Stefan Golaszewski, the creator of beloved sitcoms Him & Her and Mum, didn’t just draw from his own experience to write about baby loss – he also composed and performed the theme tune

Will Stefan Golaszewski ever tire of watching people unload the dishwasher? “Gosh, you never know – it’s possible,” concedes the creator of beloved BBC sitcoms Him & Her and Mum. For now, however, Golaszewski’s brand of intense social realism remains as meticulous as ever. In his latest series, the quotidian acts that make up a lifetime – replacing the hand soap, leaning on the kitchen counter while folding a slice of ham into your mouth and, of course, unloading said dishwasher – are given just as much screen time as some of the most soul-wrenching experiences imaginable.

Babies (he’s sticking with the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin titles) stars Siobhán Cullen and Paapa Essiedu as mid-30s married couple Lisa and Stephen. We meet them en route to a family function, yet when they arrive Lisa can only face Stephen’s relatives for a few seconds before fleeing the pub. Actually, it’s just one relative: his cousin’s new baby. We soon discover the pair have recently suffered their first miscarriage. Unable to share their grief and disappointment with friends and family, they are forced to rely solely on each other – not ideal considering Stephen’s attempts to comfort Lisa include an offer of a Solero and a trip to feed the ducks. The terror and cruelty of baby loss is all here, but Babies’ portrayal of our collective failure to address it is just as unsettling.

A once robust American anti-war movement is significantly weaker than it was in its heyday. The immensely unpopular war on Iran offers a real opportunity to rebuild it

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress for authorization to use military force in south-east Asia. His resolution passed unanimously in the House, and only two voices dissented in the Senate. As for the public, 77% of Americans said they trusted the government to do what is right, and more than 60% supported war.

It is common today to hear that the US war in Vietnam was unpopular, but it certainly did not begin that way. It took several years, billions of dollars, tens of thousands of deaths, and constant anti-war mobilization before Americans changed their minds.

After the anguish of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s almost unthinkable the US would again send troops to the Middle East – but its president is desperate and narcissistic

Concern is justifiably growing that a cornered Donald Trump will send US ground troops into combat on Iranian soil to avoid being personally and politically humiliated in a war he started, mismanaged and cannot end. Yet such a self-serving escalation, even if ostensibly limited in duration and scope, could itself prove catastrophic for him and the American people. Think what happened in previous US military interventions. In sum, he’s caught in a modern-day catch-22. Pick your own metaphor for dumb. Trump’s stumped, hoist by his own petard, stuck between a rock and a hard place, and up the creek without a paddle. The creek in question is, of course, the strait of Hormuz.

Firmly ensconced in his weird parallel universe, Trump insists the war is all but won, Iran is suing for peace and talks are making good progress. In the real world, Iran is still fighting on all fronts, Israel is still bombing, the strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, and the Iran-allied Houthi militia in Yemen has joined the war, attacking Israel and potentially blocking Red Sea trade routes. The US and Iran have each issued maximalist demands, but there is no sign of actual negotiations. They are even further apart than they were before Trump, egged on by Benjamin Netanyahu, abandoned diplomacy last month. Sometime soon, Trump will be forced to confront the huge gap between what he wants and what’s on offer. At that point he could turn to the troop buildup in the Gulf and order ground attacks.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Emigrating to be with your partner sounds wildly romantic, but what happens when the person is right and the place very much isn’t?

I met my wife in Queensland in 2001. She’s from Bern, but was in Australia to study marine science. She needed help collecting fish for her project, and had heard that I was handy with a spear gun. We hit it off straight away, and began our romance on semi‑deserted islands near the Great Barrier Reef.

We went on to make a life together. My wife liked Australia and eventually got citizenship, but after we had our first son she wanted to be near her family.

Who needs Worthy Farm? From woodland raves and psych freakouts to fell walks and barbecue hoedowns, there’s a festival for everyone this summer. And some of them don’t even require a tent

Download
10 to 14 June, Donington, Leicestershire
If you needed another reminder of the cultural capital currently wielded by the sounds and styles of the early 2000s, witness nu-metal veterans Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park headlining the UK’s biggest rock festival alongside Guns N’ Roses, who continue to fly the flag for Donington’s Monsters of Rock heritage. Further down the poster you’ll find the really adrenalised stuff: Blood Incantation’s cosmic death metal; Drain’s febrile hardcore; and Die Spitz’s peerlessly cool doom-punk hybrid. Huw Baines

These fun, charming little treats are easy and quick to put together – and make for a great Easter activity with kids

Much as I love Easter eggs – and I really do, despite being that irritating person still nibbling away at them at Christmas time – these charming, crunchy little nests full of colourful treasure are up there with hot cross buns as my favourite seasonal produce. Top tip: they’re even easier to make if you enlist a small sous chef or two to help stir the pan!

Prep 20 min
Cook 5 min
Chill 2 hr
Makes About 12

Netanyahu says decision is aimed strengthening Israel’s security along ⁠the northern ⁠frontier; Iran’s parliament speaker says forces ‘are waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire’

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has condemned Israel’s killing of three journalists in Lebanon on Saturday.

On his Telegram, Araghchi said the killings amounted to “targeted assassination” and “flagrant violation of international law”. He said they were a way of silencing “the voices of those who tell the truth”.

Five months after a ceasefire was announced in Gaza, airstrikes are still killing civilians and the humanitarian situation remains dire

There is little left that connects Palestinians in Gaza with their prewar existence. The contours of life have become darker and far more brutal, as if the population has been stripped of its past.

“Drones never stop buzzing overhead, gunfire and shelling continue almost daily and naval boats fire towards fishermen,” said 56-year-old Ahmed Baroud, a father of five displaced in Deir al-Balah.

Fresh attacks on Red Sea shipping would be devastating – but the Iranian proxy has reasons to be cautious

The true significance of the long-awaited entry of Yemen’s Houthis into the Iran war depends on whether the Tehran-backed proxy group is intending to send a few missiles and drones from a distance towards Israel or will instead capitalise on its proximity to the narrow Bab al-Mandab strait to effectively close off the Red Sea to shipping, just as Iran has in effect shut the strait of Hormuz.

The combined effect of both waterways being shut to commercial traffic from countries that neither the Iranians nor Houthis favour would be devastating. Napoleon Bonaparte’s remark that “the policy of a state lies in its geography” has never seemed more apt.

Islamabad is attempting high-wire diplomacy between US and Iran, but Israel could spoil any chance of success

Intensifying Israeli bombing of civilian targets in Iran and an expanding US military force in the Gulf are casting a dark shadow over Pakistan’s hopes of hosting peace talks between Iran and the US.

Pakistan is attempting high-wire diplomacy, using its relative neutrality as a country with good relations with Iran and the US, to provide a venue for negotiations. It is not a player in the Middle East and does not host any American military bases, so it does not bring the baggage of other potential regional mediators.

Pontiff’s unusually pointed comments come after Pete Hegseth’s prayer for violence against enemies ‘who deserve no mercy’

Pope Leo has said God ignores the prayers of leaders who wage war and have “hands full of blood”, in an apparent rebuke to the Trump administration.

The pontiff made the comments on Sunday as thousands of US troops arrived in the Middle East and days after the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, prayed for violence against enemies who deserved “no mercy”.

Exclusive: Health secretary’s pledges in doubt as analysis shows health service will not deliver key improvements

The NHS is set to miss key targets to shorten waiting times for help at A&E, cancer care and planned hospital treatment, leaving millions of patients facing persistently long delays.

The health service in England will not deliver a series of milestone improvements in its performance that ministers demanded it achieve by the time the fiscal year ends on Tuesday, a Guardian analysis of the NHS’s most recent data has found.

Britain wants limits on young people entering country but Europe opposes this as scheme aims to celebrate links

An “emergency brake” could be put on the number of people coming to the UK from Europe as part of a new youth experience scheme, under terms being offered to Britain by EU negotiators

Britain wants an outright cap, but the EU opposes this on the basis that the scheme is supposed to be a positive one aimed at celebrating and preserving links with the EU.

Forthcoming rules mean debilitating conditions may not meet strict ‘severe and lifelong’ criteria, say charities

Hundreds of thousands of severely ill and disabled people making new claims will have their benefits cut if the government assesses that their condition might improve, charities have said.

In April, the health element of universal credit – an extra payment for people assessed as too unwell to work or prepare for work – will be halved to £50 a week and frozen for new claimants unless their condition is found to be terminal or severe and lifelong with no prospect of improvement.

Exclusive: Pubs, restaurants and hotels warn of mounting pressure days before rates rises and higher wage bills take effect

One in five hospitality businesses fear collapse in the next 12 months, according to an industry-wide survey that comes days before rises in tax and employment costs kick in.

From Wednesday, many pub, restaurant and hotel companies face the prospect of a higher bill for business rates paid to their local authority, while an increase in minimum wage thresholds takes effect on the same day.

Nigel Farage has called Tate an ‘important voice’ for young men and held back from criticising his misogynistic views

Reform insiders are becoming increasingly irritated by the party’s association with Andrew Tate and other extreme online celebrities whose views are too toxic for the mainstream voters Nigel Farage needs to win over.

Insiders have revealed that as Reform prepare for power they are trying to end their association with more controversial figures on the right such as Tate, whose extreme and misogynistic content could taint the party’s credibility.

• Croat failed to win a league match as interim head coach

• Spurs hope to name Tudor’s successor in coming days

Tottenham have parted company with Igor Tudor after seven games and 44 days in a desperate attempt to halt their slide towards relegation from the Premier League.

According to the club, the decision was mutually agreed. Tudor took one point from his five league matches to leave Tottenham one point and one place above the bottom three, the final straw coming with last Sunday’s 3-0 home defeat by Nottingham Forest. A previously unthinkable demotion to the Championship would be devastating for prestige and revenues.

Police say seven people sustained ‘serious but not life-threatening injuries’ and they are ‘keeping an open mind about motives’

A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a car struck several pedestrians on one of Derby’s busiest streets.

Derbyshire police said seven people were injured, sustaining “a range of serious but not life-threatening injuries”, in the incident in Friar Gate at about 9.30pm on Saturday. The force said that “contrary to online speculation” there were no deaths.

It said detectives were working alongside officers from counter-terrorism policing but were not yet designating the incident as a terror attack and were “keeping an open mind about the potential motives”.

Attendees at Conservative Political Action Conference express support and concerns amid rift over Trump’s action

Wherever you go, there you are, the saying goes. It was a lesson Donald Trump’s Maga faithful may have been reminded of last week when they gathered in a convention center near Dallas for a revival of the president’s political movement, only to find that there was no escape from the problems it faces.

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is usually a place of optimism, if not, triumph. It was on its stage last year that Elon Musk pumped a chainsaw in the air amid his abortive foray into clear cutting government bureaucracy, and where JD Vance named undocumented immigration as the “greatest threat” facing the United States and Europe. Trump is a regular, regaling the audience with lengthy monologues about his accomplishments.

