It's the grandest and glitziest event in the fashion calendar, but this year’s Met Gala has sparked backlash thanks to its new honorary chairs, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. The billionaire Amazon founder’s involvement has led to boycotts and criticism of the event. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s fashion and lifestyle editor, Morwenna Ferrier

More than a quarter of 20- to 34-year-olds still live with their parents. No wonder they are escaping into virtual properties that they can decorate and furnish as they like

Name: Cosy gaming.

Age: Has its origins in social simulation games such as Harvest Moon (1996) and The Sims (2000).

What’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf playing at with his new policy? Is it about pushing Labour further to the right, or just an attempt to ramp up rage and resentment?

All parties struggle to invest local elections with meaning, because no party can alter the consequences of what is coming up to two decades of austerity. They can promise they’ll work hard for local people, and many of them will, but they can’t change the maths of inadequate funding and soaring social care costs. All they can do is hope to exist in an affluent enough area.

Instead, the results are taken as a popularity contest, which – if things go your way – will hopefully supply enough buoyancy to last into a general election, and, if things don’t, will hopefully evaporate.

Inspired in part by Zohran Mamdani’s NY mayorship, Rostam Batmanglij’s gorgeous new album fuses Americana with sounds of the Middle East. So why isn’t his mum happy?

The first song Rostam Batmanglij ever learned to play on guitar was Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, the quintessentially American rock’n’roll hit about being an American rock’n’roll star. “It doesn’t get more American than that,” he says, with a smile.

The 42-year-old superproducer (Frank Ocean, Charli xcx, Carly Rae Jepsen) and former Vampire Weekend member is sitting across from me in a coworking cafe in London, trying to explain the fixation he’s always had with US culture. “My brother was born in France, my parents were born in Iran,” he says. “But I was in my mum’s womb when I first came to America. My position is different. So what is my relationship to the American flag? What is my relationship to American citizenship?”

For years we have been told the best way to get fitter and stronger is to lift something heavy, whether that’s a barbell or our own bodyweight. What if how we put it down was just as important?

We all love a power move, such as running, jumping, throwing balls, swinging kettlebells or scaling walls. In comparison, deliberate, controlled movement can seem a bit boring. But this slower side of exercise is frequently safer and less physically demanding than its more showy rival. And according to the latest research, one form of it is more effective than it has traditionally been given credit for.

“Eccentric exercise training provides numerous benefits for physical fitness and overall health, making it suitable for a wide range of individuals,” Prof Kazunori Nosaka writes in a new paper published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science. It “offers unique advantages over concentric or isometric exercise, particularly in promoting neuromuscular adaptations”.

Whether it’s a new season scent or a springy running shoe, your April favourites show you’re ready for a fresh start

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It’s easy to feel hopeful in spring, with blossom all around and sunny days bringing the promise of summer ahead. It feels like a fresh start, and it’s clear from your favourite things in April that you’re looking for rejuvenation.

Maybe that’s a new scent, or a cabin bag for a holiday. Perhaps it’s a health reset, with a pair of running shoes to kickstart better habits, or a celebrity-endorsed supplement. You’ve also loved sub-£20 skincare basics and high-street looks inspired by Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel. Here are your favourite things from April.

US president’s comment echoes threat that ‘whole civilisation will die’ as tension over strait of Hormuz ramps up again

• Donald Trump sends warships to break Iran’s strait of Hormuz blockade

We have a bit more of the statement from Maj Gen Ali Abdollahi, the commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya central headquarters, who said earlier that the US or any other foreign armed forces would be attacked if they entered the strait of Hormuz (see post at 07.39 for more details). Abdollahi also said:

We will maintain and vigorously manage the security of the strait of Hormuz with all our might, and we inform all commercial ships and tankers to refrain from any attempt to transit without the coordination of the armed forces stationed in the strait of Hormuz, so as not to jeopardise their security.

Labour leadership challenge in wake of disastrous local poll results could unleash chaos in party, MPs told

Cabinet ministers have told mutinous Labour MPs that any attempt to oust Keir Starmer after a potentially disastrous set of election results this week would unleash chaos for the party that would not be easily overcome.

Several, however, told the Guardian that even with the prime minister’s determination to stay in Downing Street after Thursday’s vote, the mood on the backbenches was febrile and events could yet spiral out of control.

Counter-terror police investigate latest incident after series of attacks on Jewish-linked premises

Two people have been arrested as part of a counter-terrorism investigation into a suspected arson attack at a memorial wall in Golders Green.

A 46-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman were arrested at an address in Romford, east London, where officers were also carrying out searches, the Metropolitan police said.

Reform UK is ‘doing something right when it comes to visibility’ on multiple AI systems, say researchers

AI platforms are more likely to reference Nigel Farage than any other UK leader when prompted about British politics, according to an AI search analytics firm.

“We are confident in saying that Reform are showing up significantly more than you would expect,” said Malte Landwehr, an expert at Peec AI, the firm that did the research. “So they’re doing something right when it comes to LLM [large language model] visibility.”

A suspect has been apprehended, but detectives say little is known about their motivation at this stage

At least two people have been killed and several injured after a driver in an SUV ploughed into a crowd in the centre of Leipzig in eastern Germany, the city’s mayor has said.

“The police have apprehended the suspected assailant,” Burkhard Jung said on Monday, adding that the authorities had the scene in a pedestrian zone under control. “We still don’t really know the motivation. We don’t know anything about the perpetrator.”

Cape Verde blocks MV Hondius from docking in order ‘to protect public health’ after deaths of three passengers

• What is hantavirus, the infection thought to have killed three on cruise ship?

Medics are scrambling to evacuate two people from a luxury cruise ship stranded off the coast of Cape Verde, after a suspected outbreak of a rare respiratory virus killed three people, left three others seriously ill and forced nearly 150 people from across the world to isolate onboard.

The plight of the MV Hondius, which set off in March from southern Argentina carrying 149 people from 23 countries, emerged late on Sunday after the World Health Organization said it was investigating a suspected outbreak of hantavirus, a disease primarily found in rodents.

⚽ Premier League updates from the 8pm BST kick-off
⚽ Scores | Tables | Read Football Daily | Mail Taha

2 min: City dominate the ball … until Ndiaye tries to drive down the left wing.

1 min: Guéhi gets a good look at the ball as City roll it around at the back. Khusanov narrowly escapes Beto’s press.

The 80-year-old singer will not be performing rescheduled dates in September but assured fans she is receiving treatment and ‘improving every day’

Dolly Parton has canceled her Las Vegas residency over ongoing health issues.

The 80-year-old singer had originally been scheduled to perform six shows at Caesar’s Palace last December but moved the dates to September 2026. She has now announced on social media that she won’t be able to perform as planned.

Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams co-chair annual New York event alongside Anna Wintour; Bezos sponsorship has sparked criticism

• Why the Bezos-backed Met Gala is so controversial

Here comes co-chair Nicole Kidman. It’s her seventh Met Gala and for the occasion she has chosen a shimmering red dress with a frou-frou drop-waist from Chanel. Well, she is an ambassador for the house, after all.

This may be the first time that mineral water has been an accessory at the Met Gala, but if anyone can make it happen, it’s Anna Wintour, the global chief content officer of Condé Nast and co-chair of the Met Gala. The fact that she combines it with an eau de nil feathered cape and trademark bob and sunglasses only makes it more fashion. And more memeable.

Police got several matches during trial in London borough – but where some see progress on crime, others see violation of privacy

• AI facial recognition oversight lagging far behind technology, watchdogs warn

• Shoppers falsely identified by facial recognition

• How does live facial recognition work?

It happened in a flash outside Barclays in Croydon town centre. A digital trap snapped shut around one of Britain’s thousands of wanted criminals. In little over a minute, a combination of high-definition cameras, automated AI face scanning and half a dozen police officers had run a wanted man to ground.

After the handcuffs clicked shut, the Metropolitan police’s controversial live facial recognition (LFR) cameras had chalked up another arrest: the fifth in 45 minutes on a regular Thursday morning.

Louisiana’s cultural hotspot could be surrounded by Gulf of Mexico before end of this century, authors say

The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached a “point of no return” that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a stark new study has concluded.

Ongoing sea-level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century”.

Die Zeit’s online database of individuals’ Nazi membership is prompting a reckoning as people uncover ties to regime

Olaf Köndgen is 64 years old, a German citizen and a senior European human rights expert who has lived and worked in France for several years. Last month, Köndgen learned that he is also the son of a Nazi.

Despite a strong interest in history and its lessons, Köndgen is typical of many 21st-century Germans in having had only the roughest outlines of his own family’s complicity with Hitler’s regime.

Sally Lindsay and Jill Halfpenny are incapable of hitting a false note in this tale of a daytime TV presenter being stalked. It’s full of twists and turns – even if it isn’t wildly sophisticated

The new Channel 5 (I know! Me too – but yes, it’s still around) thriller Number One Fan stars two Coronation Street graduates from back in the days when the soap was still good. My peak Corrie-watching years were early 90s to early 00s. Which means I was there when it looked like the crowns were about to pass from queens such as Rita, Vera and Bet Lynch to their honourable successors, like Shelley Unwin, Karen McDonald, Fiz – and maybe to a younger Battersby or two, if the family learned to stop yelling and give us a bit more northern wit. Alas, their reign was brief and now there is no question that Coronation Street is worse than it has ever been. We do not have time to get into this now. Suffice to say: the presence of Sally Lindsay (Shelley, as was) and Jill Halfpenny (Rebecca Hopkins, of the same era, as love interest for Martin Platt) is enough to assure you of a good time.

Here, Halfpenny plays Lucy Logan, a beloved daytime TV presenter with her own, mildly emetic show, a sponsorship deal for her onscreen wardrobe, and a new line of pampering products coming out under her name, in partnership with a brand-friendly charity. Apart from the monthly box of expensive truffles that are actually made of manure (I want to know who bit into the first one and discovered this; a bad work experience week for someone, I reckon) sent by an unknown non-admirer, life is good.

There are many online techniques for self-cutting a fringe – but would I end up looking like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction or a low-budget Grimes?

