After forgetting the nibbles, refusing my costume requests and emailing GCHQ, ‘Gaskell’ did at least get us to show up

Two weeks ago, an AI bot invited me to a party it was organising in Manchester. It then promptly lied to dozens of potential sponsors that I’d agreed to cover the event, and misled me into believing there would be food.

Despite all this, it was a pretty good night.

Ofcom data points to more passive consumption amid changes to apps and fears about mental health and past posts

Posting significant events in your life, from birthdays to weddings and promotions, is a social media staple. But Jenny, like many other Britons recently, has hesitated over contributing to the infinite scroll.

“I wouldn’t have even posted my wedding really,” she says. “But I had to because … There’s like an etiquette. Nobody else can post your wedding until you’ve posted. So my friends were like: ‘Please post, it’s been like a week.’”

Day-one rights to statutory sick pay and paternity leave begin on Monday, and that fits the pattern. From my own life, I know people’s anxieties, and I will respond

• Starmer attacks Greens, saying vote for Labour rivals puts new workers’ rights at risk

This week 27 years ago, a Labour government introduced the minimum wage. At the time, the voices of the status quo lined up against it, but Labour made a choice: to stand up for working people. My government is doing the same.

On Monday, the biggest strengthening of workers’ rights in a generation comes into force. For the first time, workers gain day-one rights to statutory sick pay and paternity leave. No one should be forced to choose between their health and their wages, or miss those first precious days with their child because of insecurity at work.

Keir Starmer is the UK prime minister

Brings old-school charm to a touristy part of town

Burro, a new Italian restaurant in Covent Garden, London, had been on my horizons even before the napkins were on order, because Conor Gadd, the chef-owner, has form. His first restaurant Trullo, up in Islington, has sat unshakably around the top of my recommendations list for about 15 years and is namechecked by me at least twice weekly when complete strangers want a tip for a birthday, proposal or a client they need to impress. Or simply, “somewhere to take a foodie” who “really likes food”. Yes, the brief given to restaurant critics is often that vague, but to all these things I say: “Have you been to Trullo? Order the beef shin ragu and some good red wine. It’s been there for ages and they know what they’re doing.”

While trends came and went – no reservations, no tablecloths, no seats, just benches and upturned buckets – Trullo kept on being an actual grownup restaurant. And now Gadd, via Burro, is bringing some of that authority and old-school charm to a more touristy side of town; to be specific, a few minutes from Covent Garden tube, off King Street in a hidden courtyard that leads down to Floral Street. Burro’s menu certainly has elements of her big sister, but perhaps erring more on the elegant but hearty side. Take the rough-hewn, well seasoned, luscious paté of Venetian chicken livers on a thick slab of bruschetta that sits on the antipasti section of the menu, but in all honesty would do as a main course with a glass of something bright, sharp and white to cut through all that fattiness. Or simply a negroni, as chosen by my dining companion, the long-suffering Charles.

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

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

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

As the Middle East is drawn into war, expats and influencers are under pressure to only share the positive side of the UAE. In reality many are at risk of being put behind bars, and often find the UK government has little interest in helping them get out

A four-metre barbed-wire fence runs through the desert at the UAE‑Omani border. In the early hours of 17 February 2021, Albert Douglas, 58, a British businessman, was creeping along it, looking for a way through. Douglas, who cuts a slight figure, wears spectacles and has a broad, earnest smile, never expected things to come to this. He’d been forced to abandon his home on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, the tree-shaped archipelago lined with upmarket residences, and go into hiding. Usually he’d be driving around in a Rolls-Royce, now he was in a pickup truck, being chauffeured by people smugglers. They’d transported him to the edge of the Al Ain border, which neighbours Oman, in the dead of the night. It was incredible, really, how fast the life he once led could evaporate. All that mattered now was getting to the other side of that fence.

A few weeks earlier, Douglas had been sitting at home, watching his supreme court appeal via video link. He was being hounded by the Dubai authorities over debts incurred by his son Wolfgang Douglas’s company and, while Wolfgang was in the UK, Albert had been arrested. Albert was facing a £2.5m fine and a three-year prison sentence – this was his final chance for a reprieve. He had always believed the truth would prevail, but as he watched the hearing play out, his faith in the system deserted him. He decided to lie low in a friend’s apartment while he weighed his options. It soon became clear that he didn’t have any. “That’s when I decided to leave,” he says. “I left it not to the last minute, but the last second.”

This blog has now closed. Our live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran continues here

Iranian media has claims that a US aircraft was destroyed while searching for the crew member of a missing US F-15 fighter jet.

“An American enemy aircraft that was searching for the pilot of a downed fighter jet was destroyed by the fighters of Islam in the southern region of Isfahan,” the Tasnim news agency quoted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as saying. The Guardian was unable to verify their claim.

PM also criticises business figures and opponents of changes, many of which come into force on Monday

• Workers, pensioners and children: all better off. Ignore the critics – we really are standing up for working people

Keir Starmer has used a series of new workers rights that come into force on Monday to attack the Green party, saying a vote for Labour’s rivals puts such progress on sick pay, parental leave and zero-hours contracts at risk.

The prime minister also took a swipe at business figures and opponents of what he described as the biggest strengthening of workers’ rights in a generation, dismissing “vested interests” who had warned against them.

The familiar London Stadium rush for the exit has never been so misjudged. A lot of West Ham fans decided they had seen enough when Dominic Calvert-Lewin put Leeds 2-0 up and within touching distance of a first FA Cup semi-final since 1987, but how wrong they were. The non-believers reckoned without their side forcing extra time and were not allowed back in to see a ridiculous game go the distance.

It ended with Finlay Herrick, a 20-year-old goalkeeper whose experience of senior football extended no further than 10 games during a loan spell with National League side Boreham Wood earlier this season, coming on for his West Ham debut after Alphonse Areola went off injured just before penalties. Talk about a baptism of fire. Herrick is West Ham’s No 3 goalkeeper and it seemed he was about to steal the headlines when he opened the shootout by saving a tame effort from Joël Piroe.

People encouraged to ‘come forward as normal’ when BMA members begin industrial action over pay on Tuesday

The NHS is urging patients not to put off seeking the care they need when resident doctors press ahead with strike action from Tuesday, a stoppage that the health secretary has called “disappointing”.

Tens of thousands of resident doctors in England are to stage a six-day strike after the government took a key part of its offer off the table.

Councils urged to crack down on misuse of parking permits that help people with disabilities and health conditions

Councils in England have been urged to crack down on the misuse of blue badge parking permits – legitimate and counterfeit – as the proportion of people holding them has reached one in 15.

The AA called for more to be done to detect offences such as people using fake or stolen badges.

Announcement of eight young futures hubs made as concerns grow over the number of knives on the streets

Eight young futures youth hubs aimed at giving young people support towards work and away from street crime are to open across England, ministers have announced.

The youth centres are supposed to help people aged up to 18 with employment advice, health and wellbeing, and are also aimed at preventing them from falling into a life of crime.

Nasa team get deeper into space than any humans have ever ventured

Astronauts on the historic Artemis II mission are expected to reach the far side of the moon on Monday, venturing deeper into space than any humans before.

Nasa has reported satisfaction with progress toward the lunar fly-round since the team’s launch on Wednesday, with the three Americans and one Canadian on course to break the record for maximum range from Earth just as a total solar eclipse awaits.

Sponsors pull out after Keir Starmer calls decision to book rapper who wrote song titled Heil Hitler ‘deeply concerning’

Pepsi and Diageo have said they will withdraw their sponsorship of a UK music festival that is due to be headlined by Kanye West after Keir Starmer joined criticism of the event.

The musician is understood to have not yet made an application to come to Britain and could be blocked under powers allowing the authorities to do so if his presence is deemed not conducive to the public good.

Incident prompts political scrutiny across Hungary as Viktor Orbán trails in polls before next Sunday’s election

Serbia has said it found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond, sparking claims by Hungary’s leading opposition candidate of a possible “false flag” operation aimed at influencing the country’s elections.

On Sunday, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had been informed by Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, of the discovery near an extension of the TurkStream pipeline, which transports Russian gas through the Balkans to central and eastern Europe.

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

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

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

Donald Trump will claim rescue as a triumph but 48-hour drama should be a caution against launching ground operation

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump will inevitably claim the rescue of the second crew member of the downed F-15 fighter as a propaganda triumph, though the 48-hour drama is a reminder that an undefeated Iran is able to fight back and inflict costs on the US.

It also ought to be a caution for a White House still contemplating whether to launch a ground operation in Iran to seize an island in the Persian Gulf – particularly if there a serious ambition to extract Iran’s highly enriched uranium from deep underground.

Repairs will be slow and costly, pro-Russian bloggers complain; Ukraine’s president says Iran war is benefiting Moscow. What we know on day 1,503

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

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

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

Artemis II, Nasa’s first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years, is a key step toward a long‑term return to the moon and future crewed missions to Mars

Human brains are designed to detect faces as quickly as possible, which can lead to the perception of ‘false faces’

Faces: we see them in clouds, electrical outlets and even a $28,000 toasted sandwich said to look like the Virgin Mary.

Known as face pareidolia, seeing faces in inanimate objects or patterns of light and shadow is a common phenomenon.

An army of ‘pregnancy prep’ influencers is offering would-be parents everything from sensible advice to quackery and questionable supplements. What’s really needed?

Anything to do with pregnancy can sometimes feel like a crash course in withstanding uncertainty. From getting pregnant in the first place to avoiding complications later on, any parent-to-be is forced to reckon with the limits of their own control.