Model posted picture of herself naked and ‘in her full power’ to celebrate Mother’s Day, before Meta removed it for breaching nudity guidelines

The model Erin O’Connor has spoken out about the need for social media platforms to apply “clearer, more context-sensitive guidelines” after Instagram removed nude photographs she had posted on Mother’s Day, celebrating her heavily pregnant body.

The photos – which have since been reinstated on the platform – were taken in 2014 when O’Connor, who is 48, was eight and half months’ pregnant with her son Albert.

Leonid Radvinsky’s widow has been left with a crucial role in deciding what happens to the business that made her husband a billionaire

Yekaterina Chudnovsky, online biographies say, is a mother-of-four who “enjoys spending time with her family and teaching them the importance of giving back and helping others”. They add that Ukrainian-born Chudnovsky, known as Katie, finds sanctuary in walks on the beach.

In interviews, Chudnovsky has spoken warmly about her commitment to philanthropy, her dedication to supporting cancer research and her work as a lawyer for an unnamed global technology firm. Pornography is never mentioned.

Warner Bros-owned brand’s late arrival to British TV prompts deals for viewers as battle for subscribers heats up

The launch of HBO Max into the increasingly crowded UK television market last week has prompted deals for consumers as former rivals team up amid a slowdown in subscriber growth.

The Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) streaming service hopes a competitive price for direct sign-ups and deals bundling the service through Sky will make it a must-have and not an also-ran, in a British TV ecosystem upended by Netflix 14 years ago.

US release of horror novel Shy Girl cancelled and UK book discontinued after suspected AI use, as publishers feel ‘cold shiver’

Recently, the literary agent Kate Nash started noticing that the submission letters she was receiving from authors were becoming more thorough – albeit also more formulaic.

“I took it as a rise in diligence,” she said. “I thought it was a good thing.”

Aggressive strategy and loss in the trial highlight a problem for tech firms: a widespread distrust of social media companies

When Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, sought to defend itself in the landmark social media addiction lawsuit alleging its products caused personal injury to a young user, it went on the offensive. The mental health problems that the 20-year-old known as KGM suffered since she was a child were not the result of exposure to harm on Instagram, Meta’s lawyers and public relations team argued, but instead linked to her mother’s parenting and her offline social problems.

In a bench memo filed before the trial began, lawyers for Meta quoted excerpts from KGM’s teenage text messages, personal writings and social media posts complaining about her mother. They combed through therapy notes and called on doctors to testify to examples of personal conflict. Throughout the proceedings, Meta’s communications team sent reporters repeated updates from the trial and quotes from testimony that highlighted her familial issues. Far from causing harm, they alleged that Instagram offered a helpful respite from the real world.

The singers and sisters on growing up in west London, finding fame in the 90s and relaunching their music as a duo

Born in Canada, Natalie and Nicole Appleton are singers best known as members of the group All Saints. Raised between Ontario, London and New York, the sisters joined the band in 1996 alongside Shaznay Lewis and Melanie Blatt. After the success of their self-titled 1997 debut and a string of hits including the chart-topping singles Never Ever and Pure Shores, All Saints split in 2001. The sisters released music together as Appleton in 2002, and have since reunited with All Saints for three albums. Appleton’s new single, Falling Into You, is out now.

Pushing yourself to the limit, training through injury and choosing the gym over socialising are all signs that you may have an unhealthy reliance on exercise

At the peak of his adventuring career, Luke Tyburski was a man of extremes. The former pro-footballer, then in his early 30s, had dedicated himself to intense endurance challenges, of the sort that make a marathon look like a fun run. Beginning with the Marathon de Sables (a notorious multistage ultramarathon in the Sahara desert), he then ran the world’s highest ultramarathon at Mount Everest base camp, battled dehydration during a 100km run on a tropical island, and took on the vividly named Double Brutal Extreme Triathlon in north Wales. The endgame in all of this was a self-designed challenge, which saw him swimming from Africa to Europe, cycling through Spain and running to Monaco – 2,000km in total, in just 12 days.

Tyburski was a professional adventurer, financing his pursuits via magazine articles and speaking gigs, and even making a documentary about his quest. His whole raison d’etre was to push past his limitations, showing what a person is capable of when their mindset is strong enough. Yet, privately, he was dealing with depression, related to a loss of identity after the end of his footballing career, which took in Australia, the US and Belgium before he tried out for clubs in the UK. “Training and racing creates an escape, and the highs are extremely high,” says Tyburski. “But when I returned home from an adventure, the lows were extremely low, because I hadn’t addressed what I was running away from.”

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• This week’s question: has a call for ‘restraint’ ever put a stop to war?

I read that the average NFL match lasts for three hours, but the clock runs for only one hour. Are there any other sports, games, pastimes or other activities that involve more dead time than actual game time? Alice Holliday, Lancashire

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Sandra and Roy are adapting to sex as new parents, from postpartum pain to acting fast when they have a private moment
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Sex was a reminder that I’m still me. That this identity still exists, which is really important because you do lose it a bit, especially in the early weeks of becoming a mother

The Three Lions have not beaten a good side under their coach and no A-list players have emerged since the last World Cup

Maybe we’re just not that into us. There are times when trying to rationalise the makeup, reach and ultimate capacities of the England football team can feel a bit like living inside the frantically hyper-formalised New York dating scene of the 1990s.

Here we go again. Picking over the details. Hung up on what-ifs. Arguing about The Rules of the Game. Don’t be too available. Never text first. Do wear a wizard hat. Learn magic tricks. And be rude to people. Also, be endlessly mysterious. No, more mysterious than that. Seriously, where do you get off not having enough mystery?

Desire to remain relevant is understandable, but a glance at his behavioural pattern casts doubt on his PGA Tour and Ryder Cup involvement

It is a scene that has become more extraordinary with the passing of time. Plenty of sportspeople have been guilty of or admitted to extramarital capers. Only Tiger Woods appeared live on television, in front of a hand‑picked audience, to deliver a 14‑minute mea culpa on his transgressions.

American golf executives in their perfectly ironed slacks stood in sombre mood as Woods laid bare his “personal sins”. The venue, hilariously, was the home of the PGA Tour. Woods had no need to go into tawdry detail about his antics; the tabloid media had done that for him. “I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply,” Woods said. Sixteen years since that speech, it is worth pondering whether much has changed.

Relegation playoff against a WSL2 side beckons if Rick Passmoor’s team cannot end seven-game losing run

The sight of two unwaveringly optimistic young girls waving their “Foxes never quit” flags proudly in the air – despite the swirling rain at the King Power Stadium – summed up the never-say-die attitude required for a relegation battle that Leicester are going to need now more than ever, after their chances of staying up decreased significantly with this defeat on Sunday.

Even before losing against Brighton, Leicester’s hopes had sustained a big blow with the sight of Oona Siren hitting a superb, looping volley into the net to secure for 11th‑placed West Ham a valuable point in a lunchtime kick-off. The 1-1 draw at home against London City Lionesses edged West Ham further away from the bottom side Leicester, who went on to be deservedly beaten 1-0 by Brighton and find themselves four points adrift with four games remaining.

• Sale 26-31 Bath

• Bath close to point of Prem leaders Northampton

The reservoir of talent at Bath runs deep these days. The champions rested a raft of key players but still had too much class for a Sale side whose season continues to unravel at a rate of knots.

An entertaining game played in difficult, windswept conditions could have gone either way, but Johann van Graan’s side conjured up two tries in the final quarter to clinch a bonus-point win.

• Haas driver escaped with bruising after 190mph crash

• Leading figures in F1 request a safety review

Drivers and leading figures within Formula One have called for urgent action given their serious concern over the potential dangers now ­inherent in the sport after ­Oliver ­Bearman was involved in a huge accident at the Japanese Grand Prix.

The crash, caused by cars ­coming at one another at enormously ­different speeds, was described by the ­British driver as “scary” and by his Haas team principal as a lucky escape. The race was ultimately won for Mercedes by Kimi Antonelli, the 19-year-old in the ­process becoming the youngest driver to lead the world championship.

• Dane wins GC as Brady Gilmore takes stage seven victory

• Jasper Philipsen wins one-day In Flanders Fields race

Jonas Vingegaard triumphed at the Volta a Catalunya as he continued his strong start to the season, while Brady Gilmore sprinted to a surprise stage seven victory. Vingegaard topped the general classification 1min 22sec ahead of France’s Lenny Martinez and a further eight seconds ahead of Germany’s Florian Lipowitz.

Gilmore, racing with the retired football great Andrés Iniesta’s NSN team, edged out Dorian Godon and Remco Evenepoel in a thrilling bunch sprint finale. Sunday’s 95km final stage took in seven circuits of Montjuïc in Barcelona, where the Tour de France will start in July.

• Semenya criticises IOC president Kirsty Coventry

• ‘Her being a woman coming from Africa … it causes harm’

Caster Semenya, the South African two‑time Olympic 800m champion, said on Sunday that the reinstatement by the International Olympic Committee of sex verification tests for the 2028 Los Angeles Games was “a disrespect for women”.

The hyperandrogenic former athlete also expressed disappointment that the measure was taken under the leadership of the new IOC president, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe.

• Sabalenka wins 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 to land Sunshine Double

• Belarusian steadies herself after losing second set

Aryna Sabalenka had many reasons to believe history could have been grimly repeating itself on Saturday afternoon. Despite starting her Miami Open final against Coco Gauff striking the ball with clear-minded aggression, the complexion of the match rapidly changed. Suddenly, having been pulled into a tense final set, the world No 1 was struggling to hold on.

Similar scenarios played out in her two most important matches against Gauff, and both times Sabalenka had crumbled under the pressure in the deciding set. For all her imperfections, though, the Belarusian’s career has been defined by her desperation to improve. Here, she underlined her status as the best player in the world by finding composure and edging out Gauff 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 in a quality battle to win the Miami title for a second year in a row.

• Véron Mosengo-Omba was target of varied criticism

• ‘I can retire with peace of mind and without constraint’

Véron Mosengo-Omba, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) general secretary, has resigned after repeated calls for his removal and at a turbulent time for the game on the continent.

Mosengo-Omba said he was retiring but his departure comes amid a crisis of confidence in the organisation’s leadership, with a growing fallout over the decision to strip Senegal of the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) title and calls for an investigation into alleged corruption at African ­football’s governing body.

There are better ways to raise money than jeopardising a model that draws visitors to Britain and has huge benefits for the wider economy

Twenty-five years ago, the UK made the bold and generous gesture of making its national museums free to all. Suddenly, anyone from anywhere in the world could gaze at iconic works of art by the greatest artists in history without having to pay a penny. Many incredible artworks were suddenly accessible to everyone: Hepworth, Turner and Hockney at Tate Britain, and Bonnard, Picasso and Bourgeois at Tate Modern (which had both always been free) were now joined by Raphael at the V&A and Kapoor at the Walker Art Gallery, dramatic seascapes at the National Maritime Museum and bustling cityscapes at the Museum of London. And maybe afterwards they would reward the gallery by buying a slice of cake in the cafe or a print of their favourite work in the gift shop.

