner Joe Lewis and daughter Vivienne expected to fetch more than £150m in June sale

A major group of masterpieces by some of modern art’s biggest names is to be auctioned by Sotheby’s in what is expected to be the most valuable collection ever offered in London.

The works, consigned by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne – whose family owns Tottenham Hotspur – include paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse, Chaïm Soutine, Lucian Freud, and Gustave Caillebotte. Sotheby’s said the group is expected to realise more than £150m.

It showcased the biggest stars of the day, including Stan Laurel, Harry Houdini, Morecambe and Wise and Shirley Bassey, before becoming a bingo hall, a church and a squat. It was almost turned into flats. What next for Manchester’s forgotten music hall?

It doesn’t look like much from the outside. An inelegant, industrial redbrick block; if you didn’t know, you might guess it’s a biscuit factory. Make that a former biscuit factory, because this is clearly somewhere that was rather than is: entrances are bricked up, drainpipes hang loose, shrubs sprout from crumbling masonry, pigeons come and go from holes in the roof. Pretty much everything within reach of a spray can has been reached; there are tags, Marvel characters, the perhaps surprising news that “God is dead and sheep killed him”.

You know those rocks, though, that look like any old rocks, but when you smash them open they have amazing, sparkling, coloured crystals inside? Amethyst and the like. Well, this building is a bit like them. If you took a wrecking ball to it (and it’s not inconceivable that this will happen), inside you’d find a splendid Edwardian galleried auditorium with gilded rococo plasterwork and plush red velvet seats … albeit covered in pigeon shit.

In 1980, two US airmen reported an extraordinary encounter near a military base in the east of England. What really happened?

In 1996, Nick Pope wrote his first book. Open Skies, Closed Minds was a semi-autobiographical examination of well-known UFO cases mixed with his own research. Pope worked at the UK Ministry of Defence for more than two decades, from 1985 to 2006. For three of those years – 1991 to 1994 – he worked on what was known colloquially in the department as “the UFO desk”. The desk’s official name, the Secretariat (Air Staff ) Sec (AS) 2a, was responsible for assessing the defence significance of reported UFO sightings.

To promote the book, Pope appeared on BBC Newsnight. The UK’s flagship news programme was famous for its adversarial interviews that left even the most formidable politicians and intellectuals looking like startled deer. Given the subject matter and the platform, this could have gone horribly wrong, but Pope held his own. “I wasn’t nervous, probably because I’d been media-trained by the MoD,” he says. “The irony was that when I was posted to the UFO desk, I occasionally had to go on television in my role as the department’s subject-matter expert and play down both the phenomena and the true extent of our interest and involvement in the subject.” His interrogator that night was Peter Snow. “What do you believe now that you didn’t believe five years ago?” Snow began.

We put seven top pizza ovens – from gas to wood-fired to electric – through their paces to find the ones worth firing up at home

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives

If you’re passionate about pizza – and, let’s be honest, there aren’t many who aren’t – then at the top of your foodie gadget wishlist has to be a pizza oven. You’ll struggle to find many that won’t salivate at the thought of a light pillowy base, smothered in a rich tomato sauce, and topped with melting, oozy cheese.

Seven years ago, I tested my first pizza oven, the Gozney Roccbox, and since then, these appliances have moved from niche product to a must-have for family get-togethers and entertaining.

Best pizza oven overall:
Gozney Arc Lite

Best budget pizza oven:
ProCook outdoor pizza oven

Most suitcases look hardwearing, but which ones actually are? We dropped bestselling brands’ luggage from a ladder to find out …

• The best carry-on luggage

A suitcase is like the portrait in the traveller’s attic, accumulating more than its fair share of knocks and scrapes while we refresh ourselves on the road. We trundle them over cobbles, see them tumble from luggage racks on the train – and if we choose to fly, there’s a fair chance they’ll be mishandled before we reunite at the carousel.

For our testing, we pushed eight suitcases to the limit by dropping them on to a hard surface, as if they’d been fumbled by a baggage handler. Air travel is especially tough on suitcases, so you might get away with choosing a less-resilient case if you make the climate-conscious choice to travel by rail or sea.