The stats around this are worth emphasising: about one in seven couples in the UK will have difficulty conceiving. About one in eight known pregnancies will end in a loss. And as many as 29% of low-risk pregnancies will experience some kind of unforeseen complication. Often there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this. “You can do everything ‘right’ and still face delays. That’s biology, not failure,” says Dr Linda Farahani, a consultant gynaecologist and specialist in reproductive medicine at the Lister Fertility Clinic in Chelsea, London.

The former rugby star on being a tough youngster, how she became Fury on the hit TV show, and losing her dad

Born in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in 2001, Jodie Ounsley is an athlete, television personality and author. A former England rugby sevens player, she is the first deaf female rugby player for a senior England side. In 2024, she joined the BBC revival of the series Gladiators, in which she competes as Fury; the same year, she was one of the presenters for the 2024 Paralympics. Her second book, Strong Girls, co-written with Becky Grey, is out on 9 April.

I was six and had just got back from karate practice when Mum said, “Right, let’s take a picture!” Most kids would have stood politely and smiled, but my first instinct was to do the deadliest pose.

For his centenary special, the naturalist stays close to home – who could blame him? – and reveals a magical world teeming with cuteness

He’s nearly 100 years old and has spent more than half that time showing us the entire Earth, so it feels fair enough that David Attenborough has scaled back and stayed at home for this centenary year’s bundle of natural history wonders. There he is, in the sunshine in the middle of England, ambling past a shed. “Across the British Isles, there are magical places,” he says, whispering through the purple alliums. “Our gardens!”

Secret Garden’s conceit is to bring the super-high-res cameras and patient filming techniques that are usually deployed in the Amazon rainforest or the plains of the Serengeti and see what they can capture in British back yards. “Many of us are completely unaware of the wild world right under our noses,” adds Attenborough. “Some British gardens are almost as diverse as a tropical rainforest.”

I vividly remember thinking how out of line the shopkeeper was. But as I thought more about what she said, I realised she’d done me a favour

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

More than 30 years ago, I set out to build my dream house in a small rural town. It was a stressful process exacerbated by a demanding career that required me to travel across Asia and the Pacific for weeks at a time. The challenges of juggling parenting, marriage, my work and the house felt overwhelming at times. Not to mention the builders were falling behind schedule and often did not show up at all.

One day I found myself in a lighting shop, finally ready to buy light fittings. The woman who ran the shop was not exactly friendly but, as it was the only shop of its kind around, she won my business by default. I asked her a few questions about some lights and received only one- or two-word answers. I made the purchase and, as I was about to leave, she looked me firmly in the eyes and said: “You know, no matter how hard you think you have it, there are always others who have it much worse than you.” With that, she turned and went into the back of the shop.

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

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

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

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

The Reform UK leader’s energy bill giveaway certainly grabs our attention – but it’s a distraction from the real winners and losers

You can already imagine the video.

A man stands in the middle of a suburban English street holding a wad of cash in his hands. Grinning at the camera he says: “I’m about to pay this entire street’s energy bills.” Cut to gliding drone footage of the neighbourhood. The man knocks on a front door and a bewildered looking woman answers in a fleecy dressing gown. “Congratulations, Carol. You’ve saved more than £1,000 this year!” High-energy electronic music swells to a climax as she gives him a hug. Then, a shot of the next neighbour receiving his prize, and another, and another, as a tally at the bottom right of the screen shows the total cash sum rising. Finally, the entire community is out on the street waving their hands with joy.

Unlike Trump’s cronies in the White House, outside voices are not so easily disciplined. There’s a lesson here for all future political movements

If you spend enough time swiping online, you may have seen skits by the American comedian and influencer Druski (real name Drew Desbordes), in which he parodies everything from Republican patriots to flashy mega churches. Once again, he has exploded on social media channels with a skit satirising “conservative women in America”, a nakedly targeted roast of Erika Kirk, now the CEO of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) after her husband, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated last year.

Predictably, it has drawn conservative backlash, with Ted Cruz calling the video “beneath contempt”. But Desbordes is far from the only one mocking Erika Kirk. Her entrances to the Charlie Kirk memorial and TPUSA’s AmericaFest have been widely memed online for their surreal, WrestleMania-like production and pyrotechnics. In fact, much of the opprobrium comes from her own side. Far-right live streamer Nick Fuentes has disparaged Kirk’s public appearances after her husband’s death (“she looks like she’s over the moon”), and commentator and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, a former darling of TPUSA, repeatedly takes aim at her (Owens describes Druski’s skit as “hilarious”).

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

I’d forgotten how reticent Brits can be. Try to connect with strangers and they just recoil

I don’t know how accurate it is that the children of immigrants are themselves well suited to leaving home. But I do know my own experience – I first left home when I was 11 to go to boarding school, and I’ve barely looked back since. My most recent leaving happened at 33, when I moved from London to New York with a multi-year visa, clutching a receipt for the large brown boxes that would arrive some weeks after me.

I have the good fortune to root well in new soil. You’ve heard of the idiomatic fish out of water? I have strong evidence to suggest that I am not that fish – I am the fish that thrives outside the water, perhaps even astride a bicycle. I moved to New York in 2016, with the intention of staying exactly 12 months: to report on an electric election year – and then return home with a chapter (“My Brooklyn Year”) of my eventual memoir tucked away in my mind. Instead, I stayed for almost a decade. Much has changed: silvery streaks have appeared at the crown of my head. My palate has widened dramatically to accommodate the vast cuisines of North America. Sometimes, when I stand up from my desk, I make an involuntary sound. And now, I am back. Coming home, just as my older bones are discovering, is an experiment in friction.

Bim Adewunmi is a freelance journalist

Perhaps my work is still about my healing – remembering the sacred fragility, the passing nature, the end date in sight

As a celebrant, I start my weddings and funerals with the same words: “Everyone, we are about to get started, so can you please make sure your phones are off or on silent.”

I introduce myself, express my great privilege in sharing this moment with the people gathered and always make sure I have tissues on hand. Wedding dresses don’t have pockets and you’d be surprised how many people come to a funeral not expecting to cry.

Jackie Bailey is the author of The Eulogy, the winner of the 2023 NSW Premier’s literary multicultural award. When not writing, she works as a funeral celebrant and pastoral care practitioner, helping families navigate death and dying

The potency of the crucifixion story lies in how, as we experience the sometimes devastating travails of human existence, God himself suffers with us

• Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life

Twelve months ago I lost a close friend to brain cancer. He was 53 years old and survived two years after the initial shock of the diagnosis. For about 18 months of that time, with chemo and radiotherapy holding the tumour at bay, he was fit and strong and we surfed together, attended footy matches and had family get-togethers. It was hard to accept he was actually dying.

But once treatment came to an end, his demise was rapid. The last months were excruciating for him and his family, the final weeks unspeakably sad. It was confronting to witness how death took hold of him as we watched him fade away. The last time I saw him, struggling to stay awake and clearly in much discomfort, he thanked me for coming and said he expected to be “much improved the next time I see you”. It was a joke. His last one to me.

When Brent council failed to collect her kid’s rubbish for weeks on end, the actor let her 500,000 followers know just how she felt. As a mother, I can relate

Some new academic research into parenthood has caused quite a stir, by revealing that having children doesn’t make you happier. Some were outraged by it, others vindicated, debate ensued about whether it’s even children’s job to make their mums and dads happy, or the other way round. And in the cacophony of opinion, something got lost. Happier, schmappier: what the study failed to mention is that having kids turns you into a boring loser. I know, because I am one.

Your chat withers and dries up the second your baby is born. First you’re dull about sleep and feeding schedules, earnestly answering polite, cursory inquiries with long, detailed information, in a manner as welcome as replying to “How are you?” by actually saying how you are. Then, as your child grows up, you mistakenly assume the rest of the world shares your fascination with their every move, achievement and allegedly hilarious outburst. You suffer a kind of conversation blindness, no longer noticing eyes glazing over, incapable of reading the room.

The No Kings protests affirmed widespread opposition to Trump’s actions. As the midterms approach, we have an opportunity

Last weekend, millions of us once again affirmed the foundation of the common good.

Across America, people showed their solidarity – in opposition to Trump’s ill-considered war in Iran, with immigrants being targeted by ICE and border patrol agents, with current and former public officials whom Trump is prosecuting, with the students and universities whose freedom to learn and speak continues to be threatened by Trump, in favor of the earth and stopping climate change, and with every American who’s determined to reject dictatorship.

Target vulnerable Republican senators and House members. Either get them to switch parties or become independents who caucus with Democrats, or flip their seats.

Republican majorities are razor-thin in both chambers, and some Republicans who represent purple districts and states are struggling to keep their Republican supporters behind them. (They’re also struggling with their own consciences in continuing to support Trump’s authoritarian fascism.)

Begin organizing and mobilizing now to get out the vote for November’s midterm elections – aiming for Democratic takeovers of both chambers of Congress by wide margins, which will severely limit what Trump can do after January 2027.

The key will be to get out the vote. Make a plan. Use phone trees. Write postcards. Arrange transportation for people who need it.

Root out and challenge any Trump Republican attempt to intimidate likely Democratic voters or manipulate the election process.

It’s important that neither Trump nor his state lapdogs diminish the turnout of likely Democratic voters in the weeks leading up to the November midterms – by stationing federal agents near polling places, interfering with the counting or certifying of ballots, or altering laws and rules to make it harder to vote.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK

A professed desire to protect the country’s Christian identity is cover for a divisive politics which ignores the central message of the gospels

In an interview conducted a few days after the beginning of Lent, Reform UK’s Muslim home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, outlined a new policy to prevent churches being converted to mosques. This was an “incendiary” issue relating to Christian heritage, Mr Yusuf claimed, which was causing anxiety across the United Kingdom.

