Some campaigners are frustrated at slow pace of change, while those impacted are trying to work out what it means day-to-day

A year ago, the supreme court made its landmark judgment on single-sex spaces. In a long-running case against the Scottish government brought by gender-critical campaigners For Women Scotland (FWS), the court ruled that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex.

The judgment has significant ramifications for who can now access women-only services and spaces, such as refuges or toilets. But most service providers are still awaiting practical guidance on how to apply the ruling.

Weirdly, Keir and Kemi looked more secure in their jobs as a modicum of coherence entered their exchanges

Credit where credit is due. The last few prime minister’s questions have been an exercise in nihilism. The embodiment of existential futility. Questions asked by Kemi Badenoch but not even a pretence by Keir Starmer of answering them. It was like the worst days of Boris Johnson’s time in No 10. We’d have learned more if both leaders had chosen to read out some names from an old 1980s phonebook.

But to everyone’s surprise – not least Starmer’s – this week Keir did make a reasonable fist of listening to Kemi’s questions and giving a reply that was more or less coherent. Well, up to a point. Obviously he didn’t answer the one question that really counted. The one about when the defence investment plan would be published. But you can’t have everything. And, to be fair, it is a tricky one. Both sides of the house know that the UK needs to spend more on defence. Especially now the US seems to have become the enemy. But no one can agree on how to pay for it.

Blending minimalism, ambient and folk music in the former Czechoslovakia, the couple made pilgrim-like tours around Europe, beguiling everyone they met. Fans including the National’s Bryce Dessner explain their allure

The Czech duo Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi often seemed out of time. From the mid-80s, the married couple filtered minimalist composition, ambient and folk through baroque instruments, honing their craft in Prague’s churches and monasteries to create a mysterious combination of modernism and old European music against a communist backdrop. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Havels’ unhurried music didn’t rush to match the new pace of capitalism in the country. Instead, they would tour Europe by rail and bus, describing themselves as “pilgrims who wander and play”, as Vojtěch said in a 2009 documentary directed by Vincent Moon. Whether playing their string instruments or minimalist piano etudes for four hands, the pair merged into a symbiotic life-form.

The couple saw themselves as acting in service of the music, “of this energy between us and the audience”, said Irena. “Something that can only be shared together, going through us, when the ego is a little asleep.”

Leaders of Poland and Germany hail Péter Magyar’s majority as a turning of the tide – but analysts say there were other reasons for defeat of prime minister

For Poland’s Donald Tusk, the crushing defeat of Hungary’s illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orbán, after 16 years in office was evidence that the world was no longer “condemned to authoritarian and corrupt governments”.

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, also believes the two-thirds majority secured by Orbán’s centre-right challenger, Péter Magyar, in Sunday’s elections was “a clear signal against rightwing populism” that showed “the pendulum is swinging back”.

The president’s attack on the head of the Catholic church and the AI depiction of himself as a Christ-like figure have not gone down well with one of the largest groups of swing voters in the US

Poor persecuted Donald Trump has frequently portrayed himself as a modern messiah. Some of his supporters, meanwhile, have compared him directly to Jesus. And, to be fair, while the son of God didn’t eat Big Macs on a private jet and encourage his followers to buy AI stocks, there are similarities between the two figures. Namely the miracle-working. The US president may not be able to turn water into wine, but he’s turned public office into a personal goldmine. This week, Trump also managed to transform a staunch atheist (me) into a defender of the Catholic church.

I’m not defending everything, mind you, just Pope Leo XIV’s recent condemnations of war. “God does not bless any conflict,” the pope wrote on X on Friday. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who … drop bombs.” During Saturday prayers, the pope also called out the “delusion of omnipotence”. While Leo didn’t name names, his statements were widely interpreted as a rebuke of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly framed its warmongering in religious terms.

You might think of breathing as automatic, but dysfunctional breathing can arise even if you’re healthy

We’re often taught that breathing is automatic. We barely think about it, as with blinking or the quiet, constant work of the heart. But many otherwise healthy adults have dysfunctional breathing.

“Dysfunctional breathing, also known as breathing pattern disorder, is when breathlessness and/or difficulty in breathing is felt,” said Dr Stephen Fowler, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester. It can occur outside the context of any disease. If a related condition is present, like asthma, the breathlessness might feel disproportionate to that condition, he said.

Exclusive: Climate action blockers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and major fossil fuel firms set to make extra $234bn by end of 2026

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• Business live – latest updates

The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.

The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 (£74) a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies. Oil and gas supplies will take months to return to pre-war levels and the companies will make $234bn by the end of the year if the oil price continues to average $100. The analysis uses data from a leading intelligence provider, Rystad Energy, analysed by Global Witness.

UK chancellor tells US audience she is ‘not convinced that this conflict has made the world a safer place’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• Business live – latest updates

Rachel Reeves has stepped up her criticism of Donald Trump’s war on Iran, describing it as a “mistake” that has destabilised the global economy and damaged living standards around the world.

In a marked fraying of the transatlantic relationship, the UK chancellor said Trump breaking off from diplomatic talks with Iran and launching airstrikes had not made the world a safer place.

Announcement comes before Matt Brittin replaces Tim Davie as director general next month

• Business live – latest updates

The BBC is to cut as many as 2,000 jobs in the biggest downsizing of the public service broadcaster in 15 years.

Staff were informed of the cuts, which will affect about 10% of the BBC’s 21,500 employees, at an all-staff meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

Met says overnight incident in Finchley is being treated as antisemitic hate crime

Police are seeking two suspects believed to be behind an attempted arson attack on a synagogue in north London.

The Met said two people “wearing dark clothing and balaclavas” approached Finchley Reform Synagogue just after midnight on Wednesday and threw a brick and two bottles suspected to contain petrol at the building.

Airport body has asked for power to suspend EES checks requiring personal information and biometrics

• Business live – latest updates

Travellers going through some European airports are reportedly waiting up to three hours at border checks because of the EU’s new entry-exit system (EES).

Passengers in airports in countries such as France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Greece are waiting several hours at border checks, the Airports Council International (ACI) body has said.

Péter Magyar compares media coverage to Nazi-era Germany and aims to ‘restore its public service character’

• Europe live – latest updates

Hungary’s prime minister-elect has vowed to suspend state media news coverage, describing it as a “propaganda machine,” when his government takes office around mid-May.

Péter Magyar, whose landslide election victory on Sunday brought an end to Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power, detailed his plans for the suspension as he gave two tense interviews to public radio and television on Wednesday.

Exclusive: ministers consider restricting pesticide-based treatments, which can get into waterways and harm wildlife

Pet owners across the UK could be banned from buying flea treatment for cats and dogs under new government rules.

Ministers have begun an eight-week consultation on letting only veterinary practitioners or pharmacists give out the potent, pesticide-based flea treatments, to ensure “correct usage”. At the moment, the flea and tick treatments can be bought from any pet shop.

Narwhal Labs ad for ‘AI employee’ contains strapline: ‘She outworks everyone. And she’ll never ask for a raise’

A British AI company that recently secured millions of pounds of investment has been accused of running a misogynistic and sexist advertising campaign.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received at least seven complaints about the campaign by Narwhal Labs, which includes an advert depicting a woman next to the strapline: “She outworks everyone. And she’ll never ask for a raise.”

Academics from the University of Sheffield hope to create a ‘vivid, honest record’ of swearwords and other slights to stop them dying out

An idiot wandering the British Isles is sure to be greeted with a colourful volley of insults, each a signifier of the place in which he finds himself: “divvy” in Merseyside, “pillock” in Leeds or “dinlo” in Portsmouth.

But with parochial phrases increasingly being lost to the homogenisation of the English language, experts are worried that soon, the wandering idiot may just be called an “idiot” wherever he goes.

The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies made more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian.

The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies.

Lucy Hough speaks to Damian Carrington, the Guardian’s environment editor

Two recent books about Morrison attempt to make sense of her legacy as a writer, editor and thinker on Black life

When I think of Toni Morrison’s novels, I often think of the poet Lucille Clifton’s response to Gorilla, My Love, the debut short story collection by “the other Toni”, Toni Cade Bambara: “She has captured it all, how we really talk, how we really are; and done it with both love and respect. I laughed until I cried, then laughed again. I loved it! She must love us very much.”

Published in 1972, Bambara’s collection roves through a Black girlhood filled with wit, tenderness, play and betrayal with a rhythmic intensity that moves the way a blues lyric drifts into memory. Morrison edited the book, the first fiction acquisition of her 16-year tenure as an editor at Random House. The Tonis were both single mothers navigating multiple forms of literary labor, and they became fast friends.

Squeeze the day with our expert’s pick of the best juicers, from cold press to anti-clog to budget

• In the US? Read the best juicers in the US
• The best blenders, tested

Long before we became a nation of smoothie lovers, with blenders gracing our worktops, the health-conscious kitchen was always home to a juicer. Those early models could be tricky to keep clean, or require herculean effort to produce a mere dribble – but modern juicers are more efficient, easier to maintain, and can often produce more than just fruit juice.

There are some solid reasons to buy. Homemade juice is the original health drink: squeezed straight from fruit and vegetables, it has none of the preservatives sometimes found in shop-bought blends, nor is it treated to make it last longer or stay the right colour. Juicers can, however, leave behind some of the important fibre found in fruits’ skin and flesh.

Best juicer overall and best on a budget:
Nutribullet juicer

Best compact centrifugal juicer:
Philips Viva Collection juicer

Parent WhatsApp chats can be fraught spaces for new mothers. But for Wendy Syfret they were a late-night digital sanctuary

For the first few days after I brought my daughter home from the hospital, my house was busier than it had ever been. Family, friends, neighbours and even loose acquaintances crowded the doorway, plying me with food, gifts, hand-me-downs and advice.

But as the sun set, the crowds thinned. My daughter would wake for a long night of not sleeping and I’d retreat to my bedroom and, honestly, my phone.

With ear-splitting excess, flamboyant virtuosity and a talent for transgression, where classical music has led, metal has followed. Let’s hope the Philharmonia’s Metal Orchestrated concert turns it up to 11

The question is not why, but why has it taken so long? Putting heavy metal and classical together that is, as the Philharmonia are doing next week in their Forged in Sound: Heavy Metal Orchestrated gig, part of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival.

There’s more that connects metal and classical music than sets them apart. A love of volume, turning the noise up to 11? From Black Sabbath to Stravinsky, check. A worship of virtuosity, of speed, technique and orgiastic instrumental excess, from Vivaldi to Van Halen? Absolutely. An all-too easily parodied sense of grandiloquence, pseudo-seriousness and expressive pomp and circumstance? I give you Richard Wagner and Iron Maiden. An addiction to flamboyant spectacle, a PR-driven flirtation with the dark side to build the mythology of the music and the performers? That too.