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I have had a fringe since I was 15 years old. I will never forget this life-altering haircut. For years before it I had been suffering lingering effects from a bob cut I received unwillingly in primary school.

You were not a cool person if you had a bob as an adolescent in the early 2000s. But finally, my hair had grown sufficiently for styling, and I got it cut to sit neatly on my shoulders with front bangs.

‘The man is the establishment, I suppose, the military industrial complex. A few year later, when we played it live, we added a loop of Bill Hicks saying: “All governments are liars and murderers”’

Gruff was the first person I ever met who could just churn out songs – good, catchy ones. I joined his band Ffa Coffi Pawb, but by 1992 they’d split and Gruff and I were living in Cardiff, as were Bunf, Guto and my brother Cian, the other future Furries. We started out doing techno sets, and I had a little home studio where we demoed ideas for songs. Our first singer, the actor Rhys Ifans, slept on a mattress in the corner.

Isabel Walker has worked as a journalist, writer and co-founded her own charity, but a chance encounter led to her fourth career, in colour analysis – and she has no regrets

Isabel Walker was taking her adult daughter out for her 36th birthday. She had wanted to do “something unusual and special”, so first Walker accompanied her to get her colours analysed. While the specialist draped swatches over her shoulders and assessed the best fit for her skin tone, Walker kept chipping in, “because I know a bit about colour analysis. At one stage I was a beauty editor for a magazine.”

Finally, the analyst turned to her. “She said: ‘You should be doing this kind of work.’ I said: ‘Nonsense. I’m far too old. I’m 72.’ But she wouldn’t let it go. She said: ‘You’re born to do this.’”

In 1953, Dave Sharkey, a former professional boxer, and his wife, Ann, founded a photographic studio in Oxford Street, London. The studio promised prints ‘ready in 10 minutes’ long before anyone else in the city could provide such a quick turnaround. Conveniently located near the US embassy and Selfridges, the studio, which was eventually taken over by the couple’s son Philip, became a bustling crossroads for artists, actors, musicians and athletes alike, all looking to get their passport photos taken. Muhammad Ali, Bianca and Mick Jagger, David Hockney, Tilda Swinton and many more sat for their passport photo.

Passport Photo Service, published by Phaidon Press, features more than 300 celebrity portraits from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Both nations are tarred by irreconcilable crises that could unravel democracy itself – sanity and stability have never felt further from reach

A feature of living at the end of an era is that some events in the present already feel like future artefacts – things you expect to see in a school history book, or a documentary many years from now. Here is King Charles’s 2026 state visit to the United States, right between the chapters on the war on Iran and the global energy crisis. Here is an image of the entire constellation of Trumpland, dining on spring-herbed ravioli and dover sole. Look at this interesting antiquity of the time: the gold plates, the universal sign of a regime at the peak of excess. And there you see the foreign dignitary, making a speech that at the time felt like bold truth-telling, but as we all now know was little more than naive theatre while the whole world teetered on the precipice.

The cast of characters behind the era-ending crisis were present, helpfully concentrated in one place to illustrate to those in the future how it came to this, and by whose hands. The money men, the Lord Haw-Haws, the nepo babies, the quislings. Seven guests from Fox News, seven members of the Trump family, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and – a little treat for golf-loving Trump – the Masters champion, Rory McIlroy, who the president made stand up to show off, breaking away from his state address to say: “Congratulations! Very proud of you.” If you wanted a snapshot of the forces that underpin the Trump administration, indifferent to its colossal violations, here it was – billionaire-funded corporate media, big tech, private equity and stars just happy to be so close to so much power.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

As Russian aggression continues and Trump’s US threatens Nato, it is even more vital for a unified defence of the continent

As we mark the 81st anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe this Friday, 8 May, it’s clear that Germany will again be the leading European military power.

Already next year its defence spending will be as much as that of France and Britain combined – and it is projected to be significantly larger by 2030. The German government’s declared goal is to have the strongest conventional army in Europe. True, France and Britain have nuclear weapons, but that means less money to spend on the rest of defence. So the question is not, will this happen? Barring unforeseen developments, it will. The question, particularly on this solemn anniversary, is: how can we ensure that this time the growth of German military power is a positive development for all of Europe?

Councils spend heavily on grisly yet ineffective methods. Why won’t they consider a proven, low-cost and humane strategy?

By some estimates there are almost 3 million pigeons residing in London, which has the highest pigeon population in the country. Known as “rats with wings”, “flying ashtrays” and “gutter birds”, pigeons do not have popular sentiment on their side. And cities in the UK have an extensive history of attempted pigeon pest control – having tried everything short of an exorcism to remove them – to no avail.

London’s best-known victory in the war against pigeons was self-declared, after an operation in Trafalgar Square in the early 2000s. Ken Livingstone’s city government flew two Harris hawks around the area to “deter” pigeons – although the hawks went further than that, killing 121 pigeons in what ended up being a years-long bloodbath. The blitz cost the city £226,000. Wildlife activists deemed it an act of unimaginable cruelty. And it did little to permanently cut down pigeon populations. Last year in Manchester at least 81 pigeons were shot and killed by pest control services – employed by Northern Trains – in early morning offensives at Manchester Victoria station. The event is known to some as the Manchester Victoria pigeon massacre.

Sydney Lobe is a freelance writer based between Vancouver and London

For so long, the Scottish government has made a point of welcoming migrants. But I now see troubling changes in my country

• Jasmeen Kanwal is an educator and writer who lives in Edinburgh

As Scotland prepares to elect a new parliament on 7 May, immigration is dominating the political discourse as never before. Reform UK, a party whose top three policies are “stop the boats”, “secure and defend our borders” and “deport illegal migrants” is now polling in second place behind the SNP in many recent surveys. Its success here seems illogical. Immigration, after all, is not devolved to the Scottish parliament. But as I’ve learned from my experience as an immigrant in Scotland, Holyrood’s position on immigration matters.

In Westminster, the Labour government’s approach to Reform’s toxic, distorted narrative on immigration has been not to challenge it but instead to accept it as the starting point for its own hardline anti-immigrant agenda. If this thinking were to infect Holyrood, it would be disastrous for Scotland.

The promise of this task: throwaway fun and mindful, tactile joy. The reality: juice, humiliation and a deeply stubborn fruit

I’m trying to “touch grass” more these days, to embrace embodied experiences and introduce analogue “friction” – and fun! – into my life, which is how I ended up attempting Rosamund Pike’s no-knife technique for eating a pineapple.

Admittedly, I discovered it online while consuming algorithmically suggested slop (the video is from 2021, but was reposted on TikTok last week and is enjoying a new flurry of attention). But shh. It’s great – Pike is infectiously enthusiastic, explaining that the Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins told her the technique, then gamely gets to work, worrying the pineapple base off with her thumbs, then popping off and eating perfect chunks. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” she concludes.

Updated guidelines issued by the Trump administration mean immigrants could potentially be denied a green card for their political opinions

Let’s play a fun game of Will This Get Me Deported? The first contestant is myself: a British-Palestinian green card holder in the US. I’ll start by quoting some recent news items concerning Israel. I don’t have the space to list every atrocity that the US ally has been accused of in the past few weeks so, unlike certain trigger-happy soldiers, I’ll restrict myself to two bullet points.

“Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.” (The Guardian; 21 April)

“Israeli forces shot and killed a young female student on Thursday while she was attending a class held in a tent in the town of Beit Lahiya in ‌the northern Gaza Strip … third-grade student Ritaj Rihan was hit by a bullet in front of her classmates.” (Reuters; 9 April)

Yes, Trump might carry them to victory in the midterms. But he can’t carry them much longer – especially not in the 2028 elections

All told, Democrats already seem as though they’re headed for a great midterm election. Voters already troubled by the state of the economy now have the impacts of Donald Trump’s teeter-tottering war in Iran to contend with, and polls tell us they aren’t happy ⁠– per poll averages from the analyst Nate Silver, nearly 55% of Americans oppose the war in Iran, 61% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, and 57% of Americans disapprove of Trump overall. As it stands, Democrats have a six-point advantage in generic congressional ballot polling over Republicans.

And Republican hopes that a mid-decade redistricting rush would save their tight majority in the House have been frustrated. The partisan gerrymandering war of the last several months peaked with the victory of a ballot measure in Virginia that allows the state’s Democratic legislature to draw maps that would eliminate three Republican seats and a riposte by Florida Republicans who approved their own map that could allow Republicans to gain as many as four seats in that state – mere hours after the supreme court struck down provisions in the Voting Rights Act banning racial gerrymandering.

Party divisions over energy have deepened, but the need to move beyond fossil fuels has never been clearer

Energy has not been a prominent subject for discussion in the run-up to Thursday’s UK elections. In England this is logical enough, since the big policy decisions are taken by ministers in Westminster, not at council meetings. But the stances adopted by the new governments in Scotland and Wales matter a great deal. They will have an influence beyond their borders, helping to shape the national climate debate in the coming years.

In both nations, as in England, divisions have deepened as Conservatives have moved away from support for net zero and Reform UK has ramped up its opposition to renewables. Among Scottish parties, only the Greens are categorically against new fossil‑fuel developments in the North Sea. Under John Swinney, the Scottish National party’s earlier opposition to the Rosebank oilfield has softened in advance of the upcoming decision over whether it should go ahead. Scottish Labour, by contrast, has thrown its weight behind new nuclear power.

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

The announcement of the withdrawal of thousands of US troops from Germany underlines the urgency of a pan-European defence strategy

As Donald Trump’s second term has become overshadowed by plunging poll ratings and an illegal, ill-advised war in the Middle East, European governments have regularly been singled out to bear the brunt of the US president’s growing frustration. Sir Keir Starmer’s refusal to militarily back the attack on Iran led to unfavourable comparisons to both Winston Churchill and King Charles. “Unfriendly” Spain has been threatened with a trade embargo for similar reasons. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, previously seen as a key political ally, has also been on the receiving end. “I’m shocked by her,” Mr Trump said last month. “I thought she had courage. I was wrong.”