In the years that followed, this policy proved to be a huge success. It led to a dramatic and sustained increase in audiences. Within the first decade, visits to museums which used to charge rose by 151% – the uplift was 180% at the Natural History Museum and V&A, and 269% at National Museums Liverpool. Is now really the moment to reverse direction by charging international tourists to access our museums and galleries, as ministers are proposing?

Karin Hindsbo is interim director of Tate, and former director of Tate Modern, London and the National Museum, Oslo

Rachel Reeves boasts of the £23bn she has built up against her fiscal rules but now she – or any future steward of the economy – has little space to manoeuvre

It is with no pleasure that I must report a depressing domestic byproduct of the war in the Middle East: headroom chat is back.

Of course, shifts in investors’ appetite for gilts – UK government bonds – are trivial in the context of the bloodshed in Iran and beyond. But as a result of the economic chaos unleashed, gilt yields, which determine the interest rate on government borrowing, have resumed their grip on British politics. And one of Rachel Reeves’s proudest boasts, the £23bn in “headroom” she had built up against her fiscal rules, is in jeopardy.

The Other Bennet Sister reminded me of my own self-consciousness – and worry that girls still have to play down their cleverness

To be a clever, bookish teenage girl is to spend a certain amount of time standing on the sidelines, feeling invisible to boys. When I was at school, there seemed to be a natural division: you could be smart or pretty, but you could not be both. Of course, there were girls who were indeed both, but they either intentionally dumbed themselves down or spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make themselves beautiful. (Perhaps other schools and other early-2000s teenagehoods were different, but that was the reality of mine.)

The Other Bennet Sister – a new BBC costume adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel telling the story of Mary, the intelligent, bespectacled, painfully shy sister to Pride and Prejudice heroine Lizzy – sent me right back to that awkward age. That’s how vividly it conjures the extreme lack of confidence that can come from being sidelined, whether by one’s peers or, as in Mary’s case, one’s own mother. Watching Ella Bruccoleri’s excellent performance reunited me with those awful feelings of shyness and exclusion, of walking with your head down in the hope that no one notices you. “Why do you walk like that?” I remember a popular, vivacious girl in my year asking me, not unkindly. She couldn’t comprehend what it meant to walk with such a lack of confidence. I wished I could borrow even a pinch of hers.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author of Female, Nude

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

A decade ago, I knew nothing about organizing. But ordinary people are essential to fighting the rise of authoritarianism

In January of 2017, I sent a tentative email to a few dozen friends and acquaintances who I suspected were also freaked out by the election of Donald Trump, asking if they wanted to join a local chapter of an effort called Indivisible, intended to serve as a grassroots liberal counterweight to the new administration. It was frankly not possible, at that point, to know less about activism than I did.

In the more than nine years since, our group has sent an email every weekday – approximately 2,300 in total – with a single concrete daily ask for our members: call your elected representatives. Make a donation. Show up for a rally. During that span, we have knocked on tens of thousands of doors, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, sponsored refugee families, and mobilized our friends, neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances to keep fighting for democracy.

Saul Austerlitz is the author of How to Assemble an Activist

Rich or poor, male or female, it’s always a struggle to balance work and family. We’re all wondering about the paths we didn’t take

‘I do feel I’ve wasted my life, really, living in a world of fictional characters,” said Ian Rankin – multi-award-winning author (more than 35m copies of his Rebus novels sold), knighthood for services to literature and charity, a man who achieves more in one year than I have in 51 – on a recent podcast. If you’ve wasted your life, Sir Ian, what about the rest of us?

There was levity in Rankin’s delivery, but real feeling, too – an ambivalence about what his creative drive had cost him. “There’s big moments, big beats in my life that I just don’t have any memory of: holidays taken, first days at school for my kids and that sort of stuff, because in my head I was somewhere else,” he continued.

I rejected the church as a teen. But I’ve lately felt called to look for God – and my understanding has changed

Two months into the pandemic, I began a practice I called “When I look for God”. With so much changing so quickly, I was looking to find space during each day when I could ground myself amidst the uncertainty. The previous five years had opened up a spiritual yearning spurred by a life-shifting moment while surfing when God became profoundly known to me. These encounters of grace began to happen with some frequency. I was both compelled and confused by this new awakening.

God has always been elusive to me. I grew up Catholic, attended church on Sundays, went to catechism. I was baptized as an infant, received my first communion at seven, and was confirmed at 11. None of this brought me any closer to God.

In the face of existential anxiety it may be tempting to fret over smaller details, but there are positive steps we can take to prepare for a world that may change at any moment

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran, my therapy rooms have been flooded with clients talking about the possibility of a world war and the widespread perception that we stand at a perilous tipping point in history. People are dealing with this differently, with some sanguinely shrugging and accepting they can’t change matters so there’s little point worrying, while others fret and compulsively check the news. Many describe a sense of strong doom.

I too have experienced a similar awareness that the global order has changed irrevocably, with the same uncertainty as my clients are describing.

Five years of brutal conflict have made the army more determined to crush opposition, and others more convinced they must resist

China promoted elections in Myanmar, while those fighting for democracy boycotted them. That tells you everything about the shift to a supposedly civilian administration in the coming days, five years after the military seized power in a coup. It appears likely that Min Aung Hlaing will swap his leadership of the army for the presidency. Whatever the details, the junta will still be running the show, and bombing civilians – just while cosplaying as democrats.

Myanmar’s suffering has been overshadowed by higher-profile wars. But the conflict-monitoring organisation Acled estimates that about 93,000 people have been killed since 2021, while the UN says that 3.6 million are displaced. The junta does not control much of the country, limiting where polls could be held. The opposition refused to take part, and others were excluded from voting because they are denied citizenship. Little wonder the main military-backed party declared a landslide victory – despite having won just 6% of the vote in a 2020 election.

The US health secretary says he is a big fan of peptides. Many are promising drugs, but the only way to know their utility is proper clinical trials

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, is a chaotic person, but his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) agenda tends to follow a predictable logic. Large-scale, mandatory public health interventions – such as childhood vaccine requirements – are generally treated with suspicion and undermined. Personal choice – to drink unpasteurised milk, for example – is to be unleashed, and unburdened by regulation. In theory, Maha promises freedom and autonomy; in practice it tends to replace the precautionary principle with exhortations for individuals to “do your own research”, and sidelines scientific expertise in favour of “wellness” hucksters and profiteers.

This is particularly obvious in Mr Kennedy’s recent claims that he will open up the sale of “about 14” injectable peptide drugs to the public. Peptides are molecules often used by our bodies for sending signals – so there are many kinds of peptides, and the safety and efficacy of each is a separate question. The widely used “weight-loss jab” drugs are peptides but so are the toxic compounds in snake venom that dissolve living cells. Mr Kennedy is likely to be referring to a subset of 17 peptides restricted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2023 due to “potential significant safety risks”. None have been proved to be safe or effective for human use, so there is no clear argument for reversing the decision.

Readers take stock of the party’s missteps in government and Keir Starmer’s leadership

I wonder how many members still clinging on to the Labour party winced at Gaby Hinsliff’s article (Ed Miliband’s stock is rising because he’s a rare commodity in Labour these days: a thinker, 27 March). Like everyone else, she recognises that Labour has become an intellectual vacuum, with its only clear features being unpleasant policies designed to exploit the far right’s prejudices.

But the electorate is ahead here. They know that resurrecting the once admirable but now compromised Ed Miliband will do nothing to heal the existential injury in the party. Most people no longer hark back to the halcyon days of New Labour’s claim to build a better society. They now recognise it as a swindle, with its toxic components of privatisation, private finance initiatives, excesses in the private financial sector and, of course, Iraq.

Richard Harvey and Joy Webb respond to an article by George Monbiot on the fragility of the global food system in light of the Iran war

Although I agree with George Monbiot’s analysis of the serious risks that we face from a breakdown in the UK food supply chain, there are two important points we need to recognise (We’re letting big corporations gamble with our lives. Act now, or the food could run out, 25 March). First, we must seek to increase food production on UK farms because this has been falling for several decades.

Food self-sufficiency in the UK fell from 78% in 1984 to 62% in 2024. The decline is largely due to the loss of farmland to non-farming use: buildings, roads and railways, conservation and wildlife schemes, solar farms and recreation. We need to plan for a scenario where imported food may not be readily available.

Talk of disadvantaged children being left behind so often leaves out the workforce most likely to reach them, says Brett Wigdortz

Polly Toynbee is right that England’s childcare system is falling short on its social purpose (It’s always been a fight to get children the early years care they deserve. It’s time to fight again, 20 March). But the irony is that talk of disadvantaged children being left behind often leaves out the workforce most likely to reach them: childminders. When we frame nurseries as the default in childcare provision (as Toynbee does, with not a single nod to childminders) we put low-income families even further on the back foot.

As she notes, private equity-backed nursery chains prefer wealthier areas – they’re not itching to set up shop in deprived ones. But childminders can open their doors on any street and represent communities across the country. As they work from home and have lower overheads, they can be an oasis of affordability in deprived areas. And unlike nurseries’ more rigid hours, childminders offer flexible, wraparound care better suited to parents who work shifts. Without a plan to rebuild this vital workforce (which has lost 75,000 providers since the 1990s), children who need early years care the most will struggle to access it, no matter what funding changes are made.
Brett Wigdortz
CEO, Tiney; founder, Teach First; spokesperson, Childminding2030 campaign

Kenneth B Ati-John and Ndine Wa‑Chiuta respond to an article by Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama

The president of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, is right to argue that recognising the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity is an essential step toward justice (It’s time for the UN to formally recognise the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity, 22 March). But recognition alone will not be enough. The real question before the international community is what recognition is meant to achieve.

For decades, Africa and the Caribbean have secured acknowledgments of historical injustice, from the Abuja Proclamation to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Yet the structural effects of that history remain visible in patterns of development, opportunity and vulnerability across Africa and its diaspora. If this new initiative at the United Nations general assembly is to succeed, it must move beyond symbolic affirmation toward institutional consequences.

Reparatory justice should therefore be understood not simply as compensation for the past but as a framework for restructuring opportunity in the present. Recognition only becomes meaningful when it strengthens the ability of affected societies to negotiate fairer terms within the international system that their labour helped build.

The African Union’s decision to designate 2026 to 2035 as the “decade of action on reparations” signals that Africa is approaching this issue with seriousness and coordination. The next step is to translate that commitment into practical mechanisms: support for the Caribbean Community’s 10-point reparations framework, expanded educational partnerships and development financing arrangements that help correct longstanding structural imbalances.

Handled with discipline and imagination, this initiative could help redefine reparations not as a backward-looking claim, but as a forward-looking project of global fairness.
Rear Adm Kenneth B Ati-John
Lekki, Nigeria

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days

Enid Blyton’s classic kids’ fantasy novel gets the big-screen treatment, while the Aussie boyband hit the UK’s arenas

The Magic Faraway Tree
Out now
A family relocate to the countryside where they find a magic tree that transports them to a fantasy realm in this family adventure. Simon Farnaby (Paddington 2) adapts the Enid Blyton series for the big screen, with Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy starring as Mr and Mrs Thompson.