Here’s an easy rule for making sure your outfit is always tasteful – even when you’re spread too thin

Some days inspiration strikes, and it feels fun and soul-nourishing to invest energy creating something fabulous for dinner. Other days, there’s a lot going on so you make a sandwich. And here’s the thing: both are fine. It’s a long game we’re playing here, folks.

Which is a roundabout way of saying: the sandwich rule, which I am about to share with you, is not style done the cordon bleu way, but it sure is useful for days when you want to look nice but don’t have time for drama.

Gen Z are turning to nonnas for inspiration on how to live to be 100. Will donning a flowery dress and making their own pasta sauce do the trick?

Name: Nonnamaxxing.

Age: 70 to 100, and beyond.

Each party has its own version of nationalism to offer voters in May’s Senedd election: closer ties to England or more independence for Wales

It’s fair to say that the UK will change after the elections on 7 May. But few places will change as thoroughly as Wales. The polls suggest that after the vote our next Senedd will be led by either Plaid Cymru or Reform: this would make it the first time in 100 years that Welsh Labour is not the largest party in Cymru. However, Plaid and Reform’s visions for Wales are polar opposites – and their supporters are torn between two wildly different visions for their country.

When you look at the Plaid and Reform manifestos, the differences are immediately apparent. First of all, Plaid’s document is a chunky 74 pages compared with Reform’s 18. Plaid dedicates huge amounts of ink to explaining how the party is going to fight for concessions or increased power from Westminster on everything from tax to rail devolution. Contrast that with Reform’s leader in Wales, Dan Thomas, who said that a Reform government in Wales would not “pick a fight with Westminster” except on the “one matter of immigration”.

Millions have died as a result of disastrous US-led military adventurism. But there have been no consequences for those who championed it for so long

What an admission. “The threat of terrorism” from the Middle East, an influential US columnist wrote a fortnight ago, “was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it”. If the US had “not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s,” he added, “Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking” it. He went further still: “Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of ‘who we are’ but because of where we are.”

After a quarter of a century of disastrous US wars in the Middle East, that may sound like common sense. But this is Robert Kagan, one of the godfathers of neoconservatism, the creed that zealously championed military adventurism at the height of the era of US exceptionalism. In the 1990s, he repeatedly agitated for war with Iraq, a demand that became a rallying cry after 9/11, when he insisted that “the Iraqi threat is enormous”.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

The time is long overdue for members of Congress to listen to the American people and end US military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government

I am a proud Jewish-American. My father fled Poland in 1921 to escape poverty and antisemitism. Those in his family who stayed were murdered by the Nazis. Since childhood, I have known very well where antisemitism, racism, fanaticism and demagoguery lead.

So let me be clear. Speaking out against the horrific and inhumane actions of Israel, and its extremist leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not antisemitic. Speaking out about the dangerous and destructive role that Israel plays in shaping US foreign and military policy is not antisemitic. It is, in fact, what every member of Congress and every American should be doing.

Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and ranking member of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont

Helen DeWitt turning down the Windham-Campbell literary award caused controversy. But her bold act highlights that such prizes aren’t always as meritocratic as they might seem

“All you need is a five-minute spot on a morning TV show,” a colleague told me recently. “Then everyone will buy your novel.” I tried to picture myself, with my horror of being filmed, in thick orange makeup, perched on a sofa in a brightly lit studio while trying to talk about how the French critic Hélène Cixous inspired me to want to write the first great ovulation novel. It sounded ridiculous for all involved.

Yet when you’re a writer, you are supposed to take every opportunity you can get. That was the attitude to news that Helen DeWitt had turned down the $175,000 (£129,000) Windham-Campbell prize on the basis of being unable to fulfil its promotional obligations, which included six to eight hours of filming. The prize, which this year was given to eight writers in recognition of their life’s work, is intended to give recipients time and space to work independently of financial concerns.

As the country’s biggest housebuilder cuts land buying and the Iran war pushes up costs, setting an ambitious figure appears even more foolish

This is what the government didn’t want to hear when its target to build 1.5m new homes in England during this parliament already looked out of reach. The country’s biggest housebuilder is trimming its purchases of new land because the Iran war has created “a less certain backdrop”.

Barratt Redrow’s “disciplined approach” isn’t a downing of tools, it should be said. The company had previously expected to buy between 10,000 and 12,000 plots; now it will acquire between 7,000 and 9,000. In money terms, it equates to about £100m less from a £800m-£900m budget. It is a scaling-back, as opposed to the outright halt to buying new land that London-focused Berkeley Group announced a couple of weeks ago.

Péter Magyar did not need to dismantle the system – but he understood that Hungarians care more about the cost of living than conspiracies

Hungary’s election delivered an unprecedented victory for Viktor Orbán’s challenger. With a record turnout of nearly 80% and a supermajority for the Tisza party of almost 70% of the seats, this was not merely a change of government: it was a change of regime, compressed into a single election night.

After 16 years in power, Orbán became the victim of his own creation. Hungary’s electoral machinery, carefully engineered to convert a relative majority into overwhelming parliamentary dominance, worked perfectly – just not for him. In the end, the opposition leader, Péter Magyar, did not need to dismantle the system; he simply recognised the rules of the game and played to win. Orbán’s 2011 electoral laws, designed to punish a fragmented opposition, ultimately proved fatal to their creator, when he was faced with a challenger who could turn those winner-takes-all mechanics to his advantage.

Tibor Dessewffy is director of the digital sociology research centre at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations

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

A former Nato chief demands more cash while fixing Britain’s global role. Before billions are spent, ministers must define the purpose of its military

George Robertson’s claims about the prime minister’s “corrosive complacency” over Britain’s safety made headlines. But it is a howl of pain, not a sober security analysis. The former Nato secretary general and author of the government’s strategic defence review (SDR) wants Downing Street to back his view of Britain’s role in the world – as Robin to America’s Batman – with billions of pounds of cash. But his argument takes for granted what should be under scrutiny: Britain’s global military role itself.

Donald Trump’s threats over Greenland, his disregard for international law and his U-turn over the Chagos deal expose the fragility of Britain’s defence assumptions. Before spending billions, those commitments must be re-examined. Lord Robertson’s claim of a £28bn black hole assumes that the current strategy is the correct one. But if that strategy – with its emphasis on global deployment and alliance commitments – is open to question, then the funding gap may reflect overstretch rather than insufficient spending.

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 devastating ‘war of atrocities’ will continue as long as the United Arab Emirates and others back the belligerents

“Bloody unacceptable.” The UN’s top official in Sudan, Denise Brown, abandoned the language of diplomacy in addressing the failure to tackle a devastating three-year conflict which has been overshadowed by Ukraine, then Gaza, and now Iran. The humanitarian crisis has dominated discussions of Sudan, she argued: “How about focusing on finding a solution to end the war?”

The international conference convened in Berlin on Wednesday is intended to inject a sense of urgency, as the conflict enters its fourth year. Since Sudan’s generals turned upon each other, having overthrown the civilian government, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Four million have fled abroad to other fragile nations, and millions more are displaced internally. More than half the population – approaching 30 million people – are acutely food insecure. Much of the capital, Khartoum, lies in ruins.

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.

Responding to an article by the PM, Caroline Lucas says he must be clearer about climate risks, Molly Scott Cato says we must reverse Brexit and Dr Victor Ajuwon applauds Labour’s directness. Plus, letters by Toby Harris and Dr Tracey Elliott

Keir Starmer’s warning that the UK should not be at the mercy of events abroad is well made (The Iran war is a warning: Britain must build resilience – at home and with our allies in Europe, 9 April), but would carry more weight were he to level with the British public about the full breadth of the crises we face. It is extraordinary that nowhere in an article devoted to resilience did he find space to include the growing threat posed to the UK by the dramatic decline in the health of nature around the world. It is even more extraordinary – and, frankly, unforgivable – given that his own intelligence chiefs at the joint intelligence committee (JIC) have recently spelled it out for him in no uncertain terms.

In a report that the government shamefully sought first to suppress and then to redact, so that some of the most alarming warnings were removed, the JIC warned of “cascading risks” from the degradation of some of the planet’s most important ecosystems, including conflict, increased competition for resources and economic shocks. Six ecosystems “critical for UK national security” are all “on a pathway to collapse”, some potentially within five years – in other words, they face “irreversible loss of function beyond repair”. The UK’s heavy reliance on food and fertiliser imports means our food security is particularly at risk, threatening food shortages, higher prices and civil unrest.

Dr Helen Holt and Dr Peter Davis respond to an article by Polly Toynbee on the latest round of strikes by resident doctors

Polly Toynbee is right that it is time to stop the doctors’ strikes (Both doctors and the government are handling this strike badly – that’s why there is no end in sight, 10 April). She suggests that doctors are not feeling the pain of industrial action, but this is far from true. We are anxious about our patients and their cancelled appointments and procedures; we are exhausted covering work that we are not familiar with; and those being paid overtime for shifts they don’t want to do are uncomfortable about the financial impact on the NHS.

Many of us reluctantly supported industrial action at the beginning, with a government that wasn’t listening – wanting to support junior colleagues whose pay had fallen far behind contemporaries. Now we see how divided and conflicted resident doctors are too, and we long for a resolution. We recognise that the strikes are harmful. Communication and diplomacy are skills we pride ourselves on, and politicians have never needed them more than now. Diplomacy is the way to resolve this crisis for our NHS as well.
Dr Helen Holt
Consultant physician and chair of the medical staff committee, University Hospitals Dorset

Prof Michael Krawczak says the required molecular genetic testing comes at a cost, but should not be ruled out as it was in a recent court case

I read with great astonishment your article regarding the court of appeal’s decision on proving paternity in the case of a child whose father could be either one of a pair of monozygotic twins (Court of appeal says it cannot rule on which identical twin fathered a child, 30 April). I was particularly surprised by the court’s statement that it was “not possible” to say which twin fathered the child. This is definitely not true. The germ cells of monozygotic twins differ with sufficient probability and to a sufficient degree to allow their respective children to be clearly assigned to either of them using molecular genetic techniques.