Currently it is Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who finds himself in Washington’s crosshairs. In the wake of Mr Merz’s accurate observation that the US has no convincing strategy on Iran, the Pentagon has announced the future withdrawal of 5,000 US troops from bases in Germany. Vital long-range weapons are also to be withheld as American military stockpiles are depleted by events in the Middle East. For good measure, Mr Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on European car manufacturers to 25% – a measure that would hit Germany hardest.

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.

Danielle Hamm on the important perspectives that emerged from England’s first citizens’ jury. Plus letters from Libby Sallnow and Richard Smith, and Dr Pamela Fisher

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is an independent research and policy centre that aims to put ethics at the centre of decision-making about bioscience and health so that we all benefit. We agree that public views should be central to the debate on assisted dying (Editorial, 29 April). This is why we commissioned England’s first citizens’ jury on assisted dying in 2024, which produced rich and independent evidence about what the English public think about assisted dying, and the ethical, social and practical considerations that underpin their views.

Over eight weeks, 30 jurors – who were reflective of the demographic makeup of the English population – spent a total of 24 hours hearing evidence from experts, engaging with perspectives from all sides of the debate, and deliberating in groups.

Screening at the six-week check and signposting to services could prevent suffering and save lives, write Fiona Challacombe, Diana Wilson and Maria Bavetta

We were glad that the story of Kimberley Nixon was highlighted in your article and commend her openness about the devastating nature of perinatal OCD (‘This is so taboo’: Kimberley Nixon on the hell of perinatal OCD – and how she survived it, 28 April). Experiencing vivid unwanted intrusive thoughts, images and urges of accidentally or deliberately harming your infant can be hugely distressing, isolating and often misunderstood. Intrusions and compulsions can take, or indeed steal, hours a day, and can make women feel as if they are the worst mothers possible.

In severe cases, women can feel that ending their lives is the only course of action. We have been activists and researchers in perinatal OCD for 20 years and are aware of the issues of lack of recognition, misdiagnosis, inappropriate safeguarding procedures being activated and difficulties in accessing effective therapy.

Dr Sean Hanley responds to an editorial on the collapse of social democratic parties as rightwing nationalism flourishes

Your editorial on the politics of central Europe (28 April) rightly notes the collapse of many traditional centre-left parties. But its explanation is incomplete and oddly exceptionalist.

Much of what you describe – the erosion of social democratic parties after market liberalisation, the political aftershocks of the financial crisis, migration-driven cultural conflict and the drift of older and less metropolitan voters towards variegated forms of populism – is visible across much of western Europe. These are not uniquely eastern pathologies.

Readers respond to an editorial about technology’s impact on children’s wellbeing, saying that many schools increasingly rely on iPads as teaching aids

As a parent of two primary schoolchildren, I read your article with recognition and concern (The Guardian view on screens in schools: big tech is finally under the microscope, 27 April). Our school has recently introduced a one-to-one iPad scheme, and almost all of the children’s work now seems to be completed on iPads. At the same time, parents are expected to manage multiple, and often poorly designed, apps for communication, payments and even recording children’s reading.

Many parents are increasingly uneasy about this shift. Schools in the trust appear to be increasing screen time at precisely the moment when there is little clear evidence of any overall benefit for children. Meanwhile, there is growing evidence of the downsides: distraction, reduced concentration, difficulty sustaining attention away from devices and poorer literacy and learning outcomes.

Wu Yize leads 13-12 going into the final session
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Shaun Murphy 7-10 Wu Yize (72-37) Shaun leaves a snick to left corner but wu’s radar isn’t booted up yet; it’s the fourth such shot he’s missed in the frame, all of them by a way – though he gets second prize of a fluked snooker. The escape, though, is straightforward and, on his next visit, Shaun can go at a long one … which he drains nicely, before tucking in behind the brown. And, with the final red defended by blue and black, if Wu misses he’s almost certain to leave a free ball … but he hits the big dog, so it’s seven away and back in … to sneak through a tiny gap, great work. This frame is on a rolling boil now, the youngster botching yet another long pot – one you really expect him to take – punished with a snooker behind the pink, close to the side, with the red down the rail. Wu will need to deploy the swerve here, but he doesn’t get anywhere near with his first two goes, seeking to come off the bottom cushion, so he tries the side and hits the blue. The penalty points are piling up here, another miss takes Wu to within a foul of needing all the balls to tie … and it duly arrives, leaving a free ball. Shaun, though, refuses it, Wu finally hits, and the frame is almost over, the lead 35 with 35 left.

Shaun Murphy 7-10 Wu Yize (39-37) Shaun gets a red off the side then goes to remove another off the blue, but misses it by a way; end of break. So he sends a ball down the table, using the black to block off the white, and Wu’ll have to go some to hit either target, never mind get it safe; he plays it well, and this frame is maturing into a crucial battle of wits and skill.

A three-horse race has witnessed a faller. This most magical of Hearts seasons has edged closer to delivering the ultimate prize, an outcome that would shake Scottish football to its very foundations.

This was a game Rangers and their manager, Danny Röhl, dare not lose. They did, courtesy of a stirring second-half comeback from Hearts. Rangers now trail the Edinburgh club by seven points. The Hearts lead over Celtic has been restored to three with the same number of fixtures to play.

After making eight changes for this match, Vítor Pereira was asked why, with Nottingham Forest just three points clear of the relegation zone, he had taken such a risk with his personnel. “We change the players, but we keep the spirit,” he said. After this result, Chelsea’s hierarchy might be wondering quite what the “spirit” thing amounts to and where they might buy some of their own.

Forest ran through the home side, extending their unbeaten Premier League run to seven matches and doubling their gap to the bottom three with just three games remaining. Pereira was also able to rotate his squad before Thursday’s Europa League semi-final second leg against Aston Villa. For Chelsea, however, this was a sixth straight Premier League defeat for the first time since 1993, a 13th consecutive top-flight game without a clean sheet and a first (and solitary) goal in the league since the beginning of March. That the boos from the Stamford Bridge crowd were less oppressive at the finish than at half-time was only because so many had already left the stadium.

• Bath unhappy with collision between Barbeary and Lucu

• Some camera angles were unavailable to TMO in semi-final

An independent broadcast director is set to be in position for this month’s Champions Cup final in Bilbao after disquiet about the lack of crucial replays available to match officials during Bath’s 38-26 semi-final defeat against Bordeaux-Bègles on Sunday.

Johann van Graan, Bath’s head of rugby, suggested three high tackles on his No 8, Alfie Barbeary, were missed because the referee and television match official (TMO) had not been supplied with all the requisite angles by the French host broadcaster. Members of the commentary team on Premier Sports also highlighted the absence of replay footage.

• Norris and Piastri call for long-term changes to sport

• Mercedes’ Wolff suggests battery needs to remain

Formula One is under increasing pressure to consider immediate changes and the long-term future of its new engines, with the world champion, Lando Norris, reiterating after the Miami Grand Prix that the only answer to address the sport-wide dissatisfaction was to “get rid of the battery”.

At the race in Florida, which was won by Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, with Norris second, F1 and the FIA had brought in fresh regulations to address unhappiness and safety concerns prompted by the pivotal role energy management plays under the new 2026 formula.

It took six years and a lot of soul-searching for the coach nicknamed Salvador Milagros to return in 2023. After more miracles, he is off again

In the final minutes before Villarreal met Copenhagen in December, they came down the tunnel, marched on to the pitch, lined up before the ballboys holding out that starry tarpaulin like firemen waiting for a leap from a burning building, and listened to the Champions League anthem blasting out. Only there was no die besten that night, no grosse sportliche veranstaltung and no grandes équipes either. No lyrics at all, in fact. Someone somewhere had put on the Europa League tune by mistake, so they shifted their feet and looked awkward instead. Then they went out and got beaten again. But that was then and this was now and this time the DJ played the right record and everyone danced, singing along to the chorus, life good again.

That was December, before week six in the Champions League, and Villarreal were soon gone. Without a win, having picked up a single point in eight games, they were the second-worst team there and eliminated early: the continent’s premier competition, it seemed, was not their place, some kind of musical metaphor in that mix-up. But this was May, five months on, and they had just beaten Levante 5-1, securing the opportunity to go back and try again. They had done that early too. So at the full-time whistle on Saturday afternoon, week 34 in La Liga, the right anthem did go round the Cerámica, and so did the players, setting off on a lap of honour. Above them, a message appeared on the scoreboard. “We are a Champions League team (again),” it said.

• Champions League semi-final delicately poised at 1-1

• ‘We are so hungry to get the game we want tomorrow’

Mikel Arteta promised that Arsenal’s players will turn into “beasts” as they attempt to reach the Champions League final for the first time since 2006.

Arsenal drew 1-1 in the first leg of their semi-final against Atlético Madrid last week and will be confident of overcoming Diego Simeone’s side after winning five of their six matches in this competition at the Emirates Stadium so far this season, conceding only three goals. Viktor Gyökeres scored twice in a 4-0 win over Atlético during the group stage, although Arsenal will be wary of underestimating the team that knocked out Barcelona in the quarter-finals.

• Carrick has taken side into Champions League as interim

• Matheus Cunha feels Carrick has Ferguson-era ‘magic’

Michael Carrick is expected to be offered the chance to continue as Manchester United’s head coach after qualifying for the Champions League.

Carrick has not held talks regarding turning his interim role into a permanent one because the executives were intent on waiting to see whether he could lead United into Europe’s top club competition.

Positions fourth to sixth are separated by goal difference as Hoffenheim rue being out of the Champions League spots

“This is perhaps the most difficult moment of my career.” It was not, it is fair to say, what Andrei Kramaric had expected on a day – and a week – that was going along like a dream. Two days after he had extended his expiring contract for two years at “my second home”, Hoffenheim’s all-time record scorer had dragged them even closer to a surprise return to the Champions League, scoring goals 157 and 158 for the club on a sunny afternoon with the mood of celebration in the air, as they dominated direct rivals Stuttgart. But in the 95th minute, up popped the visitors’ Tiago Tomás out of nowhere to shatter it all. In the race for the top four in the Bundesliga, life comes at you fast.

