It’s only the first episode, but alongside Jeff Goldblum’s non-anecdotes about pencils the guests are reduced to discussing the colour of the sofa

Now look. Let’s make a few things clear before we begin.

We love Claudia Winkleman, absolutely, yes.

Two weeks in, it’s increasingly clear that the US-led war has taken every problem it aimed to solve – and made it worse

It’s not easy, but let’s try to look at this war in the best, most charitable light. Let’s try to see the US-Israel conflict with Iran as its prosecutors and advocates would want us to see it.

They would say that it has two aims, both legitimate. The first is to weaken if not remove a regime that has done terrible evil to its own people. Who could mourn the supreme leader of a government that, according to one report, gunned down 30,000 of its citizens on the streets in just two days on 8 and 9 January? Listen to those Iranians who long ago reached the glum conclusion that the only way they could be rid of their tormentors was through external military action. As one exiled Iranian put it to me this week: “The Iranian people have been begging the world for help for so many years. They tried voting for change in 2009; they were killed. They tried protesting in 2019, 2022 and this year; they were massacred in the tens of thousands … They were out of all other options.”

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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As it searches for a new editor and presenter, programme is facing questions over its direction and status

With well over 5 million listeners a week tuning in to hear whether another tongue-tied minister will fall foul of its legendary 8.10am interview slot, Radio 4’s Today programme continues to be one of the BBC’s flagship news shows.

It has also traditionally been the pinnacle for broadcasters, producers and editors alike, keen to be associated with a show that has strived to set the daily news agenda since the 1950s.

Ridiculed, ‘memed’ and consigned to worst-dressed lists, seven standout Oscar outfits from over the years

At the 2001 Oscars, Gladiator won best picture with Russell Crowe picking up best actor. But, if those facts might have faded to fodder for a pub quiz, the red carpet produced a moment of fashion legend – Björk wearing what is now known as “the swan dress”.

Made by the Macedonian designer Marjan Pejoski, the tutu skirt with the swan draped around the musician’s neck – and egg accessories – was panned. “It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen,” said the TV fashion critic Steven Cojocaru.

The art of the heel: if you want a shot at the US presidency, you better be ready to sartorially debase yourself on the world stage

The secretary of state of the United States of America is openly slopping around in a pair of too-big shoes that he has to wear because the president gave them to him. Why? Possibly as a piece of exquisite and complex satire about the size of his penis; possibly because Marco Rubio exaggerated his shoe size because he rightly assumed it would be linked to presidential speculation about the size of his penis.

According to the vice-president, JD Vance, Donald Trump gives all his best boys a particular brand of shoe, either after guessing their size or making them disclose it. “The president, he kind of leans back in his chair,” explained Vance a couple of months ago, “and he says: ‘You know, you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.’” Strong words, particularly from a president with such famously tiny hands. Incidentally, Vance casually dropped it into the anecdote that he wore a 13.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

It has swept awards, been lauded for its accuracy and become a word-of-mouth triumph. Now, after a big delay, The Pitt launches in the UK. We visit the set to meet the team behind this tense, unflinching US medical drama

Like many US hospitals, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (PTMC) is a place where time melts away. Rain or shine, 1am or 1pm, everything is bathed in the same retina-frying fluorescent light. Wait times often exceed several hours; in the lobby is a barrage of all-caps warnings (“aggressive behavior will NOT be tolerated”), while several TVs play clips of a Deadliest Catch-style show in two-minute loops. Purgatory, it seems, looks a lot like an American hospital … as recreated on a soundstage in Burbank, California.

On the day I visit PTMC, the 52-bed ER on the Warner Bros lot, the hold-up is some babies. The infant actors are here to film a second season scene for The Pitt, the HBO Max medical drama that singlehandedly resuscitated the genre back from its Grey’s Anatomy flatline, swept almost every television award in the US and is now, finally, heading for the UK. (No bad blood, though: on set, I glimpse a flyer for a Pitt softball game against the crew of Seattle Grace.) Developed by the team behind 90s hospital hit ER, The Pitt follows a melange of hospital workers – the doctors, nurses, social workers, security and administrative staff of a cash-strapped emergency room in Pittsburgh – as they deal with everything from gunshot wounds to burnout, fentanyl overdoses to dreaded note-taking, with all the emotional trauma in between.

US president threatens to attack oil infrastructure on the island unless passage through strait of Hormuz is unblocked

• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry is saying that two drones have been intercepted and destroyed in the eastern region.

More now after reports of explosions in Dubai on Friday morning: thick black smoke rose over the financial hub’s skyline after what authorities described as a fire in an industrial area of the city-state.

US defense head is eager to frame operation as a success – and slam journalists for not portraying it in a positive light

• Has the pro-Maga media turned on the Pentagon over Iran?

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox

Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield.

Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.