Subsequent analysis by the Times – which conducted the interview – concluded that instances of churches becoming mosques were in fact extremely rare, adding up to less than 0.09% of the 47,000 churches active in the 1960s. Mr Yusuf’s solution to this alleged crisis – which involved granting automatic listed status to churches, and changing planning laws to restrict change of use – was also widely questioned. For many churches struggling to fund repairs through the contributions of thinned-out congregations, the onerous bureaucratic obstacles posed by listed status would only be another expensive headache.

Ultra-low rates turned the yen into easy cash for bankers. But the carry trade now binds global markets to decisions in Tokyo

In 2015, Clyde Prestowitz’s book Japan Restored imagined a Japanese century emerging from upheavals such as an Israeli attack on Iran. While conflict now grips the Middle East, there are few indications of the revolutionary change the former US national security official foresaw. But in one crucial respect this already is a Japanese century – thanks to the yen’s role as easy money for global finance.

The Bank of Japan’s loose monetary policy has turned the yen into the world’s cheapest and most reliable funding currency. By suppressing yields on public debt to keep Japan’s domestic economy afloat, the BoJ effectively created a publicly subsidised funding pipeline for bankers. They can make a quick buck by borrowing cheaply in yen and investing in higher-return assets, such as US equities. The “yen carry trade” surged after the pandemic, with speculators betting $435bn in the two years to 2024 out of the estimated $1.7tn worth of yen supplied. The profits for global investors are reckoned to run into tens of billions of dollars.

Readers respond to a piece by Priti Ubhayakar about people mispronouncing her name

Priti Ubhayakar’s article resonated with me because of my non-English surname (A moment that changed me: for the first time in my life, a stranger pronounced my name correctly, 1 April). I grew up in the 1950s on a very English council estate. Most other kids were a Brown, Smith, Jones, etc, but I was an Uszkurat. My lineage is complex on my dad’s side, with a Lithuanian grandfather whose original name was changed to Uszkurat by, I think, German authorities. My dad was born in a part of Europe that was German until the Treaty of Versailles made it part of the new Poland. Like many other Polish ex-servicemen, my dad became a British citizen after the second world war.

My first day at junior school is memorable for one thing: the teacher insisting that I was spelling my surname incorrectly. Three times I was given a new workbook on which to write my name, and each time I did not use what I knew to be the incorrect spelling being insisted on by my teacher.

Andrew Copson of Humanists UK says we must recognise non-religious people as a community with a positive, ethical worldview that deserves equal standing in the public square

The retraction of the Bible Society’s report on Gen Z church attendance (YouGov withdraws survey said to show rising church attendance in England and Wales, 26 March) is a welcome moment of clarity, but the “fraudulent” data identified by YouGov only tells half the story. The report’s central premise, that young people are flocking back to the pews, was always an outlier when measured against the gold-standard British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey.

Our new analysis of the BSA data shows that six in 10 people aged 16 to 34 identify with no religion. Furthermore, this is not a “phase” of youthful rebellion; 94% of those raised without religion remain non-religious as adults. For this generation, the search for meaning is not found in dogma, but in the humanist values of reason, kindness and personal responsibility.

Readers respond to a letter by the GB News co-owner, in which he argued that calling for an end to fossil fuels is impractical

Last week I was among 120-plus Christian leaders who, in an open letter covered by the Guardian, challenged Sir Paul Marshall – a professing Christian, hedge fund manager and owner or part-owner of prominent media properties, including GB News – about climate misinformation on his news channel (Church leaders criticise Christian owner of GB News over channel’s climate attacks, 26 March). The letter also called for transparency regarding any financial interests in fossil fuels that Sir Paul may have, as well as transparency from GB News presenters and guests.

However, rather than address calls for transparency related to any financial interests in fossil fuels, Sir Paul has now written to the Guardian, claiming that the “net zero consensus is crumbling” (Letters, 30 March).

Dr Mireia Galian argues that paid, protected time off for fertility assessment and treatment should be standard across women’s sports

As you report, changes to insurance cover for female athletes following the Carney review are welcome (Landmark changes to insurance cover for female athletes to be implemented, 30 March). Addressing contraception, pregnancy, menopause and other health conditions disproportionately affecting women is long overdue.

Yet one crucial blind spot remains: fertility. Elite athletes push their bodies to extremes, often with low body fat and intense training, which can disrupt hormones and menstrual cycles. Nearly two-thirds experience irregular or absent periods, which can affect fertility.

The quadruple dream may be dead but Arsenal are now just four games from achieving an unprecedented nonruple

And then there were two. As the clock ticked down at St Mary’s Stadium on Saturday night even the stray yellow balloons on the pitch had begun to take on a weirdly mocking quality.

The balloons were almost too much, like metaphors-for-hire in an arthouse film, popping up in shot every time Arsenal tried to transform another spell of mechanical pressure into creative, incisive football. Your dreams? Your dreams are just air inside a polymer shell. Your dreams are a squeaky veneer. Even when you try to take agency over your dreams, or at least stamp on them before a set piece, they will scoot away and bobble about annoyingly near the corner flag.

Even the greatest golfers can wilt in pursuit of the Green Jacket – Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Tommy Fleetwood try to explain its special aura

They say the Masters is all about tradition. One involves the sense of trepidation that collides with excitement as the finest golfers in the world take to Augusta National. Rory McIlroy, now a Masters champion, was scared to take a divot when first taking to the Georgia venue. “For my first two or three times, it kind of felt like I was in a museum,” says Xander Schauffele.

Some visibly wilt under an intimidation provided by a course that is picture perfect. It is like the dazzling princess is concealing an axe.

• Club in FA Cup last four after shootout win at West Ham

• ‘I feel humble. You can see how much it means to them’

Daniel Farke promised that Leeds fans will take over London after their side secured an FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea thanks to a breathless win against West Ham on penalties.

Leeds appeared to be cruising to an easy victory at the London ­Stadium, only for West Ham to force extra time by fighting back from 2-0 down with stoppage-time goals from Mateus Fernandes and Axel Disasi.

• Former world champions may finally meet in the ring

• Eddie Hearn says Joshua is ready for fight after car crash

Deontay Wilder called out Anthony Joshua for a long-awaited matchup between the former heavyweight champions, after Wilder edged Derek Chisora to clinch a split-decision victory in London on Saturday.

Wilder came face to face with Joshua as he walked past the Briton after the fight. The two fist-bumped, and the American said: “Let’s do it. It wasn’t a few words, I dapped it up with him and I said, now let’s get it on. I’m ready for whoever, [as] long as these guys are in the heavyweight division, I am here. You can call me Mr Clean, because I want to clean up the whole division. The division is nothing without Deontay Wilder.”

Healthy crowds, a five-way title race and some stunning action give NRL executives plenty to be encouraged by

Super League’s possible takeover by the National Rugby League could gather pace in the coming weeks as executives head to the UK for talks to thrash out a deal. Had the NRL’s chief executive, Andrew Abdo, or anyone associated with the game in Australia watched the past few days, they would have been mightily impressed with matters both on and off the field.

The overriding mood in recent months as speculation rises over a partnership between rugby league’s two premier competitions has been that Super League is in desperate need of help. A league in crisis, sinking without a trace unless the sprinkling of magic that follows the NRL at every turn steps in and saves the day.

• Brighton two wins away from first major trophy

• Liverpool edge out Charlton in extra time

Arsenal made a surprise exit at the quarter-final stage of the Women’s FA Cup for the second successive season as Brighton stunned the record 14-time cup winners at Borehamwood.

Liverpool managed to avoid it becoming a day of shocks as they struck late in extra time to eventually find a way past a stubborn Charlton Athletic side, but they was no such joy for Arsenal, who paid the price for a performance that was well below their best.

• Slovenian among riders who ran light at rail crossing

• Demi Vollering beats Ferrand-Prévot to win women’s race

Tadej Pogacar won a record-equalling third Tour of Flanders on Sunday after the world champion dropped his main rival Mathieu van der Poel with 18km to ride. However, the race winner later learned he would be among up to 20 cyclists in the race who could face action from Belgian authorities after running a red light at a railway crossing.

Van der Poel was himself aiming for a record fourth victory in the second Monument of the season, but instead Pogacar made it two from two in the prestigious one-day classics having won Milan-San Remo last month.

• Bordeaux 64-14 Leicester

• Bégles set up Toulouse quarter-final next weekend

Even at full-strength, Leicester would have struggled against the most potent attack in Europe. But without a string of first-choice forwards – including Ollie Chessum, Joe Heyes, Tommy Reffell and Nicky Smith – the result at a sun-drenched Stade Chaban-Delmas was never in doubt.

So it proved as Bordeaux Bégles tore their English guests to shreds, scoring nine tries to underline their status as continental champions with a 64-14 win. A quarter-final against their domestic rivals, Toulouse, will be required viewing next weekend.

Matt Critchley starred for Essex as they romped to an innings victory over Hampshire while Storm Dave wiped out day three’s play at Durham

Play is underway at eight of the nine grounds. No play before lunch at CLS, but Mike’s update (below) makes it sound pretty unlikely we’ll get much play at all. Ian Holland has the ball here at Grace Road, a fierce west wind blowing across the ground and billowing at the flags up on the pavilion.

Huge thanks to CCLive! reader Mike McKie who is on the spot at The Riverside:

Concerns raised over minors placed in adult detention centres since removals began under scheme in September

More than 70 children from various conflict zones whose ages were disputed by the Home Office have been held in detention centres in the UK in preparation for forced removal to France under the government’s “one in, one out” scheme, research shows.