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

John Wells’ stellar medical drama arrives on this side of the pond, while Sergei Loznitsa’s haunting film is a terrifying tale of bureaucratic evil. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Officers fired pepper balls and teargas into group of about 150 on Saturday night, arresting those who did not disperse

• Third No Kings protest draws 8 million worldwide to push back on Trump administration

Police arrested dozens of protesters and shot teargas into a crowd on Saturday night at a No Kings protest in Los Angeles.

The conflict is the latest of many that have taken place outside the Metropolitan detention center, which has become a focal point of protests since the Trump administration launched an immigration offense on Los Angeles last year.

Weak and sick mammal has become stuck in shallow bays and experts say prognosis ‘doesn’t look good’

The fate of a humpback whale stuck in shallow bays off Germany’s Baltic coast hangs in the balance after it became stranded for a third time.

The roughly 10-metre-long (33ft) mammal appeared weakened and sick on Sunday and was struggling to find a route back to the Atlantic when it ran into fresh difficulty.

In his strongest intervention yet, PM says some features ‘shouldn’t be permitted’, while education secretary says things ‘are going to change’

Keir Starmer has backed banning addictive social media features in his strongest intervention yet on curbs that could be placed on tech companies, saying the features “shouldn’t be permitted”.

The prime minister said the government was “going to have to act” on the algorithms that hook young people and children to social media, such as scrolling or “streaks” that encourage daily usage of apps.

Anatomy of one of least studied human organs could improve outcomes for women who have pelvic surgery

Almost 30 years after the intricate web of nerves inside the penis was plotted out, the same mapping has finally been completed for one of the least-studied organs in the human body – the clitoris.

As well as revealing the extent of the nerves that are crucial to orgasms, the work shows that some of what medics are learning about the anatomy of the clitoris is wrong, and could help prevent women who have pelvic operations from ending up with poorer sexual function.

Sara Ziff, founder of Model Alliance, said business leaders need to be hauled before House oversight committee

A top modeling industry activist has called for business leaders to be hauled before lawmakers in Washington to investigate what role modeling agencies may have played in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal.

Sara Ziff is founder of the Model Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group calling for fair treatment, labor rights and safe working conditions for fashion industry workers.

Two kona low storms dumped up to 50in of rain on Oahu, flooding fields and submerging equipment

Eddie Oroyan’s farm was thriving when the storms hit. He and his wife had started LewaTerra Farm last year on a gorgeous stretch of land on the north shore of Oahu. They were delivering vegetables to customers in the community, selling at farmer’s markets and to local restaurants.

Then, on the week of 10 March, a first kona low storm hit the island, bringing copious amounts of water, flooding their land and wiping out crops. Nearly all their papayas were gone. And the tomatoes didn’t survive. But the couple quickly began cleaning, replanting and tying down crops, confident that they would get back on their feet shortly.

Andalusia houses ‘Europe’s vegetable garden’ – a laboratory of development and innovation producing vegetables for all of Europe

Europe’s vegetable garden is in Andalusia, southern Spain. It is so vast that it can even be seen from space: if you open Google Maps and look west of Almería, you will see a white patch that looks like a glacier, but as you zoom in, you realise it is the highest concentration of greenhouses in the world. More than 30,000 hectares (74,131 acres) of land are covered in plastic, a geometric labyrinth five times the size of Manhattan, where 3.5m tons of vegetables are produced every year – from tomatoes to cucumbers, peppers to courgettes, aubergines to melons – enough to feed half a billion people and generate a turnover of more than 3bn euros.

Workers prepare peppers inside the Hortamar cooperative, a fruit and vegetable producers’ organisation in Roquetas de Mar, founded in 1977, that now has more than 240 members and sells throughout Europe, the US and Canada.

University’s botanic garden will use study materials created by John Stevens Henslow, the naturalist’s mentor, 200 years ago

Plant specimens and teaching materials that inspired Charles Darwin and qualified him to work as a naturalist on HMS Beagle have been unearthed from an archive in Cambridge and will be used for the first time to teach contemporary students about botany.

The fragile specimens, ink drawings and watercolour illustrations of plants belonged to Darwin’s teacher and mentor, Prof John Stevens Henslow, and have been stored in Cambridge University’s herbarium for nearly 200 years.

A project on Dartmoor to reprofile the landscape aims to return the springy bog – and carbon store – to its natural condition

At one of the most remote spots in southern England, Al West skilfully tilts and rotates the bucket of a small digger, like a giant mechanical hand. He lifts turf, and pats it down gently on to the rich, dark brown peat beneath. Above him, the granite stack of Fur Tor looms above the vast, boggy, wild expanse of northern Dartmoor.

It is repetitive, delicate work, which West carries out with dexterity and care. Within a boundary of white flags, he takes from a borrow pit and fashions a peat embankment across each ditch and depression covering the land, to restore it to its natural smoothness and to stop the rainwater running off down the valley.

More than 100 charities, campaign groups and trade unions marched in a show of unity against far right politics

• Together Alliance march – live updates

Tens of thousands of people gathered in London to march against the far right in the biggest multicultural demonstration in UK history.

Organisers claimed half a million people had travelled to the capital for Saturday’s Together Alliance march. Police estimated the turnout was closer to 50,000, although they admitted it was difficult to judge the number due to the widespread nature of the crowd.

Sending painting to artist’s namesake school in Salford is a first for gallery, and has brought huge benefits

“Art feels different when it is close enough to breathe the same air,” said school principal Claire Coy, describing the thrill of being lent a painting from a national collection. “I have visited many, many galleries and loved my experience but nothing has matched this.”

Coy’s school, the Lowry Academy in Salford, has this week been the temporary home for LS Lowry’s Dwelling, Ordsall Lane, Salford, painted in 1927. It is the first time Tate has lent to a school and even though it has been for only two days, the benefits have been enormous, teachers and curators say.

Conservative leader expected to call for government to lift suspension on licences in drive to reduce energy prices

Kemi Badenoch is “peddling a dangerous fantasy” about North Sea energy in her attempt to reverse a ban on new oil and gas licences, a leading campaign group has said.

The Conservative leader is expected to call on the government to lift its suspension of the licences as part of a drive to reduce energy prices, as the party launches a new campaign aimed at boosting the fossil fuel sector.

Ban on junk food adverts has cut advertising spend and prompted a debate over the policy’s impact

The UK will have its first Easter without the traditional barrage of TV ads for chocolate eggs and hot cross buns as the ban on junk food advertising makes the sweetest tradition of the year a sugar-free viewing experience.

New regulations, which came into force at the beginning of the year, prohibit products high in fat, sugar and salt from appearing in TV ads before 9pm, as part of efforts to tackle rising childhood obesity.

Many say they have not received support to rebuild their homes months after the storm caused unprecedented destruction

“Before Hurricane Melissa I could have navigated life, figured things out. But since its passage, everything has just been turned upside down,” said Kerry-Ann Vickers.

Vickers was three months pregnant when Hurricane Melissa demolished parts of her home in the coastal town of Black River, in St Elizabeth, west Jamaica, last October. Nearly six months on, Vickers, 25, is still struggling to get support to rebuild her house and is distraught that her baby will arrive in a home without a secure roof.

Minister’s decision to ditch town’s colonial-era identity and honour anti-apartheid activist divides residents

A South African town is divided over changing its name from the colonial-era Graaff-Reinet to Robert Sobukwe, after the anti-apartheid activist, in a debate that has inflamed racial tensions.

Petitions have been signed, rival marches held and a formal letter of complaint sent to the sports, arts and culture minister, Gayton McKenzie, who approved the name change on 6 February.

Ukraine leader says signs with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with one to come with the United Arab Emirates, as Iran presses aerial campaign against neighbours. What we know on day 1,495

Qatar and Ukraine signed a defence agreement on Saturday that included cooperation on countering threats from missiles and drones, the Gulf state’s government said, as Iran presses an aerial campaign against its neighbours. Earlier on Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy – during a previously unannounced flurry of visits to Gulf nations – said his country and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to cooperate on defence, after Iran targeted countries in the area in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes. Ukraine also signed an air defence agreement with Saudi Arabia during Zelenskyy’s visit to the kingdom earlier this week.

“We are talking about a 10-year cooperation. We have already signed a relevant agreement with Saudi Arabia, we have just signed a similar agreement with Qatar, also for 10 years, we will sign one with the Emirates,” Zelenskyy told reporters at a briefing.

Ukraine has quickly grown into one of the world’s leading producers of cutting-edge, battle-tested drone interceptors that are cheap and effective. They are playing a key part in its defence against Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began on 24 February 2022.

In return for its aid to Gulf countries, Ukraine is seeking more high-end air-defence missiles that they possess and that Kyiv needs to counter Russia’s attacks. Last week Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was looking into whether it could play a role in restoring security in the strait of Hormuz.

Ukraine wants to build long-term ties with Middle Eastern countries, Zelenskyy said, including joint production, cooperation in the energy sector, investment and sharing battlefield experience. He spoke with journalists via Zoom during an official visit in Qatar, the latest in his tour in the region. “Simple sales do not interest us,” Zelenskyy said. “We want systemic relationships, where exporters earn revenue and Ukraine receives sufficient funds to invest in domestic production.”

Zelenskyy has sought to craft an opportunity from the war, which otherwise benefits Russia through higher oil prices and possible slowdowns in western arms supplies to Kyiv. Almost immediately, he started offering US allies in the region deals to get their hands on Ukrainian drone interceptors and has dispatched more than 200 military experts. “Surely no one else can help in this way today, with expertise,” he told reporters. “No one else possesses such experience.”

Russian air attacks across Ukraine early Saturday killed at least four people and damaged critical infrastructure, including a port and a maternity hospital, authorities said, as Russia pressed on with its war against Ukraine. Moscow has been firing drones at Ukraine in nightly barrages during its four-year invasion, with Kyiv accusing it of attacking residential areas and targeting civilians.

Iran claims it struck Ukraine-related drone warehouse in Dubai. Iran’s military joint command made the claim in a statement run by state media, without offering evidence. The Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters said more than 20 Ukrainians were in the warehouse in the United Arab Emirates and their fate was unknown. In a news briefing, Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi, however, called the Iranian allegations a “lie,” according to Ukraine’s public broadcaster.

Ukraine’s military struck a major Russian oil refinery in Yaroslavl, north-east of Moscow, in an overnight attack, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Saturday. It said in a statement that the attack caused a fire at the site of the refinery, which is critical for the Russian army’s logistics.

Thieves made a break for 413,793 units of the company’s new F1 line bars which could cause shortage before Easter

A large shipment of KitKat bars was stolen while in transit to distributors, a major candy crime right before the Easter holiday that could cause shortages for customers.

The truck carrying 413,793 units of a “new chocolate range”, about 12 tons of chocolate bars, was pilfered while driving through Europe on 26 March, Agence France-Presse reported.

Brent crude jumps 51% since start of March and gold suffers fifth-largest monthly fall in 50 years

• Middle East crisis – latest updates

The Brent crude oil price is on track for its biggest monthly gain on record in March after the Iran war caused mayhem in the markets.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, has climbed by 51% since the start of March, LSEG data shows, beating the previous monthly record of 46% in September 1990 after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, leading to the first Gulf war.

