Tribalism has not faded over the past decade. Instead, new research reveals our politics has become ever-more polarised and fractious

On 23 June 2016, the British voter changed. Before that day, they picked a party, usually red or blue. By that morning, only two tribes mattered: remain or leave. And they kept mattering long, long after the result was declared. Rather than bin those short-lived and now stale allegiances, voters made them their personas. No longer a “Labour man” or a “Conservative family”, they became instead “remoaners” or “Brexiters”. Even today, 60% of Britons still identify themselves by where they scrawled a single cross in a one-off poll 10 years ago.

Ask about the difference Brexit has made and the answer normally concerns policy or high politics: how our economic trajectory has become bumpier, or how the Tories keep getting into punch-ups with each other. But it became so much bigger than Boris v Dave. The civil war blazed through the country, and recruited nearly all of us to one side or the other. The effects still ripple through our elections and media today.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

‘After every tour, I hate the sound of my voice,’ the actor and comedian says. Yet here he is, working on a new standup act and about to host Saturday Night Live. What does he have to talk about this time, apart from his stag do, fatherhood, the remake of The ’Burbs … ?

The day I meet Jack Whitehall in central London, it has just been announced that he will be hosting Saturday Night Live (SNL) this Saturday. He is also about to get married and his stag do, which was two days before our interview, has been meticulously documented by the tabloids. It feels like a lot, so his immaculate appearance – even his beard looks polished; you wouldn’t believe this man had ever been fall-over drunk – is baffling. He is 37, but doesn’t look markedly different from the baby-faced man of 23 who appeared on our screens in Jesse Armstrong’s and Sam Bain’s stinging student satire Fresh Meat. That series sealed his place as the country’s posh mascot on panel shows including Would I Lie to You?, Mock the Week, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and 8 Out of 10 Cats.

His last comedy tour ended in 2024 and the wait for his next, at the start of 2027, is his longest hiatus yet. “After every tour, I hate the sound of my own voice,” he says. From 2017 to 2024, “I did tours back to back. I’d run out of life experience. I’d talked about every fucking thing that had ever happened to me, I’d done every possible iteration of joke about my dad. In the interim three or four years, I’ve got engaged, I’m planning a wedding, I’ll have had some time in married life, I’ve had a daughter, I’m now the father of a toddler. It felt as if I had stuff to talk about again.”

When Putin invaded Ukraine, he raised murder to the level of national policy. I felt guilt by association. And I had to act

One morning in May 2025, I walked briskly down Bayswater Road along the northern edge of London’s Kensington Gardens until I reached the gates of the Russian embassy. Its formidable outer wall, already topped with razor wire, now had the additional protection of a crowd control barrier. But there was no crowd, just a lone man feebly protesting from the other side of the road. In the early days of the war, the embassy was besieged by angry protesters. Back then, you couldn’t walk down a British street without spotting the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. That time was long gone.

Feeling uneasy, I was ushered inside by a guard who patted me down and checked the contents of my backpack before pointing the way inside. I knew this routine from my previous visits. Even the guard – a friendly Nepali man who knew about three words of Russian – hadn’t changed in years. I used to come here to renew my Russian passport and, on one noteworthy occasion, in March 2000, to vote in the Russian presidential elections. This time, I had an altogether different purpose: I was here to renounce my Russian citizenship.

The star returns as Ian Fletcher in this mockumentary from the makers of Twenty Twelve. But for every funny moment, there is a slightly off gag – and some truly woeful ones

It’s a Monday morning in Miami and Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is in a meeting. The meeting has been set up to action another meeting, the outcome of which will be actioned – or at least consciously tabled – at a third, or possibly seventh, meeting. The meeting is also a meeting in a deeper sense, in that it is an opportunity for Ian, the “incoming director of integrity” at the organising body for world football (which, states the narrator, David Tennant, “we’re unable to name for legal reasons”), to establish his place in a corporate culture that is “irretrievably American”.

“Shall we begin?”, Ian asks his new colleagues. “Oh my God,” gasps the sustainability tsar, Sarah Campbell (Chelsey Crisp), pressing the palm of her hand swooningly to her breastbone. “Soooo British!”

The dish, adapted from one brought by US soldiers after the Korean war, has sparked thousands of variations and sits at the forefront of the K-food wave

Inside a teaching kitchen south-east of Seoul, I coat a whole chicken – cut into eight parts – in batter and dip the pieces carefully into a bowl of powdered mix until covered in a light, fluffy layer.

A chef watches intently. “Don’t rub it,” he says. “Keep it delicate.”

At the peak of the Israel-Gaza conflict, 10 children a day were losing one or both legs. For those who cross the border for medical help, physical recovery is only the start of their struggle

Ola Jamal, 36, was breastfeeding her two-month-old son, Zain, when the missile struck al-Nasr hospital in Gaza in November 2023. When the explosion hit the building, the shrapnel went through Jamal’s arm while she held her infant.

“I ran with my family to the hospital and stayed there to hide,” she says at a prosthetic centre in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. “We thought it would be safe because it’s a children’s hospital.”

A row of customised prosthetic limbs, labelled with the names of patients, lined up in a clinic wall

As Israel attacks continue, Abbas Araghchi points to announcement that says ceasefire includes Lebanon while JD Vance says US never promised that

• Middle East ceasefire in serious doubt as Israel assaults Lebanon and Iran blocks oil tankers

The UK foreign minister, Yvette Cooper, has said Lebanon must be included in any ceasefire agreement. In other remarks now being reported by Reuters, Cooper added that shipping through the strait of Hormuz must be toll-free.

Amid ceasefire talks, Tehran has proposed fees or tolls on vessels to safely pass through the strait. Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested the US and Iran could collect tolls in a joint venture, while the White House said the priority was reopening the strait without limitations.

And my principles and values made sure that our decisions were that we wouldn’t get involved in the action without a lawful basis, without a viable, thought-through plan.”

PM meets Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia before further visits to regional allies, who may see him as more reliable than Trump

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The UK has a “job” to help reopen the strait of Hormuz, Keir Starmer has said, as Iranian reports said the key shipping route was closed again just hours after a supposed ceasefire.

The prime minister met British and local military personnel at an airbase in Taif, Saudi Arabia, at the start of what is expected to be a wider trip to Gulf allies, one billed as a mirror to his efforts to pull together a plan for how a ceasefire might operate in Ukraine.

Sudden pause in destructive war launched by US and Israel prompts mixed feelings in Tehran

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The video from the streets of Tehran shows crowds gathering in small groups, some waving Iranian flags while others wear them draped over their backs. In Enghelab Square, a centre for pro-regime rallies throughout the 40-day war, people are holding heated discussions. It is clear there are mixed feelings.

Footage captured by a pro-regime figure and posted online offers a peek inside the domestic reaction to a two-week ceasefire announced overnight.

Proposal to help people heat two rooms, provide hot water and run key appliances without incurring more debt

In order to cut rising bills all UK households should receive a minimum amount of energy at rates subsidised by the government through North Sea taxes, a thinktank has suggested.

Providing all homes with enough energy to heat two rooms, provide hot water and run key appliances such as a fridge and washing machine, at rates frozen at current levels, would require a subsidy of about £4.5bn, according to the New Economics Foundation.

David Lammy says those affected by a heinous crime cannot be expected to engage with the justice system within the existing 28-day limit

Victims and bereaved families will be given six months to challenge “unduly lenient” sentences handed to criminals, under changes announced by David Lammy.

Relatives of murder victims campaigned for the government to scrap the 28-day time limit to submit a formal request after an offender is sentenced.

Marine Conservation Society warns that fish numbers have reached dangerous point of decline

Consumers should “completely avoid” buying UK-caught cod, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has said, as it warned that populations have reached a dangerous point of decline despite zero-catch recommendations.

The MCS, an environmental charity, publishes a Good Fish Guide to help consumers and businesses make sustainable seafood choices.

High levels of borrowing and rapid expansion among dangers identified by Higher Education Policy Institute

Many English universities are taking excessive financial risks that threaten not only their own survival but that of others in the sector, a thinktank has warned.

High levels of borrowing at some institutions and rapid expansion of student numbers are among the dangers identified in a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi).

Paul Solway ignited explosion that damaged total of six terrace houses in Derby after his partner had kicked him out

A man who blew up a terrace house by causing gas to leak from a pipe and setting fire to a chair after his partner kicked him out has been jailed for 11 years.

Paul Solway was having a “meltdown” when he caused the explosion at his partner Joanne Waterfall’s home in Alvaston in Derby on the evening of 10 June last year.

Dozens of dogs were found crammed into single living room space at property in undisclosed location in UK

More than 250 dogs have been found at a property in scenes so shocking that the RSPCA was forced to deny allegations that the images were faked by artificial intelligence.

The animal welfare charity said it took in 87 dogs from the property at an undisclosed location in the UK and the remainder went to the Dogs Trust, another charity.

US vice-president says on visit to Budapest ‘we had to show’ support for Viktor Orbán, as opposition leads polls

• Hungary elections: what is at stake and who is likely to win?

JD Vance has pushed back against claims that the US is interfering in Hungarian politics, describing the accusations as “darkly ironic”, as a set of polls suggested the opposition Tisza party could win a supermajority in the forthcoming elections.

After spending his first day in Budapest excoriating the EU and accusing it of being behind one of the “worst examples” of foreign interference, the US vice-president spent part of Wednesday morning speaking at a thinktank and educational institution linked to Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán.

Threat of losing benefits will be lifted but campaigners say more help needed to tackle hostile workplaces

The government has unveiled its plan to allow disabled people to try work without fear of losing their benefits, but campaigners warn the policy does not go far enough to tackle hostile workplaces.

Legislation laid before parliament on Thursday will mean that people who start work or volunteering no longer automatically face a benefit reassessment, a prospect disabled people said was holding them back from trying to gain employment.

Council backs £700,000 plan to save historic landmark at former RAF base in the New Forest

A unique RAF watch office that has been crumbling for decades is to be turned into a smart hideaway home to be shared by holidaymakers – and the bats that already use it.

The Landmark Trust, which rescues at-risk buildings, has been given permission to convert the ruined property in Hampshire into a holiday retreat with four bedrooms and a roof terrace.

Loyalists rush to defend president for ‘outsmarting the critics’ but others decry deal as ‘a negative for our country’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump’s acceptance of a two-week ceasefire in Iran has exposed fresh divisions in his Make America Great Again (Maga) movement, with some supporters expressing vindication and others accusing the US president of betrayal.

The US and Iran both claimed victory after the two countries agreed to pause hostilities following more than a month of war. But the strait of Hormuz remained closed on Wednesday and fighting was still taking place as Israel launched its biggest attacks yet on Lebanon.