The one in, one out initiative means each small boat arrival can be forcibly returned to France in exchange for another person – who has not attempted the crossing – being brought to the UK legally.

Road and rail travel also disrupted across the UK before weather warnings lifted on Sunday

Storm Dave left thousands of homes across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland without power and disrupted road and rail travel across the UK before high wind and snow warnings were lifted on Sunday morning.

Winds of up to 93mph were recorded in Capel Curig in north Wales – 20mph higher than forecast – while the Met Office issued a yellow severe weather warning for heavy snow and blizzards across the Scottish Highlands, Argyll and the Western Isles on Saturday.

Mayor’s decision to appeal court order that the city must expand its housing voucher program has angered advocates for the homeless

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to appeal a court order that the city must expand its housing voucher program, despite his campaign pledge to implement it, has angered advocates for the homeless population.

Mamdani, who must figure out how to close a $5.4bn budget deficit, explained his decision by citing the cost of the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) program, which helps people staying in shelters or at risk of homelessness find permanent housing.

The Taybeh community has survived crusaders and the Ottoman and British empires, but the latest attacks leave its future in question

Taybeh, a small hilltop town in the heart of the West Bank is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. After increasing attacks from Israeli settlers it now feels itself under siege and is fighting for its very existence.

The town’s ancient Greek name was Ephraim where, according to the gospels, Jesus hid with his disciples from the Jewish religious hierarchy, the Sanhedrin, before making his final fateful trip to Jerusalem.

Letters to US agency raise concerns over tech firms’ plans to use reflective satellites and expand numbers in low Earth orbit

Proposals to deploy reflective mirrors and up to 1m more satellites in low Earth orbit could have far-reaching consequences for human health and ecosystems, leading sleep and circadian rhythm researchers have said.

Presidents of four international scientific societies representing about 2,500 researchers from more than 30 countries are among those who have raised concerns in letters to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The US has invoked national security to remove protections for the endangered cetacean, of which only about 50 are left

Since before modern humans existed Rice’s whales have been diving to the depths of the ocean to gorge on fat-rich fish while growing to leviathan proportions, their bodies spanning the length of a bus and weighing as much as as six elephants.

Unfortunately for these grand creatures, their only home became a patch of the Gulf of Mexico that the oil and gas industry, much later, became highly interested in for drilling. Only about 50 of these baleen whales still exist on Earth, surrounded by clanging aquatic highways of boats and shifting drilling infrastructure.

Exclusive: research finds Jackdaw field would provide only about 2% of current demand, and Rosebank only 1%

Opening major new fields in the North Sea would make almost no difference to the UK’s reliance on gas imports, research has shown.

The Jackdaw field, one of the largest unexploited gasfields in the North Sea, would displace only 2% of the UK’s current imports of gas, which would leave the UK still almost entirely dependent on supplies from Norway and a few other sources.

Researchers warn the high-pressure conditions could disrupt marine life and ecosystems if it continues

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For more than a century, shoreline stations operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have measured water temperatures along the California coast. This year, they are flashing a warning sign.

Over the last three months, several stations have repeatedly posted record-breaking daily high temperatures – with the La Jolla station registering temperatures a full 10F above historical average at one point last month.

Citizen science data reveals early flowering, nesting and insect activity as global heating accelerate seasonal change

Bluebells are flowering, swallows are returning and orange-tip butterflies are flying in what could become Britain’s earliest recorded spring.

Records for early spring occurrences are being smashed as 2026 looks to be the earliest this century for frogspawn laying, blackbirds nesting, brimstone butterflies emerging and hazel flowering, according to Nature’s Calendar, which has logged citizen science records of seasonal change since 2000.

Protesters held on Sunday after joining a Lakenheath Alliance for Peace encampment outside airbase in Suffolk

Seven people have been arrested under suspicion of supporting the banned group Palestine Action after a protest in Suffolk.

They were arrested on Sunday morning after joining a peace encampment to create a blockade outside the main gate of Lakenheath airbase. The protest was organised after media reports that a US fighter jet shot down in Iran on Friday had taken off from the Lakenheath base.

Walker Smith, 54, who worked for retailer for 17 years, says he grabbed bag from thief before they escaped

A Waitrose employee of 17 years has described his devastation after being sacked for stopping a shoplifter who had ransacked a display of Lindt Gold Bunny Easter eggs.

Walker Smith, a shop assistant at a branch of Waitrose in Clapham Junction, south London, was going about his normal duties when a customer stopped him. “They told me someone had filled up a Waitrose bag with the eggs,” he said.

Met police say 19-year-old was detained in connection with attack after officers recognised him at arraignment

A fourth person has been arrested in connection with the arson attack on Jewish volunteer ambulances in north-west London, the Metropolitan police has said.

The force said the 19-year-old man was arrested on Saturday morning at Westminster magistrates court, where three other men were charged over the arson attack.

Charities suggest ‘gendered understanding’ of crime means services often fail to recognise girls and young women as victims

An increasing number of girls are being identified as victims of county lines exploitation, figures have shown.

Data from Catch22, the charity that provides the national county lines support service, said girls and young women formed 22% of its caseload in 2025, up from 15% the previous year.

Ministry clarifies clause affecting those up to age 45 that is part of legislation that came into effect in January

A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has caused uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime.

The legislation, which went into effect on 1 January, aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription.

Hamburg shop set up in tribute to aspiring pastry chef becomes ‘happy’ pilgrimage site for grieving parents

Johanna Orth was a fun-loving, determined little girl and later a purpose-driven young woman who revelled in making a creative mess in the kitchen. Her parents, Inka and Ralph, chuckle quietly as they remember the stacks of batter-covered bowls, spatulas and whisks repeatedly left in the sink.

With time, Johanna’s cakes and pastries grew more sophisticated and elaborate, guided by her grandmother, Marlies, who was also a talented baker. Marlies’ own ambition of opening a cafe one day had been thwarted by the demands of motherhood and postwar Germany’s rigid gender roles.

In Les Rayons et les Ombres, Jean Dujardin plays a real-life press baron partying during the horrors of the second world war. Director Xavier Giannoli discusses bringing this still sensitive topic to light

Xavier Giannoli’s new film Les Rayons et les Ombres (Rays and Shadows) is told from the postwar perspective of Corinne Luchaire, a French actor who was once hailed as “the new Garbo” but grew too close to the Nazis during the German occupation years. As Luchaire records her thoughts on a borrowed tape recorder, she struggles to reconcile her unfaltering devotion to her father, the once-powerful press baron Jean, with his 1946 execution for treason.

Her wilful blindness collapses as the Jewish director who helped launch her career visits her cramped flat. When Corinne, played by newcomer Nastya Golubeva Carax, enquires after his sister, he reveals that she died in a concentration camp. “I didn’t know,” murmurs Corinne, only to be met with the devastating reply: “Did you even try to find out?”

Nicole Daedone, who promised spiritual wellbeing through her OneTaste enterprise, received a nine-year sentence but some question if freedom of thought is being criminalized

Clitoral stimulation as a path to spiritual connection, mental clarity and emotional wellbeing has been practiced for millennia. After being convicted on forced labor conspiracy charges related to the practice (and getting sentenced to nine years by a Brooklyn court last week), Nicole Daedone was given the opportunity to address the court.

Known as the “The Oracle” of OneTaste, a trademarked orgasmic meditation enterprise that extolled the benefits of hours of arousal, Daedone, 57, swiveled her chair toward the public gallery, smiled broadly, and said: “No.”

Average traditional funeral now costs £4,623, up 1.3% since January, says report from Pure Cremation

The war in Iran is pushing up the cost of living in the UK but it is also driving up the “cost of dying” as higher gas prices feed through to funerals.

A report has found the average cost of a funeral in Britain is running ahead of inflation, with the war seemingly partly to blame as it has pushed up the price of gas used in crematoriums.

Shirine Khoury-Haq and other managers did not receive annual bonus after damaging cyber-attack in 2025

The former boss of the Co-op collected almost £2m before her sudden departure last month despite a difficult year when the retailer was pushed into the red by a damaging cyber hack.

Shirine Khoury-Haq’s total annual pay package amounted to £1.9m in 2025, including a £165,000 “rewarding growth” bonus that was approved by the mutual’s board despite falling sales and the slide to an underlying loss of £125m.

Cornerstone of the UK’s Employment Rights Act ‘in danger of becoming a dead duck’, says Unite boss

The government has asked its new employment rights watchdog to reduce the regulatory burden on business, it has emerged, a request that worker advocates said risks turning the agency into “a dead duck”.

The Fair Work Agency (FWA), which is being launched on Tuesday, is a cornerstone of Labour’s Employment Rights Act. It will bring together several existing labour enforcement bodies and its responsibilities will include policing the minimum wage, holiday pay and modern slavery.

As medieval sages understood, putting things off – done well – can open the doors to creativity and purpose

A soft rain hammers at the window. I’ve pushed the couch to the other side of the coffee table because I need to get closer to my floor lamp. In front of me is a stack of 40 student essays, unopened and ungraded. The water I boiled for tea went cold an hour ago and I’m looking up the age of celebrities on Wikipedia. David Hasselhoff (born 17 July 1952). Dannii Minogue (born 20 October 1971). Has my afternoon been wasted? Is this … procrastination?

Today the P-word has a bad reputation. Psychologists link it with increased anxiety, diminished self-esteem and depression. And magazines (like the ones I just sorted into a date-ordered stack) feature articles with headlines such as “How to Stop Procrastinating, NOW!” Am I one of the 20% of the population with “chronic procrastination”, the lifelong tendency to avoid doing the things I should be doing? A few years ago, this would have alarmed me – but now I no longer worry. I embrace days like this. Because an obscure idea I discovered in a work of medieval theology has taught me how to relax.