Best suitcase overall:
Away the Large

Best budget suitcase:
Tripp Holiday 8 Large

I spent a month testing anti-consumption strategies, from cash stuffing to ditching Amazon Prime, to find the ones that genuinely cut my spending

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

I’m pretty careful with money, I say as I trip over piles of Amazon Prime boxes. I’ve never really been the shopping type, I insist as I stare at drawers groaning with unworn Asos clothes. Look how much I care about the environment, I tell myself as I click “buy now” on yet another battery charger I bought to replace the one, two or five I’ve lost around the house somewhere.

You don’t have to be a shopaholic to be drowning in stuff. All it takes is an averagely mindless approach to impulse buying, until one day your home is heaving with a personal landfill of tat.

You told us your favourite subscriptions for cutting costs and reducing household waste. Plus, Anya Hindmarch’s shopping secrets and marathon essentials

• 33 easy plastic-free kitchen swaps

Whether they’re full of harmful chemicals or packaged in plastic, it’s no secret that many household cleaning products aren’t great for the planet. But “taking a more sustainable approach to washing and cleaning doesn’t have to be inconvenient”, said Hannah Rochell in her recent roundup of the best sustainable subscriptions. From vegan washing detergent in a natty recyclable tin to compostable scourers, her guide is full of delivery services that make greener living less effortful.

Her list wasn’t exhaustive, though, so we asked you for the subscription services you swear by for cutting costs, reducing household waste and making your life easier. (And no one has any commercial links to these companies – we always check.)

‘A cherry-cola colour and funky, acidic aroma’: the best supermarket balsamic vinegars, tasted and rated

The best fake tan for a sunkissed, streak-free glow – tested

Ditch power tools, build a hedgehog highway: how to create a nature-friendly garden

How I Shop with Anya Hindmarch: ‘I would label everything if I could’

The best hair straighteners for foolproof styling, tried and tested by our expert

What we inherit in the kitchen isn’t only a list of ingredients, but a living tradition – one that shifts with our lives, our fridges and the people we feed

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

“Chicken, leek, flour, a few more ingredients.” That was it: my grandma’s WhatsApp response to me earnestly asking if she’d mind sharing her time-honoured chicken pie recipe. She wasn’t being obtuse – well, not deliberately. She had simply never before committed a dish that was second nature to paper, let alone an iPhone screen.

It wasn’t how she’d learned it and it wasn’t how I’d go on to learn it, either. I knew I’d have to make her chicken pie many times to get it even close to her standard, that I’d have to learn by watching as well as by asking, and that even then there’d be elements I’d miss. Such is the nature of a family dish – indeed, of any dish that has taken time, repetition and love to master, and for which, even then, perfection remains ephemeral. There is more to their method, meaning and flavour than can ever be confined to and conveyed by a recipe.

With ‘oeno-flation’ as it is, it’s hip to be square and branch out into less exclusive – and cheaper – varieties from often overlooked regions

The sommelier Honey Spencer, of Sune in east London, struck a real chord on Instagram earlier this year: “I’m so fucking sick of expensive wine,” she lamented. There followed an angry plaint about the “unrelenting rise” in the cost of bottles from “artisans making wine properly … and FORGET BURGUNDY”. In a difficult climate, this is “one of the hardest pills to swallow” for the restaurateur.

It’s not an easy swallow for the customer, either, given the mark-up on hard pills these days: according to UKHospitality, the price of wine has gone up 40% since 2020, which will surprise no one who has quietly wept into a £59 rioja.

Crab pasta done (mostly) the River Cafe way, with an ‘electric sauce’ of olive oil, red chilli, parsley, garlic and lemon

My copy of the River Cafe Cookbook is silver, having lost its original blue sleeve some years ago. Naked, the hardback cover is completely plain, so it is my handwriting of “River Cafe blue” along the metallic spine, even though there is little chance of mixing it up with the yellow softback River Cafe Cookbook Two or the emerald cover of River Cafe Cookbook Green.

Blue was first published in 1996, a sobering fact, because that’s the same year I enrolled at the Drama Centre London, as well as the year when Pierce Brosnan took on rogue agent Alec Trevelyan (played by Sean Bean) in GoldenEye. That was Brosnan’s debut as James Bond and Dame Judi Dench’s first appearance as M. Brosnan trained at Drama Centre between 1973 and 1976, which is why, when I bought the blue book in 1996, I had good reason to imagine my future career as looking a little like that of Pierce, or Judi, or both.