In the final week of Rhik Samadder’s diary, he basked in the rosy glow – literally – after AI’s wall paint suggestion

Sometimes, when the hose of my vacuum cleaner knocks over a potted plant, adding a layer of drudgery to an already miserable chore, I feel ground down by domesticity. Futurity once promised us robot butlers. What happened?

The despair led me to this week’s quest. Can AI actually transform my day-to-day existence?

A group of neurodivergent and disabled young adults ask Stephen Fry the tough questions most others don’t dare to – and it makes for a truly liberating experience

As opening questions in celebrity interviews go, it’s a bold one. You can’t imagine Norton, Ross or Winkleman beginning with it. But the latest guest on The Assembly, Stephen Fry, is just settling into his chair when he’s given this as his starter: “You tried to kill yourself a couple of times. Are you happy to be alive now?”

The Assembly, of course, is not a standard chatshow. This is the one where a famous person is interrogated by a group of young adults with neurodivergence or learning disabilities, who are less inhibited by the ordinary protocols of TV interviews. Every question is simultaneously something no conventional interviewer would ever contemplate saying, and something we are immediately interested in seeing the guest react to. Celebs enter that bright, high-windowed room overlooking the Thames with a mix of joy and trepidation, knowing that the artifices and pretensions that usually protect them don’t apply here. “I’ve seen you guys,” says Fry on his way in. “Smiling assassins!”

The Assembly aired on ITV1 and is available on ITVX

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

Welcome to the Guardian Thursday news quiz. Thanks to our illustration from Anaïs Mims, you must decide whether you are a neatly curled question mark of knowledge, or a miniature naughty dachshund of ignorance, cheerfully causing chaos and refusing to come when called, while balancing on a ball. Fifteen questions on topical headlines, pop culture and general knowledge await. There are no prizes, but we always enjoy hearing how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 242

A cycle tour of the Sierra Nevada backcountry proves a bumpy but beautiful ride through cinematic scenery

When you get into a van with an Englishman, five Irishmen and a Scotsman, you know someone is going to end up looking silly. For the next few days, my aim is for it not to be me. The van is taking us from busy Málaga to remote Andalucía for four days of gravel biking, something I have never done and for which I am not sure I am cut out.

Most of my cycling experience is limited to a flat five-mile commute through London, or long-distance road touring holidays. I love sailing across smooth asphalt, and have always been slightly snobby about the rough stuff. Why bump along when you can glide?

This unconventional exploration of Albert Speer’s duplicity during his Nazi years and into his rehabilitation is a masterful forewarning of the post-truth era

In April 1975, Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor whose efforts to track down Nazi war criminals had earned him the title of “Nazi hunter”, wrote a letter to Albert Speer, the Nazi war criminal. Wiesenthal thanked him for a psychology book Speer had sent him, and forwarded a copy of the French edition of his own memoir. Their decade-long correspondence also includes holiday postcards and birthday wishes. It ends with a personal note from Speer’s widow Margarete on her husband’s death in 1981, telling Wiesenthal how important their friendship had been to him.

Wiesenthal’s friendship was a private echo of the extraordinarily warm international welcome that Speer received as a public intellectual after his release from Spandau prison in 1966. Speer had served as minister of armaments in wartime Nazi Germany, and was found guilty of crimes against humanity; yet when he died, he was in London to promote his new book on the BBC.

This week Artemis II’s four-astronaut crew broke Apollo 13’s distance record, becoming the humans to travel the farthest from Earth. Now on their way home, the team has experienced tech malfunctions, views like no other and moments of intense emotion, all in under 10 days. To find out about all the highs and lows of the mission, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample

Artemis II crew describe ‘overwhelming’ emotions after soaring past the moon

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

The US president’s cry-wolf threats are losing their effect while European leaders are, at last, shifting from sycophancy to opposition

Europeans are on what might be called “a journey” when it comes to the US-Israel war against Iran, now apparently in a ceasefire after Donald Trump’s 11th-hour U-turn, calling off, for the time being, his threat to annihilate Iranian civilisation. The crisis in the Middle East marks the latest painful step, after the shock of the US’s betrayal of Ukraine and Trump’s threat to seize Greenland, in Europe’s emancipation from Washington. The journey is not linear, and it is dreaded by most European leaders. But the direction of travel is undeniable.

Initially, most European politicians in power all but endorsed the illegal US and Israeli attack against Iran. If the sycophantic Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, stood at one end of the spectrum of European opinion and Pedro Sánchez at the other, most European governments were tacitly closer to Rutte’s embrace of Trump than to the Spanish prime minister’s principled opposition.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

A highly alarming New Yorker feature on the machinations of Sam Altman drove me to test his AI for myself. The results were, well, highly alarming

A corollary of the truism “don’t sweat the small stuff” is, by implication, “do sweat the big stuff”, but it can be hard to pick which big stuff to sweat. For example: since the 1970s, as the world has worried about inflation and rolling geopolitics, the big stuff we should have been sweating more urgently was the climate crisis. Last year, the top trending search on Google in the US was “Charlie Kirk”, with several terms relating to the threat posed by Donald Trump also popular, when the focus should arguably have been the threat posed by AI.

Or, per my own Googling this week after reading Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz’s highly alarming lengthy piece in the New Yorker about the rise of artificial general intelligence: “Will I be a member of the permanent underclass and how can I make that not happen?”

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Do companies realise the misery caused when they take much-loved products off the market? I’m still in mourning for Izal Medicated toilet paper

I was sitting with Mrs Patmore from Downton Abbey in my car outside Langley station in Berkshire. This wasn’t a dream – this was real. To be fair, it wasn’t Mrs Patmore, it was my friend Lesley Nicol, who plays Mrs Patmore. Anyway, there we were, shooting the breeze on matters various, like our childhoods and stuff, when she mentioned something called a Jubbly. She has fond memories of this frozen drink/lolly offering. And I think we all have strong feelings about this kind of frozen drink/lolly offering from our childhood.

I base this very much on anecdote rather than data. My limited research has been inspired by an email I received from a Guardian reader called Bloss, from Marple near Stockport. Vastly overestimating my influence over anything, she implored me to use my influence to get Rose’s Lime Marmalade back on supermarket shelves. Her husband loves it, you see. She can get him Rose’s Lemon & Lime Marmalade, but for him, if she’ll pardon the slight pun, this just doesn’t cut it.

As a doctor who has worked in a conflict zone, I’ve seen spaces that were once considered sacrosanct become fair game in war. This has to end

Easter weekend marked one of the most intense moments so far of Israel’s war on Lebanon. At around 2pm on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces bombed a densely populated, residential area near the Rafik Hariri University hospital, Lebanon’s largest public hospital, killing at least five people and wounding 50 others.

When I worked at the hospital in 2020, I treated the most vulnerable people in Lebanese society: migrant workers, stateless Palestinians, Syrian refugees. What happened on Sunday is consistent with what seems to be Israel’s broader strategy in Lebanon: human rights organisations and medical workers say the IDF is crippling healthcare infrastructure, targeting hospitals and medics, sometimes when they are sitting in ambulances or in first aid centres. Israel is also forcing the displacement of civilians on a large scale, rendering parts of the country unlivable, while Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the two-week Iran ceasefire doesn’t apply to Lebanon tells us that this is far from over.

Seema Jilani is a paediatric physician based in Texas and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations

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.

If the president’s first term didn’t inoculate the American body politic against tyranny, there is no guarantee that a second dose will work

Donald Trump is a despot and the US is a democracy. These things can be true simultaneously but not indefinitely. There is now deadlock in the struggle between a president who would be king and a constitution drafted in repudiation of monarchy. But it is a battle to the death. Tyranny will either break the spirit of the republic or be quelled by it.

Since the US is the world’s paramount power, the outcome of this contest has epic consequences for countries, such as the UK, that depend on Washington for security.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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

Local elections have led to a surge of racism in a country that still struggles to see itself as anything other than white

Saint-Denis is just over 9km from the centre of Paris but is in the poorest department in all of metropolitan France, a region marked by unemployment, low incomes and social disadvantage. But Saint Denis’s town hall was the backdrop to memorably joyous celebrations on the evening of 15 March. A delirious crowd carried the new mayor shoulder high, chanting his name over and over. Bally Bagayoko who led a leftwing list uniting the radical left party, La France Insoumise (LFI), and the Communist party pulled off a remarkable feat, decisively winning the second biggest city in the Paris (Île-de-France) region in the first of two rounds. He was the only French mayoral candidate representing a population of more than 150,000 not to require a runoff contest.

For the first time, Saint-Denis, which is home to 130 nationalities, has a mayor who reflects its community – a child of the city and the son of Malian immigrants.

Rokhaya Diallo is a writer, journalist, film director, activist and Guardian Europe columnist.

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

The chasm between the two sides remains vast. A mega-deal remains the only path to averting a return to full-scale war

Donald Trump styles himself as a peerless tough guy who never backs down. But he doesn’t always make good on his threats. Consider his demand that Denmark hand over Greenland, or his threats to hike tariffs on trade partners. He has even found ways to extend his deadlines for Tehran to reopen the strait of Hormuz, claiming, without evidence, that Iran was “begging” for a deal.

On Monday, Trump outdid himself. He gave Tehran until Tuesday at 8pm ET to reopen the strait – or “a whole civilization will die tonight”. The president’s public threat to commit genocide sent shockwaves through the United States. Some Democratic leaders concluded that “Trump has lost his mind”. More than 70 Democratic members of Congress called for his removal from office. Some politicians and media personalities sympathetic to Maga did the same or roundly rebuked him. Some commentators reminded soldiers that they were required to disobey flagrantly illegal orders. Never in American presidential politics has a spectacle matched this one.

The Middle East’s best hope may be that the US president continues to rebadge strategic defeat as success

Both the US and Iran claimed victory on Wednesday morning. Both were lying. The two-week ceasefire announced by Donald Trump the night before is not the triumph that he declared. It may not be an end to the war, as welcome as the pause is, or even last the fortnight. Mr Trump said that Iran has gone through regime change. It has not. If anything, less experienced, less readable but more hardline figures are now in charge. He said that the strait of Hormuz would be open; Iran said that ships would pass through with permission, and at a price.

By Wednesday evening, Iranian state media said that the strait was closed after Israel unleashed a brutal assault on Lebanon: about 100 strikes in 10 minutes. Iran had insisted that Lebanon was part of the deal, while Mr Trump disagreed. This conflict has killed thousands in the region, including children, and left many more exhausted, terrified and traumatised, while the aggressors have openly boasted of their intent to commit war crimes.

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.

Sadiq Khan has the right approach, but his critics are determined to see the capital as a fictionalised case study in lawlessness

London is much reviled by people who don’t live there. It has its share of social problems typical to a large metropolis, but it is unusual in having also a dystopian twin – a fallen city, overrun with violent criminals, located in the imagination of rightwing politicians and the online sources they consume.