The Blue singer thinks Aqua deserve respect and his mum once did karaoke with a legend. But what record did he buy to please his nan - with mixed results?

The song I inexplicably know all the lyrics to
Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis – the song I sent off on tape as my audition to Blue.

The song I do at karaoke
I had my 30th birthday party in a karaoke bar above a Chinese restaurant. My mum was doing It’s Raining Men by Geri Halliwell, just as Geri herself walked in, so she grabbed her, brought her on stage, and went: “Sing. It’s your song.” I thought: “Mum. She’s just arrived. Chill out!”

In April 1976, the flawless Watergate film premiered in Washington – cast members and reporters share their memories of ‘the granddaddy of journalism movies’

The rustle of a notepad. The click of a pen lid. On a floral-patterned sofa sits Dustin Hoffman with long hair, big collar and a lean and hungry look. Opposite is Jane Alexander, wearing a blue button-down dress, cornered and nervous in the glow of a table lamp. In this taut, claustrophobic acting masterclass, no detail is too small.

“The makeup artists ran in because the sweat was pouring off Dustin’s face,” Alexander recalls with a laugh. “Gordon [Willis, cinematographer] said, ‘Don’t touch that, I’m lighting off his sweat!’ I love that.”

The great naturalist explores Britain’s backyards in Secret Garden – and it’s a delight. Plus: a celebrity travelogue with a difference. Here’s what to watch this evening

6pm, BBC One

My upbringing denied me access to the arts and led to me bottling up my feelings about what was happening to me. Then I saw Eminem taking control of his destiny, and decided I needed to do the same

At 15, I had never been to the cinema, or even watched a movie. I grew up in a strictly Orthodox Charedi Jewish household, the daughter of a rabbi, in Glasgow, where we had next to no exposure to cultural influences beyond our religious world. The bookshelves were stacked with biblical texts and teachings, we sang in Yiddish and I only saw TV at my less religious grandparents’ house, where we could watch the end of the tennis if it was finishing as we arrived.

By my mid-teens, my parents had moved to Jerusalem and sent me to live in Manchester, with a scholar who would later abuse me. The abuse went on for six months while his family slept or when they were out. I had no one to turn to or tell; even if I had, no one had taught me the words for what was happening to me. It was a complicated, lonely time without adults to rely on.

TV’s most outrageous family is back – and for the Breaking Bad icon, it’s a great excuse to let rip ... and get naked again. The stars talk skivvies, chugging raw meat and being stung in the crotch by 60,000 honey bees

The intro to the new Malcolm in the Middle is quite the thing. Kids punch police officers. Santa Claus gets kicked in the face. A barrel full of faeces detonates inside a family car. This recap of previous episodes is so full of gross-out comedy and family fights that a grandma grabs her teenage grandson and crushes his testicles until he squeals. “And,” intones a voiceover at its end, “someone actually asked for more of this.”

Did they? It’s been 20 years since the Emmy-winning sitcom about an outrageous working-class US family with the titular child genius went off air. It’s a show whose fans remember it fondly for never dipping in quality throughout its seven seasons. But were they really clamouring for more?

After a decade in pop’s underground, Larsson’s radiant fifth album turned her into one of the world’s biggest stars. It’s about time, she says, relishing the attention without sacrificing her morals

On a warm spring day, Brooklyn’s century-old Paramount theatre has been transformed into a base camp for all things Zara Larsson. Stage techs scurry past entourage members, managers furiously tap smartphones and various figures patiently await their moment with the Swedish superstar.

Down a plushly carpeted flight of stairs, Zara Larsson is on all fours, saying “puss puss” (Swedish for “kiss kiss”) into a camera. Despite all the craziness around her, she is locked in, wearing electric-blue stockings, tangerine booty shorts and a tiny blazer that makes her look like Malibu Barbie at graduation. A man powers up a leaf-blower, sending Larsson’s blond hair flying. After hitting a few poses, she tippy-taps over in maribou-trimmed stilettos and offers me a can of water. “Cheers!” she says as we clink.

BBC Philharmonic/CBSO Chorus/Storgårds
(Chandos)
Conductor John Storgårds pairs Shostakovich’s radical youthful 2nd symphony with the more assured 5th, in performances that emphasise clarity over drama

The latest in the Shostakovich series from the BBC Philharmonic and conductor John Storgårds pairs one of the most familiar symphonies with one of the least. The Symphony No 2 was commissioned as a piece of propaganda marking the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution; in the context of the composer’s later works it feels like a curiosity, except for what it tells us about the 21-year-old Shostakovich’s glee in experimentation. It begins with several minutes of foggy strings sliding up and down in an intangible, almost pitchless way – more sound effect than music – then builds up in a perpetual motion melee, before a klaxon introduces a celebratory chorus happily singing “October, the Commune and Lenin”. It’s brightly sung here by the CBSO Chorus, exclamation marks everywhere.

The Symphony No 5, written a decade later, could be by a different composer. Storgårds doesn’t quite find the depth of darkness that some do in the first movement, but there’s power in the way he warms the sound when the harmonies turn towards the light, and the third movement has a compelling feeling of stillness. The finale is full of small increases in tempo, tautly done, that wind up the tension – not a flashy performance, but effective nonetheless.

The Chicago band’s frantic, urgent guitar melodies celebrate hope, friendship and family in these uncertain times

From Chicago, Illinois
Recommended if you like Modest Mouse, Wilco, Car Seat Headrest
Up next Second album Something Worth Waiting For out 24 April, touring the US from April and Europe in summer

In Friko’s hands, a swirl of influences and experiments curve the many colours of indie rock into an endlessly inventive, radiant ramble. The Chicago band’s upcoming, cheekily titled second album, Something Worth Waiting For, explores the energy of yearning: for growth, for change, for stability. Across nine tracks, Friko take inspiration from their recent spate of touring to orbit the idea of finding things worth moving for and the value of the journey itself.

Irish Baroque Orchestra and Choir/Whelan
(Linn)
Conductor Peter Whelan leads a finely judged and agile period-instrument performance with only 13 singers.

Every year, the Irish Baroque Orchestra and their conductor Peter Whelan bring Messiah back to Dublin, the city of its 1742 premiere. Their recording of Handel’s oratorio – the first on period instruments by an Irish ensemble – attempts to recreate the version heard at its first performance at the Fishamble Street music hall, a hot-ticket event at which such a crush was anticipated that the ladies in the audience were requested to forgo hoops in their skirts and the gentlemen to leave their swords at home.

One of the attractions was the scandal-hit contralto and actor Susannah Cibber, who sang several arias including some more often sung today by other voice types: on the recording, gratifyingly, we get to hear a substantial share for Helen Charlston, her voice firm, slightly metallic and unflaggingly expressive. Also included is a less familiar duet-and-chorus version of How Beautiful Are the Feet, written for two of the countertenors from the Dublin cathedral choirs. Here and elsewhere Alexander Chance is in buoyant voice – he also gets the two arias Handel adapted later for his star castrato in London. Hilary Cronin’s sweet-sounding soprano stands out among the solo voices.

From sad-fishing on Facebook to sensational Substack revelations – today’s readers don’t have to look far for confessional writing. Is this the end of autobiography?

Every day I meet strangers who share intimate details with me. It’s called reading. In a newspaper piece a former sex addict recalls her need for BDSM (“when a sexual partner hurt me, I felt seen”) and how she conquered her dependency. On Substack an actor describes her grief on losing a baby (“After the miscarriage, I became convinced my daughter was backstage. I would push back the costumes on the rack and almost expect to find her”). And then there are the published memoirs, first-person stories of trauma, displacement and heartbreak. It’s not just women who unburden themselves, of course. As Martin Amis says in his memoir, Experience: “We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.”

Recent memoirs have upped the ante, though. What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers) is now open to anyone with a story to tell – “nobody memoirs”, the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them. Candour is the key, no matter how fraught the consequences. “Most writers I know,” Maggie Nelson writes in The Argonauts, “nurse persistent fantasies about the horrible things – or the horrible thing – that will happen to them if and when they express themselves as they desire”. But she takes that risk, addressing the book to “you”, her fluidly gendered husband Harry (who’s angry when she shows him a draft), while exploring identity, pregnancy, motherhood and sexuality.

Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland; The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore; The Tree Is Missing by Shannon Kuta Kelly; Dog Star by Michael Symmons Roberts; Horses by Jake Skeets

Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland (Jonathan Cape, £13)
The 45 unrhymed sonnets in Sprackland’s sixth collection coalesce into three spellbinding interwoven sequences. Set in the Blackdown Hills, a remote stretch between Somerset and Devon, the poems explore the friction between art and articulation, habitat and inhabitation. Here, the landscape is not a backdrop but a linguistic event: “a drop swells on the lip of a leaf and falls / like a word being said”. By removing the first person throughout, Sprackland makes us encounter the landscape intimately: it’s not mediated through a speaker’s interiority but in “mossy silence”, “the rumble of the combine harvester”, “the noise / of meltwater hurtling over stones”, or “the shattered pieces of yourself”. Overshadowed by an unnamed illness, the poems bear wounds but don’t broadcast suffering; this restraint fosters minute attention to “pilgrim gnats attending the water” and the mire’s “long translation from gley to peat”. Sprackland’s ability alternately to narrow and widen our focus – from a closeup on insect life to geological time – reveals how consciousness itself moves between scales. Unlike many nature poems that overanimate or sentimentalise, the book is alive to the limits of human agency: it knows “language itself is prone to collapse”. Yet in that collapse, we can find meaning; recognise the “spiky logic” of natural process, following it as “the sparrow enters / and follows” the “sprawling holly”. The unwavering sonnet form represents an act of courage, a disciplined response to illness and dissolution, creating order where language threatens to collapse. This is a profound, enduring collection.