An intrepid way to save stale pitta bread by turning it into moreish and wonderfully seasoned snacks

Three years ago, I helped my friend, the chef Sam Webb, set up Babette, a street food stall at Newquay Boathouse. Webb and his team make everything from scratch and, wherever possible, using only local Cornish produce, from their hot honey (sourced from the Rescued Bee) to pitta with freshly milled flour from Cornish Golden Grains; he also grows his own produce with fellow restaurateur Matt Comley at Gannel Valley Gardens.

As you might expect, saving food waste is at the top of Webb’s agenda, which is how he came to create waste-saving pitta chips to serve with hummus. It’s a recipe I couldn’t resist, not least because they take minutes to cook. What makes Webb’s pitta chips unique is their wonderful seasoning of sumac, za’atar and sea salt just before serving.

These negative comments about bodies and faces permeate society and could lead to some tough talks with friends

Hi Ugly,

How do I respond to my friends when they criticize their bodies, faces, skin?

Why is this column called ‘Ask Ugly’?

How should I be styling my pubic hair?

How do I deal with imperfection?

My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done

I had presumed I would love her instantly – but a traumatic birth led to devastating numbness

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was waiting for an overwhelming rush of love, but when I looked at my newborn baby what I felt was utter despair. No matter how much I smiled at her, crooned at her, fed, patted, caressed and changed her, I was absolutely numb.

I had yearned for her. Growing up in Italy, I was surrounded by images of perfect motherhood. Every rural crossroad has its tiny shrine to the Madonna and Child. I was certain by the end of my teens that I wanted to have at least one baby.

The actor and producer on being a teenage model, making My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the secret to long-lasting love

Born in Hollywood in 1956, Rita Wilson’s first role was in The Brady Bunch at the age of 15. She went on to appear in Frasier and The Good Wife, as well as romcom classics such as Sleepless in Seattle and Runaway Bride. She produced the highest‑grossing romcom of all time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, as well as Mamma Mia! and A Man Called Otto, which starred her husband, Tom Hanks, and son Truman. Alongside her career on screen, she has released music since 2012. Her sixth studio album, Sound of a Woman, is out on 1 May.

My mum took this photo of me in Hollywood. I’d just started high school and was joyful, open and optimistic.

It feels as if your work and your identity are fused. You’ll get through this, but you may have to use this time to consider other careers

I’ve been a teacher for more than 20 years and loved it. I had promotions every couple of years and was happily making my way up the ladder. This year, however, I was made redundant because of restructuring and this has thrown me into a feeling of complete confusion. I have tried to find roles at the level I was working at, but have not been successful. It has left me feeling lost and unclear.

The last five years within education have felt fraught. I left the previous school I’d worked at because I felt the headteacher was unable to support me following the death of my mum. The school before that I left after whistleblowing on a senior leader for bullying. I am worried the repeat issues and feelings of being unhappy all come from me, and somehow I am seeking out conflict or issues.

Small top-tier Android is great to use, being fast, AI-loaded and with reasonable battery life, but falls short of rivals on camera

Samsung’s compact flagship phone hasn’t changed much in a year, but the S26 is still one of the best smaller handsets available as rivals grow larger and larger.

The S26 is the cheapest and smallest of this year’s top Samsungs, dwarfed by the top-of-the-line S26 Ultra in size and price. But like everything with a memory chip at the moment, the S26 has increased in price by £80 or the equivalent to £879 (€949/$899/A$1,349). At least it has double the starting storage.

The chancellor’s changes will come into force in April 2027, affecting everyone from savers to landlords and sole traders. Experts say to act now

Millions of people will be affected by a range of savings, investment and tax changes that take effect in just under a year’s time.

“April 2027 may feel some way off, but when it comes to financial planning, a year is not a long time,” says Jason Hollands at the wealth management firm Evelyn Partners.

Apple laptop sets new performance bar with more storage, new chips and plenty of options, but now has two-tier specs depending on processor

Apple’s Macs have been on a roll this year with the brand new budget MacBook Neo and a faster MacBook Air M5, but now it’s time for its workhorse MacBook Pro to be upgraded with the fastest, most powerful M-series chips.