Exclusive: Research finds sharp rise in models evading safeguards and destroying emails without permission

AI models that lie and cheat appear to be growing in number with reports of deceptive scheming surging in the last six months, a study into the technology has found.

AI chatbots and agents disregarded direct instructions, evaded safeguards and deceived humans and other AI, according to research funded by the UK government-funded AI Security Institute (AISI). The study, shared with the Guardian, identified nearly 700 real-world cases of AI scheming and charted a five-fold rise in misbehaviour between October and March, with some AI models destroying emails and other files without permission.

From 6 April, low-income families can claim universal credit payments for all children living in the household

The two-child benefit policy has been described as a “cap on childhood” and as it comes to an end, Claire* hopes to throw a birthday party for her son.

It is a celebration most children may take for granted, but Claire and her partner run out of money at the end of every month, skipping meals so that their three children can eat. Her son, now in his final year at primary school, has never had a party.

AI images of people – such as women in military contexts – are making money and serving as propaganda, researchers say

Online content creators are not just building fake images and videos of prominent public figures, they are also fabricating people and using them in military contexts, which can make them money and even serve as effective propaganda, according to artificial intelligence researchers.

Some of these online avatars are sexualized images of women wearing camouflage garb that have generated a significant audience and helped create an idealized image of political figures like Donald Trump, even if the viewer knows the content is not real, according to experts.

Barbican Centre, London
From Stavros to Wayne Slob, Loadsamoney to DJ Dave Nice, the 64-year-old distilled whole characters and social types

To younger audiences, Harry Enfield may be best known for his Prince-turned-King Charles in Channel 4 satirical soap opera The Windsors – and it’s in character as the monarch that he enters the stage for this Audience With … event, reviewing his whole career. By the end, he’s staked a strong claim to be considered head of our comedy state, with a show anthologising a formidably comprehensive array of personae, catchphrases and showbiz anecdotes from Enfield’s 40-plus years making funny TV.

Not for the first time in career retrospectives like this, I came away marvelling at just how many indelible characters and sketches of Enfield’s have entered common currency; have become totems, indeed, of the times in which we live(d). Not that Enfield makes any such claims for himself; there’s nothing self-congratulatory about this show. Quite the opposite: the 64-year-old wears his iconoclasm like a badge of pride, with material that’s often as indelicate as the best of the jokes with which, back in the 80s and 90s, he made his name.

More seaside crime-solving as Grace returns with a Grantchester crossover. Plus, more fun in the Bake Off tent as Jojo Sima and Babátúndé Aléshé are among the celebs getting their hands floury. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, ITV1
Who knows why some detective shows last and others don’t? Being low-key, a bit old-fashioned and without distinguishing features hasn’t stopped this John Simm vehicle, set in and around Brighton, surviving to a sixth season. Episode one is an inessential-ITV-crime-drama crossover, as Grantchester’s Rishi Nair appears as the husband of a woman who has vanished, for reasons not initially clear. Jack Seale

Everyone you meet in this lovely documentary, from the goat herders to the osprey nest makers, is making the world better and is also that rarest of things: truly content. Start Googling career changes now

I must say, I was expecting Inside Britain’s National Parks to feel a bit less like school. The new documentary series looks at four of our 15 national parks and the people who live and work in them. So you would expect the usual barely disguised tourism ads – wall-to-wall shots of beautiful landscapes, scored with beautiful music, breaking off only for lovely, gentle interviews with lovely, gentle people. An hour’s escapism before you go back to your stress-bound, office-bound, mortgage-bound life instead of roaming the wilds of Wales noting new nesting sites for choughs or checking peatlands for sundews, or … Well, we’ll talk more about what else we could be doing later on. But it’s a lot.

We do get plenty of the expected stuff but its traditional soft edge is whetted by an oddly dry script (despite being delivered by Alex Jennings, who could customarily talk me into a burning car) that prevents you disappearing into these wonderful worlds as fully as you might have been hoping.

Westminster insiders try to get to the bottom of Starmer’s awful unpopularity and frequent blunders – but fail to consider less palatable possibilities

Why is Keir Starmer so unpopular? The basic question is easily answered by political broadcaster Lewis Goodall in his investigation of our prime minister’s historically awful approval ratings. In several elections and one big referendum, Goodall says, Britons have voted “for economic change, for material improvement in their lives”, but it hasn’t come. Starmer toured the UK in a campaign bus with “CHANGE” written on the side, yet life as an ordinary citizen has only got harder.

The extent of the national disgruntlement is well known, but the programme underlines it by revealing the results of a shiny new survey – which is something documentaries of this kind like to commission because it guarantees them news coverage. Those headline-grabbing findings: a majority of respondents say Starmer should resign, that he has been too slow to make change, that he does not have a clear plan. Asked to describe him in one word, punters’ top responses were “incompetent”, “useless” and “weak”.

This HBO series about Italy’s top TV host (and his feathered friend) getting embroiled with the mob sounds genius … and yet it’s troublingly tedious

Had a little wager with myself this week, regarding whether HBO Max’s new series is about the west London vintage market, a mushroom, or a coastal suburb of Edinburgh. Even spread-betting, I got cleaned out. Portobello is actually the true story of Enzo Tortora, former host of Italy’s top TV show, who was falsely accused of being a member of the Camorra. How was I supposed to guess that?

At its height, Portobello the variety show had a staggering audience of 28 million, a national cross section from nuns to prison inmates. Among the latter, Giovanni Pandico: a froggy-looking Camorrist and clinical paranoid who becomes fixated, Stan-like, on Tortora. He believes he communicates with the presenter via telepathy, as well as mind control of a parrot which guest-stars on the show. Bizarrely, the mob criminal posts Tortora 20 lace doilies to sell on his show (in a segment actually called Portobello Market, which really spun me out).

As I sat in a park during the pandemic, listening to the Evermore album on my headphones, one song finally released the grief that I’d pent up for five years

When the pandemic hit in 2020, it had been five years since my sister, Emily, had died. She had lived with cystic fibrosis her whole life, yet we were a close, tactile family. We laughed, hugged and sang often. When Emily died, relatively suddenly, aged 30 (I was 27), I coped with it as well as anyone could. In fact, I prided myself on how outwardly resilient I seemed: I spoke to a therapist, started a new job. I poured myself into a packed diary and a big city.

It wasn’t until time stopped, in a way, in 2020, that I really sat with my grief. I was forced to – made redundant like so many others that summer, my days had no shape. Like many people living in city flatshares, my one little freedom was a daily walk.

After a nine-year come-up, the self-described ‘worst girl in America’ is having a breakthrough

For the past several months, nothing has gotten me through this brutal New York winter quite like Crank, a fiendishly chaotic concoction by the electropop artist Slayyyter. The track is deliriously overstimulating; the singer tweaks out over record-scratches and squelches and ferociously barrels through a chorus that sounds – and I mean this as a sincere compliment – like a plane crash. In these times of global catastrophe, I have found this soothing.

Slayyyter’s new album Worst Girl in America scratches a similar anarchic itch. Immediate, vertiginous and diabolically cheeky, the after-hours record finds her channelling a ferality that feels rare in our slop-ified pop culture (cue the rock-tinged Cannibalism), and has garnered breathless hype among those in the know. All five singles released from the project to date have the jet propulsion of someone fueled on years of pop star study and frustrated by, as she bluntly puts it, “my ninth year on the up-and-coming list”.

With her acoustic guitars and trip-hoppy beats, the London musician recalls a particular era of polished 00s boho-pop, from Nelly Furtado to Corinne Bailey Rae

From London
Recommended if you like All Saints, Frou Frou, Nelly Furtado
Up next EP out now; on tour with After in May

The first time I heard Gianna’s Shadow of a Bird, I was instantly transported to a place that smelled of Impulse body spray. It is a track that has perfectly nailed the polished boho-pop of early 00s Nelly Furtado, All Saints and Corinne Bailey Rae – the sort that features arpeggiated acoustic guitar, vaguely trip-hop beats and a gently distinctive voice swooping through them.

(ECM)
Jack DeJohnette and Michel Portal – both of whom died recently – are phenomenal foils for the Weather Report alumnus’s classical-influenced jazz

Czech double bass virtuoso and composer Miroslav Vitous must by now have shrugged off any residual irritation about the oft-circulated fact that he was a founding member of the legendary jazz-rock fusion band Weather Report in 1970. Vitous’s dislike of the band’s drift away from improv toward electric music and popular global funk saw him leave as their star was rising. His CV would turn out just fine: Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Jan Garbarek, John Surman and Jack DeJohnette were among his many classy playing partners. Seven years in the making, with Vitous now 78, Mountain Call reflects a lifetime’s immersion in classical music alongside jazz, and the balance of spontaneity, nuance and cinematic atmospherics that offered him.

Across multiple improv dialogues and two suites (all short, Vitous being no fan of loquacity), the set prominently features DeJohnette, who died in October, with Esperanza Spalding, saxophonist Bob Mintzer and the phenomenal French clarinettist Michel Portal, who died in February. Eight duo tracks for Vitous and Portal (mostly all-improvised) are worth the album alone, for their ever-shifting mix of mellow lyricism and challenging curiosity. In four improvisations on a standard clarinet, Portal segues graceful swoops, plaintive queries and staccato punctuation against Vitous’s turbulent undercurrent of muscular plucked runs and percussive accents. On bass clarinet, the Frenchman sweeps from resonant deep sounds to breathtaking glissando ascents hurtling to the upper register.

Deborah Green was a charismatic woman who established a ‘free love ministry’ in California, claiming to be a vessel for God. She was also a controlling, cruel sadist. Her daughter Sarah talks about her terrifying upbringing – and dramatic escape

Sarah Green realised things weren’t right in the religious community where she was raised when her mother forced three of its members to live in a locked shed. All three were women, disowned by their husbands, and forced to live off scraps of food. Her mother, Deborah Green, said they had been judged by God and this was their punishment. One of the women, an old family friend called Maura, was made to wear a white sackcloth dress and renamed Forsaken. The other two women were renamed Barren and Despised.

Sarah is a strong, striking woman with a keen sense of irony and a joyous cackle of a laugh. But now she’s in tears. “I felt sickened to my gut. Even though I’d been groomed and my mom told me, ‘I’m God’s oracle, so therefore I hear what God wants for everybody, and this is what they have to go through because they’re sinning’, it didn’t make sense to me.” She sniffs back her tears. “Sorry, I’m getting emotional. So when they locked the people in the shed, I’d sneak them food. I just didn’t understand why Maura, who was part of our membership, had kids, all of a sudden was being forced to live like an animal and do the most degrading things. I didn’t understand why.” Sarah is wailing, as if she’s been transported back to the little girl she was at the time. “What had she done? I didn’t see anything, and I grew up around them. So from that moment you lived in fear, because you could be the next person on the chopping block.” Sarah eventually discovered that Maura’s sin was that she had refused to beat her children.