The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore (Corsair, £14.99)
Moore’s new collection constructs an ambitious architecture for exploring intergenerational trauma and motherhood. At its best, we find her confessional signature, as in The Black Notices, cataloguing unidentified murdered women, or Giving Birth With Anne Sexton, where literary inheritance meets bodily terror. Sometimes, however, this commitment to sincerity and transparency results in poems that feel like pedagogic exercises: Damaged Cento catalogues the “eight stages” of domestic homicide, while The Trimesters documents pregnancy’s upheavals. The motherhood poems, though deeply felt, risk predictability in their exploration of well-trodden territory – breastfeeding, bedtime routines, and the spectre of parental loss (“I imagine someone taking her away, / or a car ploughing into the pram”). It’s technically hard to make this new. Moore clearly presents the “I” as a site of shared, unpolished vulnerability, prioritising emotional legibility over lyric innovation.

The author on being inspired by Michael Ondaatje and how Hilary Mantel helped her overcome her aversion to historical figure novels

My earliest reading memory
The headteacher in my village primary school used to recount terrifying Cumbrian ghost tales to the class, which I’m sure was formative. I can also still hear my mum sing-songing rhymes; “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s”. My dad read the Ant and Bee books to me, repeatedly – he’d drive back over a high upland road from work and get home in time for bedtime stories. But my earliest independent reading memory is The Story of Ferdinand by Leaf and Lawson. I loved that bull!

My favourite book growing up
Big books gave me the whirlies so it took a while for them to start landing.

A psychologist delves into the genetics of bad behaviour in a book littered with fascinating scientific findings

In 2021, the psychologist and writer Kathryn Paige Harden co-authored a paper outlining her research into the genetic patterns linked to a higher risk of developing substance abuse problems or engaging in risk-taking behaviour, such as having unprotected sex or committing crime. The paper referred to the genetics of “traits related to self-regulation and addiction”, but Harden thought of herself as studying the genetics of sin.

Harden is a professor at the University of Texas and the author of a previous book, The Genetic Lottery, on how our knowledge of genetics should shape our views on meritocracy. She once received a letter from a man who has been in prison since he was 16 for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman. “What would drive a boy to do such a thing?” he asked her. Her new book is a heartfelt, subtly argued response to his question, an attempt to outline how our expanding knowledge of what makes people do bad things – the interplay of our inherited tendencies and our life circumstances – should influence how we assign moral responsibility and blame.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From an interactive session of Sex With Friends to improvised Robot Karaoke, the Friday Live celebration of play and performance amid the museum’s venerable halls was a reminder of gaming’s cultural clout

In the grand entrance of the Victoria & Albert Museum, beneath a looming dome with ancient statues visible through nearby arches, a programmer/DJ is busy live-coding a glitchy electronic music set. Either side of her, large LED displays show streams of code and strobing pixellated images as the bass pounds. She’s part of a group named London Live Coding, an experimental collective that makes music by writing and manipulating audio programs. It is loud, disorientating and brilliant, and I can’t help wondering what Queen Victoria and her husband would have made of it.

The set is part of the museum’s long-running Friday Late evening series, a collaboration with the London Games Festival. It showcased a range of independent video games and immersive interactive experiences, focusing on the link between play and performance. Visitors were given a map and left to wander the halls, corridors and galleries looking for installations. You could play the Bafta-winning comedy game Thank Goodness You’re Here! on a giant screen beneath a 13th-century spiral staircase. You could wander down the darkened Prince Consort’s gallery and find groups of giggling pals playing the hilarious erotic physics puzzler Sex With Friends, in which ragdoll-like characters have to be guided into (consensual) sexual encounters – much to the amusement of spectators.

Watermill theatre, Newbury
Screenwriter Daisy Goodwin imagines the old queen revisiting her diaries and reveals a tale of control and coercion behind Albert’s dutiful devotion

When screenwriter Daisy Goodwin read that Prince Albert liked to choose Victoria’s bonnets, she wondered: was this an act of domestic devotion, or of something darker? She explored the heady early years of their relationship in a TV drama – but this new play finds a tale of coercive control within the revered model marriage.

We open at Windsor, in the dank tail of Victoria’s long reign. Amanda Boxer’s queen is a fretful owl in black bombazine, withering and imperious, if no stranger to self pity (“a poor widow with no one to support me through all my tribulations”). An inveterate diary-keeper, her children worry that the candid volumes will be published after her death.

Sadie Coles HQ, London
From holiday snaps to atrocities, Throbbing Gristle album covers to backsides in shorts, the Polish painter reproduces the scattered attention and flattened perspective of our social media age

Wilhelm Sasnal has transformed the ground floor of Sadie Coles’ elegant gallery into a parade of broken images: the Oval Office, a ghastly forest, a blasted tree trunk, the artist’s wife and daughter, a British post-punk band, and the sitting US president surrounded by cronies, his face resembling the burn produced by screwing a lit cigarette into a photograph.

These paintings, most of which are untitled, are broken in the sense that an online link can be broken: it is difficult to connect them to their source. (It would be useful to know the location of that tree, for instance.) They are also broken in that they do not fit together as a whole. What connects that revolting White House interior, with its acid greens and faecal browns, with a spooky forest? What links President Trump to the founders of industrial music?

Dorfman theatre, London
Comedy infuses Winsome Pinnock’s disarming but ebullient drama about two Black academics who are given the job of authenticating the diaries of an enslaver

You don’t imagine many laughs in a story about enslavement legacies and erased Black histories. But comedy infuses Winsome Pinnock’s ebullient drama about two Black academics who are given the job of authenticating a cache of 18th-century diaries written by an enslaver.

Fen (short for Fenella, played by Sylvestra Le Touzel), is a direct descendant of Henry Harford, now managing his illustrious country estate, and it is she who finds the diaries that catalogued life on his Jamaican farm run by enslaved people. She gives Abi (Rakie Ayola) and Marva (Cherrelle Skeete) full rein of the diaries, so that they can authenticate them for posterity. Harford showed every sign of having been an abolitionist, she says in mitigation, although Abi and Marva’s investigations turn up disturbing evidence of his brutality in Jamaica.

Poland’s leading figurative artist de-faces Trump, feminist art rebels squat in East Sussex, and the UK’s street art is captured – all in your weekly dispatch

Wilhelm Sasnal: family/history
The domestic meets the political in these unsettling new paintings of family life and global current affairs (including some greyed-out visions of the Oval Office) by Poland’s leading figurative artist.
• Sadie Coles HQ, London, until 23 May

The artist performed songs from her new album in a five-night residency at Hollywood high school’s auditorium

With a swaying ocean projected on the stage, bathing the space in the brilliant light of sunset and sea, the figure holding a microphone almost appeared to be floating with the waves.

It added to the surreal effect that permeated the auditorium of Hollywood high school on Thursday night as singer Mitski performed Dead Women from her new album Nothing’s About to Happen to Me.

The best-selling novelist explains why his new retelling of Homer’s epic offers the ideal antidote to the age of Trump

Yann Martel’s writing studio, where he sits while we talk over Zoom, is a mere 10ft by 12ft; beyond his treadmill desk lie the drifts of snow that separate him from the house he shares with his wife, writer Alice Kuipers, and their four children. Martel was born in Spain, but his father’s academic work took the family to places including Portugal, France, Costa Rica and Alaska; perhaps it’s no surprise that, after all that travelling, he’s been settled in Saskatoon, Canada, for many years. But his novels couldn’t be any less rooted, in time or place: from the sea-tossed raft of the Booker prize-winning Life of Pi to the Dante-inspired Beatrice and Virgil and the era-shifting triptych of The High Mountains of Portugal, Martel is clearly possessed of an itinerant imagination.

Now comes Son of Nobody, for which Martel has written what the novel’s dismissive professor would term “pseudo-Homerica”; a version of the Trojan war seen from the perspective of an unknown soldier, Psoas, and discovered by an eager researcher in present-day Oxford, Harlow Donne. The poem appears in full, with Harlow’s story – including the breakdown of his marriage and his relationship with his young daughter, Helen – presented via digressive footnotes, at times scholarly but just as often humorous and domestic.

The California star may have earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Joan Baez in Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, but as she prepares for her stage debut in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, she says impostor syndrome is still a big problem

“I feel like I’m imitating an American accent, but it really is mine,” Monica Barbaro jokes. The actor has spent the morning rehearsing in an English accent for her stage debut in the National Theatre’s revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. During interviews, she says, she switches back. “I feel it’s best to use my own voice.”

Today, Barbaro – Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of activist and folk singer Joan Baez in James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown – is using that voice to reflect on a new chapter as a theatre actor. She is playing Madame de Tourvel, one of literature’s most famous casualties of seduction and manipulation. It’s a daunting challenge, not least because of the role’s formidable lineage, with Juliet Stevenson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Annette Stroyberg and Reese Witherspoon among those who have previously taken it on. “Speaking aloud in a theatre for this big of an audience is new for me,” she says, apprehensively.

Fancy an at-home coffee maker that can grind beans and make tasty espresso? Our expert put 12 to the test, including fully automatic and assisted models

• The best coffee subscription services

Laziness is akin to godliness. I know this for a fact because, every morning, my kitchen hosts a dishevelled re-enactment of Michelangelo’s famed fresco, the Creazione di Adamo (Creation of Adam). An outstretched arm extends a single finger, and lo – a bean-to-cup machine stirs, a grinder whirs, the smell of freshly ground coffee wafts, coffee drips and milk froths. Hopefully, my cup does not runneth over, for all the big mugs are in the dishwasher.