I and my colleagues first presented the idea for this approach back in 2012, and clearly demonstrated its practical feasibility in 2018. Of course, the required molecular genetic testing entails considerable costs (currently in the five-figure range). However, whether such costs would be so “very significant” (the court’s words) as to preclude genetic testing seems highly questionable, given the potential consequences of inaction for those involved.
Prof Michael Krawczak
Kiel University, Germany

Madge Christopher was featured in an article on Storm Goretti, then Robert called

My photograph appeared in your article on the aftermath of Storm Goretti (‘It has been traumatic’: the Cornwall landmark left battered by Storm Goretti, 3 April), and now I have an extraordinary tale to tell.

Within a day or so of the publication, I received an email from a man called Robert who said that, more than 50 years ago, we had worked in the same local government establishment, which was an office with a small number of employees. But there was more…

• Iraola leaving at end of the season

• Rose out of work since March 2025

Bournemouth are in advanced talks with Marco Rose to replace Andoni Iraola as their head coach. The German has emerged as the leading candidate and a deal for him to take over at the end of the season could be agreed by the end of this week.

Bournemouth have also given strong consideration to moving for Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna, but Rose is available now and boasts a strong CV. McKenna’s contract contains a buyout clause and no negotiations can be held with him before the end of the Championship season. The Northern Irishman is trying to lead Ipswich back into the Premier League and the club are likely to resist any attempt to take the 39-year-old away from Portman Road.

Return of Alexander Isak is all well and good, but it will not redeem a season of sustained underperformance

“The failure is big,” said Ryan Gravenberch as he digested the Champions League defeat by Paris Saint-Germain that ensured Liverpool’s season will finish trophyless. It was a more appropriate description of the team’s plight than Arne Slot’s insistence the future looks bright and a reality the head coach cannot avoid whether Champions League qualification for next season is secured or not. As it must be.

Failure is unthinkable for a club whose business model depends on its lucrative revenue streams and a team that, 12 months ago, was about to win the Premier League title at a canter and was then remodelled to the tune of almost £450m. With the top five all qualifying, Chelsea fading from the conversation under Liam Rosenior and a five-point advantage over Brentford and Everton with six games to play, it would be a humiliating final blow for Liverpool to miss out. Slot’s defence for getting a third season to manage Liverpool’s transition would be holed.

England have a long way to go yet before booking flights to Brazil, but Esme Morgan, Lotte Wubben-Moy and Lucia Kendall impressed against Spain

Everybody keep calm. England sit top of their qualifying group with a 100% record after beating Spain, but there remains a very long way to go before anyone can start booking flights to Brazil for 2027. Let us cast aside that sensible advice, though, and begin to look at the players who enhanced their prospects of selection because, whether England continue this winning streak or not, their target is to win a first world title and there is no hiding from that challenge. So who has staked a claim?

Of those who started at Wembley on Tuesday, eight look nailed on to be in the first-choice XI for the World Cup. That octet of Hannah Hampton, Lucy Bronze, Alex Greenwood, Keira Walsh, Georgia Stanway, Lauren Hemp, Lauren James and Alessia Russo will be central to Sarina Wiegman’s plans for Brazil, together with senior players such as Leah Williamson and Ella Toone when they return after injuries, plus the “clutch moment” saviour that is Chloe Kelly, who was on the bench.

• Defender shown red card against Bournemouth

• Officials claim Maguire made remark as he left field

Harry Maguire will miss Manchester United’s trip to Chelsea having been handed an additional one-match ban by the Football Association for his reaction to being sent off at Bournemouth.

The 33-year-old was shown a red card at the Vitality Stadium last month for a foul in the area on ­Evanilson, with Eli Junior Kroupi scoring from the resulting penalty as Bournemouth sealed a 2-2 draw.

Rumors about the reporter and New England head coach Mike Vrabel flew all week. The conclusion to the saga was all too predictable

Dianna Russini, one of the NFL’s most high-profile reporters, is photographed holding hands with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel at a fancy resort in Sedona, Arizona. Rumors fly. Vrabel and Russini, who are both married to other people, issue statements denying the assumptions of something untoward. But the firestorm only grows. Russini resigns from her post at the Athletic, Vrabel continues with his job as usual.

The female reporter’s career is in shambles. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for the male head coach.

• Club unveil plaque outside South Stand at new stadium

• Representatives of families attend ceremony

Everton have marked the 37th ­anniversary of the Hillsborough ­disaster by unveiling a permanent tribute at Hill Dickinson Stadium to the 97 Liverpool supporters who were unlawfully killed.

Representatives of the Hillsborough families and Liverpool FC were invited to a ceremony at ­Everton’s new stadium on Wednesday to pay respects to the 97 and unveil a plaque outside the South Stand.

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While Barcelona’s night at the Metropolitano was pretty well summed up by the accompanying image of poor Fermín López shipping six studs in the mush, Lamine Yamal’s cross in the buildup should be framed and hung in the Louvre. Using a minimum of backlift, the preposterously precocious 18-year-old had arced the ball directly into the path of the midfielder with the outside of his left boot, only for López to be denied by a splendid Juan Musso save that left the already bandaged Barça midfielder drenched in claret. Had López scored, Barcelona would have gone 3-0 up on the night and ahead in the tie, having already restored parity courtesy of goals scored by Lamine Yamal and Ferran Torres in a blistering and blood-drenched opening 30 minutes. Moments later, Charlton Athletic academy graduate Ademola Lookman scored the decisive goal that sent Atlético Madrid into Bigger Cup semi-finals, much to the not entirely surprising delight of their head coach Diego Simeone. “Playing in a [Bigger Cup] semi-final, how wonderful,” he honked before an appointment with Arsenal or Sporting. “We’ll go there with all our enthusiasm and faith. We know our strengths and weaknesses. We’re ready.”

• Red Bull driver outspoken about regulation changes

• ‘In a meeting he was very keen to give suggestions’

Formula One must listen to Max ­Verstappen’s grievances about the sport’s new regulations and their effects on racing, according to F1’s CEO, Stefano Domenicali. His ­intervention comes as key ­players hold ­meetings to consider ­adjusting the rules for the remainder of the season.

Verstappen has been outspoken in his dissatisfaction with the new ­formula and the part energy management now plays in ­preventing being able to race flat-out. The four-time champion is not alone in his ­feelings with other drivers also ­critical of the deployment and recharging of ­electrical energy.

Luther Davis, a national champion with the Crimson Tide, is said to have worn wigs and make-up to secure fraudulent loans

A former University of Alabama national champion plans to plead guilty later this month to orchestrating an alleged scheme in which he impersonated NFL players and defrauded lenders out of nearly $20m. The alleged scam is described in detail by the US attorney for the northern district of Georgia, including depictions of the former defensive lineman donning disguises during loan closings.

Luther Davis, a member of the Alabama football team that won the 2010 national championship game, along with a partner, CJ Evins, “obtained at least thirteen fraudulent loans totaling more than $19,845,000”, the criminal information filing alleges. A criminal information (CI) document is filed by a US attorney when a defendant agrees to waive the constitutional right to indictment by a grand jury and instead proceed by typically entering a guilty plea; both Davis and Evins are doing so according to the court docket.

Aliya Sports said it had no further comment on this article. Sure Sports did not reply to a request for comment.

British aid to double as 19m people face acute hunger, but summit unlikely to end conflict amid Saudi-UAE tensions

The British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, will urge Sudan’s warring parties to “cease bloodshed” during a major conference on Wednesday, which analysts believe is unlikely to deliver a significant step towards peace.

The talks in Berlin – held on the third anniversary of the start of Sudan’s ruinous war – are expected to help address a catastrophic funding shortfall that is compounding the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The much-travelled politician, who has also been a member of Ukip, will stand for election to Thurrock council

First he was a Tory councillor, before switching to Labour. Then came a stint in Ukip, followed by a return to the Conservatives that ended in ignominy amid a row over trees. And now, the much-travelled Richard Bingley is representing Reform.

If Bingley is elected to Thurrock council in Essex on 7 May, it will represent something of a resurrection for the man with a case for being Britain’s most ideologically free-ranging politician, coming three years after he quit as leader of another council – Plymouth.

Conflict is pushing up price of energy and food, fuelling higher borrowing costs and hitting growth, report says

• Iran war escalation could trigger global recession, IMF warns

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The Iran war risks triggering a rise in global debt levels, forcing governments to choose between cushioning a cost of living shock and maintaining sound public finances, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

Against a volatile backdrop of the Middle East conflict, the Washington-based fund said the war could add to the already strained position of government finances throughout the world.

Lelia Doolan, who finished 220km trek at parliament gates, says use of Shannon airport violates Irish neutrality

A 91-year-old peace activist has crossed Ireland on foot and arrived in Dublin to petition the government to bar US military flights.

Lelia Doolan completed a two-week, 220km (138 mile) trek on Wednesday, ending at the gates of parliament accompanied by throngs of supporters.

Scammer arrested after manipulating payment terminal to overcharge 1,000-fold in latest in spate of seaside cons

A scammer has been arrested in Rio de Janeiro for selling a kebab to an unsuspecting British tourist for nearly £1,500 – the latest in a spate of brazen beachside swindles.

The man was detained on Tuesday on Copacabana beach, just over the road from two of the region’s top hotels. He and an accomplice allegedly manipulated a payment terminal to dramatically overcharge the foreigner for their meat skewer. The victim reportedly paid 10,000 reais (£1,480) for the meal rather than 10 (£1.50).

Analysis shows whales’ coda vocalizations are ‘highly complex’ and remarkably similar to our own

We may appear to have little in common with sperm whales – enormous, ocean-dwelling animals that last shared a common ancestor with humans more than 90 million years ago. But the whales’ vocalized communications are remarkably similar to our own, researchers have discovered.

Not only do sperm whale have a form of “alphabet” and form vowels within their vocalizations but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech, the new study has found.

The Avá-Guarani community have received little recognition of the destruction of their land by the Itaipu dam on the Paraguay-Brazil border

When the Indigenous leader Teodoro Alves was a young child in his community of Ocoy-Jacutinga, on the border between Paraguay and Brazil, a river ran through it. The Paraná River, which rises in Brazil and flows south through Paraguay to the Río de la Plata between Argentina and Uruguay, once structured the lives of Avá-Guarani people along its banks.

That continuity, Alves says, was broken in the 1970s with the construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam, which submerged their lands and displaced hundreds of families. “I saw the Paraná River before the Itaipu dam was closed. Now I see an immense lake. The river died completely. It died with the Avá-Guarani people,” Alves says.

More than 1,000 people were in shelters across Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands as Sinlaku moved away

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Super Typhoon Sinlaku hammered the Northern Mariana Islands, flipping over cars, toppling utility poles and ripping away tin roofs.