As her dark debut about a tradwife who wakes up in the past is made into a film by Anne Hathaway, the novelist explores the sinister truth behind the barefoot influencers

Gingham dresses, linen aprons; toddlers smiling toothily out from their perch on a perfectly cocked hip. And the mothers holding these babies? They’re beautiful, obviously. They speak in a whisper. Their skin tone is varied in the exact range and spectrum of honey.

Tradwife. It’s a frilly word, the kind that holds a gun to your head and demands you say it in sing-song. The media coverage of the phenomenon has been as breathless and decidedly feminised as the term itself. I have yet to find an article on the topic that was not written by a woman, which feels ironic, given that the term – as well as the vision therein – was originally coined and circulated by men, born out of the dank, murky caves of online “incel” forums, where anonymous usernames set forth the deeply unoriginal vision of a wife who would do everything the real women in their lives refused to do: manage the house, give birth to children, have sex on command, and most importantly, ask nothing in return.

1970s and 80s New York are viscerally evoked in this potent memoir of the ‘no wave’ scene

You won’t necessarily have heard of Adele Bertei: she was a member of experimental jazz-punk band the Contortions from 1977 and recorded the pop-house single Build Me a Bridge. But her memoir is an essential slice of New York’s bohemian pizza pie, and works in part because she is a relative unknown, not weighed down by her own cultural baggage.

Following a troubled, itinerant upbringing, she arrives in Manhattan in 1977 to find a city on its knees. The big apple was in the red, both literally (fires were a regular occurrence) and monetarily (there was a municipal debt crisis). But pre-Aids and post-Warhol’s avant garde grip, it was also a place that was creatively open.

Musical inspiration from Corinne Bailey Rae; danger in a magical academy; the adventures of an otter pup; a YA queer gothic fantasy, and more

The Bear and the Seed by Poonam Mistry, Templar, £12.99
When Bear’s glorious forest disappears, he finds hope in a tiny seed – but he needs help from other animals to tend it in this inspiring picture book, filled with spellbinding geometric art.

Little Passenger by Deirdre Sullivan and Jessica Love, Walker, £12.99
This poetic, beautiful picture book features a mother talking to her growing baby throughout pregnancy (“You are a full stop, a pea, a single grape”). Love’s lustrous ink and watercolour illustrations marry the delicate tendrils of developing plants with the intricate stitches of a sampler.

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

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

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

As physical media makes an unlikely comebac​k​ among younger gamers, the humble VHS emerges as an unexpected archive of gaming’s messy, magical evolution​ that I saw first time around

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As I am nostalgic and of a certain age, I recently bought a VHS video recorder, just for the retrospective thrill of it; then I won a 32-inch CRT television at an auction in Shepton Mallet. Partly, this was to play a few old videos I had found in my loft, including one of me appearing in a 1990s youth TV show talking about sexism and Tomb Raider. (I was against the sexism, to be clear). But it was also because I wanted a new way of spending my money on fragile video-game nostalgia.

The rise of the games industry in the 1980s and 90s coincided with the explosion of the home-video business, and the two crossed paths in lots of interesting ways. There are the obvious treasures I want to get hold of: VHS copies of Street Fighter: The Movie and the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, naturally, as well as early games-inspired hits such as The Last Starfighter, The Wizard and WarGames. I rented most of these from my local video shop in the 80s – which, like many others, also sold computer games by the budget publisher Mastertronic, another interesting (at least to me) crossover between these two entertainment formats.

Huge cuts announced this week show that truly no developer working in games is safe from corporate whims

The video game industry is currently experiencing a seemingly endless bout of ruinous deja vu. Every month, another publisher posts an all too familiar statement about job losses in its development studios. There will be airy expressions of regret and platitudes praising the skill and contribution of the imminently jobless; it is all filtered through layers of corporate doublespeak intended to disguise the human cost of downsizing.

On Tuesday, it was the turn of Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, one of the most successful titles on the planet. In a note posted online, CEO Tim Sweeney announced that more than 1,000 jobs would be lost – this followed the cutting of 830 staff in September 2023.

From owing a debt to obscure Japanese horror Sweet Home to the influence of Aliens and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the franchise continues to petrify players three decades on

To many of us playing and writing about video games in the 1990s, Resident Evil seemed to come out of nowhere. The emerging PlayStation and Saturn consoles were all about slick, bright arcade conversions – the shiny thrills of Daytona and Tekken – and Japanese publisher Capcom was in a rut of coin-op conversions and endless sequels to Street Fighter and Mega Man. Scary games were rare at the time and mostly confined to the PC. So when the news of a horror title named Biohazard (the Japanese name for the series) started to emerge in 1995, it caught the attention of games journalists as it seemed radically out of step with prevailing trends. Games were about power, but as early demos quickly revealed, Resident Evil was about vulnerability.

Thirty years later, it’s still here. The series has sold more than 180m copies worldwide, with 11 core titles and dozens of spinoffs and remakes, as well as film, television and anime tie-ins. Its characters and monsters are icons, its tropes now embedded in game design practice. What has allowed it to not only survive but flourish in such a rapidly changing industry? Why do we still let it scare us?

Lyric Hammersmith, London
Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy – following a day in the life of a Harlem braiding salon – is filled with humour and hijinks

‘Don’t touch my hair” is a racially-charged statement of Black femininity, encapsulating the personal as political. Hair is political here too, though there is plenty of consenting touching in Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy following a day in the life of a Harlem braiding salon.

Bioh’s follow-up to School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, is again directed by Monique Touko and has dazzled audiences on Broadway. You can see why: it contains such abundant charm, humour and insuppressible, crowd-pleasing energy that it is hard to be anything but seduced by its radiating warmth.

Royal Festival Hall, London
The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Beijing Olympics composer premieres his immediately appealing choral concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Whether or not you recognise the name of Chinese-born American composer Tan Dun, you have almost certainly heard his music. His score for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon swept up awards in 2000. He composed the official music for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His back catalogue includes concertos for classical megastars Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang, a full-length work for the Metropolitan Opera and even an Internet Symphony for Google/YouTube.

No surprise, given his track record, that Tan’s Choral Concerto: Nine is immediately appealing. Commissioned to mark Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, the work demands the same orchestra-and-chorus forces as the Viennese composer’s final symphony – plus lashings of extra percussion. Conducted by Tan himself, its UK premiere saw the London Philharmonic Orchestra crammed on to an extended stage to accommodate a full battery of drums, with the combined London Philharmonic Choir and London Chinese Philharmonic Choir arrayed behind.

Bristol Old Vic
The Reduced Shakespeare Company returns with a frantic mix of pratfalls, audience participation and lightning-flash characterisations

A classical actor who appeared in a recent production of Othello told me that the cast was alarmed by the murders being met on many nights by blasts of laughter. This may be due to audiences having seen the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s 1987 show The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) during its long West End runs or world tours. Or other examples of the trend for carved-up Bard that this “RSC” founder Adam Long started, including Spymonkey’s The Complete Deaths, making central an incidental aspect of Long’s shortening: the climactic body pile-ups.

At Long’s revival, it is apparent, from interval conversations, that many who were taken to The Complete Works as teenagers are now bringing their own. Topical tweaks acknowledge this. Louis Theroux, a sixth-former when the original version premiered, has grown up to get a gag in this iteration, as have other contemporary phenomena, including Ozempic.

Royal Court theatre, London
A class on The Crucible unearths troubling parallels for a group of teen girls in Kimberly Belflower’s play set in the wake of the Weinstein scandal

Kimberly Belflower’s revisionist take on Arthur Miller’s classic The Crucible re-spins the witch-hunts for the #MeToo generation. A classroom of teenagers – mostly girls – want to set up a feminist club, which is sparked, you assume, by the news headlines. Set in 2018, it is an original way to deal with adolescent girlhood in the direct fallout of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, although the play takes a while to gather power.

Beth (Holly Howden Gilchrist) is the class swot; Ivy (Clare Hughes) has a father accused of inappropriate behaviour at work; Nell (Lauryn Ajufo) is the new girl; Raelynn (Miya James) is a pastor’s daughter whose ex-boyfriend cheated on her with Shelby (Sadie Soverall). The last of these is key to proceedings but is absent from school – and this play – for quite a while.

The presenter would do Common People at karaoke and avoids 6 Music during intimate moments. But which multilingual song makes him cry?

The first song I fell in love with
My dad had a quite a small record collection, but it was pretty good, he had all the classics: Bob Marley, Bill Withers, Ella Fitzgerald, Tina Turner. But I vividly remember loving America by Simon and Garfunkel – there’s a sense of hope to it, like a feeling of wanting to escape. We spent a lot of time in the car, going on drives that didn’t really go anywhere, like that was our entertainment – we’d sing along in the car, me, my mum and dad.

The first single I bought
I remember my mum bought me a tape called Hardcore Ecstasy, which is a great compilation – I was genuinely seven. I just loved it. I think rave is so appealing to a seven-year-old, you know, it’s so noisy and vibrant. But the first song I remember buying is It’s Oh So Quiet by Björk, in Oldham’s HMV. It was weird and stuck out to me – I was nine. I think if I’m honest, I bought it based on the font and the silver metallic hyper-futuristic look – I didn’t know who she was, but I liked her DIY fringe.

In this week’s newsletter: From singers to YouTube stars and TV hosts, more famous faces are treading the boards. Some insiders think it’s killing the industry, but for others it opens up theatre to a wider audience

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Timothée Chalamet might have smirked his way out of an Oscar. Sabrina Carpenter might have been roundly snubbed at the Grammys. But there’s one place both would be welcomed with open arms: the UK theatre scene.

It seems we can’t get enough of celebs on stage (acting chops preferable but not mandatory). This week alone, London’s West End features Stranger Things star Sadie Sink, singer Self Esteem and Strictly cutie pie Johannes Radebe. Meanwhile, Mischa Barton, best known for playing Marissa Cooper in the 00s TV series The OC, is touring the UK and Ireland in a new adaptation of James M. Cain’s crime novel Double Indemnity.

The Late Show host is co-writing a new JRR Tolkien adaptation to be produced by Peter Jackson

Typically, when a famous comedian ventures into writing, it’s in service of a book of humorous essays or a screenplay for a starring vehicle. Stephen Colbert, the comic actor turned beloved talkshow host, is preparing a more unusual pivot: he’ll be working on the screenplay for a new Lord of the Rings movie, to be produced by franchise impresario Peter Jackson, who directed the original trilogy of films based on the JRR Tolkien fantasy novels, as well as a trilogy based on Tolkien’s book The Hobbit. To casual viewers of his about-to-end Late Show on CBS, or those who remember his years as a contributor to Comedy Central’s irreverent The Daily Show, this might seem like an odd fit; Tolkien isn’t known for his satirical edge. Colbert, however, is known for his love of Tolkien – among other things.