At its simplest, this is the appeal of a fully automatic bean-to-cup coffee machine. Turn it on, place a cup on the drip tray and lazily prod a button. The machine then freshly grinds the beans, brews the coffee and – if it has an automatic milk frother – optionally adds a layer of hot frothy milk to your beverage. Your role in the process is simple: decide whether you want an espresso, lungo, americano, cappuccino, macchiato, latte or cortado. Decisions, decisions.

Best bean-to-cup coffee machine overall and best on a budget:
De’Longhi Magnifica Start

Best bean-to-cup coffee machine under £1,000:
De’Longhi Rivelia

Sinking into a cup of cocoa softens many of life’s problems, but quality varies. Which are fudgy pleasures and which are simply powdered pap?

• The best supermarket coffee, tasted and rated

A hot cup of cocoa is one of life’s great pleasures, especially for the feeling of sheer comfort and nostalgia it conjures up.

These days, there is drinking chocolate of exceptional quality out there, which just didn’t exist in my childhood. It’s made with some of the finest chocolate in the world: bean-to-bar, single-origin or even single-estate, and often made from grated bean-to-bar chocolate and nothing else.

Not sure where to begin or want to simplify your current regimen? Our expert demystifies the marketing with her step-by-step skincare guide

• The best anti-ageing creams and serums

Skincare has never been so overwhelming, as we’re bombarded with ads for complicated-sounding products and TikTok routines that promise dramatic results in just days. I get it. Despite having been a beauty journalist for more than 15 years, even I haven’t been able to escape the noise; I’ve stood in front of a bathroom cabinet full of half-used serums, wondering why my skin was left feeling worse, not better.

Somewhere along the way, we were sold the idea that more steps, more products and more intensity equals better skin. But it rarely does, and what works best, ultimately, is consistency – which is boring (sorry) but effective.

Whether it’s a tiered tulle skirt or a hardworking Henley tee, our fashion expert’s Easter basket is brimming with joy

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

I am a big fan of Easter, which is an underrated holiday in my opinion: lots of joy and food, but better weather than Christmas (or at least more daylight) and less stress.

So my April shopping list starts, naturally, with a chocolate egg. More goodies include not one but two stormingly gorgeous new-season high-street skirts. Also, an umbrella to keep you smiling through the inevitable spring rain – and the shades you’ll want when the sun comes out. Because that’s April for you!

This marvellous staple of the Portuguese kitchen is a rich bean stew with pork and sausages that makes an excellent one-pot feast. You might find it’s perfect for midweek …

If you are trying to incorporate more beans and pulses into your diet, as I am, then this robust, one-pot feast, which food writer Edite Vieira describes as “a marvellous standby of the Portuguese kitchen”, is one to bear in mind. Though each region has its own variations, “basically”, she explains, “feijoada is a rich bean stew with pork and sausages”. The Brazilian version, often cited as that country’s national dish, is the product of the West African “love of beans”, according to the Oxford Companion to Food, with some suggesting that it’s a South American creation that travelled to Europe along with returning colonisers. Others insist with equal fervour that the dish was “born in the north of Portugal, and imported and adapted to what was available in Brazil”. Like so many such homely favourites, its precise history will probably ever remain a mystery; what’s important is that it’s simple to prepare, easy to adapt according to taste and budget, and very satisfying.

It’s wild garlic time again! Try this pesto with an aromatic chicken, fennel and potato stew, then dive into a fudgy banana cake with a tantalisingly crunchy top

I love Mexican chillies for the subtle flavour they give to cooking. Take the ancho, with its sweet, earthy notes of chocolate and plum. That adds immense depth to dishes traditional and avant garde alike, and is now readily available online and in shops. In today’s one-pot, which is a near-perfect way to cook a whole chicken, the ancho adds character to a classic sofrito, while in the pudding the savoury notes and touch of heat complement the dark caramel, helping to create a banana cake that is anything but bland. If you can’t find ancho, try any other medium-heat chilli flake in its place (nora, aleppo), or simply leave it out. The results will be delicious either way.

A cheerful rice bowl fragrant with ginger, garlic and spring onion, and laced with a sprightly chilli bean sauce

With spring in the air, I want a dish that’s the equivalent of turning the key in the ignition, firing up the engine and riding off into the sun. In short: something with a bit of va-va-voom. That dish, for me, is these Sichuan aubergines, a take on the classic “fish fragrant aubergines” (so called because the same aromatics are often used to cook fish). Creamy to begin with, they’re layered with flavour by way of ginger, garlic, spring onion and, finally, laced with delight and good times owing to the bright chilli bean sauce and vinegar.

Gently scented with orange and vanilla, lightened by ricotta, and studded with rum-soaked raisins

This is a cake for the long, ambling tail-end of an Easter lunch. It’s gently scented with orange and vanilla, lightened by ricotta, and studded with rum-soaked raisins that bring bursts of sweetness to each slice. Ideally, they’d be soaked overnight to plump them into something luscious, but if time gets away from you, take a shortcut: put the raisins and rum in a microwave-safe bowl, zap for 20–30 seconds, then leave to cool and absorb. The chocolate glaze is optional; on days when you want something simpler (or lighter), a generous sifting of icing sugar is all this cake needs. Serve with a small glass of grappa or something similarly warming for a quietly perfect way to bring a feast to a close.

When Marisha Matthews first saw ‘cool minister’ Paul, she noticed his kind eyes and jewellery. Their growing relationship was a slow burn over many years

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In the summer of 2014, I was living in Adelaide with my two young children in a very hot rental house with a low ceiling and a rat problem. It also had a slightly leaky pool, which was good for entertaining.

It was coming up to Australia Day, which I’ve always had mixed feelings about. I couldn’t stomach inviting people over for a plastic flag-fest, so I suggested my guests bring items to make a welcome package for refugees. As a first-generation Anglo Indian British Australian with Chinese siblings, and previously married to a Persian refugee, my family is full of the newly arrived.

It sounds like you are so concerned about losing him, you are considering losing yourself, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. This bit is the mistake

• Read more Leading questions

I just discovered by chance, and to my complete surprise, after more than 20 years of what I thought was a happy and faithful marriage, that my husband has had a year-long and passionate affair with an accomplished, charming, brilliant career woman whom I also regarded as a friend. I am accomplished too, but not nearly at her level, and I am also a bit older and I have less panache than her. I don’t think I can compete with her, and in any case I feel too proud to try.

Here is the thing: he says he doesn’t want to give her up, though he also says he does not want to marry her (she is in any case married though, it seems, in an open marriage). He also says he loves me and wants to remain married to me. I think if I demand he gives her up, he will end up unable to love me. I also think I will barely, or possibly not at all, be able to bear the pain of him continuing to see her. I am so unsure what to do or indeed what I can bear doing. I so don’t want to lose him. I have been deeply in love with him ever since we first met. Do I give him the world in return for half his heart?

With public houses increasingly restricting or banning children, we asked for your thoughts on adult-only pubs

A growing number of pubs in the UK are restricting or banning children, citing safety concerns, changing atmospheres and lost trade. We asked people their thoughts on adult-only pubs.

Many who contacted us supported child-free pubs, believing adult-only spaces were important, but a good proportion said they would change their mind if children were “properly supervised by parents”.

Henry says Maggie is constantly losing them; she thinks her son is making a lot of noise about nothing. It’s up to you to give them a fair hearing

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

Mum doesn’t look after her headphones because she knows I’ll always be there to buy her new ones

I’m 76, and don’t like online shopping. It only takes Henry 30 seconds to buy a new pair

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

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

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

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

Only way to avoid missing a flight because of EES rules: squeeze everything into a cabin bag and skip luggage check-in

Travellers to the EU risk missing their flights because bag drop-off times don’t allow for the long queues to get through a new security system.

My family of four missed our easyJet flight home from Málaga because, although we followed advice from the airport and arrived three hours before departure, the bag drop-off didn’t open until two hours before.

Snappy performance, high-quality screen, best-in-class keyboard and trackpad show cheaper can still be great

Apple’s brand new entry-level laptop is powered by the chip from an iPhone and offers more than just the essential MacBook experience for a great price, putting the PC industry on notice.

The MacBook Neo is the first of its kind from Apple. A 13in laptop that runs on an A18 Pro chip and brings the starting price for a brand new MacBook down to £599 (€699/$599/A$899) – £500 or the equivalent less than the MacBook Air.

The practice touted by Nicole Daedone combined spirituality, mindfulness and sexuality. Then came the controversy – and prison sentence

In 2009, the New York Times ran a story about Nicole Daedone and her wellness company, OneTaste, which promoted women’s empowerment through a practice known as “orgasmic meditation” (OM).

“I don’t think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality,” Daedone said at the time.

If a food is labeled ‘functional’, what does that mean? Not much, experts say

You’re at the grocery store, looking for a sweet snack. But these days, the chocolate aisle promises so much more than that: mental clarity, a stronger immune system, PMS relief and even sexual stamina – all in a few squares.

Chocolate is hardly the only treat to be reborn as a wellness product. Supermarket shelves now boast chips with added protein, gut-friendly sodas and collagen oatmeal – all part of the fast-growing “functional foods” market, which is expected to reach $586bn globally by 2030.

Cannabis policy still divisive two years in, with SPD hailing it while CDU minister says it is risk to young people’s health

It was a landmark piece of legislation passed by Germany’s previous, centre-left-led government: a measure that legalised the personal recreational use of cannabis for over-18s despite warnings from critics it would cause a steep rise in the drug’s use, including by teenagers, and boost criminal gangs.