The capital’s denigrators felt vindicated recently by scenes of disorder on Clapham High Street. Hundreds of young people, rallied on social media, mustered for a spontaneous gathering, which degenerated into a spree of antisocial behaviour. Images of the disorder were shared online as proof of the capital’s status as a no-go area. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said that the unrest was symptomatic of “societal breakdown”.

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

Readers respond to warnings that female teachers are increasingly having to cope with misogynistic behaviour from male students

A quarter of female teachers have been the target of misogyny over the past 12 months (A ‘masculinity crisis’ is brewing in UK schools, union says, 4 April). In truth, this is a crisis that’s been building for years. Annoyingly, we had the chance to deal with this crisis when it was still impending.

Three years ago, headteachers started asking the Department for Education (DfE) for help when Andrew Tate and his mates started being named – and quoted – in classrooms. Its advice? Don’t engage. Educators were told not to discuss Tate’s views in personal, social, health and economic education lessons and the DfE refused to offer any training.

Readers respond to an article by Leah Harper on the environmental impact of the balloon boom and calls for a ban

I was pleased to read your article on the detrimental effects of balloons on the environment (The dark side of the balloon boom – is it time they were banned?, 2 April). I attend a yoga class on the first floor of a building in Chiswick, London, and I have been repeatedly disturbed by the sight of a helium balloon caught in a tree outside the window there.

Over the last 10 years, I have watched it metamorphose from a silvery helium balloon with a string into a grey, stringy mess that still hasn’t disappeared. Each time I see it, I despair that people still insist on so often buying balloons for celebrations without concern for the environmental impact that they will have once discarded.
Beatrix Chappell
London

No appeasement in Britain | Donald Trump’s new mantra | Fascinating obituary | The trouble with names | Spellchecker

Donald Trump says “We won’t want another Neville Chamberlain” (Trump uses Neville Chamberlain jibe to mock Starmer over stance on Iran, 6 April) – ie someone who does not stand up to tyrannical regimes and tries to appease them. Well, Donald, I am sure you are pleased that, so far, that is not happening in the UK, where our prime minister does seem to be standing up to such regimes by refusing to back the US-Israel attacks on Iran.
Dominic Rice
Sheffield

• President Trump used to have the mantra “Drill, baby, drill”. Now it seems to be “Kill, baby, kill”.
Rae Street
Littleborough, Greater Manchester

The government is cutting contributions at a critical stage in the campaign to eradicate the disease, writes Gillian Russell

It is extremely disheartening to read that after 2026, the UK government is to end its contributions to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), putting at risk the great efforts that have been made over the last 40 years to improve the health and wellbeing of children across the world (Polio virus detected in London days before ministers cut global eradication funding, 27 March).

The eradication of polio is a cornerstone of the humanitarian work of Rotary International (a GPEI partner). I am one of many Rotary members who have taken part in vaccination days in India and seen at first hand the dedication of local health workers in ensuring that all children are vaccinated.

• Slot admits team ‘were in survival mode’ during first leg

• ‘Football has shown many times everything is possible’

Arne Slot admitted Liverpool were in survival mode against Paris Saint-Germain and will need the backing of Anfield to raise their level against the European champions in next week’s Champions League quarter-final second leg.

Liverpool were fortunate to escape with a 2-0 defeat at Parc des Princes where Ousmane Dembélé, who missed a crucial chance for Barcelona in their 2019 semi-final against Jürgen Klopp’s eventual champions, squandered several opportunities for Luis Enrique’s star-studded side.

When the final whistle went, the man in black disappeared out of sight and set off running up the tunnel. For the first time since he took over at Atlético Madrid 15 long, transformative years ago, Diego Simeone had just led his team to a victory at the Camp Nou, reviving the dream of taking them back to a European Cup final a decade later.

In 2014 and 2016 Atlético knocked out Barcelona en route to Lisbon and Milan and while there is much to be done at the Metropolitano in six days’ time, they have put themselves in a superb position to repeat that in 2026, maybe even to finally lift the trophy that resists them.

Spaniard is seeking his second Green Jacket at first Masters since 1994 without Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson

Half a mile from the gates of Augusta National, at the foot of Washington Road, sits a keyboard and piano store. It closes on Masters week every year. “Spring has sprung and so have we,” reads a sign in the forecourt. Clearly there is insufficient correlation between golf fans and those with a tendency to tinkle the ivories (or similar) for the business to remain open.

Masters mania is not for everyone. This feels a pity; almost nine months since the last putt dropped on the final major of 2025 and 27 weeks on from the Ryder Cup rumpus of Bethpage, golf is back at the forefront of the sporting world. Another date reference is significant. This Masters, the 90th edition, will be the first since 1994 without either one or both of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson on the draw sheet. Rather than cause for a golfing lament, this provides opportunity. The post-Tiger world need not be as scary a place as so many seem to believe.

As talks begin over fixing the controversial regulations, the FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis says changes to ‘specific aspects’ are needed, not a total overhaul

Formula One has endured a somewhat turbulent opening this season under the sport’s new regulations. Amid the sound and fury of some driver dissatisfaction with the new formula and safety concerns brought sharply into focus by a huge accident at the Japanese Grand Prix, three races in there is now an opportunity to propose changes, with the man who has been at the heart of the process since it began quietly confident that F1 can adapt successfully.

Nikolas Tombazis is the single-seater director for F1’s governing body, the FIA, and has been with the organisation since 2018. He was there when the very first discussions of the 2026 regulations took place in January 2021 and has been central to their evolution since. In his calm and articulate fashion, Tombazis says the noise around the new regulations is overstated.

I Am Maximus, the 2024 winner, heads to Aintree on Saturday as favourite to triumph again. Here is a look at the chances of all 34 contenders

One of two previous winners at the top of the weights and he backed up his 2024 success by pressing Nick Rockett all the way to the Elbow 12 months ago before finally crying enough. He had shown precious few hints of his National-winning form in two runs before that exceptional performance under top weight and has more to recommend him this year, having finished second in a Grade One in December and fifth in the Irish Gold Cup. In strict handicapping terms, he should probably find one or two too good, but Aintree aptitude is a serious weapon and another podium place is no forlorn hope.

Verdict: each-way hope on Aintree form, but no top-weight winner since 70s

• Italian side defeated Roma in Europa League last 16

• Emery has won competition four times as a manager

Unai Emery has warned his Aston Villa side to respect Bologna, and the Europa League itself, if they are to continue their progress in the competition with victory over their Italian opponents.

Describing the Serie A side as “a winner team”, Emery said Villa could not be considered favourites for this quarter-final as he sought to ensure his players’ heads are in the game following the extended international break that means Villa haven’t played a competitive match since 22 March.

The sportswear giant says it’s aware of the strange seam on some of the new shirts, and is looking into how to address it

When Nike rolled out its collection of World Cup kits in late March, fans and pundits alike largely approved. The US men’s national team got arguably their most distinctive pair of shirts in decades, while other federations – France, England, Canada and Uruguay among them – earned strong reviews.

Over the last international break, when players took the field in the kits for the first time, many fans couldn’t help but become fixated on one singular detail of the new shirts: a somewhat unsightly bulge along the shoulder seam.

• WSL academy teams would play in third tier

• Previous FA expansion plan was withdrawn last year

Plans to include four Women’s Super League academy sides in the third tier of the English women’s football pyramid from 2027 have been criticised as an idea based around “repackaged B teams” and received a mixed reaction from club staff and supporters.

The changes to the Women’s National League, put forward by the Football Association, would also introduce a mid-season split similar to that used in Scotland, as well as a potential investment package of about £1m and enhancements to legal and medical support in the loan system. They have not yet been formally ratified, but consultations are continuing.

• World No 10 suffers heavy loss to Matteo Berrettini

• Russian committed 27 unforced errors

Daniil Medvedev smashed his racket several times and placed the remnants in a courtside dustbin during his humbling 6-0, 6-0 loss to the Italian wildcard Matteo Berrettini at the Monte Carlo Masters on Wednesday.

It was the world No 10’s first tour-level defeat without winning a game and he capitulated in 49 minutes, failing to earn a game point on his own serve and committing 27 unforced errors. Berrettini will face João Fonseca in the last 16 after the Brazilian teenager beat Arthur Rinderknech 7-5, 4-6, 6-3.

Delo, pardoned by Trump after violating US banking law, describes himself as champion of free speech

A British billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business has given £4m to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Ben Delo, 42, who is now based in Hong Kong, wrote in the Telegraph that he had made the donation since the start of the year, before the government’s cap on donations to political parties by British citizens living abroad.

Over 70 Democratic lawmakers are calling for amendment to be invoked to remove Trump from office amid war

Democratic party leaders have vowed to renew the effort to curb Donald Trump’s war in Iran after several days of escalating tactics that culminated in a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday evening.

In recent months, several war powers resolutions have failed in Congress after a handful of Democrats voted alongside Republicans. But Trump’s aggressive overtures this week – including a Truth Social post that said “a whole civilization” could be wiped out if Iran did not agree to demands, have pushed some to act.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Here’s Trump’s full post on his social media platform, Truth Social:

All U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with. If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the “Shootin’ Starts,” bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before. It was agreed, a long time ago, and despite all of the fake rhetoric to the contrary - NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS and, the Strait of Hormuz WILL BE OPEN & SAFE. In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!

Those overnight losses follow several indications that the ceasefire isn’t holding quite as expected on Tuesday night. For instance, both the UAE and Kuwait said yesterday that their air defences had been intercepting drones from Iran. And on the Iranian side, their Parliament’s Speaker Ghalibaf said that three points of the ceasefire agreement had been violated.

Moreover, the IRGC warned of a “regret-inducing response” if Israel’s strikes against Lebanon didn’t stop immediately, whilst the Fars news agency said that the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz was halted because of Israel’s continued strikes on Lebanon. So collectively, that’s raised concern about how durable this ceasefire will prove, particularly with it only being a two-week truce.”

He also criticised NATO in a separate post overnight, saying that they weren’t “there when we needed them”, and called on people to “remember Greenland, that big, poorly run, piece of ice!!!”. So that raised concerns about a repeat of mid-January, when Trump’s call for the US to take Greenland and the threat of European tariffs drove a risk-off move in global markets.

8.30am BST: Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey appears before the European parliament committee on economic and monetary affairs

9.30am BST: Bank of England credit conditions survey for Q1 2026

1.30pm BST: US gross domestic product, initial jobless claims, PCE inflation measure and wholesales inventories

3pm BST: IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva expected to deliver a speech on the outlook for the global economy and outline key policy priorities for member countries

New York Times report claims London-born Adam Back is creator of the cryptocurrency after comparing writings

A British computer scientist has insisted he is not the elusive developer of bitcoin, after a report claimed to unmask him as its creator.

A story in the New York Times details a years-long effort to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious author of the bitcoin white paper which laid the theoretical foundations for modern digital currencies.

Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi were arrested 7 March with alleged homemade devices at Gracie Mansion in New York

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Two teen alleged Islamic State supporters accused of trying to detonate explosive devices during a protest outside the home of New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, freely discussed how many people they might kill, with one remarking: “I want to start terror, bro,” according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

The teenagers, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, were arrested on 7 March for allegedly igniting two improvised explosive devices during an anti-Islam protest outside Gracie Mansion. Authorities claim that Balat, 18, lit one device and threw it in the direction of the protesters.

Analysis of six extreme heatwaves found when temperature and humidity were accounted for, all were potentially deadly for older people

Extreme heat is already creating “non-survivable” conditions for humans in heatwaves that have killed thousands and likely many more, according to new research that warns people are more susceptible to rising temperatures than first thought.

Scientists re-examined six extreme heatwaves between 2003 and 2024 and found that when temperature, humidity and the body’s ability to stay cool were accounted for, all were potentially deadly for older people.

Taking sand from the Nigerian city’s lagoon to supply a building boom harms more than fish – it affects the entire food chain, erodes coastlines and is depriving fishing communities of their livelihoods

Before dawn, when the noise of Lagos’s danfo buses fills the air and generators rumble to life, the city’s lagoon is already stirring. Not from fish splashing or canoes gliding, but from the long suction pipes of the dredging machines, pulling up the lagoon bed and spitting out wet sand that will be used in the construction of high-rise blocks, housing estates and flyovers.

Sand dredging is regulated by the Lagos state government and the waterways authority but in a city of more than 20 million people, where sharp sand has never been in higher demand, not all dredging is being done by the book.

Dredging leaves its mark on the landscape along the shores of the Lagos Lagoon in Epe

Senior climate figures warn North Sea drilling would encourage fossil fuel exploitation by developing countries

Opening new oil and gas fields in the North Sea would “send a shock wave around the world”, imperilling international climate targets, undermining the UK’s climate leadership and encouraging developing countries to exploit their own fossil fuel reserves, experts have warned.

The UK government is under stiff pressure from the oil industry, the Conservatives, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, some trade unions and parts of the Treasury to give the green light to new oil and gas fields, despite clear evidence that doing so would not cut prices and would have almost no effect on imports.

Exclusive: Former UN climate chief to co-chair Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality

• What are the health impacts of sea-level rise, and who should pay?

• Christiana Figueres: Sea-level rise is a health crisis and we must hold polluters accountable

Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.

Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.

Awarded to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, other recipients include S Shakthidharan, Adam Ehrlich Sachs and Kei Miller

British novelist Gwendoline Riley is among eight writers set to receive $175,000 (£130,000) each in recognition of their life’s work.

Australian playwright S Shakthidharan, known as Shakthi, is also among those selected for this year’s Windham-Campbell prizes, which award $1.4m annually to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, with the aim of enabling them to focus on their work free from financial pressures.

Record high set on Monday and raised on Tuesday, with 14.4GW of electricity generated in sunny spring weather

Britain’s sunny spring weather powered the grid to new solar energy records on two consecutive days this week.

Solar farms in England, Wales and Scotland generated 14.1GW of low-carbon electricity at lunchtime on Monday, surpassing the previous high of 14GW in July last year.

Cheryl Bartley is charged with gross negligence manslaughter after 2023 death of Robert Smith, 61

A woman has been charged with manslaughter after a man died during a baptism ceremony in Birmingham.

Robert Smith, 61, from Brixton, south London, drowned during the ceremony, which took place at a home in Slade Road, Erdington, in 2023. The ceremony, which involved a paddling pool in a back garden, was filmed and livestreamed, with a congregation of about a dozen people looking on.

High of 26.5C recorded in Kew Gardens in south-west London but rain and cooler conditions are on the way

Temperatures soared in parts of the UK as the country recorded its warmest day of the year so far – and one of the hottest April days in the last 80 years.

A high of 26.5C (79.7F) was recorded in Kew Gardens, in south-west London, on Wednesday, the Met Office said. It was the hottest day recorded in the first half of April since 1946, according to the forecaster.

Local school closes in Daejeon city as hundreds of emergency service and military personnel scour area around O-World theme park where the wolf escaped from

Authorities are hunting for a wolf after it escaped from a zoo in Daejeon, a South Korean city with a population of 1.5million.

More than 300 people – including firefighters, police and military personnel – are taking part in the search operation, an official from the Daejeon fire headquarters said.

White House says only person committing war crimes is actor ‘for his awful movies and terrible acting ability’

The long-running war of words between George Clooney and the White House has ignited again after the Oscar-winning actor criticised Donald Trump’s threat to Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight”.

On Wednesday, in a speech to 3,000 high school students in Cuneo, Italy, Clooney said the US president had committed a war crime with his threat.

New York architect admits to murdering eight women, whose remains were mostly found along Long Island’s coast

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Rex Heuermann, a Long Island architect accused of seven murders known as the Gilgo Beach killings dating back to 1993, pleaded guilty on Wednesday – and added an eighth murder to his gruesome tally.

Heuermann, who has been held in custody since he was arrested on a Manhattan street in July 2023, appeared in court in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, and changed his plea to guilty in the murders of women whose remains were found years after they disappeared.

PM says ban will come into force in January if it is backed by parliament and calls for united action across EU

Greece has announced a social media ban for under-15s from 1 January, with the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, citing rising anxiety, sleep problems and the addictive design of online platforms – although he acknowledged it may incur the wrath of some children.

“We have decided to go ahead with a difficult but necessary measure: ban access to social media for children under 15 years old,” he said in a TikTok video intended to address a young audience.

Situation still volatile as Tehran and Washington issue conflicting messages about opening of Hormuz channel

A plunge in the oil price, stock market rally and renewed hopes for the global economic outlook. After the announcement of a two-week ceasefire in the Iran war, the relief in financial markets was palpable. But it is far from absolute.

For the past six weeks, the economic damage had been steadily mounting, as the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz by Tehran triggered the worst energy crisis of the modern era.

Struggling pubs reel from rising business rates, wages and energy bills, with customers at limit of what they will pay

Nick Evans is staring in vain at columns of numbers, trying to make them add up to a profit. He is a co-owner of the Old Crown Coaching Inn in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, a pub and hotel whose rich history is etched into its crooked wooden beams and cosy snugs.

Oliver Cromwell stayed here in 1645. A room believed to have been used by the notoriously severe “hanging judge” Lord Jeffreys to condemn rebels now stages happier encounters: it is the honeymoon suite.

AI company says purpose of its Claude Mythos model is to bolster defenses against hacking in common applications

Anthropic on Tuesday said its yet-to-be-released artificial intelligence model called Claude Mythos has proven keenly adept at exposing software weaknesses.

Mythos has laid bare thousands of vulnerabilities in commonly used applications for which no patch or fix exists, prompting the San Francisco-based AI startup to form an alliance with cybersecurity specialists to bolster defenses against hacking and withhold wide distribution.

Expert stresses importance of staying alert for unusual activity, as hackers could ‘take you to fake sites’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Russian hackers are exploiting commonly sold internet routers to harvest information for espionage purposes, the UK’s cybersecurity agency has said.

The hack could allow attackers to obtain users’ credentials, redirect them to fake sites, and potentially access other devices on their home network such as phones and PCs, said Alan Woodward, a professor at the University of Surrey.

Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page flirt their way through expected genre tropes in a watchable, if a little unspecific, slice of formulaic fantasy

You, Me & Tuscany is a perfectly wholesome and harmless meet-cute that starts by asking: “What if the Little Mermaid had a Lady and the Tramp-style hookup with the season one heart-throb from Bridgerton, spaghetti and all?”

Halle Bailey is Anna, hopelessly navigating life after the death of her mother, torn between the worlds of adult responsibility and inner child whimsy. A freelance hustle as a house sitter helps make ends meet, but her impulse to fully inhabit her clients’ lives constantly threatens her livelihood. A gig watching over a spectacular Central Park West apartment seems out of a dream. But it quickly goes awry when the lady of the house (Nia Vardalos in a sly cameo) returns early and catches Anna cosplaying as a Park Avenue princess in her premium lingerie. Embarrassed, Anna retreats into the arms of her bestie Claire (Aziza Scott of One of Them Days), the luxury hotel clerk whose barbed sisterly advice is well worth enduring for the one-liners and the potential discount on a short-term residency.

As the Artemis II astronauts return from the moon, we celebrate the science, suits and spirit of endeavour that took them there, all brought together in a colourful new book called Space Journal

Succession meets The Borrowers in The Miniature Wife. Plus: Jane McDonald heads to Nashville seeking musical inspiration. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic

The star’s fame, reckoning and resurrection are examined in this nuanced three-parter. It speaks to those who were closest to Jackson but can a story of such wild extremes really be told from the middle ground?

In what way, exactly, is Michael Jackson an “American tragedy”? Does the tragedy to which the title of this three-part BBC documentary refers concern the downfall of the most famous man on the planet into financial ruin, addiction and disgrace? Or does it belong to the children who alleged – and continue to allege – that Jackson sexually abused them? Is it about the bottomless need of a child star who craved the love of an abusive father so desperately he tried to fill the void with the adulation of millions of fans? Is it the sacrifice of a genius at the altar of the brutal music industry? Or is it an American tragedy about race?

As far as Michael Jackson: An American Tragedy is concerned, it’s all of the above, and then some. “The tragedy was that this man who got more attention than any human being was still so utterly lonely,” says Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Jackson’s former spiritual adviser. For childhood friend Michelle Breger, seeing Jackson whiten his skin in the late 1980s was “heartbreaking – Michael was trying to erase something off his face”. For prosecutor Ron Zonen, the tragedy is that the might of the Jackson machine won out over justice: “I felt it was remarkably obvious that he was molesting children.”

In Netflix’s Trust Me: The False Prophet, documentarians in disguise help bring down a cult leader now serving a 50-year sentence

Film-making effects change. Director Rachel Dretzin, a former investigative journalist for Frontline, will testify to that.

“These films that I’m making,” says Dretzin, “that other documentarians are making, are often more effective than the legal system at effecting change; psychological change and also sometimes systemic and criminal change.”

Don’t be fooled by the lighter tone of Margaret Atwood’s follow-on. June’s daughter is now grown up in Gilead, where daily horrors are still in full swing – and Aunt Lydia is back

I had to give up on the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale quite early on – the mass mock execution scene did for me – because it was too relentlessly bleak, too full of dread, too awful, too true. Margaret Atwood’s future-dystopia tale, published in 1985, drew on nothing that had not already occurred in totalitarian and tyrannical regimes around the world. Translated to the screen, the visceral terror of it all was almost too much from the very beginning.

Now, the sequel Atwood published in 2019, The Testaments, has come for us, created by The Handmaid’s Tale’s showrunner, Bruce Miller. Brace yourselves.

Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
There is something eternally teenage about the trailblazing rocker, who can still deliver at her glam-era best – but her rambling reminiscences are a bit Alan Partridge

Suzi Quatro has a confession. At 75, age has taken its toll, she tells the Glasgow crowd. She has lost an inch in height and is now 5ft 1in. “But,” she grins, “I can still scream just as loud.” Proof comes during 48 Crash. It is a thrilling noise, the Suzi Q scream, a holler of swallow-the-world desire and a defining sound of the glam era. She has been screaming like that since she was a kid playing dance halls around Detroit. There is something eternally teenage about her, an innocent in black leather, so that even when she covers Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World, towards the end of the first of two sets, she drains the song of anger and floods it with galvanising sincerity.

While the opening hour is entertaining and well paced, the second, longer set is a mess of lesser material, tedious solos and drawn-out introductions of her eight-piece band. Worst is the stretch in which Quatro runs through her career with the aid of pictures: “Fifteen years on BBC Radio 2. I was up for broadcaster of the year at the Sony Radio awards.” Ever wondered what it would be like if Alan Partridge delivered a PowerPoint in the middle of a rock gig? Not great.

From Sleep Token to Ghost and Slaughter to Prevail, the genre’s biggest stars are using freaky facial disguises. Are they hiding behind them – or revealing their true nature?

When US avant garde metal band Imperial Triumphant decided that their image needed a shake-up in 2015, they considered putting on corpse paint, the ghastly makeup popularised by 90s black metal. But, their singer/guitarist Zachary Ezrin says, they then realised how much effort it would take – and how uncool the post-gig rituals would feel: “You just rocked a show, and now you have to sit backstage and wipe off your makeup.” (Perish the thought of being the average female pop star.)

They instead chose to wear striking gold masks modelled after 1920s art deco architecture, though these brought their own problems when they got lost in transit. “We had to do one show where Steve [Blanco, bass] was wearing a new mask that we put together from parts. We went to some Hungarian costume shop and just started grabbing stuff and piecing it together.”

When the singer-songwriter and Sufjan Stevens collaborator became gravely ill, he had to learn to walk, talk, hear, play and sing again. Music – and a love of antique instrumentation – helped him rebuild

On Halloween 2022, Angelo De Augustine was at home in Los Angeles when he suddenly collapsed. “I got all these strange sensations and knew something was very wrong,” says the 33-year old singer-songwriter. “Then I lost control of my body.” Luckily, he had family around who were able to rush him to hospital, where he was put through days of exhausting tests. “I was conscious most of the time unfortunately,” he says drily, “but I don’t remember a whole lot about it other than I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see well and I couldn’t really move.” Despite countless explorations, doctors were unable to offer a concrete diagnosis, and eventually sent him home. “They said, ‘Come back if you go completely deaf or blind.’”

Reeling and semi-incapacitated, De Augustine had just one thought: to finish Toil and Trouble, the album he had been making for the preceding year. “Nobody was helping and I didn’t think I would survive the illness,” he admits. “I couldn’t do basic tasks like lift things, but I’d worked so hard I didn’t want to leave it incomplete. As far as I was concerned, I wanted to get it finished and then thought I was probably gonna die.”

The Whole New World composer who soundtracked millennial childhoods and won eight Oscars looks back on a stellar career

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In early 1991, the composer Alan Menken took a keyboard to St Vincent’s hospital in New York to visit his friend and creative partner, the lyricist Howard Ashman. Ashman was in the final stages of Aids-related illness, but was determined to finish his work on Disney’s Aladdin. Together, they knocked out the music and lyrics for Prince Ali – one of the movie’s most joyous numbers – as Ashman lay in bed.

Menken and Ashman had already collaborated on Disney’s hit 1989 animated musical The Little Mermaid; in the winter of 1991, they were putting the finishing touches on Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast simultaneously. Ashman was “fighting for his life” while they were working on all three, Menken recalls from his home studio in upstate New York. At first, he had no idea his friend was sick, let alone battling HIV; Ashman only revealed his diagnosis after they won the Oscar for best original song for Under the Sea in 1990.

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos

In Venice, authorities tried to enforce social distancing by closing all the bars, and banning the sale of wine by merchant boats plying the canals. In Gloucester, the powers that be attempted to lock down the city by banning anyone travelling to and from Bristol, 40 miles south. But fights broke out among thirsty Italians, and Gloucester’s quarantine was broken – whether it was by people simply going on a trip to check their eyesight has, alas, gone unrecorded. In London, there was a dramatic rise in the sale of personal protective equipment, in the form of gloves.

The story of the Black Death, as historian Thomas Asbridge shows in this magisterial survey, contains many such echoes of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it also shows just how relatively lucky we were a few years ago. The plague was far more lethal, and in the areas it spread between 1346 and 1353 it killed half the population. About 100m died: it was, Asbridge remarks, “the most lethal natural disaster in human history”. If a pathogen with a similar case fatality rate were to erupt worldwide today, billions might die.

Sex, booze and subterfuge in the story of an extraordinary friendship at the heart of MI6

At the Café Royal in Regent Street in 1944 three intelligence officers bent over their plates while Europe held its breath. Outside, London braced for D-day. Inside, Graham Greene announced that he was resigning from MI6.

Kim Philby, his chief in Section V, MI6’s counterespionage arm, blinked. Educated at Westminster, converted to communism at Cambridge and by then securely installed as Moscow’s man at the heart of the British establishment, he had helped orchestrate the deception on which Operation Overlord depended, persuading Hitler that the allies would land at Calais rather than Normandy. Greene had played his part in tending the illusion. Yet here he was, strolling off-stage before the curtain rose.

A new book by Molly Crabapple documents the rise and fall of a revolutionary Jewish party that fought against Zionism and for ‘solidarity across difference’

There is perhaps no more vivid illustration of the moral nadir Israel has reached than the Knesset’s passage, two days before Passover, of a death penalty law that applies only to Palestinians. The measure, whose approval was greeted with tears of joy and the popping of champagne in the legislative chamber, is a concise legal expression of the core animating idea of modern Israel: that there exists no humane obligation in Jewish tradition with a durable universal ambit. The notion that Jews should have a special concern for the fate of all humanity, regardless of ethnicity or creed, lies dead beneath the rubble in Gaza.

It had to be killed, however, because there was a time when it lived. Cosmopolitanism over nationalism, social democracy over rapacious capitalism, collective liberation over ethno-chauvinist fortress-building – these were the values that animated the Jewish Labour Bund, a revolutionary party founded in 1897 in the Tsarist empire. “For leftist Jews longing for resources within our own past for combating the Zionist death cult,” as author, activist and artist Molly Crabapple puts it, “the Bund is a model.” A model with an audience – Crabapple’s new history of the Bund was already in its second printing the week before it came out.

With echoes of Balzac and Proust, this tale of obsessive love evokes the dangers and delights of forbidden desire

Wayne Koestenbaum has built himself a slow-burn reputation as one of America’s sharpest queer iconoclasts, but the title of his latest novel suggests Netflix-ready realism. Will My Lover, the Rabbi be a sober yet uplifting account of the conflict between religious orthodoxy and forbidden desire? Not a bit of it. The book’s central and anchoring fact – the overwhelming desire of a man who works as an antique furniture restorer for a man who works in a synagogue – is accepted as a given by every single character. The writing, meanwhile, treats all realist convention with a kind of exalted scorn, conjuring the dangers and delights of obsession in prose that is itself unashamedly obsessive – and wonderfully frank when it gets down to the physical details. The result is as fierce and strange as anything you’re going to read this year.

The fierceness begins immediately. All the book’s 188 chapters are short, but the first one comes in at only four lines. Putting both punctuation and vocabulary to tactically unexpected use, it plunges the reader straight into a world of carnality, confusion and bizarrely specific detail. Like all but a handful of the chapters, it also includes the title of the book itself. And as the book proceeds, this reiteration of the title begins to toll like a bell through the architecture of its prose, becoming almost a mantra. Far from being style-for-style’s sake, this insistent and anxious formality is at the heart of the book’s uncanny life; a quite brilliant matching of style to subject.

As real astronauts vanish behind the moon, games have long tried to evoke the fragile quiet of drifting through space

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Last week’s launch of the Artemis II space mission was a stunning spectacle, the 17-storey-high rockets erupting into cacophonous life before wrenching the craft through the Earth’s atmosphere. But the images that have come since hold just as much impact: the tiny Orion craft and its four-person crew drifting silently through space, further and further from home.

In his autobiography, the Apollo astronaut Michael Collins described this feeling perfectly. Left in the command module as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface, he wrote: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.”

From a subtle Princess Peach lip jelly to a Yoshi egg that’s been traumatising children, the cosmetic chain’s latest tie-in is out of this world

When The Super Mario Bros Movie came out in 2023, it came with a rather unlikely tie-in: a range of skincare and bathing products from cosmetics chain Lush. The store, known for its devotion to natural ingredients and support for social justice causes, didn’t seem like the obvious partner for a major video game franchise. Because of this, I thought I should try them out, assuming that my dalliance with beauty journalism would be short-lived.

I was wrong. The collection was so successful, Lush later released a Minecraft range, which I also reviewed, and now there’s a Super Mario Galaxy range to tie in with the new movie. Somehow, I have become the Guardian’s Lush correspondent and it seems I am now trapped in a sweet-smelling cycle of video game-branded toiletries. There are definitely worse fates, so I’m just going with it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was the play that rocked a nation. The makers of the devastating drama, which transported theatre-goers from a Fife pub to a war zone, recall how it grew and grew

Within six months of its launch in 2006, the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) produced a globe-conquering hit. Inspired by tragic events at Camp Dogwood in Iraq, Black Watch was a humane portrayal of young squaddies on the frontline. As a pool table transformed into a tank, the audience were transported from a Fife pub to a war zone where nothing was more heartbreaking than a letter from home.

Vicky Featherstone (founding artistic director): On my first day at NTS in 2004, I bought a Glasgow Herald. On the front page was an article saying Tony Blair was going to get rid of Scotland’s individual regiments and turn them into the Royal Regiment of Scotland. On page three, there was a sad story about three soldiers from the Black Watch regiment who had been blown up by an IED along with an Iraqi translator. In the gap between page one and page three was a story that had to be told. I called up Gregory Burke and said, “Will you follow this story?”

Hampstead theatre, London
Michael Frayn’s cerebral drama of science and conscience returns with urgency – although this production struggles to ignite its emotional core

Paapa Essiedu recently spoke of reviving only those plays that speak to the present moment. Michael Frayn’s 1998 drama could not better fit that bill. A dangerous hard-right politician who threatens to wipe out an entire civilisation sits at the heart of this three-hander about pioneering atomic physics caught in the warp of political violence and warfare.