One could understand Kramaric’s difficulties in absorbing what had just happened. When he left the field in stoppage time to the warm applause of the PreZero Arena Hoffenheim were in fourth position, the (likely) final Champions League spot which they have worked so hard to recover in recent weeks after a big wobble either side of Easter. By the time that the Croatia striker got comfy on the bench his team had seen their lead improbably evaporate, and when he sat down for dinner they were in sixth, following Bayer Leverkusen’s 4-1 demolition of RB Leipzig in the early evening Topspiel.

Supreme court issued a temporary order to restore access to the abortion pill mifepristone by mail on Monday

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The supreme court issued a temporary order to restore access to the abortion pill mifepristone by mail on Monday.

This comes after two companies who manufacture mifepristone the drug filed an emergency appeal to the court on Saturday asking it to halt a court decision that would require an in‑person exam before the medication can be prescribed.

Prime minister uses European Political Community summit to begin negotiations for UK participation in scheme

Keir Starmer has said the benefit of joining the European Union’s £78bn loan scheme for Ukraine “outweighs the cost” as he argued the continent must move at pace to bolster its own defence.

The prime minister, who said the UK’s involvement in the recovery loan plan would also help create jobs at home, acknowledged that tensions were high between Donald Trump and Europe, particularly over military issues.

This year’s winners also include Jill Lepore’s book on the constitution and Brian Goldstone’s on housing insecurity

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Pulitzer prize officials awarded the fiction award to an author with a long history in fantasy, horror and young adult novels: Daniel Kraus, cited for Angel Down, a first world war narrative that unfolds in one long sentence. Liberation, Bess Wohl’s look back at the feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, received the drama prize.

Winners announced on Monday included two books rooted in the founding of the US. Jill Lepore’s We the People: A History of the US Constitution won for history, and Amanda Vaill’s Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution was the winner for biography.

Cole Allen was isolated from other inmates, denied a Bible and placed on suicide watch despite showing no suicidal tendencies

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A US judge on Monday apologized to the man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump for the “legally deficient” treatment he has faced in a Washington DC, jail, including being placed on suicide watch, separated from other inmates and denied a Bible.

The US magistrate judge Zia Faruqui said he was disturbed by the conditions for Cole Allen, who allegedly fired a shotgun during a foiled attack on Trump and senior officials in his administration at a 25 April press gala. The judge said the conditions were inappropriate for a person with no criminal history.

Bamber, 65, has long used press interviews to campaign against convictions for murder of five family members

Jeremy Bamber, who has served more than 40 years in prison for murdering five members of his family, has been banned from communicating with the media.

Bamber was convicted in 1986 by a 10-2 majority of shooting his adoptive mother and father, his sister and her six-year-old twins at the parents’ family farmhouse in Essex a year earlier. He has always protested his innocence.

Video showed large ash clouds billowing from the Mayon volcano on Luzon island in the Philippines over the weekend. Emergency services issued alerts to nearby towns and more than 5,450 fled to emergency shelters.

Mayon is the most active volcano in the country and last erupted in 2023

International Energy Agency analysis shows methane leaks remained at near-record highs in 2025

Methane emissions from the energy sector remained at near record levels in 2025, the International Energy Agency has concluded.

Tackling the emissions could make billions of cubic metres of gas available to international markets, a top priority as the war in the Middle East squeezes energy supplies, the IEA said in a report.

High winds have hit the South Aegean and heavy rain has fallen in Turkey, but Central Europe has felt summer heat

Greece and Turkey have found themselves in the grip of a late-season cold spell this weekend. Conditions will persist over the next few days as an area of low pressure situated over Turkey is pulling in colder, moisture-laden air from the north-east via the Black Sea; this meteorological set up has suppressed temperatures well below where they should be for the time of year. Away from the Mediterranean coast, much of Turkey struggled to reach double figures, which is around 10C below the average, while Greece saw a similar chill. In Athens, temperatures only crept into the low teens Celsius, a far cry from the mid-20s typically expected in early May.

But they haven’t just faced colder temperatures. Greece had gale force winds whipping through the islands in the South Aegean – gusting at around 60mph on Sunday evening and the unsettled weather has brought a surge of heavy rain to Turkey. The Central Anatolia region of Turkey would normally see about 50mm of rainfall across the entire month of May, but on Sunday had already seen many areas pick up half that total in just 24 hours. With colder air in place, higher elevations have even seen a return to winter, with up to 30cm of fresh snow forecast across the Anti-Taurus Mountains on Monday and Tuesday. In Ankara, temperatures on Monday were expected to peak at just 7C – nearly 14C below average – before slowly edging back towards normal by the weekend.

Australia’s biobanks store everything from seeds of native plants to the cells and tissue of threatened animal species

In the mudflats of Swan Bay, Victoria, royal spoonbills sweep their paddle-shaped bills through shallow water. Nearby, under the grass-covered roof of the Queenscliff marine research centre, a team of scientists from Deakin University are trying to bring the ecosystems those birds and many others rely on back from the brink.

Some of that involves associate professor Prue Francis’s beakers – filled with bubbling brown gunk – that are bathed in red light inside a fridge equipped with sensors, alarms and a backup generator.

Authority says workers and councillors ‘threatened for explaining the council’s position’ as union jack and St George’s flags taken down

Residents, council staff and councillors have been subject to rising “abuse, harassment and intimidation” directly linked to the removal of unauthorised flags, a local authority has said.

Shropshire council said it had recorded a rise in reports of abuse with staff and members “being threatened for explaining the council’s position” on the removal of flags and when they attempt to do so – “even in day-to-day work to repair street lighting”.

Alice Chapman and Zak Khan say they were beaten, kicked and spat on after detention near Crete last week

Two British activists have said they were admitted to hospital after being beaten by Israeli forces who intercepted their Gaza aid flotilla last week.

Alice Chapman and Zak Khan were among 180 members of the Global Sumud flotilla detained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in international waters near Crete late on Wednesday.

Kent schoolgirl tracks down 10,000 namesakes as part of campaign – but non-Kirstys are welcome to donate too

Calling all Kirstys! A schoolgirl from Tunbridge Wells in Kent is seeking people who share her name to help raise money for research into paediatric brain tumours like the one for which she is being treated.

Kirsty Waugh, who turns 12 on Monday, has already persuaded more than 10,000 Kirstys, Kirsties, Kersties and assorted other variants to plot their locations on a map that shows Kirstys can be found everywhere from Colombia to Malaysia, and even at the Rothera research station in Antarctica.

Beef and olive oil costs increase the most as climate and energy shocks drive inflation, research suggests

Food prices are on track to be 50% higher in November than at the start of the cost of living crisis in 2021, research suggests.

Climate and energy shocks have driven an almost quadrupling of the pace of food price growth, according to research from the thinktank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), with costs rising in five years at about the same rate as they had over the previous two decades.

The British artist was booed after identifying as a Republican voter while on stage in Dallas

Rapper Kid Cudi has fired MIA from his tour after the British artist went on a rant that went viral while on stage in Dallas.

While opening up for the hip-hop artist on 2 May, MIA was booed after saying, “I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter,” as reported by Variety.

Exclusive: Sperm re-transplant offers hope that boys left infertile by chemotherapy could have biological children one day

In a groundbreaking fertility trial, a man whose testicular tissue was frozen before he underwent chemotherapy as a child to be re-transplanted 16 years later has been able to produce sperm.

It is the first time a transplant of cryopreserved prepubertal testicular tissue has been demonstrated to restore sperm production in an adult patient. The 27-year-old man had the sample frozen when he was 10, before undergoing potent chemotherapy as part of treatment for sickle cell disease.

Ventura county district attorney says pop star made plea through lawyer after being arrested in March for allegedly driving erratically

Britney Spears pleaded guilty on Monday to a charge of reckless driving in the driving under the influence case against her, sparing the 44-year-old from any jail time.

The pop star, who was initially charged with driving while under the combined influence of alcohol and at least one drug, did not appear in court in California’s Ventura county. Because she faced a misdemeanor, she was not required to attend proceedings.

Police are searching for at least four individuals responsible for ‘terrifying signals of hatred and threats of violence’

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Several synagogues and homes in the New York borough of Queens were vandalized overnight on Monday with swastikas, according to the city council speaker.

On Monday, Julie Menin, along with other city council members including Lynn Schulman and Phil Wong, visited Congregation Machane Chodosh, one of the sites targeted in Forest Hills.

More than 7,000 join employment tribunal that will include claims for minimum wage and holiday pay

More than 7,000 Just Eat couriers are taking legal action against the food delivery company in an attempt to gain better employment rights including the minimum wage and holiday pay.

The employment tribunal, which begins on Tuesday and is set to run until 2 June, will determine if the couriers are classed as workers, a status that comes with improved rights, or self-employed independent contractors.

Video game retailer’s CEO warns that unsolicited bid could turn hostile if it is rebuffed by resale site’s board

US video games retailer GameStop has offered to buy eBay for $55.5bn (£41bn) in an unsolicited bid that its boss warned could turn hostile if the proposal is rebuffed by eBay’s board.

GameStop, which has quietly accumulated a 5% stake in eBay, said it was willing to pay $125 a share, split 50-50 between cash and stock.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is backing new version of app called Divine, where content must be made by a human

As a pioneer of the short-form video format, Vine has been credited as one of the most influential – if short-lived – social media platforms.

The app, which allowed users to record a looping six seconds of video, boomed in popularity after its launch in 2013, spawning a plethora of viral comedy sketches and internet memes. It hit 100 million monthly active users at its peak and helped launch the careers of influencers such as Logan Paul.

Jimmy Wales remembers a toxic internet even before social media and says AI is ‘not a disaster’ for the free – and freely edited - online encyclopaedia

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Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, has branded the Australian social media ban an “unmitigated disaster” and an “embarrassment” that is teaching kids to accept surveillance from tech companies when they go online.

The online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit was born in a world before social media, in 2001. But Wales told Guardian Australia that many of the ills of social media existed even in the earlier stages of the internet.

Milton Court, London
The four siblings start with Webern before ditching traditional instruments for mics, voices, percussion and oud

‘We’ve done many concerts, but this is the first time I’m stressed,” the first violin confesses with a grin, lowering his instrument before a single note has sounded. But before he can launch into the story he’s interrupted by the cellist. “We’re actually supposed to play first!” she chides.