The latest MacBook Pro comes in two screen sizes and a large range of chip and configuration options. The 14in version starts with the M5 chip costing £1,699 (€1,899/$1,699/A$2,699) and then jumps to the more powerful M5 Pro from £2,199 (€2,499/$2,199/A$3,499) before climbing further for the 16in version or the top M5 Max chip. A pricey machine for professional workloads.

It cheerily addressed letters to my late spouse, and threatened penalties if he terminated his contract

After my husband died suddenly, I discovered he had been paying £171 a month for our EE broadband and TV contract. EE initially offered me a monthly deal at £44.99 on the phone.

There followed two letters, one day apart, cheerily addressed to my late husband. The first stated that he would have to pay £1,007 to terminate his contract; the second giving a termination fee of £520. The letters told him he could take the contract with him when he moved house.

Data tool could help NHS prioritise who gets access to limited weight-loss medication, say scientists

A new tool that can shed light on who is most at risk of obesity-related diseases could help identify people who would benefit most from weight-loss medications, researchers have said.

Recent data suggests about two-thirds of adults in England are overweight or obese – a situation that has caused concern among health experts.

Madeleine Finlay sits down with co-host and Guardian science editor Ian Sample to talk through three eye-catching stories from the week, including the news that the number of years people in the UK are spending in good health has declined compared with a decade ago. Also on the agenda is the science, tech and nutrition behind two runners at this weekend’s London marathon breaking the two-hour threshold, and an answer to why some old houses feel particularly spooky

People in UK spend fewer years in good health than a decade ago, study finds

Spooky feelings in old houses may be caused by boiler sounds, study suggests

Report calls for tough action to combat ‘escalating and unsustainable burden’ of liver-related problems in Europe

Governments in Europe should impose much higher taxes on alcohol and unhealthy food to tackle the continent’s 284,000 deaths a year from liver disease, experts say.

Taxes on those products should rise sharply enough for the money raised to cover the huge costs they place on health services, the criminal justice system and social services.

Physical phone-blocking devices, powered by NFC wireless technology, are becoming a popular solution for doomscrolling. Brigid Delaney puts one to the test

Wake up, 100 messages from group chat overnight about something – what? another assassination attempt; a village destroyed in Lebanon; the football result in England; the weather in Iran being manipulated; the pesticides causing lung and bowel cancer, so everyone who eats salads is now at risk of cancer; meditate for 20 minutes, then fire up x.com, a place I thought I’d never want to revisit, with its carnival barkers and supplement salesman, and have you seen the Lego thing calling Trump a paedo?, you gotta see the Lego thing, and this is before my first coffee, yet x.com is the coffee and the tea, whatever Elon has done to the For You algorithm is evil genius, it’s like the global collective id, nasty and funny and addictive and compelling – like gawking at a car crash, like soaking in a hot bubble bath of anger, and memes, and geopolitical dramas, and Trump, Trump, Trump – soaking in Trump, and then, For Me (just as Elon promised).

So begins the circuit around my phone, that goes all day and night, around the tiny screen with its icons (when a born-again Christian once told me he had favourite icons, for a long time I thought he meant apps, not pictures of the Virgin Mary). I started to feel like I was in Canberra, on one of those enormous roundabouts, rotating between the icons – not Joseph, not Jesus, but X and WhatsApp and TikTok and even LinkedIn for Christ sakes – round and round from one app to the next, just checking, checking in case something is happening. I watched tiny videos and maybe, occasionally, got distracted by the novel I am meant to be writing, which is due on 31 July. But the novel is boring, just a static Word doc on a screen, it’s not giving; it’s taking hard work. So I spend six minutes with my novel, and then it’s time to go back to my phone, to circle the roundabout visiting all my icons again, like a demented Stations of the Cross, because I can’t focus, I just can’t focus on work right now when there is so much good scrolling to do …

Jennifer Rauchet, wife of Pete Hegseth, caused partisan uproar by supposedly wearing a bargain dress to the formal event – but what it says about our attitudes to fast fashion is more interesting

Although far less important than the political violence at the White House correspondent’s dinner in Washington over the weekend, the sartorial choices of the Maga administration are now getting airtime – and one dress is causing a particular furore.

It is being reported that Jennifer Rauchet, wife of the US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, wore what appeared to resemble a gown listed on Shein for $42 (and similar to another on Temu for half the price).