Authorities were just beginning to assess the damage left behind by the typhoon, which first hit the islands on Tuesday night local time and continued with a barrage of fierce winds and relentless rains for hours on Wednesday. So far, there have been no reports of deaths.

More than 2,200 ants were found in Zhang Kequn’s luggage at Nairobi airport, with baggage destined for China

A Chinese national has been sentenced to a year in prison and fined by a Nairobi court for attempting to smuggle thousands of ants out of Kenya, a lucrative trade in east Africa that was exposed last year.

The insects are mostly destined for China, the US and Europe, where they become pets and can be worth about $100 each.

Decision to seek contact ban orders for people who repeatedly call about non-criminal matters is believed to be UK first

People who call with complaints about their neighbours could face a contact ban for wasting police resources, a police force has said.

In a social media post on the weekend, North Wales police (NWP) said they had responded to four antisocial behaviour callouts in 24 hours for disputes such as “neighbours who don’t put their bins away or kids playing in the garden making too much noise during the day”.

Regulator says tool, which creates reports for humans to review, has helped classify entire UK catalogue of HBO Max

TV shows including The Pitt and a Game of Thrones spinoff have received age ratings in the UK after the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) deployed AI to help flag contentious scenes.

The BBFC developed a tool to identify content that triggers compliance issues, such as violence, nudity and bad language. The flagged scenes were then passed over to BBFC staff for human review.

David Parrish, who won Cape Wrath Ultra in 2023, had been attempting gruelling route again as fundraising challenge

A 35-year-old ultramarathon champion from Dumfries has died while attempting to beat the record for a race to the most north-westerly point on mainland Britain.

David Parrish, a former Royal Marine, NEW who often hiked alongside his spaniel Munro, was trying to become the fastest man to complete the Cape Wrath trail, one of Britain’s most gruelling race routes.

Coventry University reported Navodya De Silva, 25, to Home Office after £8,000 arrived late, causing termination of visa

A Sri Lankan university student says her life has been ruined because a one-day delay in paying her tuition fees led to her being thrown off her degree course and put at risk of deportation.

Navodya De Silva, 25, secured a place at Coventry University to study international hospitality and tourism management, with overseas student fees for the three-year undergraduate course of £42,000.

Physicians issue reminder to public after TV doctor and CMS chief relays president’s claim on Don Jr podcast

Donald Trump defended his consumption of diet soda by suggesting it might help prevent cancer, according to recent comments shared by Mehmet Oz in an interview with Donald Trump Jr.

The remarks have even prompted some doctors to remind the public that, no, diet soda will not do anything to prevent cancer.

Kirk Moore was injured as he tackled a former pupil who opened fire at Pauls Valley high school

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An Oklahoma principal has been praised for preventing a tragedy at his high school by charging and disarming a former student armed with two semi-automatic handguns, an episode captured on dramatic surveillance video.

Kirk Moore, principal of Pauls Valley high school, was shot in the leg as he wrestled the attacker, a 20-year-old said by court documents to be obsessed with the 1999 shooting at Colorado’s Columbine high school in which 12 students and one teacher were killed.

Appointment of Roelf Meyer seen as attempt to improve relations amid false US accusations of ‘white genocide’

South Africa has appointed a former apartheid government chief negotiator during the talks that ended white rule in the 1990s as ambassador to the US, in what is seen as an attempt to improve the deeply strained diplomatic relationship between the two countries.

Roelf Meyer replaces Ebrahim Rasool, who was expelled in March 2025 after he criticised the Trump administration.

US president says he has ‘held back’ on firing the head of the Federal Reserve leading up to end of Powell’s term in May

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Donald Trump threatened to fire Jerome Powell if he stays on as US Federal Reserve chair past the end of his tenure and doubled down on a criminal investigation into renovations of the central bank’s headquarters.

As the White House pushes Trump’s new nominee to take charge of the Fed, Kevin Warsh, Powell has a month left in the role. The possibility of Powell staying on as chair past 15 May, the official end of his term, has grown amid mounting scrutiny of Trump’s approach to the Fed in the Senate, which is required to approve Warsh’s nomination.

Cuts by Snapchat’s parent company come in response to a declining stock price and pressure from an activist investor

Snapchat’s parent company plans to lay off 16% of its employees, around 1,000 people, citing “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence”, the social media company told staff on Wednesday in an internal memo. The staff reduction is part of a wave of tech industry layoffs in the past year, with many firms blaming AI for the cuts.

Snap Inc’s layoffs follow demands last month from Irenic Capital Management, an activist investor whose portfolio manager wrote a letter to the Snap Inc CEO, Evan Spiegel, calling on him to reduce costs and headcount while criticizing the company’s current strategy. In Spiegel’s memo to staff, he claimed that the layoffs would move Snap towards profitability and suggested that artificial intelligence could fill the lack of human labor.

Plans for return of such transport have been discussed for years, and not all local people believe that service will come

It is 1993 and a young James Lewis is going to do work experience in Leeds city council’s highways department. His team, Leeds United FC, have only just relinquished the title of defending English champions. And the council is marching on with big ideas: putting the abandoned 1980s Metroline tram plan behind them, and forgetting the unloved 1991 concept of a Leeds Advanced Transit skytrain. The Supertram is the coming thing.

“I remember these drawers and drawers, full of big paper plans,” says Lewis, 33 years on. Lewis is now leader of the city council, and it is all done online. Much of the city centre has been transformed, rebuilt and pedestrianised. Leeds United have never threatened to be champions again. But as Lewis stands outside Elland Road stadium, explaining how to cross the adjacent motorway, one thing has not changed. What Leeds really wants is to build a tram.

UK official receiver understood to prefer Blastr as buyer for SSUK’s electric arc furnace in Rotherham and site in Stocksbridge

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UK officials have entered exclusive talks with a Norwegian startup to buy the former Liberty Steel works in South Yorkshire, in a significant step towards its rescue.

Norwegian-owned Blastr is understood to be the bidder preferred by the government’s official receiver to take on ownership of the UK’s largest existing electric arc furnace in Rotherham and other works in Stocksbridge, both in South Yorkshire.

Barratt Redrow blames effects of Iran war and expected impact on mortgages and costs for further reduction

• Government’s 1.5m housebuilding target is suffering subsidence

Britain’s largest housebuilder is planning to dramatically cut back on buying new land, blaming the impact of the conflict in the Middle East and putting Labour’s ambitious housing target under more pressure.

Barratt Redrow said it intended to approve between 7,000 and 9,000 plots of land for purchase in its current financial year, far lower than previous guidance of between 10,000 and 12,000.

She brought Irish Gaelic to Top of the Pops, featured on soundtracks including Titanic and King Arthur and showed that folk could find pop success
• Clannad singer and harpist Moya Brennan dies aged 73

Moya Brennan’s voice was an unusual instrument to arrive in the Top 20 in November 1982, especially on a Top of the Pops episode featuring the very different delights of A Flock of Seagulls, Eddy Grant and one-hit wonders Blue Zoo. As light as a leaf in the air, it provided a sacred counterpoint to the low, looming drones of a Prophet 5 synthesiser, and, in its breathy solo lines, guided the layered harmonies of her Clannad bandmates – her brothers and uncles – to somewhere new. A week later, Theme from Harry’s Game – the closing song on a radical Yorkshire TV series about The Troubles that played out over three consecutive nights – had jumped to No 5 in the charts, the highest ever position for a song sung in Irish Gaelic.

The lyrics were about the never-ending cycle of life, and how all things must pass, plucked from a proverb from a book of her grandfather’s, by her brother and bandmate, Ciarán. Even to non-speakers, Brennan’s voice sounded like a new kind of spiritual guide, much needed in the anxious early days of Thatcherism and only a few months after the IRA London park bombings. Her impact also expanded the transportive possibilities of traditional music in film and TV. Brennan’s voice became a mainstay of soundtracks, later among them ITV’s Robin of Sherwood series, Titanic and the 2004 feature film adaptation of King Arthur starring Keira Knightley, entering public consciousness in a way similar to how the avant garde output of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop had in the 1960s.

Once you start noticing “it’s not X, it’s Y” as you scroll online, you can’t fail to register it. I’ve become so hypervigilant that it has seeped into my subconscious thoughts

If you’ve never seen Jim Carrey’s 2007 psychological thriller The Number 23, then congratulations. It is a film about a man who sees the number 23 so many times that he ends up going bonkers. I used to think this film was stupid. However, now I appear to be living it.

My own personal number 23 is a rhetorical device: “It’s not X, it’s Y.” Everywhere I look, there it is. Whenever I hate myself enough to scroll through Facebook’s wilderness of algorithmically suggested posts, I find myself being smacked in the face with sentences such as: “Self-improvement isn’t a trend, it’s a lifestyle shift,” and “The small wins aren’t just moments, they’re the majority of your life.” Once you notice it, it becomes impossible to ignore. This weekend during a Peloton class (I know, shut up), I heard an instructor bark a variation of “this isn’t X, it’s Y”. Yesterday, a character did the same during a TV show I was reviewing, and I dropped a star from its score in retaliation.

Succession is the question as Cox directs and stars as a distillery boss tempting estranged brother Cumming back into the Highland fold

For his directorial debut, Brian Cox is painting in pretty broad strokes and primary colours; Glenrothan is a sentimental comedy-drama from screenwriter David Ashton about the troubled reunion of two brothers in Scotland. It can be a bit soppy, sometimes resembling Sunday-night TV comfort food, but this big-hearted picture wins you over, and there are certainly some marvellous panoramic shots of the Highlands.

Cox himself plays Sandy, the glowering chief of a hugely profitable family-owned distillery which provides employment for the entire locality, and run by the fiercely competent Jess (Shirley Henderson). Sandy effectively inherited the job from his late father, a stern disciplinarian remembered in traumatised flashback scenes – for this role, Brian Cox has drolly cast his son Alan Cox.

A legal dispute led to Letty Lynton, the golden age superstar’s controversial drama, being sealed away. Only now can audiences see what all the fuss was about

Joan Crawford was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s golden age, but one of her most famous, and controversial, films has not been screened legally since January 1936. Ninety years later, thanks to her grandson, that is all about to change. The 1932 MGM film Letty Lynton tells the lethal tale of a Manhattan socialite, her fiance and her vindictive ex-lover. It was a hit at the box office – although something of a conundrum for the critics. They just couldn’t understand how MGM had managed to sneak such a risque story past the censors. That was only the start of the trouble.