Befitting his eventual gig as a political satirist, Colbert was born in Washington DC, the youngest of 11 children in a Catholic family that subsequently lived in Maryland and South Carolina. The family suffered a major loss in 1974 when two of Colbert’s brothers and their father were killed in a plane crash. Colbert was only 10 and became withdrawn after the tragedy, retreating into books – especially fantasy books like the works of Tolkien – and games like Dungeons & Dragons, which he played heavily for four years. This provided some early training in acting and improvisation without him entirely realizing it. “For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing,” he told the AV Club in 2006. “You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It’s good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in.”

The ever-changing menu is a paean to things that make me happy

The Wellington has been drawing crowds to Margate of late, due to a recent takeover by chef Billy Stock and front-of-house queen Ellie Topham. Stock is formerly of nearby Sète, which I loved very much, and also cooked at London’s The Marksman and St John, which is a pedigree that says: “I like feeding people proper food, not fancy, itsy-bitsy suggestions of food.” So with that, I set off to the south-east Riviera on a day when the weather ranged from hailstones to simply freezing gales.

Much is said about Margate being freshly desirable, hip and charming, but on a freezing day at the tail end of winter, this seaside town certainly tests the prescription of one’s rose-tinted spectacles. None of the down-from-London brigade cries, “Let’s move to Margate!” as icy hail plink-plonks off their nose while they cower in the door of the Turner Contemporary. On days like this, you need a centuries-old pub like the Wellington just off the promenade in the Old Town, to dry off with a stiff negroni and a bowl of French onion soup with beef short ribs. Or maybe a slab of country-style terrine with cornichons and, if you’re driving, one of their very good non-alcoholic shrubs: when we visited, there was a lovely, sharp but not-too-tart rhubarb one on offer.

Take your time. Often we need to find out who we are before we can know what, and who, we really want

I’m 18 and have been at university for a few months. Being here has made me realise certain things about myself, including my struggle to desire a relationship. I’ve never been in one and don’t believe I’ve ever been physically or sexually attracted to anyone. I know I am still young, but I’m worried this will never change. Since going to uni, I’ve been around friends and others experiencing intimate relationships or discussing feelings which I can’t relate to or understand. I believe I am straight, but then again, as I haven’t felt anything towards the opposite sex, I have questioned that.

I am quite an anxious person, have often felt quite out of place in social situations, especially the last few years, and wonder if this is all linked. One of my biggest goals in life is to have children, and I’m worried it may be hard due to how I’m feeling.

With an egg-cellent roster on offer, which chocolate treats are the most moreish and which aren’t worth shelling out on?

• The best novelty hot cross buns

At the age of 45, my Easter egg hunt is about seeking out quality, transparency and flavour, rather than just finding the most eggs. Then again, I haven’t been on one for about 35 years, and my tastes have since changed, as has the market. Beyond those foil-wrapped novelties of yesteryear, there’s now a genuinely impressive selection of thoughtfully made, handcrafted chocolate eggs aimed at those with a more mature palate.

As with all chocolate, certifications matter: Fairtrade guarantees a minimum price, fairer working rights and investment in climate resilience, while the Rainforest Alliance focuses on environmental standards and farm sustainability. The quality and processing of the chocolate is also important. Most eggs contain the likes of invert sugar syrup, soya lecithin and E471, so rather than highlight every additive, I’ve instead flagged products with minimal processing, as well as those that use palm oil. I haven’t marked down for high sugar content – it is Easter, after all – but I have included the percentage of sugar.

This pricey infrared therapy mat claims to help mood, sleep and muscle recovery. It felt more like a glorified heating pad

• Plastic-free cutting boards and $17 bike lights: 11 things you loved in March

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I have a $1,400 mat stashed under my pink velvet couch.

It’s my roommate’s PEMF and infrared therapy mat, and yes, it costs nearly as much as my monthly rent. Measuring 6ft in length, made of vegan leather, layered with bright-blue amethyst and obsidian crystals and weighing as much as a Siberian husky, the HigherDose mat makes my basic yoga mat feel like a flimsy slab of cardboard.

Keep your lawn neat – and avoid petrol models – with our pick of the best electric mowers, from cordless to budget-friendly to rented options

• How to create a more eco-friendly lawn: six things you can do right now

Leaving your lawn to develop naturally into a meadow of pollinator-friendly wild flowers is the best option from an ecological perspective, but many of us still like to have at least a small area of grass, whether it’s to break up your flower beds or provide a space for the kids to play. And every lawn needs a mower.

Your family’s lawnmower might have been a fossil fuel-guzzling petrol beast, but today, an electric model is far more energy-efficient and kinder to the planet. I’ve tested electric mowers from five manufacturers to find out which are the best.

Best overall and best cordless lawnmower:
Makita DLM432PT2

Best budget lawnmower:
Einhell GC-EM 1600/37

Playful dressing is back, and our menswear expert has picked his top staples and styling tweaks for the new season, from stripes to moustaches

• How to buy secondhand clothes online that you’ll actually wear

Over the past couple of years, the runways have felt hushed: classic colours, minimal silhouettes, understated accessories. This season feels like a gear change: the mood has lifted, and designers are getting playful again. We’re talking colour, stripes, brooches, bandanas, resort wear, jewellery, denim jackets, even pyjamas … Personality and feelgood dressing are back on the agenda.

I’ve put together a list of 50 tips and tricks to get you on top of your fashion game for the upcoming season. For spring, your best investments will be transitional layers that wake up your wardrobe – think denim jackets, long-sleeve bretons and argyle knits.

This is simply some deliciously spicy, baked grated potatoes, with an egg on top and a moreish chutney to go with it – you can thank us later

Eggs are very Easter-appropriate, and some of my favourite egg recipes come from the egg-obsessed Parsis (descendants of Persian Zoroastrians, who emigrated to India thousands of years ago). Their obsession extends beyond the kitchen, too: achoo-meechoo, for example, is a custom where an egg is waved around a person’s head (six times clockwise, once anti-clockwise), then broken to ward off evil. When it comes to cooking, meanwhile, Parsis will put an egg on anything, and one favourite dish is kanda papeta par eeda, or eggs on potatoes, which I ate when staying with friends in Mumbai’s Malabar Hill and which inspired today’s recipe.

Show up, speak up … and just be nice. Here is one anonymous server’s advice for a happy meal

Hospitality is in a right state at the moment, what with the seemingly never-ending shitshow of rising rents and rates, extortionate VAT, higher staffing, produce and utility costs, and all those other well-documented socioeconomic pressures (don’t mention the Bre*it word, please). So the last thing those of us who work in this beleaguered industry need right now is to be kicked in the proverbials by the very people we rely on perhaps more than anyone. And, yes, by that I mean you, our lovely customers. So here is some advice on how to avoid infuriating your serving staff.

Turn up …
Pre-Covid, most restaurants didn’t have the balls to take card details or charge for late cancellations and no-shows, but that’s all changed now (thank God). If you buy a ticket to the football or a gig, say, you’ll be out of pocket if you can’t be arsed to turn up. Why should restaurants be any different? What’s more, even if we have charged you a cancellation fee, remember that we’ve still lost out on drink sales and service charge.

As told to Bob Granleese

From alcohol-free fizz to sips as dirty and spicy as they come – quench your seasonal thirst with these twisted classics

From alcohol-free kir royal at the top to punchy pours toward the bottom, we have all your spring sips covered.

This labor-intensive way of eating isn’t for everyone – and I’m not sure it’s for me. It requires planning and flexibility

When I called Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist and author, his assistant answered. “We’re stopped really quick,” Marielle said, adding “he is harvesting a ton of wild onions right now. He’ll be on in just a minute.”

I waited, curious to see his haul and bemused by his willingness to delay an interview for wild vegetables. I had called Greenfield, who wrote Food Freedom about the year he grew and foraged 100% of his food, to talk about how possible, or hard, it is to do just that.

From seeing him on stage to locking eyes at a lounge room disco, comedian Tom Ballard only had eyes for Harley, a handsome circus acrobat

I met Harley at the Adelaide Fringe festival in 2020. We were sharing a venue in the Garden of Unearthly Delights; I was doing my standup show, he was performing in a group circus show. I was all set to move to the UK later that year to become a West End star (or something), so I wasn’t looking for a relationship.

One night I sat in on the circus show and, when I saw Harley in action, I was smitten. About halfway in, he performed this stunning rope routine, and there was something fundamentally sexy about him rolling around in the air, shirtless and sweaty, coiling and unfurling that rope around him. Obviously, I thought it was really cool art etc, but also, you know – hot.

One minute, Dennis Biesma was playing with a chatbot; the next, he was convinced his sentient friend would make him a fortune. He’s just one of many people who lost control after an AI encounter

Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.”

Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself.

Rita wants Martin’s novelty ashtrays to stay in the garden. He likes to give them pride of place on the shelf. Whose argument is a smokescreen? You decide

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

Martin says his novelty ashtrays are decor and will spoil in the rain, but ash in our home is gross

I’ve already compromised and cut down on smoking – plus they’re more like collector’s items

My eternally exiled father was dying and witnessing a siege on Gaza. Afterwards I could go home – but he couldn’t

The last fight we ever had, my father and I, occurred on a night in May 2021 on the eve of his first chemo treatment. At this point in our story, I was a new mother, and he was a year and a half from his death. To treat his stage four prostate cancer, he had been given a series of experimental hormone treatments, which had put him in a sort of male menopause and which had just begun to fail. This last fight of ours also happened to fall right in the middle of that previous siege of Gaza (before the more recent one none of us will ever forget), which itself resulted in the destruction of 40 schools and four hospitals.

That night in May, we were in the rented ranch house in Arizona, the one with the broken dishwasher and the blue pool slide that had not been functional for decades, the house with its view of the sky and faint hint of the McDowell mountains. Though my father had lived in Palestine, Syria, Kuwait and Italy, he had fled to the Sonoran Desert after going bankrupt in New York in the early 1990s and loved the dramatic landscapes of the west with a fealty he had for nowhere else. Whereas I missed New York like a lover. I felt unmoored, restless. Exiled.

From a former wartime ‘shadow factory’ in London to converted country mansion in Yorkshire, homes with open living

Mid-range handset gets chip, storage and MagSafe upgrades to offer more essential iOS features for less

The cheapest new iPhone has been upgraded for this year with a faster chip, double the storage, automatic portraits and MagSafe, providing even more of the core Apple smartphone experience for less.

The iPhone 17e is an upgraded version of the mid-range “e” line launched last year with the first iPhone 16e and is the latest member of the iPhone 17 family. It starts at £599 (€699/$599/A$999), undercutting the iPhone 17 and iPhone 16 by £200 and £100 respectively to be the cheapest new iPhone sold by Apple.

Screen: 6.1in Super Retina XDR (OLED) (460ppi)

Processor: Apple A19 (4-core GPU)

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 256 or 512GB

Operating system: iOS 26

Camera: 48MP rear; 12MP front-facing

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C, Satellite and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.8mm

Weight: 170g

Fraudsters exploit isolation and search for human contact to often devastating effect. These are steps you can take to avoid them

As you have got older, retirement has left you with more time on your hands. Loneliness has set in. Luckily, you have found a friend through one of the online motoring groups you are in, and a close bond has blossomed over your common interest in cars.