White House contends with reality of shoddy preparations for war and unclear conditions for victory

• Middle East crisis – live updates

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As US and Israeli jets descended to deliver the opening salvos of the war in Iran, Donald Trump’s back-of-the-envelope plan for regime change in Tehran was about to run into the reality of the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

That reality came quickly.

Israel has issued a new displacement order for southern Lebanon, instructing residents within 25 miles of the border between the two countries to head north. The order covers major Lebanese cities and dozens of villages. Israel’s military is considering an escalated campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah after the pro-Iran group launched its most intense attacks yet on Wednesday night. Guardian journalist William Christou reports from Nabatieh, a city in south Lebanon hit by Israeli strikes

• Israel strikes Beirut and orders south Lebanon evacuation as conflict mounts

Longer sentences, overcrowding and inexperienced staff cited as factors in ‘rising tensions’ in prisons

Notorious prisoners such as the Soham killer Ian Huntley are facing increasingly violent attacks from inmates with “nothing to lose”, the head of the Prison Governors’ Association has said.

Tom Wheatley, the president of the PGA, which represents governors in England and Wales, said those serving lengthy sentences or whole-life tariffs in high-security institutions had “no fear” of being given additional time in prison, and could earn status by singling out famous child murderers and paedophiles.

Last week, a 20-year-old sex offender who had recently moved to my son’s prison was ‘kettled’. In prison, that means boiling water, mixed with a bit of sugar, was thrown into his face. He has been scarred for life.

This is the kind of threat that my son and every sex offender has to live with every day when they are in prison.

Trio captured relaxing around a wooden table in photo believed to have been taken on Martha’s Vineyard

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson have been pictured in bathrobes alongside Jeffrey Epstein, in the first known photograph of them together.

The trio were captured relaxing outside at a wooden table with mugs decorated with the American flag in the newly unearthed photograph believed to have been taken on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts that is favoured by the wealthy.

Exclusive: Chancellor plans help for vulnerable and low-income customers due to conflict in Middle East

Rachel Reeves will set out extra support next week for households across the UK facing a surge in the cost of heating oil due to the conflict in the Middle East.

The chancellor is expected to set out plans to assist those on low incomes or with other vulnerabilities, particularly in rural areas. The help will be delivered in England via councils using the new crisis and resilience fund.

Case was seen as major test of the first amendment and whether the US could use broad anti-terrorism statute to prosecute leftwing protesters

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox

A group of protesters in Texas was found guilty of providing support for terrorism and other charges on Friday in a closely watched case in which prosecutors alleged anti-ICE activists were actually part of an antifa cell.

The case was seen as a major test of the first amendment and whether the government could use a broad anti-terrorism statute to prosecute leftwing protesters. It marked the first time the government alleged individuals were part of an antifa terrorist cell in a criminal prosecution.

Most transatlantic cables go through or close to Ireland, making its waters particularly vulnerable to attack

The UK has signed a “rebooted” defence agreement with Dublin that could mean the Royal Navy responding to hostile ships and other issues in Irish waters.

The deal, announced at the second post-Brexit Ireland-UK summit, held in Cork on Friday, updates a 2016 agreement to include cyber-threats and the sabotage of critical internet and electricity undersea cables.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva revokes Darren Beattie’s visa in retaliation for Brazilian health minister being denied visa for US

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he has “forbidden” one of Donald Trump’s advisers from visiting the South American country in retaliation for his health minister being denied a US visa.

Darren Beattie, a far-right political strategist who was recently tapped for a senior advisory role on Brazil, had reportedly hoped to use a trip to the country to visit the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to stop Lula taking power after the 2022 election. Beattie is a longstanding critic of Brazil’s judiciary and president and once called the moderate leftwing leader a representative of “the most destructive and corrosive version” of communism.

Mayor says he will encourage Met to scale down his official vehicle alongside plans for new charges for big cars

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has said he would be encouraging the Met to abandon his armoured car in favour of a smaller vehicle as he signalled a clampdown on driving SUVs in London.

Khan and Transport for London are considering options including additional charges on outsize vehicles to tackle the increasing numbers of SUVs on London’s roads, primarily to address road safety but also to address concerns about parking and congestion.

Alireza Askari, 42, sentenced for killing Paria Veisi after she left him, and aunt Maryam Delavary jailed for helping bury her

A man has been jailed for at least 26 years for the “cold-blooded murder” of his ex-wife and the burying of her body in his garden.

Alireza Askari, 42, admitted killing Paria Veisi, 37, at the property they previously shared in Penylan, Cardiff, in April last year.

The black-and-white shows were first broadcast in 1965, and will be available to watch next month on BBC iPlayer

Two lost episodes of Doctor Who unseen since airing in the 1960s have been discovered in a cardboard box belonging to a deceased film aficionado.

The film cans, which were wrapped in plastic bags, have now been regenerated by BBC archivists and will be available next month on iPlayer.