A string quartet is often compared to a four-way marriage. But what if the dynamic was closer to four siblings? One group that doesn’t need to imagine the answer is the Saad family: brothers Omar, Mostafa and Gandhi, and sister Tibah – AKA the Galilee String Quartet.

The Last Week Tonight host dug into the unregulated ‘wild west’ of kratom, boner pills and ‘gas station heroin’

On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver focused on the rise of gas station drugs, the brightly colored bottles and pills that are sold at the registers of US convenience stores. Promising increased energy, pain relief or improved sexual performance, these unregulated products often contain tianeptine, a drug known as “gas station heroin”.

“While you might assume they’re just snake oil, that’s not necessarily true,” said Oliver. “Some of these drugs can be actively dangerous, presenting risks of addiction just like controlled substances.”

Lee Sang-il’s heartfelt drama spans 50 years following the bond and rivalry between two brothers who play the rigorously observed female roles in the traditional art form

Lee Sang-il’s heartfelt and muscular epic (whose title means “national treasure”) was a box-office smash on its Japanese home turf, winning a host of festival awards and an Oscar nomination. It’s a mighty Cain-and-Abel drama spanning five decades, set in the rarefied world of kabuki theatre where some of the most exotically prized performers are the onnagata, the men who have mastered the rigorously observed discipline of playing women in classical kabuki roles, a convention which arose from Japan’s 17th-century banning of women on stage, rather as they once were in England 100 years before. It is a semi-intentional irony of this intensely and even passionately male film that actual women are of subordinate importance.

The story begins in an outrageously melodramatic way, with a situation which might even itself have once been amenable to kabuki dramatisation. In 1960s Nagasaki, a yakuza gangster is holding a social event to underline his prestige; he has provided kabuki entertainment for his guests, and such is his reverence for this Japanese high-cultural form that he has permitted his teenage son Kikuo to perform as an onnagata. Kikuo’s performance stuns a renowned kabuki actor called Hanjiro, played by Ken Watanabe. But the event is chaotically attacked by a rival gang, the yakuza is killed, and Hanjiro offers to adopt Kikuo and train him up as a onnagata in his kabuki company, alongside his own son Shunsuke.

A desperate driver joins a service that directs him down a shadowy path in this interesting, less-is-more satirical thriller

Canadian film-maker Michael Pierro makes his feature debut with this low-to-no-budget sortie, a modern-day Travis Bickle nightmare which, though flawed and in need of some script development, adds up to a pertinent satirical comment on the gig economy and the Waymo-isation of the service industry.

Nathaniel Chadwick has the everyguy role of a Toronto driver working for an Uber-style app, slumped in his hoodie at the wheel, deeply depressed about providing for a partner and baby at home, avoiding calls from his landlord, exhausted and exploited by customers who are rude and throw up in his car. He’d prefer to be paid by the app every day rather than every week but that would mean upgrading to some higher “platinum” level of driver, and paying a non-returnable membership fee which would supposedly entitle him to be first in the queue for jobs and various other questionable perks. He can’t afford it, in an interesting insight into Uber world.

The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their most rewatched comfort films is an unusual journey back to the 1980s through the lens of the early 2000s

If the stereotypical feelgood movie is a cashmere comfort blanket – the kind of film that leaves viewers blissed out on the sofa as the credits roll and Bridget Jones finally gets to snog Mark Darcy – I should probably notify a qualified team of specialists that my own is a tale of teenage alienation, suburban hypocrisy, apocalyptic dread and a man in a monstrous rabbit suit issuing stern instructions about death. Then again, it does have a considerably better soundtrack.

Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko explored alternate realities decades before the Marvel films and Everything Everywhere All at Once made the multiverse a pop-cultural touchstone. Its tree-lined streets, Halloween skies and teenagers pedalling through suburbia were like a weirder, sadder blueprint for Stranger Things long before Hawkins existed. It’s a suburban fever dream about fate, madness and collapsing timelines, a nightmarish physics puzzle steeped in existential dread. But beneath all the cult-film weirdness, it is also the oddly uplifting story of a lonely, damaged kid who finally understands his place in the world – and sacrifices himself to save it against the backdrop of some of the most luminous 80s alt-pop atmospherics ever recorded.

The Paddington star narrates an eerie adaptation of an Arthur Conan Doyle classic. Plus a worrying series about the US tech company at the heart of the NHS

Whether made by human hand or shady algorithm, emotion-based playlists are everywhere. But if you’re looking for a superior soundtrack to ‘all the feels’, get your ears round these selections from our music writers

Music might be the greatest mood enhancer in the world: it’s certainly hard to think of another art form that can so effectively tip a feeling of happiness into euphoria or create a suitably gloomy space in which to wallow in melancholy. There have always been albums designed to evoke a certain mood, from Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely to Essential Chill Out Vol 2. But in recent years, we seem to have become more interested in the relationship between music and mood. Streaming services are thick with mood-based playlists. There appear to be hundreds of the things on Spotify, from the straightforward (Happy Vibes) to the vague (All the Feels), and they appear to have struck a nerve: Spotify’s own curated mood playlists are now vastly outnumbered by user-generated ones, soundtracking everything from Friday at the Office to – I swear I’m not making this up – Losing Someone to Suicide.

There are those who have detected something sinister in all this. Liz Pelly’s 2025 book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist suggests that the Spotify’s seeming obsession with mood-based playlists is linked to its focus on what it calls “lean-back consumers” – not ardent music fans, but the kind of people who would once have turned the radio on in the morning and left it burbling quietly away all day. These playlists, Pelly suggests, exist as a latterday equivalent of muzak, designed to be as unobtrusive, unsurprising and unadventurous as possible, to seamlessly play in the background without really being noticed.

The East 17 man knows his 90s bangers but once inadvertently cleared a dancefloor. And what song gets him on the exercise bike in a morning?

The first single I bought
Shut Up by Madness, from a record shop on Hoe Street in Walthamstow, London. It gave me a kind of independence in the world when I could choose what I wanted. And as a nine-year-old, you could find 10p down the back of the sofa and get a Madness badge at the market to stick on your coat.

The song I do at karaoke
I’ve only done karaoke once, really loud and absolutely inebriated on sake in Japan. I’d had a few and thought: “This isn’t really doing much”, then it hit me like a hammer. That was a messy night. If I had to do karaoke now, I’d do East 17’s House of Love, because at least I’d remember the words.

The star’s potent sexuality made him my ‘secret friend’ but, with my career in the arts stalling, his death led me to the life-changing decision to move to Minneapolis and maintain his legacy

I distinctly remember the first time I heard Prince. I was a dreamy, artistic child growing up in 80s rural Australia, feeling completely out of place. One day, I turned towards the cassette radio in my bedroom, hearing something totally different to the rock music I had grown up with – something electric and alive. It was Prince. My body moved. From that moment, he became my secret soul friend, his music carrying a powerful mix of sexuality and spirituality that I didn’t yet have the language for. Songs such as Controversy and Purple Rain felt like permission to be fully expressive, and fully myself.

My love for Prince remained as I grew up. I moved to New York to pursue a career in the arts, but never quite fully managed it, ending up as an arts administrator. I supported other artists, organised programmes, lived alongside creativity rather than inside it.

A landmark new account of the 1979 revolution provides much needed context for current events

As Wordsworth found in Paris after 1789, revolutions are deeply enthralling. There is nothing so bold, so self-sacrificing, so brave, so cruel as a revolutionary crowd. What’s more, revolutions have shaped the modern world. The European Union has been transformed by the overthrow of Marxism-Leninism in eastern Europe, while the near-revolution in Tiananmen Square in 1989 feeds the neuroses of the Chinese Communist party to this day.

Yet in some ways it was a revolution 10 years earlier that has been even more formative for our times: the overthrow of the shah in Iran. That, indeed, was a genuine revolutionary archetype on the 1789 model: barricades in the streets, crowds armed with old hunting rifles and kitchen knives facing up to the tanks (British-made, naturally); palaces, barracks and secret police headquarters stormed and sacked, the uniforms of the shah’s supposed “Immortals” lying on the ground, abandoned in utter panic. I even came across the ultimate revolutionary image: the body of an unfortunate cop hanging from a lamp-post. Squeamishness back at the BBC in London meant the shot wasn’t used.

A young pregnant woman is assailed by dark visions of sisterhood in a novel splicing eco-horror, cosmic distress and ideas of the monstrous feminine

Realism, contrary to appearances, isn’t a form closed off to horror. The stories in ’Pemi Aguda’s debut collection, Ghostroots, a finalist for the 2024 US National Book award, rivetingly bore out this fact. Neither strictly realistic nor wholly supernatural, they seized on ordinary events pulsing with sinister possibility: a mother distraught at her inability to produce milk for her newborn wonders whether her unresolved feelings over her husband’s infidelity might have poisoned her body; a young woman prone to violence fears she is inhabited by the spirit of a wicked ancestor; a driver who runs over a pedestrian can’t shake off the feeling that her own daughter will be next to die. One Leg on Earth, as the title suggests, is similarly a liminal creature, although it flirts more openly and ingeniously with darkness. It follows a young woman, Yosoye Bakare, newly arrived in Lagos to intern at an architecture firm involved with building Omi City, a state-of-the-art enclave on land reclaimed from the sea.

Away from home, Yosoye is hungry for adventure. Out on a stroll one night, she slips into a cruddy bar, allows a man to buy her a drink, and goes to a cheap motel where they have ravenous sex without protection. Across the city, pregnant women are inexplicably throwing themselves into open water. But when Yosoye learns she is expecting, she decides to keep the baby. “It was hard to explain to someone who hadn’t spent their whole life trying to belong, to be inside – the joke, the anecdote – that the promise of another being that would be just theirs, that would, yes, belong to them, was like cold water on the tongue after hours of trekking under the Lagos sun.”

Her philosophical approach to therapy has become a global phenomenon, and inspired a new book. Could a session with her change Sophie McBain’s life?

The existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen moved to the UK inspired by RD Laing, the Scottish anti-psychiatrist who said insanity is a “perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. It was 1977 and Van Deurzen, who is Dutch and had studied philosophy and psychology in France, found work with the Arbours Association in London, a therapeutic community based on Laing’s ideas, in which people in crisis, psychiatrists and therapists lived together as equals. It was a rude awakening.

Arbours aimed to create space for people to “explore their madness”. “Now that was a very interesting idea,” Van Duerzen says, “but in practice it meant that people self-medicated, with alcohol and pot, and it was not a happy situation.” The residents were often very depressed or psychotic, and it was common to be woken up at night because someone was seeing things or had become suicidal. Van Deurzen came to believe that anti-psychiatry had “lost courage”: it had proposed a different way of thinking about madness, but having released people from asylums and taken them off neuroleptic drugs, it was “kind of leaving them to it”. “And this is what I realised wasn’t good enough,” she says. When people are experiencing a mental health crisis, they need help to make sense of what has happened to them, and to find their way to healing. “From that moment on I just knew: nobody’s doing this. I’m going to have to do it myself,” she says.

From 1980s Cincinnati into the interstellar darkness, the stories of four women interconnect across the centuries in a gentle hymn to found families

This is the kind of book you pitch by analogy: JG Ballard meets Gabrielle Zevin; Isaac Asimov meets Stephen Chbosky; Ready Player One meets Love, Simon (replete with ferris wheel). I’ve been describing it to friends as a YA Kazuo Ishiguro set adrift in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. It turns out I have two kinds of friends: those who hear that description as praise, and those who heed it as a warning.

Novels that demand comparisons rarely survive them. This one does (though it could do without that mawkish ferris wheel). American author Portia Elan’s debut is a gentle hymn to found families – the kin we choose rather than inherit – and it’s fitting that it reads that way, assembled from allegiances. Elan knows what her characters will discover: stories are how we claim one another.

Meeting ‘my people’ – video gamers with very long memories – took me back to an era of machine play that lacked megabytes but had far more tangible presence

I want to tell you about the game that has made me the happiest this month. It’s a game I didn’t complete. It’s a game I didn’t even start. I just held it. And smiled. I have played the game before, but not for many years. Forty of them to be precise.

The game is Daley Thompson’s Super Test for the ZX Spectrum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arts Collective, Northampton
An overdue celebration in her home town of this funny, direct, critical, satirical conceptualist shows her spiky social commentary is as fresh and relevant as ever

Rose Finn-Kelcey wanted to make art that was neither pompous nor condescending. Those are pretty rare ideals in conceptualism, where pomposity and condescension come with the territory, but Finn-Kelcey was a pretty rare artist.

This show in Northampton’s brand new £5m art centre – a very colourful retrofit of the historic municipal offices and town hall annexe, filled with artist studios – is a homecoming. Finn-Kelcey was born here in 1945 and grew up on a nearby farm, but spent the 1970s onwards causing a big old feminist ruckus with all sorts of art pranks, installations, performances, videos and photography in London before her death from motor neurone disease in 2014.

Soho theatre, London
Directed with swagger and finesse by Matthew Xia, Dave Harris’s play explores sex, pleasure, parenthood and what makes a man

There are two kinds of people in the world – those who, given a paddle to signal willingness for audience participation at a play set in a strip club, will raise it high, and then there’s me. The crowd arrived hyped for Dave Harris’s Tender – my neighbour waved her paddle through the pre-show playlist – but it’s not really about rambunctious bump and grind. Instead, Harris delves into modern masculinity: hard bodies, squishy hearts.

The Dancing Bears is a down at heel club in New Jersey. Two young dudes and a non-dancing daddy work their teddy-bear heads and neon-green jocks for a dwindling crowd of middle-school teachers and recovering divorcees. Monster-schlonged rivals are stealing their punters and then Geoff has an onstage panic attack. Bear down!

Linbury theatre, London
The Jette Parker Artists ran the full spectrum from sombre lyricism to frenzied satire via divorce drama in works by Elizabeth Maconchy, Charlotte Bray and Elena Langer

Tales of Love and Loss: the title made this triple bill of English-language one-acters from the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Artists sound like something very serious. In fact, it sent us out laughing.

Admittedly, after the first work the mood could only lighten. Elizabeth Maconchy’s 1961 two-hander The Departure, last staged in 2007, begins with a woman watching a funeral through her bedroom window; when her husband comes home she realises it is her own death that is being mourned, and that she is there to say farewell. Directed by Talia Stern, in a 1960s set designed by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita, it flirted with melodrama, especially in the flashing-light effects as she remembered the fatal car crash, and the ending, with the sound of a baby crying, felt mawkish. Still, Maconchy’s music, sombre yet lyrically expansive in a way that made it feel like the orchestra was bigger than the 14-strong Britten Sinfonia, made an impressive vocal showcase for the mezzo-soprano Ellen Pearson and baritone Sam Hird.

Milton Court, London
The Venezuelan pianist was mercurial and dazzling in this Spanish-themed recital including Chopin, Scarlatti and Albéniz adding improvisational mastery with a Purcellian take on Here Comes the Sun

Mozart did it. Liszt, famously, too. You could hardly stop Bach and Messiaen – even Boulez dabbled. But at some stage improvisation disappeared from the concert platform; experimentation became something to do privately and in advance rather than in public and in real time. Unless you’re Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, who has spent a career reinstating the art on the concert platform.

So far Montero’s three-concert residency at the Barbican hasn’t yielded an opportunity – not so much as a cadenza – so I suspect many of the substantial audience for her solo recital were there in hopes of hearing more than just the advertised programme.

The artist’s dreamlike paintings, inspired by his childhood home, led to an invitation from a global icon. Now he’s opening a casita in Bruton. What will the locals think?

Angel Otero is on the brink of tears. He’s describing the feeling of being part of fellow Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny’s La Casita – a set the musician used on stage during his 31-show residency on the island last year, a recreation of a typical single-storey home found across Puerto Rico and the wider Latin American diaspora.

“When I was invited, of course, I accepted,” Otero tells me, standing in his temporary studio in Somerset. “Although I tend to shy away from things like that. The replica is a very similar setting to the one I grew up in, and I had multiple feelings when I got there. Of course, there’s the spectacle of being on the stage of a significant artist of our time, who is from my island. But it also transported me into the subject I’ve been working on for so long. It was a sort of validation, seeing people enjoying the culture, people specifically from my kind of upbringing.”

Is this the ultimate location for contemplative art? Our writer travels to the legendary island of Naoshima – and meets the great creator of its most spellbinding works. Will he step through the arch and find nirvana?

The island of Naoshima used to be heavily polluted and dominated by a Mitsubishi plant. Now, after being redeveloped by the billionaire Sōichirō Fukutake in 1989, it’s known as Japan’s “art island”. Boasting 3,000 inhabitants and rising up out of Seto Inland Sea, the island is studded with dim, concrete-walled galleries sunk into the hillsides. Designed by architect Tadao Andō, these have a contemplative, almost worshipful ambience and are filled with extraordinary paintings, sculptures and installations by artists ranging from Claude Monet to land artist Walter De Maria, although the real Instagram bait is the giant yellow-and-black spotted pumpkin deposited on a pier by Yayoi Kusama in 1994.

As all the retired American couples treating themselves to a trip of a lifetime would attest, Naoshima has become the ultimate destination for those seeking a transcendental visual experience. For many, this comes as they walk downhill to the coast and see a huge steel arch, 11m tall and 13m wide, pinned between two sand-coloured boulders. Underneath it is a long steel plate acting as a kind of runway, enticing visitors to walk through the arch towards the sea.

From tales of giant tortoises trampling tents to almost getting shot, this is a relentlessly entertaining documentary about one of David Attenborough’s greatest pieces of TV

Life on Earth has a good claim for the top spot in any list of the best British TV shows of all time. A giant leap forward from previous wildlife programmes, it gave us the David Attenborough epic as we now know it: every expansive, expensive, dazzlingly informative BBC nature series since has used a template that Life on Earth created. It’s a classic, a landmark, a totem of the creative power the Beeb once had. It’s now 50 years since it went into production, and it’s Attenborough’s 100th birthday this week. As TV anniversaries go, this is a weighty one.

You might worry that a retrospective film about Life on Earth could be an hour of solemn awe and hushed reverence. What you actually get from Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure is a relentlessly entertaining cavalcade of top-drawer anecdotes, more like the sort of gossipy celebration that might commemorate the making of Jaws or Star Wars. Victoria Bobin’s rollicking film is the story of a giant pop-culture moment, a gang of mates remembering how they sensed conditions were right to create a blockbuster masterpiece – if they were willing to flirt with failure and even death to get there.

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway shine in frothy sequel that smartly comments on struggling media industry

• This article contains spoilers for The Devil Wears Prada 2

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 review – a sequel? For spring? Groundbreaking

After a promotional blitz that has run the full gamut from haute (Meryl Streep on the cover of Vogue with Anna Wintour) to not (a heinous line of Target sweats), The Devil Wears Prada 2 is finally here, and set for very chic box office takings of over $200m in its first week.

Praised as one of the few Hollywood sequels to measure up to its beloved original, the movie sees Streep reunite with Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci two decades after the original movie’s release in a flurry of designer rags, withering put-downs and a slew of celebrity cameos. Surprisingly enough, it mostly works. At my screening on opening weekend, fans crowded to take pictures with promotional cardboard cut-outs and clinked cocktails as the lights went down. Read on for a spoiler-packed breakdown of the film, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The world often feels dominated by sadness and doomscrolling. But fun is still possible – and necessary. Here are tried and tested ways to enjoy yourself

Cartwheel. On the day we scattered my father’s ashes, we lightened the mood with some competitive gymnastics. I don’t know how it started, but in attempting a cartwheel, I was shocked at my own creeping decrepitude. Over the last year, I’ve been watching online tutorials and practising – and I can do a passable cartwheel now. For that joyful split-second, upside down and wheeling, I’m reconnected with my eight-year-old self. Emine Saner

Have a kitchen disco. Never underestimate the fun ready to burst out of your kitchen. The crucial ingredient? Good music, played loudly. Parcels are my new favourite – the whole family have become superfans since last summer’s awesome Glastonbury set. Tieduprightnow, Gamesofluck, IknowhowIfeel, Hideout, Safeandsound – so many danceable, joyful tracks. Patrick Barkham

Our lungs have evolved to heal from damage, but some smokers will suffer irreversible effects

It used to be thought that the lungs couldn’t regenerate,” says Dr Charlotte Dean, head of the lung development and disease group at Imperial College London. “But we know now that’s not the case. Broadly speaking, they can repair when you quit smoking.”