MGM had wanted to buy the rights to a play called Dishonored Lady, written by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes. This was a hit on Broadway in 1930, but its booze, drugs and sex content meant it had already been designated by the Hays office as “unfit for motion picture adaptation”. MGM only backed out when the authors demanded $30,000 – and the Hays office made it clear they wouldn’t give an inch, not on a story about a woman they considered a “nymphomaniac”. Instead, for just $3,500, MGM bought the rights to Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novel Letty Lynton, which, just like Dishonored Lady, was inspired by the real-life case of Madeleine Smith. In 1857, Smith, a Scottish socialite, was tried for murder, accused of poisoning her lover with arsenic after he threatened to use her love letters to expose their affair and jeopardise her engagement.

The star powerfully plays the mum to Elle Fanning’s cash-strapped single mother and OnlyFans creator in this charming schmaltzfest – which could have been so much more

Margo’s Got Money Troubles first gives us the why. Margo’s got money troubles because Margo got pregnant. Margo got pregnant because she is so young, and she thought her English professor writing her a poem was A Good Thing (poems written by English professors are never A Good Thing). She started having sex with her English professor and their combined brain power clearly didn’t extend to contraceptive deployment. Margo stayed pregnant because there’s no story in “young woman has termination, goes on with the rest of her life pretty untraumatised, actually”. Margo had the baby. And that is where the money troubles start.

David E Kelley’s new series is an eight-part comedy-drama, adapted from the pugnacious romp of a 2024 bestselling novel by Rufi Thorpe, and directed by Dearbhla Walsh. It stars Elle Fanning (as great as she is in The Great) as the eponymous heroine and Michelle Pfeiffer as her mother, Shyanne (which, along with her role in The Madison, might signal a proper career renaissance for the actor – Kidman-style, but less boring).

Director Ferzan Özpetek captures the loves and lives of a group of seamstresses working on a fictional 18th-century period drama

If we are being honest this comedy-drama set in a costume atelier in 1970s Rome is a little light on the comedy, while the drama is decidedly on the melo end of the scale, even a bit absurd at times. But there’s something about it that is irresistible, especially if you are in any way sympathetic to queer-accented celebrations of women played by powerhouse ensembles in the spirit of George Cukor’s The Women, François Ozon’s 8 Women, or Pedro Almodóvar films. You will also have a ball if you like luscious-looking period costumes – this one is completely awash in them, specialising in 18th-century silhouettes and 1970s prints – with lust-inducing shots of bolts of silk fabric billowing out in slanting sunlight; as well as the haberdashery porn of carefully categorised button collections; and the camaraderie of collective craftsmanship, especially seamwork. To add to the list there is mouthwatering footage of food, scenes where women bicker one minute and then hug it out the next in sisterly fashion; the occasional studly male who walks cluelessly through the action to either be ogled or provide a baritone or tenor voice for a communal singsong to vintage 70s Italian ballads.

Nevertheless, it is essentially a fluffy work from director Ferzan Özpetek (Hamam, Facing Windows); he is no Almodóvar, but you can tell this comes from a place of love and sincerity for him, as well as familiarity given he’s spoken in interviews how the inspiration for this were his visits to costume studios around Rome in the 80s when he was just starting his film career as an assistant director. In this fictional version of that world, set in 1974, sisters Alberta (Luisa Ranieri) and Gabriella (Jasmine Trinca) run just such a studio, staffed by a few dozen seamstresses and supplemented by a dyeing specialist (Nicole Grimaudo) and an in-house cook/nonna figure (Mara Venier).

After being dropped by his label, the British-Nigerian singer became huge as an independent artist. So why did the Brit awards snub him? Ahead of arena dates, he reflects on his journey so far

“I’m not looking at a crowd tonight,” Odeal says hours before his first ever Brixton Academy performance in late March. “I’m looking at my people; aunties, uncles, friends, peers and supporters.”

Dressed in loungewear and stretched across a leather sofa backstage at the south London venue, the British-Nigerian singer seems calm, as if he’s exactly where he expected to be. The 26-year-old has the type of fame particular to the British R&B scene: adoration and many millions of streams from the genre’s global fanbase, to the point where he’ll soon play arenas across the US in support of R&B megastar Summer Walker – though is yet to have much mainstream recognition beyond that.

After her death aged 92, we look back on the vast and varied catalogue of one of India’s greatest vocalists, who brought actorly skill to her Bollywood playback performances

• Indian music legend Asha Bhosle dies aged 92

With more than 12,000 songs to her name, Indian playback singer Asha Bhosle is one of the most recorded and well-known voices in Bollywood cinema. Born into a musical family, with her father Deenanath Mangeshkar working as a singer for regional Marathi theatre and film throughout the 1920s and 30s and her older sister Lata Mangeshkar becoming a Bollywood playback singer in her own right, Bhosle entered the industry at just 10 years old with this debut performance in the Marathi film Maze Baal. Duetting with Lata, Bhosle’s melismatic falsetto in the song gives voice to the playful innocence of the film’s central love-child. Keening and crystal-clear, her vocal immediately cuts through the rollicking instrumental and already displays the yearning emotion that would become her signature as her voice matured.

How to Fail’s Elizabeth Day and historian Dan Jones dissect the mistakes of Richard VIII and Anne Boleyn. Plus, Kylie Jenner lets her guard down to Kid Cudi

How to Fail’s Elizabeth Day teams up with historian Dan Jones for this new series about screw-ups from times gone by. Fast forward through the university reunion (they were at Cambridge together) and it quickly gets entertaining. Their first episode challenges Shakespeare’s vision of a villainous Richard III, while a future episode will consider the “Ross and Rachel of early modern history”, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Royal Festival Hall, London
Young performers brought tremendous quality and personal touches to a concert of works from Wagner to pop star Jacob Collier, under the focused guidance of new principal conductor Alpesh Chauhan

There’s always more at an NYO concert. More players: 160 this time, crammed on to a platform that seems full with half that number. More of the energy that comes with the fact that, for every player, this is a very special occasion. And, in recent seasons, more stuff to remind us that these are teenagers, not hard-bitten professionals.

This time there was a semi-choreographed walk-on to a mashup of Raye and Chaka Khan, with the percussion taking the lead and the assembled orchestra eventually joining in. There was a short speech from one of the players before each work – somewhere between pointing out a personal connection with the music and giving superfluous justification for its inclusion. And as an encore – sung, not played – there was Jacob Collier’s Something Heavy, with a bit more choreography.

The horrifying story of the Catholic-run institutions that incarcerated thousands of women and girls

Many readers, and surely most Irish readers, will finish this book in a state of white-knuckled rage, mingled with sorrow and at least a pang of guilt. It is a detailed, thoroughgoing and appalling account of the Magdalene laundries, the most famous, and most infamous, among Ireland’s extended and varied landscape of penal or correctional institutions, which operated for most of the 20th century (the last of the laundries was closed in 1996).

As the academic Louise Brangan points out in The Fallen, it is easy to become confused by the number and variety of prisons, mental asylums, orphanages, workhouses and homes for unmarried mothers that proliferated in Ireland between the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the late 1990s. However, the Magdalene laundries were unique. Dr Brangan writes: “In a regime distinguished by its excessive inhumanity, the Magdalene laundries were its deep end. In 1951, when the laundries were at their height, for every 100,000 males, 27 were in prison … [while] for every 100,000 females, 70 were in a laundry. These were not peripheral: they were Ireland’s main carceral institution.”

A man who meant to be a priest is faced with a moral crossroads in this ambitious and affecting first novel

Jon Doyle’s debut novel tells the story of Mack O’Brien, a young man who went to a seminary to study for the priesthood but was asked to leave because he had no real calling, and has therefore returned to his family home in Wales to work out what to do with his life. Cheek by jowl with his ailing, deeply religious mother, and a father struggling to process the grief of his own parents’ recent deaths, he finds himself drawn into participating in a local theatre production – playing a disciple in Owen Sheers’s now-legendary Passion of Port Talbot, an immersive community-led re-enactment of the crucifixion that took place over several days in Port Talbot in 2012, starring Michael Sheen.

Mack is recruited after a steelworker from the plant where he works as a security guard drops out of the show. Material enough for a novel already, one might think, but all this becomes more or less background noise when, on the same night he agrees to be in the play, Mack bumps into Siwan, a young woman he was close to at school. Siwan’s mother was an environmental activist who ended up going to prison for her protests. Siwan had visited him at the seminary on the day he agreed to leave the priesthood and said to him, “forgive me father, for I am about to sin”. The nature of the sin she is intent on committing becomes the focus of the novel.

The former children’s laureate missed the announcement of the award in Bologna due to post-Brexit passport rule changes

Michael Rosen, the poet and author known for books such as We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Chocolate Cake, has won the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen award for writing in recognition of his lifelong contributions to children’s literature.

The former children’s laureate is the fourth Briton to win the award, following Eleanor Farjeon, Aidan Chambers and David Almond.

Biography mingles with fiction as Levy explores the avant-garde writer through the story of three female friends in Paris

The narrator of Deborah Levy’s witty scherzo of a “fiction” – “novel” isn’t the word for this uncategorisable book – thinks that Gertrude Stein would have liked Sigmund Freud. She imagines them enjoying a cigar together while their wives make small talk. Would Frau Freud “have exchanged her recipe for boiled beef with Alice B [Toklas]’s recipe for hashish fudge”? The two never met (though with her interest in the “bottom character” and his in the “unconscious”, Stein and Freud would have had plenty to talk about), but that barely matters. This book is full of things that don’t actually happen, of relationships that are not what the people involved suppose them to be, of digressions and fantasies and encounters that are imagined but never take place.

It all starts with a lost cat. The cat is called “it”: lower-case “i” followed by lower-case “t”. This causes all sorts of linguistic confusion, highlighting the way we use the word “it” to mean something indeterminate (as in the first sentence of this paragraph), or something trivial, or something tremendous. The phrase “lost it” recurs, the “it” meaning – variously – one’s mind, sympathy with Ernest Hemingway, daring to be as unconventional as Gertrude Stein, the stream of consciousness “flowing under the mowed and manicured golf courses on which men swung their clubs in the 21st century”, the temptation to smile while being undermined by a patronising man, the drudgery of housekeeping, the thing – which might be obedience or shame – that holds an artist back from becoming a modernist … or love, or one’s mother, or a black-and-white cat with one deformed ear.

In a post-apocalyptic landscape of cutthroat scavengers, surprisingly peaceful players are opting to team up and open up – a phenomenon that’s intriguing game developers and psychologists alike

The video game Arc Raiders is set in a lethal imagining of an apocalyptic future for humanity. Survivors have been forced to live deep underground in colonies while mysterious, murderous AI machines patrol the surface. Only the desolate ruins of former cities survive, and reckless human “raiders” take trips topside to conduct dangerous scavenging missions.