But your new friend has found themselves short when it comes to paying for their university textbooks, and has asked you for £50. It’s not much, and you get on so well that you agree to pay via bank transfer.

Those planning for uni in England and Wales this autumn can apply for student loans from Monday. Here are the options for families worried about debt

Our child is heading to university soon – should we try to pay their tuition fees upfront so they are not saddled with a debt for decades?

Our child is a recent graduate and their student loan debt is ballooning – should we help pay off some or all of it?

The popular fitness trend is all over social media, and curious, I tried a few classes – they left me totally out of air

I have spent years in and out of the gym, trying the latest fitness trends. Consequently, my social media feed often populates with shirtless, sweaty men promising to transform my workouts.

Then it started. First, it was the occasional video of athletes grinding through a series of herculean tasks: pushing plate-laden sleds, collapsing over rowing machines, sprinting laps and throwing weighted balls at a wall inside of what looked like an aircraft hangar. That trickle became an avalanche, and I became curious.

At 59, I was at last an orphan. I woke up with the most complete feeling of liberty and personhood I’d ever experienced

Looked at one way, the modern longevity narrative is an inspirational story of human scientific and social progress. Looked at another you could say that we are now condemned to longevity – our own and other people’s. It’s placing a massive economic, social and psychological burden on us as individuals and as a society.

There are now so many old people that new categories of demographic definition have been created to describe them. Those considered the “young old” are aged between 55 and 65. That’s me: At 63 years of age, I’m a young old. By all the rules of human history, I should have been dead for years. Instead, when I look 20 years into the future, I foresee an even older me who will need to plan for the outside possibility that I may have another 20 years to go. This is not necessarily, in my view, a glorious prospect.

Need for abstinence before fertility treatment questioned as study finds sperm deteriorates as it stays in body

Encouraging men to have more frequent ejaculations may boost their fertility, according to researchers who found that sperm deteriorates over time as it remains in the body.

The longer men went without sex, the more their sperm showed signs of DNA damage and oxidative stress, and the more tests rated the sperm as less viable and poorer swimmers.

We’re told that sleep is a superpower, making us smarter, healthier and happier. But how much is enough? And is insomnia as bad for us as we think?

‘Once, after I did a presentation, someone came up to me and said, ‘I don’t get eight hours of sleep a night. Am I going to die?’” says Prof Russell Foster, head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. “And I said, ‘Well, yes, you’re going to die. But, you know, we all die eventually.’”

This exchange is, hopefully, comforting, but it also shouldn’t be too surprising. Over the past decade or so, we’ve been repeatedly told that sleep is everything from a legal performance-enhancer to an actual superpower – and, conversely, that if we don’t get enough shuteye we’re risking an early start to our eternal slumber. But how bad is a lack of sleep, really? And if we seem to be coping fine on six hours a night, is there a chance we’re still setting ourselves up for problems further down the line?

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

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

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

Show draws almost entirely from collection of Lancashire schoolteacher Peter Smithson, a fan since he was 10

Peter Smithson’s wife, Belise, has never minded when he receives a corset from Japan or a pair of fur-trimmed knickers and they are not for her.

“No, she’s never seen it as strange,” said Smithson, a chemistry teacher and Vivienne Westwood supercollector. “She has never judged it. She gets it. She knows it is part and parcel of who I am.”

From flannel shirts to herringbone tailoring, Pep Guardiola’s stylistic pivot hint​s at a man renegotiating his identity ​in the twilight of ​his footballing era

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Last Tuesday, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola lost to Real Madrid in a £270 shirt.

The grungy flannel number from the cult Swedish menswear brand Our Legacy was so noteworthy it consumed more post-match oxygen than the news that Manchester City had been dumped out of the Champions League before the quarter-finals. Never mind that Guardiola is beginning to look bereft of ideas for the first time in his career. All anyone cared about was whether he’d hired a stylist.

It will come into its own in summer. Until then, try layering it with spring-ready jackets and chill-proof knitwear

Join the Famous Five in Dorset, relive Springwatch in the Peak District … our selection of Easter treats will keep all the family entertained

Spring has arrived at Wicken Fen, one of Europe’s most important wetlands, and with it the first summer migrants. Chiffchaffs are usually the earliest, with their rhythmic song ringing out across the fens. Then, if the weather is mild, blackcaps and willow warblers might join them. Listen closely, especially early morning or at dusk, for the foghorn-like calls of the booming bittern across the reedbeds. There’s a pushchair- and wheelchair-friendly boardwalk around Sedge Fen, and wheelchair-accessible wildlife hides. Look out for the electric blue flash of a kingfisher, and male marsh harriers performing their dramatic sky-dancing flights as the breeding season gets under way, before the cuckoos arrive in late April.
From £10 adults, £5 children (under-5s free), nationaltrust.org.uk

The luscious chocolate and apricot torte is the stuff of legend in the grand, old world of Viennese coffeehouses. But which makes the tastiest?

I’m on a tram on Vienna’s Ringstrasse as towering facades, columns, statues and domes drift past, each more ornate than the last. Here, the State Opera; there, the Austrian parliament, built in the Greek neoclassical style.

As I gawp, I shove cake in my mouth. After all, Vienna isn’t just the city of music, or lavish architecture. Thanks, in part, to its centuries-old coffeehouse culture, it’s also one of Europe’s finest pastry destinations. Cake (or more precisely, torte, kuchen or Mehlspeisen) has its own day here – “Sweet Friday”, the most delicious of Catholic customs, when meat dishes are replaced with sweets. I have been introduced to it via the medium of Marillenknödel – apricot dumplings.

Your top tips for seasonal outings from birdwatching to gorgeous gardens, amazing architecture and more
• Tell us about a trip to Spain – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Last April, I based myself in Oban and took my teenagers puffin-watching at Lunga, off Mull, in the Treshnish Isles, with an organised tour (Staffa Tours) by ferry and foot. It was a real delight. The guides were brilliant and helpful, especially with my mobility issues, and we were surprised and amazed at how tame and friendly the puffins were – allowing us to get great views of their faces from as near as 5ft or so. Next spring, we are going again as this is the best time to see them arriving in their thousands.
April

The Which? travel editor on the unexpected joys and considerable savings of house swapping. Plus top tips on how to do it

Imagine cutting the cost of accommodation on your next holiday to about £5 a day. You can have a whole house, rather than just a bedroom. And you can go almost anywhere in the world and stay as long as you like, within reason. Welcome to house swapping.

You’re sceptical, I know. I was, too. Our terrace house was too small. Too overflowing with stuff. The 1980s kitchen was too old (and battered). We aren’t in a nice enough neighbourhood. Who would want to stay here? Lots of people, it turned out.

One thinks mirgrants take advantage of Britain being a generous country, the other thinks they need more safe routes. Can they find common ground in the rise of the Green party?

• Want to meet someone from across the divide? Click here to find out how

Abdal-Jabbar, 56, Manchester

Occupation Monitors offenders on electronic tags

Examining the packaging is key to avoiding illegal and potentially harmful devices, as millions are seized each year

You buy a vape from a shop on the high street. Nothing looks unusual but after charging the unit and using it for a few days, you notice it is getting hotter and hotter.

The vape is a fake and one of the thousands on sale illegally in shops around the UK. By not installing a simple circuit to prevent overheating, the manufacturers have saved a couple of pence but risk it catching fire.

The Filipino photographer was delighted to see his usually serious daughter getting muddy with her young cousin

When Mark Linel Padecio is at home in Danao City, Cebu, in the Philippines, family life lies “within a rhythm of schedules, studies and screens”. His 10-year-old daughter, Xianthee, is shaped by the city. “Her days are filled with lessons and responsibilities, and she’s a diligent, serious student, so smiles from her are rare and often reserved,” Padecio says.

Along with his wife, Padecio owns a small farm in Dapdap, a 30-minute drive away. After a fleeting rainfall ended a long and punishing drought last year, the family paid a visit. “Rivers frequently dry up for months, forcing families to suffer crop failures, to ration and face heightened risks of illness,” Padecio says. “So even if the river only trickles briefly, it feels miraculous, instantly transforming hardship into relief and hope.”

It started with an obscure railway postbox that had been thrown in a skip – now my museum has pieces from Scotland, Ireland and Hong Kong

Back in 1994, I went to north Wales to see the miniature steam trains – I was a fan of railways. On a platform at Rhyl station, I noticed the painted outline of a postbox – it was all that remained of one that had stood there since the late 1800s.

It turns out it had been vandalised, set alight and chucked in a skip. I asked the station manager if I could see it and he jokingly said: “Give me 20 quid and you can take it away with you.”

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

Ruling that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed addictive products marks possible watershed moment for social media

The young woman at the heart of what has been called the tech industry’s “big tobacco” moment was on YouTube at six and Instagram by nine. More than a decade later, she says, she still can’t live without the social media she became addicted to.

“I can’t, it’s too hard to be without it,” Kaley, now 20, told a jury at Los Angeles’ superior court. This week, five men and seven women handed down a verdict on the design of two of the world’s most popular apps that vindicated Kaley’s position.

Shops and restaurants once bustling with tourists now struggle for survival as Canadians think twice about crossing the border

On a warm March weekend in the American border town of Lewiston, New York, bakery owner Aimee Loughran is putting the finishing touches on a special order: a state trooper badge-shaped cake for a local officer’s retirement party.

It should be the last task of a busy Saturday at her Just Desserts shop, which sits just 20 minutes north of the rushing waters of Niagara Falls. Dotted with cafes, restaurants and historic buildings from the 1800s, the Lewiston strip is usually catnip for tourists, including the Canadians whose homes can be seen from the banks of the nearby Niagara River.

Political veteran says she faced ‘French misogyny and machismo’ while making Paris greener and more peaceful

On a sunny spring morning, the highway along the right bank of the Seine is packed with joggers, cyclists, families out for a stroll, roller skaters, dog walkers, picnickers and others taking the air.

In a few months, sand will be spread along a stretch to create the annual artificial Parisbeaches, enjoyed by all but especially city dwellers struggling to make ends meet and unable to afford the real thing.

As some landlords introduce bans or restrictions, we want to hear from pub-goers about their experiences and views

A growing number of pubs in the UK are restricting or banning children, with some landlords citing safety concerns, changing atmospheres and lost trade. Others argue that pubs should remain welcoming community spaces for people of all ages.

We want to hear from pub-goers, both parents and non-parents, about their experiences and views.

Were you surprised by your bill? How did you manage the cost? We would like to hear from you

The UK’s competition watchdog has ordered vets to cap prescription fees at £21 and proposed a cost-comparison website.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said public satisfaction with the cost of services was “low” after a two-and-a-half-year investigation that found “there is not strong competition between veterinary businesses”.

We’d like to speak to people in the UK who are cutting back on fuel use after the increase in petrol and diesel prices linked to the war in Iran

We’d like to speak to people in the UK who are cutting back on fuel use after the increase in petrol and diesel prices linked to the war in Iran.

Are you taking fewer journeys or using alternative modes of transport? Are you still travelling to work the same number of days a week? Have you cited fuel costs as a reason to work from home?

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

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

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

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