Get it right and leather trousers have the power to make you look just that tiny bit cooler than everyone else in the room

Leather trousers are not for the fainthearted. They come with … baggage? Mythology, perhaps, is a gentler way of putting it. Either way, you know what I mean. Leather trousers can be suggestive of pelvic-thrusting rock frontmen. Noisy motorbikes. They hint at midlife crisis or teenage rebellion. They are a lot.

But leather trousers – along with gym clothes in public and cancelling plans at the last minute – have been normalised in polite society. There is a new breed of leather trouser-wearer. You know who I mean: she looks as if she could be an architect, perhaps. She is chic and understated (neutral colours, not too much jewellery) and she’s wearing a nice pair of trousers that just happen to be leather, rather than wearing leather trousers in a let’s-get-the-shots-in kind of way. Again, if you know what I mean.

Body lotions containing exfoliating acids are infinitely more effective and less messy than granular scrubs

The onset of sunshine has caught my limbs by surprise. I went out in short sleeves last week and my neglected, greyish arms looked as if they were recently freed from a plaster cast. If you are to be a bride this spring, you may already be thinking about how best to restore what lies beneath the winter layers. The answer for us all is an exfoliating body lotion – an all-over moisturiser to even out upper arm bumps, slough off dead skin, smooth roughness and moisturise dry patches, ready for lighter clothing. There are several new ones that improve on predecessors.

I typically recommend Ameliorate to brides who’ve likely ringfenced some budget for pre-wedding skincare. Punchier than those on supermarket shelves, its clinically proven Transforming Body Lotion uses effective levels of lactic acid and urea to exfoliate without stinging or drying, plus glycerin and sweet almond oil to moisturise the newly uncovered skin beneath. Now Ameliorate makes a pearlised, lightly tinted version to provide additional cosmetic effects. The new Illuminating Glow (£24 for 300ml) adds a subtle, streak-free veil of golden tan to all areas and skin types that washes off easily with soap and water. It’s a fast and easy way to look immediately healthier while it simultaneously does the grunt work.

Show features pink denim and suit printed with headlines from Gabrielle Chanel’s time in resort town

Chanel’s honeymoon period with the new designer Matthieu Blazy is showing no signs of cooling. Blazy’s fifth catwalk show – on the Biarritz beachfront where the young milliner Gabrielle Chanel opened a couture house in 1915 – was an irresistibly seductive love letter to the enduring allure of the double-C logo.

The day before the show, sales assistants at the Biarritz boutique were holding up Chanel beach towels on the shop floor to create extra changing room space for shoppers impatient to buy jeans at €3,100 (£2,690) a pair. Blazy’s jeans are becoming a totem of the new Chanel, which, in aesthetic, although certainly not in price, marries high taste with an inclusive, democratic point of view.

The natural world is the headliner at these joyous gatherings, while the support acts include live music, immersive art and fire ceremonies

Winner of the UK’s best micro-festival in 2025, Between the Trees returns to Candleston Woods in the spectacular Merthyr Mawr national nature reserve (between Cardiff and Swansea) this year. Designed to reconnect people to the natural world, the programme features science and nature activities, folk music and storytelling. Workshops in the Eco Hub include micrographia sessions – exploring the world of insects on the reserve – and nature crafts. The Seren area has plenty of new talks and walks on offer, including stories of Welsh witches and forage-and-taste outings. With camping spots next to a wild beach and huge dunes, the site itself will ignite plenty of awe.
27-30 August, weekend tickets £195 adults, £50 children, betweenthetrees.co.uk

Gentle cycling is the perfect pace to enjoy the region’s sunflower fields and medieval towns – with gourmet food and fine wine along the way

As I cycle in golden light through the Loire’s vineyards, I have the sudden wish to wear a flowing floral dress, tuck a sunflower behind my ear and answer only to the name Delphine. Opulent chateaux, honeyed stone villages, blazing fields of sunflowers … the Loire is so ridiculously and relentlessly beautiful it’s no wonder artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Émile Vernon made it their home.

A short zip across to Paris on the Eurostar and then an hour south on the TGV to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps and it feels as if we’ve stepped into a live JMW Turner landscape (he toured the region in 1826).