Two years on, controversy over the move has still not been stubbed out, with critics and proponents at odds over its impact on consumption, youth welfare and organised crime.

One of the fastest-growing fitness trends is also one of the most divisive. To its fans, it promises a stronger, healthier body; to its critics, it’s another way to make women feel insecure. Time to sort fact from fiction

I have noticed something new in my London neighbourhood. Amid the sea of nail salons, vape shops and purveyors of fried chicken, sleek, opaque-fronted premises are popping up everywhere. There are several within 15 minutes of my home.

At weekends, you can spot clusters of devotees heading to these mysterious, vaguely aspirational temples of self-care, AKA reformer pilates studios. Many of these devotees conform to an aesthetic popularised on TikTok via hashtags such as #pilatesprincess. There is definitely a uniform: pink athleisure, Rhode phone cases and oversized pastel-coloured Stanley tumblers, jokingly referenced on Instagram as “emotional support” bottles. It is a trend that prompted New York magazine to run an article under the headline “Why Pilates Keeps Pissing People Off”: the workout has become inseparable from a very strict idea of womanhood.

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

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

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

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

Nevermind the trends, want to know how to dress for actual spring weather? Then read on

It all came to a head, as matters of getting dressed so often do, over black tights. I had wanted to wear my silver skirt, you see. It was a rare blue-sky day and the sunshine was making me crave reflective surfaces to maximise the light. Anyway, you know how it is when you just get a yen to wear something. So I pulled out said silver skirt and then realised I didn’t want to wear the black opaque tights I wear with it in winter, but it wasn’t anywhere near warm enough to wear it with bare legs as I do in summer. I was completely stumped. And it made me realise: I need a refresher course in what to wear at this time of year. Spring has sprung, but I have forgotten how to hop to it.

So here we have it: your pocket primer on how to dress for spring. I’m talking about the spring that happens every year, an actual real-world meteorological phenomenon, not about the fashion trends of this particular moment. The lengthening days, daylight commuting, the juicy greens and yellows of the landscape, the maverick unpredictability of rain. Whether zebra stripes are the new leopard does not concern us today. We don’t need fashion to provide the newness when newness is in abundance in the world. So we can flick back through the pages to remind ourselves of spring’s fashion classics.

Armani revamps a favourite, Clarins adds a tint to its serum and a new base from Carisa Janes will suit anyone who hates powders

Three very big hitters have new foundations: one risky reformulation of a cult classic; one addition to a wildly popular skincare franchise; and one to launch a new brand from a beauty legend.

Let’s start with Armani’s Luminous Silk (£49 for 30ml), loved by many for its buildable, versatile coverage, and perhaps the most worn bridal foundation of all time. While I’m not against a reformulation in principle (technology, regulations and ingredients move on, and that’s all for the better), Armani does seem to have reformulated here for little discernible reason beyond Google Analytics.

Designed as a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Med, today the scenic waterway from Toulouse to Sète is seen as a living ‘work of art’

Centuries before Donald Trump started playing around with the world economy, “tariff” was a levy paid to Spain by ships using the strait of Gibraltar; it was named for Tarifa, the town near the strait’s narrowest point. France’s kings had long dreamed of a waterway linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean: as well as depriving the Spanish monarch of easy money, it would save ships a long voyage around Spain and Portugal, risking storms and pirates.

From the Atlantic, vessels can reach Toulouse from the Gironde estuary (on the Garonne River), but not until the 1660s did anyone have a viable plan for the remaining 200km to the Med. Considered one of the biggest engineering feats of the 17th century, Pierre-Paul Riquet’s Canal du Midi (finished in 1681 and called the Canal Royal du Languedoc until the revolution) rewrote the history of transport and commerce in the south of France – for centuries it carried wheat and wine, people and post.

Regular swappers say they not only make big savings but create connections. Here is how it works

About six miles from Reims, beside a golf course, is a house with a heated pool and space to sleep 10 people that would probably be perfect for many of those planning to book a family holiday in France.

An hour’s drive from Disneyland Paris, the four-bedroom property is quiet, located near a village with a bakery, has an electric gate that provides security, and is on almost half an hectare (one acre) of land.

For years this region was regarded as little more than a gateway from the North Island to the South. But spend several days there and you’ll ache to tear yourself away

The visitor to New Zealand’s South Island knows what they have to see. There’s a well-trodden circuit. Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook, to gaze at the stars. Queenstown, for a spot of daredevil adventure. The glaciers, Fox and Franz Josef. And then down to Milford Sound, for the fjord, cliffs and waterfalls. Each stop stunning, each one worthy of its place in a tourist trail so long-established they call it the southern loop.

But for those searching for something new, bent less on ticking off the New Zealand icons than on experiencing a region as brimming with natural beauty as it’s been relatively, and mysteriously, overlooked, there is another destination. Head to the place they’re calling Nelson Tasman.

The RN7 road to the Côte d’Azur is enjoying a renaissance among lovers of slow travel in search of offbeat France

‘We were five people in my parents’ 2CV; we would set out at 3am and by 10am, around about Lyon, my father would need a break. My mother would set up a deckchair for him under a tree by the side of the road and he would sleep before driving the rest of the way to Toulon.”

On a recent road trip through France, I met up with Thierry Doillon, a vintage car fanatic who helped restore a 1950s petrol station on the Route Nationale 7. I wanted to talk about the heyday of this iconic road (so famous that singer-songwriter Charles Trenet released a song about it in 1955) and why it’s enjoying a renaissance with holidaymakers.

They disagreed on immigration, but could an IT professional and an engineer agree on ​the Israel-Palestine conflict?

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

Julian, 64, Hayling Island, Hampshire

Occupation Engineer

Exposure response prevention may help her to cope with her anxiety and learn that she doesn’t need to respond to intrusive thoughts

My daughter is 15 and has lived with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) for some time. Her compulsions change – counting, repetitive actions such as flicking light switches a certain number of times, showering/brushing her teeth in a particular order, placing things in her bedroom in a certain way …

She has had two courses of private therapy, but neither seemed to help. Both focused on the compulsions – for example, they’d encourage her to tackle one ritual at a time and try to eliminate it. It felt as though they were addressing the symptoms rather than the cause – new rituals can come to her in the moment and if one ritual is eliminated, it will quickly be replaced.

From high-end antiques to Dinky Toys and Star Wars, fraudsters have ways to make you believe it’s genuine. Here’s how to avoid being tricked

When Kayleigh Davies looked at the bottom of what was supposed to be a vase from the French luxury glass-maker Lalique, it was clear the piece was a fake.

Etched into the base was the word “Lalique”, but Davies, an experienced valuer of antiques, could see that something was amiss.

Researchers are weaving Native practices with western methods to revive ecosystems and reclaim food sovereignty

“I’m a glorified clam counter.”

So said Marco Hatch, a marine ecologist at Western Washington University and an enrolled member of the Samish Indian Nation. Hatch has been conducting surveys of mollusks growing in and around clam gardens in the Pacific north-west, as he collaborates with seven Indigenous communities to build or rebuild these rock-walled, terraced beaches once created and tended by their ancestors.

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

Linking UK mainland with Isles of Scilly, this is last season before boat is replaced with a newer model

There was a mix of anticipation and trepidation in Penzance among the passengers waiting on to board Scillonian III.

Some were looking forward to an adventurous voyage on the ferry to the Isles of Scilly, which lie 30 miles off the Cornish coast; others were not quite so keen, knowing that when there is an Atlantic swell, the Scillionian can toss and turn, a tendency that has earned it the unflattering name the “vomit comet”.

Viral reviews of artisan cafes across the capital are sparking a debate over cost, culture – and who gets a slice of the city

The video that started it all was innocuous enough: a woman in her 20s posted on TikTok about how she spends a perfect weekend in north London. On her list were the bakeries Jolene and Gail’s, and the De Beauvoir Deli.

The reaction, however, was anything but. Many locals commented that they had never heard of the businesses she mentioned. One north Londoner, Moses Combe, 21, was equally incredulous. “If this is where all the north London girlies come in the morning, I’d be a bit surprised,” he said in a viral video.

From schools in Ghana to workplaces in Britain, underpinned by the colonial roots of ‘respectability’, conversations around natural hairstyle persist

Last month a Jamaican woman said her teenage son had been pulled from lessons because school staff had deemed his afro hairstyle inappropriate.

“The dean of discipline called me to state that my son has been removed,” Michelle Scott said. “You’re telling me that you took him, a fifth-form student, out of classes to go and get a haircut?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

We want to hear from owners of dogs, cats or other pets who have tried these trackers

With a growing number of pet fitness trackers on the market, owners can monitor the stats of their companions as never before. But these devices can be costly, and their necessity is debated.

We want to hear from owners of dogs, cats or other pets who have tried these trackers to hear if such health monitors have proved useful, neutral or problematic.

We would like to hear about your experiences of caring for elderly parents and how this has affected your life

In a recent Guardian opinion piece, Lucinda Holdforth described her experience of caring for her late mother, and her complicated feelings after she died.

It is a common human theme that good parents can never really rest for worrying about their children. But it seems to me that a reciprocal burden exists for good children. We are never entirely free from the psychic weight of our parents’ needs, love and ambitions for us in our youth, and increasingly we now find ourselves taking on guardian-style responsibilities for them during their prolonged old age.

I finally understood the accumulated heaviness of the burden I had carried about a year after my mother died. At 59, I was at last an orphan, which meant I could turn off my phone each night. I woke up one day with the most complete feeling of creative liberty and personhood I’d ever experienced. That feeling has not left me since.

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