Smoking is in effect damaging your lungs, Dean says, and the lungs have a substantial capacity to heal themselves. They have evolved to cope with pollution or getting infected by bacteria or viruses. “Because they’re so vital – you can’t survive without your lungs – they needed to have this capacity,” she says.

Our expert puts the best power washers through their paces on the toughest – and muckiest – outdoor chores, from grimy paving slabs to dirty decking

• The best lawnmowers to keep your grass in check

The trouble with the great outdoors is that it gets a bit untidy. Your garden tools might do a good job of keeping your plot in check, but keeping your patio, decking and outdoor furniture spick and span can take hours, especially if you rely on a bucket of soapy water and a scrubbing brush.

That’s where a pressure washer comes in. These handy tools connect to your hose pipe and squirt water at any cleaning problem. Stubborn and unpleasant stains, from bird dirt to years of neglect, can be lifted from your garden’s hard-wearing surfaces in seconds. With the right attachments, you can also use your pressure washer to hose down cars, bikes and boats.

Best pressure washer overall:
Ava Go P40

Best budget pressure washer:
Kärcher K 2 Classic

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

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

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

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

• The best carry-on luggage

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

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

Best suitcase overall:
Away the Large

Best budget suitcase:
Tripp Holiday 8 Large

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

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

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

Oozy and creamy like a good risotto, this is the perfect midweek taste of Greece

For me, it isn’t really spring until the first May bank holiday; the days are longer, the flowers are out, and an abundance of green graces our shelves. This spanakopita orzo is a celebration of all things light, bright and spring. It’s a great weeknight dinner that will instantly transport you to Greece.

Mexican spring soup followed by black bean and three-cheese quesadilla

I have always loved the evident (though not proven) link between how foodie a country is and its love of soups. In Mexico, where nose-to-tail eating is a given, broths maintain a steadying presence in any self-respecting cantina, and soups are commonplace on most menus. We don’t eat a crazy amount of meat at home, but having homemade stock in the freezer is an ingenious fast track to flavour and goodness. Here, whether your stock is chicken or vegetable, homemade or shop-bought, the joy is in the gentle spicing, a scattering of herbs, zingy tomatillos and some lovely spring leaves.

Jamie Oliver’s head of restaurants is optimistic about new recipe of smaller site, slimmed-down menu and no burgers

When Jamie’s Italian crashed and burned in 2019, with the company in £83m of debt and causing 1,000 job losses, no one imagined the celebrity chef would try again.

But seven years later, Jamie Oliver has opened a flagship site under the same name in Leicester Square in central London, and believes he has a new recipe for success: a smaller restaurant with a slimmed-down menu, which features cheaper cuts of meat and no burgers.

This cute and jovial eatery is reason enough to make a break for the coast

As summer looms, and with it the urge to stampede towards the edges of Britain in search of paddling opportunities, I proffer another coastal dining idea: Willy’s in Margate – and, yes, that name does have about it something of the naughty seaside postcard. Tucked away in the back of Margate House hotel on Dalby Square, a few minutes’ walk from the seafront, Willy’s is a blur of frilly red-and-pink seaside adorableness. It’s cool, cute and jovial, with pork scratchings and apple chutney on the menu, as well as black pudding scotch eggs, sticky toffee pudding and Sunday lunches of beef rump and baked cauliflower cheese. This menu is short, intentional and hearty, rather than airy-fairy, and it chortles in the face of small plates.

But, for the foodie/sippy crowd, the signifiers are all here: there’s a paper plane and a penicillin on the cocktail menu, throwbacks to New York’s iconic Milk and Honey bar. There are three Olivier Pithon natural wines from Roussillon on the short list, which as a whole leans towards natural and low-intervention bottles from France, Spain and Italy. Most tellingly, the chef is Mark O’Brien, who worked with Robin Gill at the Dairy in London and at Samphire in nearby Whitstable before making this little nook his home, and who earlier this year reached the final three of MasterChef: The Professionals. Willy’s is clearly run by a team that knows about nice things.

I always knew my Vietnamese pot-bellied pig was smart and special – and he has brought love, chaos and happiness into my life

We have lots of animals in our home in Sacramento, California – a dog, two chicks, a pigeon, a bearded dragon, three rats and two rescue cows. But our pig, Merlin, is special.

I had a pig obsession for a while. I remember going to visit some animal sanctuaries and getting emotional when I saw the pigs. There’s just something about them that I felt a connection to. I knew how smart they were. I remember telling myself that one day I’d have a pig.

He didn’t just shout me a drink, he made me feel understood and seen. I’ve never forgotten his gesture

I had picked up a box of books at work when my back just went – I have never experienced pain like that in my life. I was off work for weeks, consumed by the agony of it and barely able to move. In desperation, I tried every treatment I could – massage, physiotherapy, herbal compresses. You name it, I’d given it a go.

On one such Hail Mary mission I went to a back pain clinic, where my lower back was injected with anaesthetic. The treatment was so painful, I left in tears. I remember walking out in such a state and thinking, “How am I even going to get myself home?” As I stumbled along, it occurred to me that I needed something to calm myself down. Spotting a chocolate shop, I stepped inside.

Her actions may be numbing pain she feels in other areas of her life, so you must approach the issue thoughtfully

My mother is in her 70s and addicted to playing video games such as Tetris, many different versions of solitaire and slot machine gambling games.

In the 1990s my parents bought a desktop computer and my mum started to play mostly card games on it for hours. As technology has progressed, she moved to a laptop and now a smartphone. When my sisters and I were younger, we used to joke about her gaming, but we’ve come to realise it has affected our relationships as she has never been emotionally available. When I’m with Mum now, she always has her phone in her hand and will be playing a game even when I’m talking to her. I never feel I have her full attention. She is like this with other family members too and it’s become a bit of a family joke.

When Federica met Oskar, she thought their Google translate-powered romance would be brief, but soon they were planning their future restaurant together

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2013 I moved from Milan to work as a pastry chef in Marano Vicentino, a tiny town in the region of Veneto. My new boss was the youngest chef to be awarded a Michelin star in Italy and I was excited by the opportunity to work at El Coq, living in the staff sharehouse and learning everything I could.

I’d been there a year when Oskar arrived on the scene. A fellow chef and friend of my boss, he had been working on a boat somewhere and was going to stay with us in the sharehouse for a few weeks and spend some time in the kitchen helping us develop the menu.

Charges set out in a new contract for Aver Healthcare’s homes appear to contradict advice from the regulator

I hold power of attorney for my aunt who is in a care home run by Avery Healthcare. Avery recently sent relatives its new contract, which states that care home fees are payable for 14 days after a resident’s death, and levies an upfront £595 charge for “dilapidations” (damage or wear and tear).

These charges contradict advice given by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and are probably unenforceable.

After subscribing to the Claude chatbot, mystery payments started to appear on one family’s credit card bill. They are not alone

David Duggan* was so impressed with the ability of the Claude chatbot to answer medical questions and organise family life, that a $20-a-month (£15) subscription seemed like money well spent.

But then his wife spotted two $200 payments on his credit card bill for gift cards to use the artificial intelligence tool.

Rural dwellers reveal failings in backup plans, as campaigners call for deadline to be extended from 2027 to 2030

“Every time there is a power failure I lose all means of communication with the outside world,” says Robert Dewar of life in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands since the landlines were transferred from the old copper cable network to broadband connections.

Blackouts also knock out the village’s mobile phone signal. “Our most recent power cut lasted for 42 hours,” Dewar says. The interruption outlasted his five-hour emergency backup battery. “If I had had a heart attack there is damn all I could have done about it, except compose myself, say my prayers, and await the outcome.”

From a quintessential ‘chocolate box’ cottage to part of a grand stately home

Gemma Correll has suffered from anxiety and depression disorders since childhood, and at 16 she discovered a magical elixir that promised to make her feel better. In this extract from her new book, she shows how that promise was broken

In 2018, I was in my 30s and living in Oakland, California, having moved there from the UK in 2015. I had always struggled with anxiety and panic attacks, but I was doing fairly well – until suddenly I wasn’t. I started having back-to-back panic attacks, wandering the streets of Oakland and nearby Berkeley in a desperate attempt to shake them, without success.

Can a sentence affect the course of your life? Five authors reveal the interactions that transformed the way they saw themselves – and the world

When I was 14, I had to start a new school. I wasn’t great at starting new schools, even though I had done so quite a few times – once for my dad’s work, once because I wasn’t fitting in at my primary school and once because my parents didn’t like the teachers. Of course, 14 is possibly the most awkward of all the ages to start a new anything. Anyway, it was halfway through the first term at the new school in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and I was taken aside by my history teacher, Mr Philips, at the end of a lesson. He didn’t like me very much. To be fair, I was probably hard to like, from a teacher’s perspective. I had trouble concentrating, I stared out of windows, I clowned around. However, it is difficult to explain the shock to my self-conscious teenage soul when he told me, “I think it would be a good idea for you to join a special needs class.” Now, for context, the year was 1989, and in my state comprehensive at that time the idea of being “special needs” was akin to being given a leprosy bell or being marked with a cross for the plague. It was a binary system. You were either “normal” or you were “special needs”. To make matters worse, I was told that another teacher – my art teacher – had come to a similar assessment.

Doing more trips around the sun does not mean inevitable decline, new research suggests – and having a optimistic outlook can even bring improvements

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By most standards, Prof Velandai Srikanth is at the peak of his career. He is the director of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing; his decades of highly regarded research have led to work being published in leading scientific journals; and he has been awarded funding from some of the world’s biggest scientific funding bodies.