From the Cambrian Mountains to Cardigan Bay, the 83-mile Teifi Valley Trail is a grassroots initiative designed to revive a once-thriving area

Up here, the river was a mere gurgle; a babbling babe finding its way into the world. A few sheep roamed, a kite wheeled and a spring-clean wind ruffled the tussocks on the barren hills and rippled the pools. It was a stark yet striking beginning. As we followed a brand new fingerpost, skirted Llyn Teifi – the river’s official source – and picked up the fledgling flow, there was a sense great things lay ahead, for us both.

The Teifi rises in Ceredigion’s Cambrian Mountains – the untramped “green desert of Wales” – and pours into Cardigan Bay 75 miles (120km) south-west. It’s one of the longest rivers wholly within Wales and, historically, one of its most significant: the beating heart of the country’s fishing and wool-weaving industries, 12th-century abbeys at either end, Wales’s oldest university en route.

Beyond the Tuscan capital, there are exquisite towns with Medici fortresses, stunning frescoes, Roman amphitheatres – and not a selfie stick in sight

First, it was Barcelona, Venice and Dubrovnik. Now, Florence has joined the most overtouristed destinations in the world: its 365,000 inhabitants shared their city last year with 4.6 million visitors. The director of the city’s Accademia gallery – home to Michelangelo’s David – talked in 2024 about “hit and run” tourism, describing visitors “on a quick in-and-out mission to take selfies … trampling the city without contributing anything”. Local author Margherita Calderoni describes Via Camillo Cavour, a street leading to the Duomo, as a “rancid soup” of chain restaurants and “shops selling plastic trinkets from who knows where”.

Although steps are being taken – the city council has introduced a ban on new short-term lets and is promoting sights in lesser-known neighbourhoods – tackling overtourism is a challenge. And other Tuscan cities, such as Siena and San Gimignano, are suffering too. But beyond these honeypots, Italy’s fifth-largest region is full of glories, with not a takeaway chain or selfie stick in sight. Here are six of my favourites.

Carol thinks Scandinavian-style sandwiches are unwieldy and messy, while Lucas wants to get the most from his fillings. You decide who’s the bread winner
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Food should not fall out while you eat a sandwich, and your hands shouldn’t be sticky with sauce

Two slices of bread feels a bit excessive. It’s too much bread compared with the filling

When I saw a woman with a facial difference like mine at a party, I crossed the room to speak to her. It led to one of the most joyous, exciting and transformative discussions, in which I connected with feelings I’d always ignored

At a fundraising event, I looked across the crowded room and saw a woman with a cleft – a gap in the lip (and sometimes the palate) where a baby’s face doesn’t fuse properly during pregnancy. She was standing on her own, and I beckoned her over to join the small group I was with. She politely declined and before I quite realised what I was doing, I was crossing the room to speak to her.

I too had been born with a cleft. I’d talked to doctors, my parents, my wife and other friends about it to varying degrees over the years, but as I walked towards her, I knew this was going to be the first time – in more than 60 years – that I was going to have a conversation about living with a cleft with someone who also has one. I was terrified I might offend her, but I said something like: “Isn’t it scary walking into a crowded room? Because it feels as if everyone is looking at us.”

What makes the best birthday cake? Well, it all depends on the recipient

What’s the best birthday cake?
Katie, by email
“My mum once made a cake with mini rolls made to look like cats with googly eyes and strawberry lace tails,” says Nicola Lamb, author of Sift and the Kitchen Projects newsletter. And that’s the whole point of a birthday cake, right? It should align with the recipient’s favourite thing: “That could even be a lasagne,” Lamb says. “I’m not at all prescriptive about what you stick a candle into.”

Of course, some cakes are a safer choice than others. Take the Victoria sponge: “I don’t think anyone is going to have a problem with a plush vanilla sponge, jam and cream job,” Lamb says. “If you want to lower the effort and feed a lot of people, bake the sponge in a brownie tray for a single-layer, low and wide cake, spread whipped cream stabilised with mascarpone over the top, dollop on some jam and you’re good to go.” That said, you could go for a vanilla or chocolate buttercream instead, which, Lamb adds, comes with the bonus of welcoming sprinkles.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

It promises to filter toxins, absorb odours, prevent mould and keep roots healthy, but does it deliver?

The problem
Once you have graduated from novice plant parent, how can you take your level of care to the next level, helping your houseplant not only survive but thrive? Is activated charcoal the answer? You will find it listed in terrarium recipes and soil amendments. It promises to filter toxins, absorb odours, prevent mould and keep roots healthy. The bag looks purposeful, and the price suggests it is doing something important. The question is whether any of that holds up in an ordinary pot on an ordinary windowsill.