It is based on a real life meeting in 1941 between the Danish Niels Bohr (Richard Schiff) and the German Werner Heisenberg (Damien Molony), both brilliant quantum scientists on opposite sides during the second world war. The raging leader here is Hitler but echoes of Donald Trump could not be more resounding, given his recently expressed fantasy of genocide in his war with Iran.

Sadler’s Wells, London
This parody of courting rituals brings back its inaugural dancers 48 years on – ghosting their onstage choreography with footage of their younger selves, for a moving look at the passing of time

‘My name is Arthur, Arthur Rosenfeld. I’m nearly 74,” says the self-proclaimed “sprightly old geezer” on stage. “My name is Meryl Tankard. I’m 70,” says the woman next to him. Josephine, 76; Ed, 80; John, 79 … these are some of our dancers this evening, performing live on stage but also accompanied by the ghosts of their younger selves.

Kontakthof is the dance that keeps on giving. Created by the late Pina Bausch, German dance-theatre doyenne, in 1978, it’s set in a dance hall to songs of the 1930s. The piece is an oddly affecting parody of courting rituals and friction between the sexes – petty cruelties, intimidation, questions of consent. Like the nature documentary that briefly plays in the second half, it’s a detached observation of our species’ strange behaviour.

Kontakthof has been performed in multiple iterations, most memorably in London in 2010 with two casts, one a group of teenagers, the other a company of nonprofessionals over 65, putting completely different filters of experience on exactly the same steps. This latest version devised by Tankard, however, is special. These eight dancers (a ninth was unable to perform this evening) are all members of the original cast, reunited, dancing their old roles. The backdrop is the film of their 1978 performance, so they are mirrored by the spectres of their younger selves; time folded in on itself.

The sleeper hit film has been transformed into a Disney stage show. But does it let exploitative huckster PT Barnum off the hook? We go behind the scenes of its launch run in Bristol

‘Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve waited for!” Nine years after Hugh Jackman first purred those opening words, silhouetted against a foot-stomping crowd, the inevitable has happened: The Greatest Showman is now a Disney stage musical. Despite derisive reviews, the 2017 film was a sleeper hit, powered by an anthem-packed soundtrack that included the Oscar-nominated paean to self-realisation and resilience This Is Me. It seemed written in the stars that those bangers would be rolled out in a live circus-theatre spectacular, and the production adds new songs by the original composers, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, whose musical Dear Evan Hansen made the opposite (but ill-fated) journey, from stage to screen.

Rather than launching in London or on Broadway as might be expected, The Greatest Showman is premiering in Bristol with an eight-week, sold-out run treated as a tryout. Its future is unconfirmed but it is worth noting that Theatre Royal Drury Lane, former London home to the mighty Frozen, will soon be vacant because Disney’s Hercules is closing in September.

As Artemis II returns from the dark side of the moon, Nasa’s transformations of electromagnetic energy into sound remind us that everything is vibrating – even while the astronauts are listening to Chappell Roan

Jaw-dropping dark-siding exploration aside, it’s the mundane details of the Artemis II mission that connect us with the four astronauts slingshotting their way around the moon and back. The zero-gravity hair, the playing with the microphone when they’re on a call with the President, and the wake-up music that Nasa pipes into their module every orbital morning: a cookie-cutter selection of feelgood choons from Chappell Roan to CeeLo Green.

There are no reports, so far, of Artemis hearing anything like the strange whistling and “outer-space type things” that the dark-siders of the Apollo 10 mission in 1969 documented during the hour that they were out of communication with Earth. Those three men heard an unsettling and unforeseen sound around the other side of the moon that resisted explanation – and inspired conspiracy theories, since the transcript wasn’t made public until 1973. The sound is now known to have been the call-sign of our nearest alien neighbours, the Vum-Jums of planet A4863F.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement announce four shows at Wellington venue Meow Nui from next week – their first gigs since 2018

New Zealand’s self-described “fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo-a cappella-rap-funk-comedy-folk duo” Flight of the Conchords sold out their first shows in eight years in minutes this week, sparking a frenzy among fans.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement formed the musical comedy act in 1998, soaring to worldwide fame off the back of their HBO comedy series of the same name with tunes including Business Time and Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros.

From Bat for Lashes to Brakes and the Pipettes, misfits on the south coast made fearless music amid cheap rents and salty air. Could this ever happen again?

It’s any given night in 2002. We’re at the Free Butt in Brighton, a small pub with a stage and an anything-goes spirit that serves as an extended living room and rite-of-passage workplace for aspiring musicians. Natasha Khan – not yet Bat for Lashes, still a Brighton University art student – is dancing on top of the bar while Yeah Yeah Yeahs are tearing through their first UK tour. Guy McKnight, the lead singer of the brutally underrated Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, has just finished pulling pints, his day job when he’s not the city’s greatest frontman. Steve Ansell of Cat on Form, soon to form Blood Red Shoes, is the in-house sound engineer. Joe Mount from Metronomy is watching this week’s buzziest local support band. The atmosphere is charged with the feeling that anyone in the room might be about to become someone known beyond our city’s limits. Often, they did.

In the early 2000s, music scenes tended to have stories that bands and media could rally around: a shared silhouette, a signature sound, a shaped mythology. New York City gave us the Strokes and Interpol with their tight black denim and wiry riffs; Libertines-era London had its own sticky churn of style, press and parties. Yet Brighton was rarely described as a scene, despite being home to Nick Cave and Paul McCartney and hothousing a surge of remarkable young talent that’s still thriving more than 20 years later. In this seaside enclave, rock bands sounded and looked so unlike each other, they never needed to jostle for a single narrow lane.

Jasveen Sangha had pleaded guilty last year to selling the Friends actor a fatal dose of the drug

Jasveen Sangha, who pleaded guilty last year to selling a fatal dose of ketamine to actor Matthew Perry, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday.

Known as the “Ketamine Queen”, Sangha was the fifth defendant to take a plea deal and admit guilt in the case and received the harshest sentence. Federal prosecutors had asked for the 15-year sentence for her role in Perry’s death and that of another individual, citing the “far-reaching scope of defendant’s illegality [and] her callous response to the deaths she helped cause”.

In the sparsely populated Queen Charlotte Sound, tourists can accompany the skipper-come-postman as parcels are dropped off via the scenic route. No heart rate check required

For a travel destination famous for offering the adrenaline rush of extreme sports, from bungee jumping to the parachute drop, it’s an unlikely tourist activity – but an irresistible one. If you’re travelling in New Zealand, don’t miss out on the chance to deliver the mail. By boat.

It happens in the Queen Charlotte Sound, part of the Marlborough Sounds in the stretch of water that separates New Zealand’s North and South Islands. For over 160 years, New Zealand Post has ensured the handful of families who live on the bays and inlets of the sound receive the same mail service as every other resident of the country, no matter that they live in isolated homes accessible only by boat. Six days a week, the mailboat leaves from Picton, the skipper doubling as postman for the three- or four-hour voyage – and these days passengers can come along for the ride.

A rather pastoral feel accompanies this week’s simple recipe for a nutty chocolate cake

Having been kept waiting for three hours, Dick Dewy leaves Miss Fancy Day snipping and sewing her blue dress. The plan is that he will return for her a quarter of an hour later, however, Dick convinces himself that he has been scandalously trifled with by Fancy and decides that, to punish her, he will not return. Instead, he leaps over the gate, pushes up the lane for two miles, takes a winding path called Snail-Creep, and crawls through the opening to the hazel grove in Grey’s Wood.

Our seasoned traveller braved obstacles and mud to put the best cabin bags to the test – from hard-shell to budget, wheeled to lightweight

• The best travel pillows, tested

Let’s start by saying that if you can avoid taking a flight, that would be best. Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global carbon emissions – and the levels released by aircraft could double or triple by 2050.

Regrettably, you can’t always reach your destination by rail, sea or hot-air balloon. If flying is unavoidable, one way to reduce your carbon footprint is to take a cabin bag, rather than hold luggage. This encourages you to pack less, so your baggage is lighter, and less fuel is required to spirit it through the stratosphere. If that doesn’t move you, consider that you’ll also pay lower fees to the airline.

Best cabin bag overall:
July Carry On luggage

Best budget cabin bag:
Tripp Holiday 8 cabin suitcase

Whether you’re searching for volume, length or waterproof warpaint, we tested 40 mascaras (and applied up to 40 coats) to find the best for your makeup bag

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

If you were allowed to pick only one makeup item to use for the rest of your life, what would you choose? Without a doubt, mine would be mascara. It’s the most transformative beauty staple. Defining your lashes has literally eye-opening results, making them appear bigger and brighter.

If the questions I’ve been asked as a beauty editor are anything to go by, even those who consider themselves low-maintenance usually own a mascara: requests for mascara recommendations are by far the most common. It seems no one is immune to how effortlessly eye-framing a few coats can be.

Best mascara overall:
Lancôme Lash Idôle Curl Goddess mascara

Best budget mascara:
L’Oréal Paris Extensionist Telescopic Mascara

From bouclé and bomber to quilted, suede and multiwear, our jacket edit will lift the mood – and have you ready for the most changeable of seasons

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

Spring is the most confusing season when it comes to fashion. Mornings can be grey and drizzly, but come the afternoon, the sun may be shining like it’s August. A trusty spring jacket will help you navigate the forecast and the transition into the warmer months.

The perfect spring jacket is lighter in weight and often softer in colour than a winter one. Taking inspiration from the flowers, greenery and lush landscapes these months bring is a great way to add joy to your everyday. A pastel-coloured jacket can instantly make your outfit feel more seasonally appropriate, too. Leaving behind the warm embrace of your puffer isn’t easy, and I love a classic black coat, but neither seems fitting on a bright April morning.

Our expert spills the beans (sorry) on everything you need to know about coffee. Plus, chefs on cooking the perfect roast and Jess Cartner-Morley’s April essentials

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The Filter recently did its very first live reader Q&A, where you had the chance to serve up your deepest, darkest roasted questions about coffee. There were so many that we didn’t have time to answer them all on the day. I’ve enlisted the help of Ben Young over at Craft House Coffee in Sussex to put some of your more challenging questions to his team in the roastery.

Many of you just wanted to know how to make better coffee – and without spending big money. Several readers professed their love of the moka pot, wanting to know the optimal technique. “Start with boiling water and lower the temperature once coffee starts flowing,” advises Ben. “As soon as you see any signs of bubbling or spurting, take it off the heat and cool the base to stop the brewing process.”

Jess Cartner-Morley’s April style essentials: fancy brollies, Biscoff eggs and the perfect holiday dress

Scrimp on moisturiser, splurge on serum: the secrets of a great skincare routine

The nine best bean-to-cup coffee machines in the UK, tried and tested

How to wear a quarter-zip jumper without looking like a finance bro (and 14 of the best)

‘Rich, indulgent and full of flavour’: the best hot chocolate, tasted and rated

A creative way to use the core, leaves and all so that not one part of the cauli gets left behind

This recipe, adapted from one in my cookbook, is a very elaborate way to serve humble cauliflower cheese. The whole plant, including the leaves and core, is seasoned with nutmeg and roasted, and it’s then dressed with a satisfying layer of rich cheese sauce and grilled until charred and bubbling. Choose a cauliflower with plenty of leaves, because they go deliciously crisp when roasted.