For all the menace of these armed robots, called Arcs, the deadly droids are not the biggest threat in this hugely popular game, which was released late last year and has sold more than 14m copies. Raiders operate with the constant anxiety that another person will shoot them on sight and steal their loot. Mercilessness is rewarded in this kind of competitive, high-stakes world.

‘Unc’ is meant to disparage older players who favour slow-paced shooters and epic narrative games, but the industry should make games for all generations

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While researching women’s experiences in multiplayer video games recently, I came across this thread on the subreddit about Bungie’s latest live shooter, Marathon. “I’ve played a lot of shooters, and as a feminine-presenting player tbh it’s often a struggle,” it reads. “I’ve heard all the ‘get back to the kitchen’ jokes … ​But Marathon has been completely different, guys. I haven’t had a single issue, people have been incredibly kind and helpful… ​The community feels genuinely welcoming to everyone.”

The top-voted reply? “Benefit of being an unc game.”

As The Super Mario Galaxy Movie storms the box office, we look back at the best forgotten games inspired by Tetris, Lemmings and … vitamins?

It should be no surprise that the latest Super Mario movie is smashing box office records – despite the, let’s say mixed, reviews. Nintendo’s iconic plumber has been a pop culture staple for 45 years, starring in some of the bestselling video games ever made, from the original Donkey Kong through to the joyous Super Mario Bros Wonder and the chaotic Mario Kart World.

But as with any storied showbiz career, there have been some lesser works. Who can forget – or actually remember – Hotel Mario, a door-shutting puzzle game for the doomed Philips CD-i console? Or what about Mario Teaches Typing, a 1992 educational game for the PC in which players navigate the Mushroom Kingdom by … correctly inputting words. Yet there have also been genuine treasures lost along the way. Here, then, are seven of our favourite much-overlooked Mario odysseys.

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

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

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

Temple church, London
An unlikely alliance cut a swathe through folk songs, Janáček and music from Australia and New Zealand in an eclectic and beautiful evening

Many musical instruments are basically bits of hollowed-out wood, and if you think of it that way then the four played here by the enduringly experimental Brodsky Quartet and William Barton – violin, viola, cello and yiḏaki, or didgeridoo – don’t seem such distant cousins after all. This programme, already widely toured outside the UK, is well run-in – a good thing, considering that Barton’s didgeridoo was stuck in airport baggage control and arrived at the venue barely half an hour before the concert. It mixes up the two hemispheres in unapologetically eclectic fashion. Barton’s opening didgeridoo monologue segues into a Purcell Fantasia, and Robert Davidson’s Minjerribah – a lyrical evocation of place in which the didgeridoo, although a later addition by the composer, seems an essential and persuasive voice – rubs up against the yearning spikiness of Janáček’s String Quartet No 1.

It was Barton whom we heard first, offstage. Through a soundscape of whistles and pulsing low notes, he conjured a sense of vastness that spoke to the feeling of space under the Temple church’s arches. Throughout, the building’s warm acoustic seemed to render everything beautiful even at moments when, in the Janáček in particular, the Brodskys might have been aiming for more harshness. And it helped carry viola player Paul Cassidy’s voice as he sang his own arrangement of She Moved Through the Fair, the other performers weaving atmospheric detail around him. This established a fitting folk-song context for Barton’s own, weightier Square Circles Beneath the Red Desert Sand, which followed with Barton as vocalist and player.

Various venues, Leeds
Roderick Williams could breathe life into a telephone directory, but found much better material in his recital with Iain Burnside. A later concert featured atmospheric soundscapes from local composer Martin Iddon

Leeds’s top-tier celebration of the vocal arts continues to push the envelope. Two vastly different concerts were typical of director Joseph Middleton’s determination to think outside the box while honouring the festival’s roots in the traditional recital.

Haiku, which premiered last year in Minnesota, sprang from the fertile brains of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Iain Burnside. The roughly 90-minute programme revolved around eight poems taken from a collection of haiku written by Japanese Americans interned during the second world war. Libby Larsen’s settings – sung in both English and Japanese and collectively entitled Mobile/Not Mobile/ … – are distilled musical morsels, stuffed with imagination, exploring themes of exile, detention and deportation.

From showstopping fabrics to mind-expanding photos and an opening show celebrating Black British music, the real value of London’s new museum will surely lie in the art it inspires

• Our architecture critic on the building

Outside the V&A’s new outpost in east London, a nondescript young person stares blankly out across the old Olympic Park. This five-metre-tall sculpture is generic by design, an amalgam of “images, 3D scans and observations” of local people. It is easy to see why Thomas J Price’s idea appealed to a museum eager to engage with the area’s diverse communities – here is the quintessence of east London youth, executed at the scale of Michelangelo’s David – but by smoothing out the differences between individuals it sends out a confusing message.

To aggregate data and identify common denominators is, after all, the logic of the algorithm. So the worry is that this museum will likewise second-guess the desires of its audience based on predictive models, guiding visitors towards things they are predisposed to “like” and away from opinions they are presumed not to share. So it is a relief to find, on entering the building, a vision of how people make and cultures meet that is infinitely richer, more heterogenous and more open-ended than those first impressions suggest.

Traverse theatre, Edinburgh
Jess Brodie’s monologue about life on the brink of parenthood is both witty and gripping

There are few transitions in life more profound than becoming a parent. Out go late nights and long lie-ins. In comes responsibility. It is an experience that demands redefinition, turning you from cared-for to carer, solo player to team captain. Even as it approaches, you know it will change you.

This is the still point of the turning world that playwright Jess Brodie identifies: not the birth, but the moment before. A time to look back, reflect and reappraise as much as to speculate on the unknown path ahead.

Perry denies the allegations, shared by Rose on social media, calling them ‘dangerous reckless lies’

Police are investigating claims Katy Perry sexually assaulted the Australian actor Ruby Rose at a Melbourne nightclub more than a decade ago, allegations the American pop star strenuously denies.

Victoria police on Wednesday said in a statement: “Melbourne sexual offences and child abuse investigation team (SOCIT) detectives are investigating [an alleged] historical sexual assault that occurred in Melbourne in 2010.

Confessions II reunites her with producer Stuart Price and is billed as a study of the dancefloor as ‘a ritualistic space where movement replaces language’

Madonna has announced the release of her 15th studio album, Confessions II: a sequel to Confessions on a Dance Floor, her disco-fabulous 2005 release regarded as one of the jewels of her discography.

The album will be released on 3 July. Details are still relatively scarce beyond that, but like its predecessor, Confessions II is a collaboration with the British producer Stuart Price.

When Stuart Price and I first started working on this record, this was our manifesto:

We must dance, celebrate, and pray with our bodies. These are things that we’ve been doing for thousands of years — they really are spiritual practices. After all, the dance floor is a ritualistic space. It’s a place where you connect with your wounds, with your fragility. To rave is an art. It’s about pushing your limits and connecting to a community of like-minded people.

Sound, light, and vibration
Reshape our perceptions
Pulling us into a trance-like state.
The repetition of the bass, we don’t just hear it but we feel it.

Altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time.

Extension of three-year lifespan for bronze coincides with 25th anniversary rerelease of original romcom

A record 149 days have now passed without alcohol, cigarettes or ice-cream for Bridget Jones’s statue in Leicester Square in London – and her fast is set to be extended indefinitely.

Originally conceived to be in situ for three years, the bronze statue, which was unveiled in November, has now been granted permanent residence opposite the Empire Casino and adjacent to the toilets, where she joins the likes of Harry Potter, Mary Poppins and Batman as part of Westminster council’s Scenes in the Square initiative.

‘I went to this tourist resort in Accra wanting to show how the people who live there fish, play – and rest. Africans aren’t often portrayed in this way. And the horse pulls it all together!’

This was taken at Labadi, a popular tourist resort in Accra, the capital of Ghana. You don’t often see this side of it. People go there for the golden sand and nightlife but they don’t really integrate with the community who live there. I wanted to show how they fish – in traditional canoes – how they rest, how they play.

I love how this door looks fronting a ruined farm building. It represents the freedom of not being bound by walls. And I love the Ghanaian flag on the side – a nod to place and heritage. I just thought it was a beautiful set. The community keeps a few horses in stables, which they use to carry equipment. The one in the picture pulls it all together and adds elegance, because it’s such a majestic and beautiful animal. The way Africans are often portrayed in documentary photography isn’t like this.

Thomas Delaney’s addiction issues started when he was a teen and worsened through his 20s. Eventually, an argument with his mother led him to change everything

Thomas Delaney never used to believe he was “good enough to be loved”. Growing up, he internalised the hurt he saw playing out at home. “I thought I was useless, I wasn’t a nice person … I even thought that my mum and dad didn’t love each other because of me.”

When I visit him (and his extremely affectionate black-and-white cat, Figaro) at home in Glasgow, Delaney, dressed in a jumper printed with the words “nicotine is dumb”, is frank about the impact his childhood had on him. “I had suicidal ideations from a very, very young age because I assumed that, if I was dead, maybe my mum and dad wouldn’t be arguing.” Later, he became addicted to ketamine. At his most unwell, he weighed just 38kg (6st).

In the past few months, there has been a boom in tradwife novels, while the accounts of influencers only grow more popular. What is it about this culture that makes it so compelling to young women?

‘No one I know wants to go spend their one wild and magical life being a shill for some billionaire tech asshole,” says Shannon, a character in Yesteryear, the buzzy new novel about a tradwife influencer by Caro Claire Burke. Shannon is a gen Z woman who is working as a producer for the protagonist, Natalie, a 32-year-old social media star seemingly with more than a little in common with some aspects of the real-life influencer Hannah Neeleman, who rose to fame documenting her life as a wife and mother on her ranch, Ballerina Farm.

“Just so they can breastfeed in a broom closet someday,” Natalie quips back.

Hot brushes promise bouncy blow-dries and voluminous curls – without the salon price tag. We put 14 to the test to reveal the best, from budget buys to multistylers

• The best hair straighteners – tested

Few things put a spring in your step quite like a beautiful, bouncy blow-dry from your favourite hair salon. However, if you don’t want to spend your days – or your money – at the salon, then a hot brush could be just the styling tool you need.

As the name suggests, a hot brush is a round or paddle-shaped hair-styling tool that either heats up like a straightening iron or uses warm airflow like a hair dryer to dry and style your hair. Depending on the shape and size of the brush, a hot brush can give you anything from a straight, sleek style to volume and lift, or even red-carpet curls.