The hack
Activated charcoal works by adsorption, trapping impurities on its porous surface. In a closed terrarium or bottle garden, where water recycles and there is no drainage, a charcoal layer can slow the buildup of gases and bacteria. But does that translate to standard houseplant pots?

PocketOS was left scrambling after a rogue AI agent deleted swaths of code underpinning its business

It only took nine seconds for an AI coding agent gone rogue to delete a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to its founder. PocketOS, which sells software that car rental businesses rely on, descended into chaos after its databases were wiped, the company’s founder Jeremy Crane said.

The culprit was Cursor, an AI agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model, which is one of the AI industry’s flagship models. As more industries embrace AI in an attempt to automate tasks and even replace workers, the chaos at PocketOS is a reminder of what could go wrong.

In this extract from a new book on Sheffield’s musical history, Monkeys drummer Matt Helders and the cream of the city’s indie scene look back on the febrile mid-00s – from brilliant tunes to ‘brainless violence’

In 2005, enough of a storm seemed to be brewing in northern British indie music that NME tried to coin a new genre to encompass it all: New Yorkshire. “Forget LA, New York or London,” the feature read. “New Yorkshire is the best new band scene in Britain.” The magazine lumped together a bunch of disparate bands such as Sheffield’s Arctic Monkeys, the Long Blondes, Milburn, Harrisons and Bromheads Jacket, along with a Leeds and Wakefield bunch comprised of Kaiser Chiefs, the Cribs, Black Wire, the Research, ¡Forward, Russia!, the Ivories and the Sunshine Underground.

The New Yorkshire tag, though, had overlooked a fairly noticeable split in Sheffield at the time between the artier indie bands, often students, and the more traditional local indie outfits.

Authorities are yet to decide how they will move the body of the massive creature, which is attracting humans, eagles – and plenty of sharks

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Thin strips of flesh hang down like rotten tinsel, swaying in the wind. Glistening fluid trickles on to the stone where insects buzz. On the windward side, the odour is masked by the salty air. But step downwind, and you enter a sickly, sour-sweet blend of garbage and rotting fish. A passing couple pull their T-shirts tight over their noses.

On a rock shelf at the southern end of Era beach, the estimated 25-tonne body of a sperm whale rests like a melted candle. Looking down at the rock pools, floating chunks of white fat bob in the water.

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

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

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

As David Attenbourugh turns 100 years old, we would like to hear your memories over the years – including any encounters you’ve had with him in the wild

As David Attenborough turns 100 years old on 8 May, we would like to hear your memories of the great naturalist and broadcaster over the years – including any encounters you’ve had with him in the wild.

What is your standout memory of Attenborough? Have you ever met him? You can share your stories – and pictures – below.

The Guardian’s Saturday kids’ quiz is made up of questions submitted on behalf of children. Here’s how to submit one

Each week Molly Oldfield, host of the hit children’s podcast Everything Under the Sun hosts a quiz for the Guardian in which she answers the questions that kids have about the world around us. Like “how much bamboo can a giant panda eat?” “Do aliens exist?” or “Why is the sky blue?”

Do you have a child aged 3-13? Do they have a question they would like to share with the world? Please fill in the form below on their behalf and it could appear soon as part of the Guardian’s kids quiz.

We would like to hear from younger people about how often they go to the cinema

People born after 1997 are now the most frequent cinemagoers, According to a US-based survey by Fandango, with 87% saying they have seen at least one film in a cinema in the past 12 months.

With this in mind, we would like to hear from people aged 18-29 about how often they go to the cinema. Do you prefer it to home viewing, and why? What is the best film you’ve seen at the cinema recently?

Wake up to the top stories and what they mean – free to your inbox every weekday morning at 7am

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Get smart, sustainable shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox, every Sunday

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

A weekly email from our star chefs featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from our star chefs, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent.

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Upgrade your space today, with eight emails packed with tips to brighten up your home - whatever your budget

Embrace your space: the Guardian’s House to Home newsletter is bursting with tips and tricks to help you boost your bedroom and give your living room some love.

Sign up any time, and get eight emails direct to your inbox every Sunday morning.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world