He has also turned 60 and says that, as soon as he did, “somebody said ‘so when are you going to retire?’” The comment shocked him – he realised this was the stigma of ageing, and it was coming for him.

This underdiagnosed condition, which causes leg pain and swelling, affects one in 10 women, yet most doctors haven’t heard of it

The first thing Becca Golden noticed was her pants.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2023, her pants stopped fitting. Her legs became puffy, with a rippled texture and heavy ache. Within a year, the 32-year-old, Austin-based podcaster went up four pant sizes, gained 30lb and found herself in constant leg pain. She had always had a little bit of cellulite, she says, but while her upper body appeared mostly unchanged, now her legs seemed to belong to a “different person, overnight”.

Wilson is not the first high profile respondent to change her wardrobe for court, but fashion can also help plaintiffs express themselves when speech is constrained

Pitch Perfect star Rebel Wilson is being sued for defamation by actor Charlotte MacInnes. The trial has seen Wilson arrive in court wearing various iterations of white button-down shirt beneath neutral knitwear or suiting, paired with cropped black trousers and heels. Similar to the undeniably demure, court-appropriate uniform she also adopted during her trial against Bauer Media in the 2010s, her courtroom aesthetic sits in stark contrast to her usual glittery, vivacious style.

This isn’t the first time a celebrity’s courtroom look has diverged from their regular wardrobe. While it shouldn’t materially affect the outcome of a case, famous or not, how one presents at trial can carry real consequences.

Fashion’s Oscars - aka the Met Gala - arrives this Monday. But before we see this year’s outfits, our writers revisit the looks that still spark debate, delight and the occasional meme

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The first Monday in May is fast approaching, which means the next iteration of the Met Gala – the biggest night in fashion – is on its way.

While we eagerly wait to see what co-chairs including Beyoncé (her first Met in a decade) wear, how Anna Wintour handles honorary chairs Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez on the steps (the couple have provided most of the funding for the gala and its exhibition), and how much impact the anti-Bezos protesters have, we thought it would be fun to hit pause on predictions and instead indulge in some Met Gala nostalgia.

There’s more to this classic look than simply wearing your nightwear as daywear. Try it with a T-shirt or a silky bomber – and always with a slick of lipstick

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

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

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

After decades in the shadows, the residents of this historic quarter came together to launch local businesses and make the area an attractive proposition once more

My favourite way to enter Rione Sanità is by elevator: descending from a bridge into cobblestoned streets buzzing with mopeds and flanked by opulent but decaying 18th-century palazzi. Through the grand doorways of these once noble palaces are courtyards where bakers, butchers, cobblers and the odd contraband cigarette vendor do business.

This buzzy quarter is best enjoyed on one of the many tree-lined terraces, eating gourmet wraps, sipping bio wine and listening to live jazz

Named for its 19th-century neoclassical church, Notre-Dame du Mont was once a site where sailors who’d survived shipwrecks and storms made offerings of thanks. Now locals and visitors make a pilgrimage to this vibrant quarter for its restaurants, indie shops and street art. Voted Time Out’s coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2024, Notre-Dame du Mont has retained its laid-back charm while continuing to grow, stretching south on Rue de Lodi. Since December 2025, the church’s parvis has been pedestrianised. Removing the urban roar of scooters has returned the quarter to its village-like ambience – best enjoyed on one of the many tree-lined terraces.

It once housed the fanciest shops and restaurants in Greece’s capital city – then it crashed. Now the area is reborn as a vibrant, multicultural neighbourhood

After my father’s will banned me and my siblings from his funeral, I wrote a novel about some brothers and sisters stealing their dad in his coffin. The emotions were drawn from my painful experiences, but I invented the characters and the tragi-comic narrative in Stealing Dad. Despite growing up in England, I’ve lived in and written about Athens for 25 years, and it came naturally to create several Greek characters. Alekos is a wild sculptor who dies in London, and his daughter Iris (one of seven dispersed half-siblings) lives off Victoria Square – one of Athens’ most fascinating corners.

In the 1960s, Plateia Viktorias was a fashionable neighbourhood with the fanciest restaurants, shops and theatres. Townhouses from the interwar period were being demolished and Athenians were occupying the new six-storey apartment blocks so fast that construction dust and the constant drilling were the main problem. Today, through wrought-iron and glass doors, elegant, marble-lined halls reveal concierges’ desks and traces of a vanished bourgeois life.

These are the less explored corners of Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin and Porto that you’ve ‘stumbled into and ended up staying’

• Tell us about a great trip in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

When friends came to visit while I was studying in Berlin or I wanted to flaneur through the city, I would go to Maybachufer, a neighbourhood in the Neukölln district. Wander from U-Bahn station Kottbusser Tor in the direction of the Landwehrkanal and peruse the multicultural market taking place Tuesdays and Fridays. You can also attempt to haggle in your best German at the fortnightly Sunday flea market. Useful phrase: das ist zu teuer für mich (that’s too expensive for me). Stop for a bite to eat (or an Aperol spritz) alfresco at buzzing La Maison and spend the afternoon sat by the canal next to the Admiralbrücke historic wrought iron bridge, or at the nearby independent cinema Moviemento, which shows a wide variety of English-subtitled films. End the day with a döner kebap from one of the many takeaways or restaurants nearby and a trip to one (or more) of the local bars: Multilayerladen for its laid-back, homely aesthetic or Soulcat Music Bar for 50s and 60s music on vinyl.
Kitty

The emo kings on growing up in Arizona, making it big, and Jim’s annoying wake-up calls

Jimmy Eat World are an alternative rock band from Mesa, east of Phoenix, Arizona. Formed by vocalist and guitarist Jim Adkins, guitarist Tom Linton, bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind in 1993, they have released 10 albums – including their 2001 breakthrough record, Bleed American. Its hit single, The Middle, peaked at No 5 in the US Hot 100 chart; it has now had more than 1bn streams. The band mark the 25th anniversary of the album with a series of shows this summer including UK appearances in August in Halifax, Cardiff and Gunnersbury Park, London.

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

This week’s question: The inside of my cardigans never become bobbled. Can’t the pieces be sewn together inside out?

I must admit to cracking a smile when I read the story about the revolting result of a tofu spill last month in Missouri. About 18,000kg (40,000lb) of extra-firm tofu was left to rot for three weeks after a road accident – no one was hurt – turned into an insurance dispute. Local officials described the smell as “unforgettable” and “like a dead animal, but worse”. So, what are history’s greatest bad smells? Liz Prior, Southampton

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Linda lost her sexual appetite after a hysterectomy, but making a list of sex cues with partner Elias helped her regain her desire
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Since everything on the list is something we both like, when he sends me a suggestion it turns me on

Cheshire villagers are letting lawns grow wild to improve diversity and reconnect with nature on their doorstep

Ian Waddington was crouched in his garden last summer, inspecting loose paving, when he lifted a slab and spotted something extraordinary: a tiny field mouse nestled in a hollow, feeding four babies – each half the size of his little finger. “It was astonishing. Like life in miniature,” he says.

After decades in the construction industry, the 86-year-old has found a new passion in retirement – nature. The discovery of the field mice made him realise his garden could be a thriving habitat for animal and plant life. This year, Waddington joined the No Mow May movement and allowed his garden grow wild through spring.

Exclusive: Biometrics commissioners say face-scanning not as effective as claimed and new laws needed to regulate use

• How does live facial recognition work and how many police forces use it?

• Guilty until proven innocent: shoppers falsely identified by facial recognition

Britain’s biometrics watchdogs have warned that national oversight of AI-powered face scanning to catch criminals is lagging far behind the technology’s rapid growth.

With the Metropolitan police almost doubling the number of faces they scan in London over the past 12 months and a rising use of the technology by retailers in the UK, Prof William Webster, the biometrics commissioner for England and Wales, said the “slow pace of legislation was trying to catch up with the real world” and “the horse had gone before the cart”.

An independent audit of the Met’s use of facial recognition technology (FRT) has been indefinitely postponed after the police requested delays.

Polling shows 57% of people believe the systems are “another step towards turning the UK into a surveillance society”.

A whistleblower claimed shop-based face-scanning systems had sometimes been misused by shop or security staff “maliciously” adding members of the public to watchlists.

Public records and private papers reveal compassion and tacit acceptance before ‘moral panic’ took hold in the 1950s and 1960s

Northern Ireland carved a grim reputation for homophobia for over half a century, a record of intolerance and bigotry so baroque it was turned into an opera.

In the 1970s, Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and Free Presbyterian church, led a “save Ulster from sodomy” crusade to resist the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

When Vadym Lietunov spotted a fortified position after his own had been blown up, he didn’t realise it belonged to the enemy

The bombing began the morning after Vadym Lietunov arrived on the frontline. It went on for six or seven hours each day. The Russians hit the dugout where he was sheltering with kamikaze drones and mortars. After every strike, Lietunov and another Ukrainian soldier, Sasha, repaired the damage, extinguishing fires with bottles of urine and shoving clay-filled sacks back into position. “The enemy knew we were there. It was trying to kill us,” he said.

In late February Russian drone operators tried a new tactic. They sent in a Molniya drone carrying an anti-tank mine. It exploded next to the entrance, leaving the two soldiers concussed and shaking. There were several similar attacks before Lietunov heard an ominous buzz. This time, a mine fell on top of their foxhole. “I look up and we’ve got no roof. It blew everything up,” he recalled.

Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their spring encounters with nature

Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.

The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a marauding toad, a fascinating flower or a garden bird.

If you’ve changed your holiday plans, we’d like to hear from you

Rising fuel prices, aviation fuel prices, and changes to travel rules such as the new EU border system, EES, are causing some holidaymakers to reconsider their travel plans. Holiday companies have predicted an increase in bookings for UK summer breaks after a jump in interest from Britons fearful of flight cancellations linked to the Iran war.

Have you changed your summer holiday plans in light of recent world events? We’d like to hear from you.

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

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

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

What was your experience? Have you found another place to rent?

Solicitors have said they were inundated with requests to serve last-minute section 21 no-fault evictions prior to the Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force in England today.

Citizens Advice said thousands of people facing a no-fault eviction had approached it for help in the last month.

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