Chips, fish fingers, pizza … restaurant food for children is depressingly predictable. Are there more adventurous options? I took my four-year-old daughter on a month-long mission to find out

We’re heading out for dinner. Before I tell my four-year-old where we’re going, she has already announced that she’s going to have fish, chips and lots of ketchup. It sounds delicious; a classic. But there’s the irksome feeling that the intrepid impulses of childhood should be met with food that expands palates rather than feeding into the well-trodden path to a beige meal.

My guilt is only slightly assuaged by the ungenerous thought that maybe I can lay some blame at other people’s feet. Namely – as if it hasn’t got enough on its plate already – the hospitality industry. A certainty of fish and chips hasn’t come from nowhere – so often, regardless of the type of restaurant, kids’ menus have the same fodder.

Freeze, dry or pulse past-their-best rosemary, thyme and more, to use in anything from bread or potatoes to chilled yoghurt soup

What can I do with herbs that are past their best?
Joe, by email
Happily, Joe and his on-the-turn herbs aren’t short of options. “The obvious choice for hard herbs is to chuck them in a sandwich bag and freeze them for future stock-making,” says Alice Norman, founder of regenerative bakery Pinch in Suffolk. Alternatively, Sami Tamimi, author of Boustany, would be inclined to dry his excess herbs. In summer, he’d simply pop them on a tray and put them outside in the sun, but right now he “dries them in a 60-70C oven, then packs in containers, ready for the next time you’re short of fresh herbs”.

Norman’s current MO is to blitz languishing herbs (“rosemary and/or thyme work best”) with a 3:4 ratio of fine salt. “You don’t want too many herbs, because that will throw off the moisture content and turn the mix black, but you need enough for the blades to catch and break down the rosemary properly.” Pulse until fine, then store in an airtight jar in the fridge (where it’ll keep for a month or so). “That can be used for so many things, from seasoning game to roast potatoes, and it works particularly well in bread.” To which end, take any focaccia recipe, boost it with mashed potato and replace the required salt with the herby salt: “The potato helps retain moisture, while the rosemary salt adds fragrance.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Serve this over sticky rice, to soak up all those spicy, buttery juices

The classic combination of soy sauce and honey salmon is a staple in our house, and works for kids and adults alike. However, sometimes I want to change things up, so here I’ve elevated it slightly with a gochujang dressing – similar principle, but with a bit of heat and depth, as well as richness from the butter. Using butter might seem unusual, but it is often paired with soy sauce in Japan (shoyu butter) with an indulgent result. Serve the fish over sticky rice, to soak up all those spicy, buttery juices, with steamed greens on the side.

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

Experts weigh in on why some people have an inexplicable barrier to responding – and what they can do about it

“There’s no such thing as a bad texter. They just don’t want to respond,” said influencer Delaney Rowe last year on the online talkshow Subway Takes. “People go around thinking being a bad texter is like a pathology, but it’s not. It’s a cop-out.”

“I don’t believe in bad texters,” announced radio host Dan Zolot last year. “If you want to answer you will answer.”

After I collapsed during a run along a beach, my loyal dog Beau sprang into action

When I lost my wife, Jo, to cancer eight years ago, I knew it was time for a fresh start, so I packed up my London home and moved to Poole on the Dorset coast. I longed for a companion, so I welcomed a labrador puppy into my life, naming him Beau in a nod to the time Jo and I had spent living in France.

A gun dog from Derbyshire with a sleek black coat and deep brown eyes, Beau was an adorable and mischievous puppy who kept me on my toes right from the start. When he was six months old, he rummaged in a fisherman’s bucket and swallowed a fishing line and hook. Thankfully, it came out the other end, narrowly avoiding surgery.

Japan’s ban on married couples having different surnames has prompted an event to highlight people’s reluctance to change their name

At the very least, the three men and three women calming their nerves on a Friday evening at a venue in Tokyo know they have one thing in common.

Spaced out across booths, they will soon be placed in pairs and given 15 minutes to get to know one another.

Before Miguel, Sandra’s sex life was rather vanilla. When they got together, he suggested swinging – and all that changed

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I never thought, when I was a pregnant Catholic teenager, that I’d have this lifestyle, but my God, it’s fun

She can’t get enough of hearing about my hook-ups, and I can’t get enough of the fact that she can’t get enough

More than 80% of the UK’s tradespeople have had tools stolen. Some have lost months of work as a result. With thefts up 16% in a year, can the police and the government do anything to protect them?

If you’re on social media and have even a passing interest in home improvement, there’s a good chance you will have seen Kevin Tingley’s work. The 39-year-old decorator is known as Paint Warrior – and has millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram. He’s in demand, highly skilled, generous in sharing tips from his many years of experience and even has his own range of products on sale in the UK and the US.

But even with his social media army and branded brushes, he’s still not immune to the biggest threat faced by British tradespeople: tool theft. “It was Boxing Day morning,” Tingley says. “I was still in bed, my wife was on her way to the gym. She came running back in and told me that all the doors of my van were open.”

Through no fault of their own, she faces repaying £100 a month until she is 93 or face legal action

My 66-year-old mother has been told that she has been overpaid her civil service pension by £40,000 and must repay it, or face legal action. Once the tax she’s paid on the income is deducted, she owes £32,000.

Her monthly pension payments have now been cut, which means her annual income will fall from £19,700 to £12,000, and she was, additionally, ordered to repay £496 a month for five years. This was later reduced to £100 a month, and a charge was put on her house as security. She’s been told she will have paid everything she owes when she’s 93.

The key takeaways for who is eligible and how to seek redress from the new FCA motor finance scheme

Complain now to be at the front of the queue. That is the message from the City regulator and the consumer champion Martin Lewis as a scheme gets under way to pay out about £7.5bn in total to millions of motorists mis-sold car loans.

More information emerged this week about how much money the different categories of people might get and how it will all work after Monday’s announcement that an industry-wide compensation scheme for victims of the UK’s car finance scandal is definitely going ahead.

From a 300-year old building in the heart of ‘cheddar cheese and cider’ country, to a newly renovated smallholding in an area of outstanding natural beauty

Data on almost 28,000 patients suggests understanding gene variations could improve treatments for obesity

Scientists have discovered how genetics may help explain why weight-loss jabs work better for some people than others.

Variations in two genes involved in gut hormone pathways, which regulate appetite and digestion, may help account for different weight-loss results or side-effects when taking glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP1) medicines.

It sends us to sleep and wakes us in the night, excites us and depresses us, gives us confidence one moment, anxiety the next. How does this messy drug wield so much power?

Whatever you think of alcohol, you have to admit that it’s versatile. Ever since the first humans started smashing up fruit and leaving it in pots to chug a few days later, we’ve been relying on it to celebrate and commiserate, to deal with anxiety and to make us more creative. We use it to build confidence and kill boredom, to get us in the mood for going out and to put us to (nonoptimal) sleep. Where most mind-altering substances have one or two specific use-cases, alcohol does the lot. That’s probably why it’s been so ubiquitous throughout human history – and why it can be so hard to give up entirely.

“We often call alcohol pharmacologically promiscuous,” says Dr Rayyan Zafar, a neuropsychopharmacologist from Imperial College London. “It doesn’t just calm you: it can stimulate reward pathways, dampen threat signals, release endogenous opioids that can relieve pain or stress, alter decision-making and shift mood, all at the same time.”

Oxford team’s technology picked up danger signs with 86% accuracy in study of 72,000 patients in England

Oxford scientists have developed a simple AI tool that can predict the risk of heart failure five years before it develops.

More than 60 million people worldwide have the condition in which the heart cannot pump blood around the body as well as it should. Spotting cases before they develop into heart failure would be a big step forward, experts say. Doctors could prepare better for and manage the condition at an earlier stage or even prevent it entirely.

Scientist who established productive growth of HIV in an immortalised cell line, which led to the development of the UK’s first antibody test for the virus

The virologist Robin Weiss, who has died aged 86, was the outstanding scientist of the UK’s response to the Aids pandemic. In 1984 he led the team that identified the CD4 molecule as the cellular receptor for HIV, the causative virus of Aids. Subsequently he established productive growth of HIV in an immortalised cell line, and this allowed the development, with Richard Tedder, of the UK’s first antibody test for HIV, later commercialised by the Wellcome Foundation.

Critically, this test allowed HIV-infected people to be identified accurately and at scale. Robin was the first to demonstrate antibody neutralisation of HIV, a fundamental basis to vaccine development. These major scientific advances were all achieved while Robin was the youngest-ever director (1980-89) of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London.

At last … creative perfumes at half the cost of most niche fragrances, with a wide range of beautifully balanced options

The business of modern perfumery can stink. While I accept that the cost of everything is now troubling, large sections of the niche fragrance sector seemingly pluck their prices from the sky. It’s not unusual for a bottle costing £300-odd to launch without any accompanying explanation as to why. An unknown name, a needlessly quirky bottle, an egregious price tag – all serve to underline the assertion that this is a “niche” fragrance for people who take their scents seriously, who should be too in the know to question its calibre.

And so when I see a brand doing things honestly, authentically and with great care, I must give due credit. Essential Parfums is new to John Lewis (and available directly from the brand online) and its aim is to democratise creative perfumery. What this means in practice is an open brief to perfumers, who include such big hitters as Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo; their total creative freedom; sustainable and mostly natural ingredient sourcing, development and manufacturing processes (using biotech, simple refillable bottles and cardboard packaging containing no glue or plastic); and a fair price – around £86 for a whopping 100ml, which, millilitre for millilitre, is less than half the cost of a pretty average designer fragrance enjoying little of the same treatment, and about a quarter of some of the nonsense I’m pitched regularly.

Scottish designers are showcased alongside a backstage set and props including a Chanel-branded megaphone

In 1971, Manolo Blahnik created shoes for the designer Ossie Clark’s catwalk show in London. Relatively new to shoemaking, the Spanish designer forgot to put steel pins in the heels of the shoes, which meant that models wobbled, unbalanced, down the catwalk. Blahnik thought it was the end of his career. But the press thought it was a deliberate style; the photographer Sir Cecil Beaton even christened it “a new way of walking”.

The sandal in question, a green suede heel with ivy leaf embellishments, is just one treasure currently on display at the V&A Dundee’s new exhibition, Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show, which helps bring to life more than 100 years of history, charting its journey from the discreet salons of 19th-century London and Paris all the way up to the extravaganza it is today.