Best hot brush overall:
GHD Duet Blowdry

Best budget hot brush:
Revlon One-Step Volumiser

Our tester hauled, hurdled and army-crawled his way to crowning the best carry-on luggage. Plus, Michelle Ogundehin’s shopping secrets and meal kits, tested

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Want to get fit, quick? Try testing the best cabin bags over a muddy assault course in Leeds. Seldom have I showered so gratefully or slept as soundly as I did after this product test.

The first and thorniest challenge was logistical. How would I get a selection of suitcases – the seven top performers in routine testing – from my house to the West Leeds Activity Centre, on the other side of the city?

The best spring jackets for women: 12 favourites for every forecast

The best mascaras for longer, fuller and fluttery lashes: 12 favourites worn and rated by our beauty expert

How I Shop with Michelle Ogundehin: ‘We grownups have enough stuff already’

‘A good, strong squeak’: the best supermarket halloumi, tasted and rated

The best water flossers, tested for that dentist-clean feeling

‘Fresher than anything in a shop’: the best recipe boxes and meal kits for time-poor foodies, tested

Whether you want budget, organic or vegan, these are the best meal delivery services from our writer’s test of nine

• The best chef’s knives – tested

Recipe box services are the best thing to happen to time-poor foodies since, well, sliced bread. They’re cheaper than a takeaway, often less processed than a ready meal, and much more culinarily adventurous than beans on toast.

You have to do the actual cooking, but not the shopping. Recipe boxes contain every ingredient you need (well, most do), often in the exact measurements required. “Meal kits” cut hassle even further by including preprepared stocks, sauces and other flavour bombs, plus ready-chopped veg. All you have to do is put them together following the steps in the recipe, which can take less time than queueing at a supermarket checkout.

They’re pricier than the competition, but have key features: the music doesn’t skitter when you step out of Bluetooth range and they can handle water and dust

• How do Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 compare against hearing aids? I put them to the test

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

Over the past eight years, I’ve reviewed dozens of portable speakers from every top brand. And I can confidently say that Sonos makes three of the best portable speakers of them all.

There’s Sonos Play, the brand’s newest portable and the Goldilocks of its lineup in size, sound and features. The Roam 2, a Toblerone-shaped speaker that’s small enough to go anywhere. And the Move 2, a powerhouse that doesn’t sacrifice bass performance.

The little one:
Sonos Roam 2

This Lombardian ‘village cake’ is simple, delicious and endlessly adaptable

Old sourdough is my secret ingredient. To stop it going mouldy, I take it out of any plastic packaging and keep it in the bread bin with plenty of airflow around it – that way, it will dry out slowly, rather than turning mouldy. Any odds and ends, meanwhile, I store in a cloth bag to use in various dishes, from pangrattato (or poor man’s parmesan) to strata, a savoury bread-and-butter pudding.

My new favourite recipe discovery for using up stale bread is today’s torta paesana, or village cake, from Lombardy. The best way I can come up with to describe it is that it’s a bit like a firm baked custard.

Savoury, sour, funky and spicy – it’s no wonder there are multiple uses for a lime pickle

I’m obsessed with lime pickle. It’s savoury, sour, funky, spicy and full of bold personality that enlivens anything it’s smeared on. It’s made by salting and fermenting limes with chillies and spices for a fierce, flavour-packed condiment that’s traditionally eaten as a side to poppadoms or with simple dal and rice. Over the years, I have also folded it into grilled cheese toasties, marinades for fat prawns to barbecue in the summer or made compound butters with it to smother over sweet potatoes before roasting. It’s an instant flavour bomb and my pantry is never without a jar.

Don’t be scared of cooked rice: our experts share safe ways to turn yesterday’s leftovers into something delicious

How do I store cooked rice safely, and what can I make with it the next day?
Michael, by email
“It’s a bit of a running joke with rice, because I think of all the people in China who aren’t spreading their leftover rice immediately on to a tray to cool and are still alive,” says Amy Poon, of Poon’s at Somerset House in London. “But I have to be responsible and say: cool the rice as quickly as possible, within the hour, and put it in an airtight container and pop it in the fridge [or freezer] straight away.” The reason being, as food science guru Harold McGee notes in his bible On Food & Cooking, “Raw rice almost always carries dormant spores of the bacterium Bacillus cereus, which produces powerful gastrointestinal toxins. The spores can tolerate high temperatures, and some survive cooking.” In short: good storage practices will prevent bacterial growth, not to mention open a whole world of dinner opportunities.

“Rice is the most versatile grain to have around as extras,” confirms Ping Coombes, author of Rice, but there’s another benefit, too. “When rice cools, the molecules rearrange into tighter bonds in a process called retrogradation.” This, Coombes continues, creates resistant starch, and the more resistant the starch, the slower the release of energy. “Eating chilled, pre-cooked rice makes it release sugar molecules into the blood stream more slowly, promoting the feelings of fullness for longer and preventing big variations of blood sugar.” But back to Michael’s prospective meals.

You don’t need a yard or balcony to get going. We asked experts for their advice on how to grow your food

Maybe it’s because I’ve lived in cities my whole life, but I can’t think of anything more luxurious than popping out to your garden and eating a fresh tomato straight from the vine. How decadent to enjoy its crisp, bright flavor and the smug satisfaction that you coaxed this food into being with your own hands.

But what does becoming a modern-day Demeter actually entail? What if you don’t have a yard, or even a balcony? And is it worth growing your own food when supermarkets exist?

A university researcher and a property manager may have found (some) common ground on leaving the EU – but what about affordable homes?

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

Graham, 76, Pangbourne

Occupation Property manager

Studying on different continents is a challenge for Veronika and Fabio … Can their young love go the distance?

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

There have been days when we’ve been on the phone for 10 hours at a stretch

When I’ve flown back to see her, we’ve tried to make up for lost time

Turn your attention to your internal landscape rather than the next building project. Make your next project yourself

My wife and I are in our late 60s. The past 20 years have felt like treading water, as all my funds are tied up in a property that, for complex reasons, I am unable to sell. We are both creative. Over the past year or so I’ve made some improvements to our house, things that make people say wow. I enjoy seeing their pleasure, but their praise isn’t hugely important to me. In fact, I am somewhat reclusive. I do not enjoy being part of a wider community and I’m content with a handful of close friends.

Last year my father died, and after a period of despair, during which I found myself contemplating suicide (I did not share this with my wife), I turned first to Samaritans, then a therapist.

Alda feels Rachel should follow jewellery ‘rules’, but Rachel likes to mix things up. You decide whose argument rings true
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I know she’s expressing herself, but when you mix everything up, it looks thrown together and cheap

They’re not Alda’s hands to worry about – I like my mismatched mess. Why does it matter to her?

Now I’m being threatened with debt collectors because I don’t have a tenancy agreement or a mortgage

British Gas opened an account in my name for an address that I have never occupied, and sent me a £571 bill. It declined to open a complaint because I “refused” to provide a tenancy agreement or mortgage statement which, since I’ve long since paid off my mortgage, I don’t have. It is now threatening me with a debt collection agency.

IW, Northampton

There are many options, from cards to buy now, pay later. We find out the best – and the effect on your credit score

Until recently, if you wanted to buy something you couldn’t afford upfront, you reached for a credit card or took out a loan. Now, when you get to the checkout, you are likely to be faced with other options, including buy now, pay later (BNPL).

With so many ways to borrow, the true costs and complexities aren’t always clear. Which option will actually save you the most money in the long run? And how might each option affect your credit score? We spoke to financial experts to get some answers.

Swedish retailer continued to advertise partnership with Soly and failed to offer me any advice

I am one of many left thousands of pounds out of pocket after signing up for solar panels via Ikea’s website late last year.

Ikea had partnered with the European installer Soly, and the fact the panels were being advertised via such a well-known company gave us confidence.

Fraudsters send emails claiming storage is full or nearly full, then trick people into clicking on links that can expose bank and personal details

For a while you’ve been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full”. They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take aren’t being uploaded.

You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of 99p a month for more storage. But it seems that you can’t keep putting off the inevitable: you have received an email which says your iCloud account has been blockedand your photos and videos will be deleted very soon. To keep them you need to upgrade immediately, it says.

When your boss asks to meet, do you assume you’re about to get fired? Experts explain this common pattern

Your boss asks you for a meeting later in the week; you have never received negative feedback, but you automatically assume you’re about to get fired. Thoughts begin to swirl as you imagine the consequences: soon, you’ll be unemployed and unable to pay your rent.

Or, perhaps, when your partner is a little late coming home, you visualize a terrible accident on the motorway, their car crushed in the pile-up.

Having diverse microbes in the gut has been promoted as a way to boost immunity, but studies suggest it’s more complicated than that

The trillions of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies – known as the microbiome – have been hailed as the key to better immunity. “Lots of studies correlate the types of bacteria in your microbiome with health and disease across almost every mental and physical condition,” says Prof Daniel M Davis, head of life sciences at Imperial College London and the author of Self Defence: A Myth-busting Guide to Immune Health. “But most of that evidence is correlative, and we still need to understand exactly how the microbiome affects health.”

Scientists often look at one measure: diversity. In other words, how many different species of microbes live in the gut. “The more diverse your microbiome is, the more it seems to correlate with not being ill.”

TikTok users increasingly say the app has steered them toward diagnosing medical problems not yet identified

Malina Lee, a 31-year-old wedding baker based in San Antonio, Texas, joined TikTok during the Covid pandemic lockdowns in 2020. Like many people at the time, she was bored and began using the platform to pass the time and advertise her business. She didn’t expect a cancer diagnosis.

Four years after Lee joined the app, a commenter with the username “PickleFart” told her that her neck looked asymmetrical in a way that could suggest she had a goiter – an enlarged thyroid gland – and that she should get it checked out. The anonymous amateur clinician turned out to be right – Lee had thyroid cancer, received treatment quickly, and, less than a year later, was cancer free.

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

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

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

Even the promise of stronger, healthier hair could never quite tempt me to use products as opposed to cutting it. Until now …

There are few brands one can credit with having changed the beauty game, but the launch of Olaplex just over a decade ago invalidated the assertion that the only way to fix damaged hair is to cut it.

It used a patented ingredient (the unpronounceable bis-aminopropyl diglycol dimaleate) to strengthen and rebuild all types of hair bonds ravaged by bleach, colour and other chemical or heat treatments.

Designer who left fashion house in January said to be considering options for his 40% stake ahead of talks with lenders

Stefano Gabbana left his post as the chair of Dolce & Gabbana at the start of this year, the fashion house he co-founded with his then partner, Domenico Dolce, has said.

The Italian luxury brand said Gabbana had tendered his resignation, effective as of 1 January, “as part of a natural evolution of its organisational structure and governance”.

Don’t save them for holidays – with the right styling white trousers will be the linchpin of your spring wardrobe

Her rare cover appearance with Meryl Streep may be to promote The Devil Wears Prada sequel, but it also marks a shift from elusive editor to carefully curated personal brand

In the world of magazines, when someone announces they’re leaving a job, their colleagues will traditionally present them with their own personalised mock-up of the magazine’s front cover. Perhaps their face is superimposed on the body of a previous celebrity cover star. There are probably some witty cover lines referencing memorable office moments or their favourite snacks. It’s a rite of passage – and this week, Anna Wintour was bestowed with her very own cover. But instead of a jokey imitation bidding her adieu, it was the real, glossy deal, coming to a newsstand near you on 28 April.

In a somewhat surprising effort to promote the forthcoming The Devil Wears Prada 2, Vogue’s May issue sees Wintour share the cover with Meryl Streep, whose steely Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of the fictional title Runway, is said to have been inspired by Wintour. “Seeing Double. When Miranda met Anna” reads the cover line. While Wintour has fronted various industry titles, including Interview in 1993 and Ad Week in 2017, it’s the first time an editor has placed themselves as the subject. In another fun twist, both Wintour and Streep are wearing Prada.

The vertiginous Valais canton offers adventures aplenty, from abseiling down gorges to wild swims in glacial pools – and nights swapping hiking tales in mountain huts

Thick grey-green mud squidges through my toes as I step into the icy, irresistible water. I’m on the descent from the Britannia Hut at the foot of the Allalinhorn in the Valais canton of the Swiss Alps, and this turquoise pool of glacial meltwater has been on the horizon tempting me for an hour. I peel off all five layers of clothing and plunge into the murky water. After a night in a shared dorm without showers it’s bliss.

In winter, the jagged ridges of the Valais are the domain of expert skiers and ice climbers, but in summer the lower slopes become accessible to hikers, with the added bonus of the ski lift infrastructure. You can be surrounded by dramatic peaks with the security of well-marked trails ranging from gentle strolls to serious alpine routes. I’m here to hike to mountain huts, test my nerves on via ferrata routes, and fill my city-dweller lungs with clean Alpine air.

Taking a leaf out of Kenneth Grahame’s book, our writer spends a few days getting lost among the woods and riverside villages of Oxfordshire and Berkshire

Strolling through a deep tangle of beech trees to get some fresh air after a long drive, I think of the scene in Kenneth Grahame’s wistful story The Wind in the Willows, where Mole gets lost in the Wild Wood. “There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.”

I’ve come to South Oxfordshire to explore what was once Grahame’s old stomping ground. Although I don’t share his character’s fear of the woods, I do share his own wonder for this part of the country, close to suburbia yet wrinkled with pockets of wildness. It’s one of those spring days when the light feels elastic and daffodils brighten the verges of muddy lanes. The moon is rising, however, and smoke drifts from the chimney of a cottage just beyond the woods. Nocturnal creatures may be rousing but I’m feeling the pull of a cosy burrow. I leave the trees and head back to my accommodation, Bonni B&B, in Hill Bottom.

Good wine, cheap tapas, ramshackle decor and a sense of history are the key ingredients of these Madrileño institutions. I went on a bar crawl to find my favourite

The first hurdle to overcome when searching for the Spanish capital’s top bodegas is the correct interpretation of the word “bodega”. It is defined as a warehouse, winery, wine cellar and wine shop or bar specialising in wine. In Spanish slang it can also mean a convenience store.

I asked several people working in the Madrid wine trade, and they all struggled to define exactly what a bodega is – and sometimes disagreed with each other. For example, while La Bodega de los Reyes fits the description because it has a wine cellar, a nearby bar owner said it couldn’t be classed as a bodega as it was just a wine shop.

On the north coast of Spain you can see some of the world’s oldest art, explore a stunning medieval village, then watch surfers ride Atlantic swells

Exploring the area west of Santander feels like being in a time machine. Within a half-hour drive of the Cantabrian capital on Spain’s green northern coast, you can stumble upon prehistoric cave art, a perfectly preserved medieval town and a laid-back beach resort.

When I began my weekend trip, it was raining, so my journey started in the Upper Paleolithic period, at the Cave of Altamira, a Unesco world heritage site, staring up at some of the oldest art on Earth. Well, almost. The original cave was largely closed to the public decades ago to protect the fragile paintings, so we were inside the Neocueva, a painstakingly reconstructed replica built beside it that costs just €3 to enter.

From the moment I started climbing the 7,000-metre peaks of the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan, something felt off. What followed will stay with me for ever

I didn’t have a reason for my terrible feeling of dread – and that was part of the problem. From the moment I arrived in Tajikistan with my boyfriend, Tim, to climb two 7,000-metre (23,000ft) peaks, something felt off. It wasn’t a fear I could name: it was more like a constant, unnerving low hum.

A helicopter dropped us off – landing on a jagged glacier that was to be our base camp and act as a refuge from avalanches from the towering peaks that surrounded it. The helicopter flew far too low, skimming the glacier ice that looked sharp enough to tear it open. You could see it from the helicopter because there was a gaping hole in the back – a part was missing because it was so old.

Chip upgrade brings pro-level power, long battery life and plenty of storage, but the Air now faces real competition

Apple’s latest MacBook Air is its most powerful yet, comes with double the starting storage and is better than ever for getting work done and as the benchmark for a consumer laptop. But this year the new lower-cost MacBook Neo has muddied the waters.

The M5 MacBook Air starts at £1,099 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,799) for the 13in version, which is £100 or equivalent more than last year’s excellent M4 version, but comes with at least 512GB of storage. It sits above the £599 MacBook Neo and below the £1,699 M5 MacBook Pro, making the Air Apple’s mid-range machine.

Screen: 13.6in LCD (2560x1600; 224 ppi) True Tone

Processor: Apple M5 with eight or 10-core GPU

RAM: 16, 24 or 32GB

Storage: 512GB, 1, 2 or 4TB SSD

Operating system: macOS 26 Tahoe

Camera: 12MP centre stage

Connectivity: wifi 7, Bluetooth 6, 2x Thunderbolt/USB 4, headphones

Dimensions: 215 x 304.1 x 11.3mm

Weight: 1.23kg

At the height of Covid, hundreds of cancer patients had mastectomies without the reconstruction that would normally accompany them. They would eventually get the surgery, they were told – but for many that promise feels more meaningless by the day

Every time she lifts her arms to get dressed or hang out her washing, Julie Ford gets a painful reminder of one of the most terrifying experiences of her life. At 7am one day in April 2021, she had gone into hospital, alone and wearing a mask, to have her right breast and lymph nodes removed in a bid to stop breast cancer from spreading. Later that day, still groggy from the anaesthetic, in pain and with surgical drains hanging from both sides of her chest, she had staggered to the door with the help of two nurses. She was eased into a friend’s car and driven home to fend for herself.

While Julie’s breast had been removed, it was not reconstructed. Usually, both procedures are carried out in the same operation. But as reconstruction using tissue from the patient’s abdomen is a complex, eight-hour procedure requiring a large surgical team, it was considered “non-essential” and paused by most NHS trusts during the Covid-19 pandemic.

They won’t save an unhealthy plant, but they do create better growing conditions in rooms with no airflow

The problem
Most plant advice focuses on light, water and soil. Air barely gets a mention, yet stagnant indoor air is one of the less discussed reasons houseplants struggle. Fungal spots, mould on the compost surface and pest infestations like mealybugs can all be traced back to a room with no airflow. We open windows in summer but rarely think about what happens in winter.

The hack
Running a small fan near your houseplants is said to improve stem strength, discourage mould and reduce pest pressure. In the wild, plants experience constant gentle movement; a fan replicates this indoors.

With AI-generated comedy videos and lego animations of Trump, Iranian content creators are using humour in propaganda battle against US

If Iran could manufacture destructive missiles at the speed with which it produces cutting memes, US Central Command would be coming out with its hands up by now.

One of the more bizarre and unexpected aspects of the Iran-US war is that Iran, a country by reputation dominated by conservative clerics neurotic about western culture and media, is dominating the social media war, unleashing its gen Z tech warriors to engage western audiences with its sarcasm and ridicule of the Trump administration.

Researchers identify wrecks at the bottom of the sea from as far back as fifth century BC, from Europe and beyond

Spanish archaeologists exploring the bay that curves between the southern port of Algeciras and the Rock of Gibraltar have documented the wrecks of more than 30 ships that came to grief near the Pillars of Hercules between the fifth century BC and the second world war.

Over the millennia, the bay, which sits at the north end of the strait of Gibraltar that separates Europe from Africa, has swallowed everything from Phoenician and Roman vessels to British, Spanish, Venetian and Dutch ships – as well as the odd aeroplane.

Struggle for justice symbolises limitations of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose hearings began 30 years ago

Darkness had fallen on 27 June 1985 when Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto set off on the 150-mile drive back from a meeting of anti-apartheid activists in the South African city of Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha. They never made it home.

About an hour into their journey, as the road wound north from the coast towards their home town of Cradock (now called Nxuba), the four men were pulled over by three white security police officers. They were handcuffed and driven back towards Gqeberha.

We would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI

Companies are increasingly using AI in their hiring processes – including conducting job interviews themselves. With this in mind, we would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI.

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We would like to hear parents’ views on their children’s school meals

The government is to announce an overhaul to school food standards in England that will lead to dishes such as fish and chips and steamed sponges being banned. The new rules, which are part of efforts to lower the rates of childhood obesity, will apply from September.

We would like to hear parents’ views on their children’s school meals. Does your child like eating them? Has there been a change in quality? Have you recently considered switching your children from school dinners to packed lunches?

Have you experienced reactions from other people when using your blue badge? We’d like to hear from you

Scepticism about people’s right to a blue badge, as well as discussion of Motability, has created an atmosphere where disabled people are facing public questioning about their eligibility for the measures.

Some disabled and chronically ill people report that they have been accused of “faking” their impairment while using their blue badges. Others say they have been accused of “scrounging” after using a car believed to be via Motability.

Have you been affected by the recent rise in mortgage rates? What will this mean for you?

The crisis in the Middle East is also being felt far beyond the region, with the conflict undermining broader business and consumer confidence.

One aspect of this has been the impact on the UK mortgage market.

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