Fabric that once defined Northern Ireland’s capital is at heart of its stylish revival, embraced by designers, royalty and heritage farmers alike

On a cobbled street in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, next door to a hipster coffee shop and opposite an ice-cream parlour that has a near-constant queue since going viral on TikTok, the elegant Kindred of Ireland boutique is doing a surprisingly brisk trade in artfully oversized butter yellow linen blouses and exquisite Donegal mulberry tweed jackets finished with a length of rose pink linen tied in a bow at the nape of the neck.

Half a century after the Troubles, Belfast is finding a new identity through an industry that once defined it. Linen – the fibre that built its wealth and earned it the name Linenopolis – is being woven into a story of renewal. Almost a century after the postwar collapse of an industry that, at its peak, employed 40% of the working population of Northern Ireland, linen is returning as a marker of identity.

The key to stopping pale colours feeling saccharine? Breaking them up with tougher textures – here are three ideas to whip up this weekend from our styling editor

England’s largest forest has an aura reminiscent of parts of Canada or Finland. This year it celebrates its centenary with new trails and dark sky events

Deep in Kielder Forest, on the northern side of the vast Kielder Water stands Silvas Capitalis, a giant, two-storey timber head, one of the most striking of the 20 sculptures tucked between the pines. It’s an eerie sight, almost shocking; its mouth ajar, as if astounded by all it sees. It’s my first visit to Kielder, and my face has been wearing a similar expression since I stepped out of the car at the lakeside trying to take in the scale of the landscapes unfolding around me.

Kielder doesn’t look like England – at least, not the England I know. For a start, it’s vast; 250 sq miles (648 sq km), with 158m trees, mostly sitka spruce conifers planted by hand. And even though it’s a plantation, there’s a wilderness feel that reminds me of Finland or Canada; a great swathe of nature at its most intense. It’s a working forest, involving 500 full-time jobs (not including tourism) and 2026 marks the centenary of the very first plantings, when the UK was in need of timber reserves after the demands of the first world war.

Ancient hill carvings of horses, crosses and crowns have fascinated artists, writers and travellers for centuries. I went in search of their stories

In the churchyard next to Wilmington Priory in East Sussex, I found a yew so ancient and stooped that its trunk had eaten half a gravestone. Its boughs were supported by long poles, a creepy sight that made me shudder. I had come here to see something just as strange, but more benign than this folk-horror vision – the figure of the Long Man of Wilmington on the hillside opposite, on the steep scarp of the South Downs. He treks over the hill, a stave clasped in each hand. Climbing Windover Hill, just beneath the South Downs Way, I saw that while he was once a chalk giant, his lines are now marked with concrete blocks.

The Long Man may be Anglo-Saxon in origin – the shape is similar to the design on a buckle discovered in Kent in 1964 by the archaeologist Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, which probably represents the god Odin (or Woden); but he may be a much later adornment for the hillside, made to be viewed from the priory. His form entranced the photographer Lee Miller and her husband, the artist Roland Penrose, who lived close to the Long Man. Penrose painted a surrealist representation of the Long Man on the inglenook fireplace at Farleys, their home – for them the figure was a protective spirit. It also inspired the composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor, the folk collective the Memory Band, and Benjamin Britten picnicked at its feet.

Under Anne Hidalgo – mayor for 12 years until last week – the French capital added bike lanes, cut traffic and reclaimed public space, but not without resistance

When Corentin Roudaut moved to Paris 10 years ago, he was too scared to cycle. The IT developer had biked everywhere as a student in Rennes but felt overwhelmed by the bustling French capital. Cars were everywhere. Cyclists had almost no protection.

But once authorities carved out space for a segregated bike lane on Boulevard Voltaire near his home in the 11th arrondissement, Roudaut returned to the two-wheel commute and did not look back.

Some of the best under-the-radar attractions across the Channel include steampunk wonders in Calais and the largest collection of impressionist works outside Paris

You don’t need to venture too far into France to find its wow factor. Indeed, within minutes of exiting the ferry or Channel Tunnel, you can be staring a fire-breathing dragon in the face. The Dragon de Calais is a 25-metre-long mechanical beast that stomps along the renovated sea front carrying 48 passengers on its back (adult ticket €9.50), emitting jets of fire, steam and water from its nostrils. It was created by the team behind Les Machines de L’île, a collection of steampunk wonders including a 12-metre elephant, in Nantes.

Larger than any dog, let alone a house cat, the beast swaggered through the Dartmoor mist. My schoolfriends and I were entranced – until the adults who had slept through everything told us we were lying

I was 11, with a handful of friends on a school trip to Dartmoor. We’d set up our tents near the edge of a camp, which was mostly empty.

The first morning, our tent woke before the teachers. We stole out to find another group of boys already on the dewy grass, standing hands in pockets, together in nature. The sun was just coming up. The last of the night-time mist was peeling away.

Rachel Waters gave morphine to her dying mother to ease her in her final hours. Then came the murder charge

Rachel Waters was in her apartment in Queens, watching food reviews on YouTube, when a nurse called: her mother was dying.

She needed to get to the memory care facility in Evans, Georgia, immediately. A physician had said Marsha could die within hours.

Our writer travels to the eastern Andes in search of one of Ecuador’s most elusive birds

I’m out of breath – and not just because I’m desperate to see one of Ecuador’s most elusive birds, the rufous-bellied seedsnipe. To have any chance of success, I’ve come to Cayambe Coca national park in the eastern Andes. At 4,400 metres (14,400 feet), this is the highest altitude I have ever experienced.

Fortunately the skies are clear, the sun is shining, and my guide, Juan Carlos, is optimistic. I don’t tell him I have a track record of missing nailed-on certainties.

Woolton Hill, Hampshire: I visit an old friend in an old haunt, where a small herd of Shetlands has been set to work

Thirty years on from the impassioned action of the road protests, the Newbury bypass soars above us on the old railway embankment. I can’t entirely accept it even now, having been part of the campaign. Today, walking in The Chase, the nature reserve that lies adjacent, the roar of traffic slips into a background hum, aided by other memories I’ve built up here.

Many of those have been with my dearest friend, Sarah. She volunteers as a “cow watcher” for the National Trust, and I’ve come with her as she checks their whereabouts and wellbeing. They are conservation grazers; keeping coarser scrub in check, spreading seed and poaching areas, and encouraging greater biodiversity and plantlife.

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

The Lib Dems’ Sue Miller has spent most of her life trying to reduce the risk of nuclear war. And it’s not going well. Why are so few people talking about non-proliferation, let alone disarmament?

Almost the mildest remark that Sue Miller makes about nuclear weapons is also the scariest: “The last people to take a big interest in any of this were Gordon Brown and Margaret Beckett.” Those people seem such a long way away – Brown, of course, still campaigns valiantly against poverty, and Beckett is a working baroness, but as voices against the global buildup of nuclear arms, theirs are so historical as to be almost nostalgic.

Yet the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ symbolic representation of how near the world is to destroying itself, has never been closer to midnight than it is now: 85 seconds (and this was prior to the current war in Iran). Russia has been making thinly veiled threats of “tactical” use since its invasion of Ukraine, while its drone incursions into Nato nations have “heightened European threat perceptions” (as the bulletin puts it), without those perceptions driving anyone’s thoughts towards nuclear de-escalation, let alone disarmament. Meanwhile, non-nuclear European nations are talking about developing “nuclear latency” – building the ability to develop nuclear capacity at speed.

Sandra Laville has been reporting on England’s sewage crisis for years. She answered your questions on the water privatisation scandal.

Guardian environment correspondent Sandra Laville’s reporting on the sewage crisis in English water has helped to expose a scandal of privatisation that has created a swell of fury across the political divide.

Sandra has now finished answering your questions. Read the Q&A below.

The government has put the cost of renationalising water at £100bn. But this is a disputed figure. Academics working with the People’s Commission on the Water Sector say this figure is ‘serious scaremongering created on biased evidence’ which was paid for by water companies. It is based on the Regulatory Capital Value of companies as determined by Ofwat, not the” true and fair value in law”, which reflects losses from market failures, like the cost of pollution or the monopoly profits taken by shareholders and banks.

The route to renationalisation could come via the system set up legally when the companies were privatised. Under the law companies can be put into special administration if they are unable to pay debts, if they breach licence obligations, such as on sewage pollution, or failing to supply water, and if it is considered in the public interest to do so. Special administration is a form of temporary renationalisation.

This is the million dollar question! While tackling separation across the whole network at once is considered too disruptive and costly, particularly in urban environments, the chartered institute of water and environmental management says moving towards separated systems is their key focus to address urban pollution and storm water sewage releases. New developments, for example, are now mandated to have separate pipes for foul wastewater and surface water run off.

They also want to see the increased use of sustainable drainage systems like water butts, and storage basins for existing properties, to reduce the amount of runoff into the system. Keeping gardens rather than paving them over, and creating so called sponge cities is also key to tackling pollution.

The UK was described as the dirty man of Europe back in the 70s and 80s, due to levels of pollution. For example in coastal towns there were no water treatment plants to treat sewage, raw sewage was just pumped and dumped into the sea. It was only when the EU directives came in that the clean up began. Chief amongst these was the Urban Wastewater directive, the Water Framework directive, and the Bathing Water directive.

Since leaving the EU there have been fears that these pieces of legislation could be watered down. James Bevan, as CEO of the Environment Agency, talked about changing the Water Framework Directive, essentially to make it easier for rivers to pass tests for chemical and biological health. Currently no river is rated as in good overall health under the WFD where rivers have to pass both chemical and biological health tests.

The brassy actor’s performance in Death of a Salesman is the crown jewel in a life spent on stage. He says it could be his last Broadway role

“It’s, like, 10 minutes. I pee, I have a cup of tea, I put the jacket back on and I go out and fight my way to the death.”

The way Nathan Lane describes spending the intermission of Death of a Salesman – the nearly three-hour play in which his character flails and ultimately fails through an epic depression – reflects the actor’s own spirit: practical, lightly fatalistic, artfully hyperbolic and very, very funny. Today he is in fine form, nestled into a corner table in New York’s classic Upper West Side haunt Cafe Luxembourg. When I ask him if Salesman marks his first time performing at the Winter Garden Theatre, he responds without missing a beat: “Yes, except when I took over in Mame.”

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

With Iran and the US agreeing to a two-week conditional ceasefire, we would like to hear how people living, working or travelling in the Middle East have been affected by the conflict.

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

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

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

The US and Iran have agreed to a provisional two-week ceasefire, which includes a temporary reopening of the strait. But maritime traffic through the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman remains affected, with vessels still facing delays, diversions and heightened security risks as the situation evolves.

Maybe you use them to decide what to eat or to help you write text messages. We’d like to hear from you

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are now a part of everyday life.

More and more people are using them to help make decisions in their lives, like sending text messages, deciding what to cook, or navigating relationships.

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

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

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

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