After months of red carpets and awards season campaigns, it’s all eyes on Hollywood’s night of nights - the Academy Awards. It looks like it will be a fight between Ryan Coogler’s thriller Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation One Battle After Another for most of the big prizes, with Jessie Buckley’s performance in Hamnet the clear favourite for best actress. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s film editor, Catherine Shoard

As the QuitGPT movement gains momentum, should people concerned about the environmental impacts of AI consider opting out?

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

It’s only a few years on from the release of ChatGPT but the race to plug artificial intelligence into everything has sparked a surge in datacentres, with escalating environmental costs.

Globally, datacentre power demand is growing four times faster than all other sectors, according to the International Energy Agency, and is on track to exceed Japan’s electricity use by 2030.

Whether it was a solo trip to a cafe, a nice lipstick or merely wandering around a shop that was out of her price range, my mum showed me that a little luxury goes a long way

My mum’s best advice was “You’re allowed to enjoy nice things.” Both elements – the nice things and being allowed them – were equally important. She was a fervent believer in the restorative power of a treat, taking herself out for solo breakfasts most weeks (a bacon muffin and a cup of coffee in the cosseted calm of Bettys Tea Rooms), ordering chips at the slightest provocation, staying in chic hotels she had a pre-internet gift for ferreting out and being coaxed by department store salesladies into buying expensive unguents.

She was even keener on treating others, including me. During my teens and early 20s, when I was ill and unhappy in my body, she took me for lavish lunches, booked me massages and accompanied me on spa trips. I recently found a note she had sent me when I was slogging, lonely and sad, through my finals, which had obviously come with some cash. “Buy yourself something frivolous darling,” it read. “A nice nail polish?”

Struggling to nod off? From magnesium flakes to mental maths, knee pillows to boring podcasts, here are the things you – and we – swear by for a peaceful slumber

• The best mattresses – tested

When it comes to falling (and staying) asleep, there are endless sleep aids on the market, and plenty of hacks promising a restful night. But which ones actually work? As the days grow longer, lighter and warmer, making sleep more elusive, here at the Filter, we want answers.

We asked you for your best tried-and-tested sleep tips (and no, you don’t have any vested interest in any of these: we checked), and rounded up some of our own – from products we’ve tested to help you wind down to the most optimal bedding; from the most sleep-friendly mattresses, pillows and pyjamas to tricks involving almost everything from boring podcasts to mental maths. Here are the things you – and we – swear by for a peaceful slumber.

After living with chronic pain, Darcey Steinke wanted to know how it affected others. Her memoir, This Is the Door, explores both isolation and freedom

Chronic pain has a way of upending a life.

In her memoir This Is the Door, writer Darcey Steinke writes that “pain, like failure, breaks into our everyday lives and upsets who we thought we were and what we thought we could do”.

The artist has spent three decades changing the face of African art, and has just won the prestigious Hasselblad award. But they say the win isn’t about them – it’s for under-represented people still living with the echoes of Apartheid

Zanele Muholi has been named the winner of the 2026 Hasselblad award. The South African artist, who identifies as non-binary, now takes their place within the pantheon of the world’s greatest art photographers, from Carrie Mae Weems, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Wolfgang Tillmans and Sophie Calle all the way back to the forebears of the art form, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams.

It’s the kind of accolade that codifies the breathless reception with which Muholi’s work has been heralded to date. When their 2020 survey show at London’s Tate Modern was stymied by pandemic visitor restrictions, the gallery brought it back four years later. One critic likened their arresting self-portraits to Rembrandt’s.

If the long-mooted third instalment of the 80s sword and sorcery series finally gets off the ground, it could be Arnie’s chance to go from ageing action hero to cinematic totem

If you’re a fan of 1980s and 1990s Arnold Schwarzenegger, his late-era career has probably come as a bit of a disappointment. The Austrian oak was once Hollywood’s most reliable tool for punching killer robots, but he’s never really had his Unforgiven moment. Despite an absurdly influential run of sci-fi and fantasy movies, Schwarzenegger has missed out on the sort of grizzled, late-career reckoning that might have deconstructed his own youthful myth, just as Clint Eastwood’s epic 1992 western confronted the very legend the actor-director spent decades building.

It’s not as if Hollywood hasn’t tried. In fact, studios have spent the last decade or so trying to produce Schwarzenegger’s “old warrior” phase, as if prodding the action hero myth with a stick to see if it still roars. The problem is, nothing has quite landed. Terminator: Dark Fate turned the T-800 into a retired drapery salesman reflecting on his own violent past. Maggie had him as a grieving father in a quiet zombie family drama. Aftermath is essentially a sombre meditation on grief that briefly veers into revenge thriller territory. None quite managed to become the monument to the Schwarzenegger enigma that the actor’s era-defining body of work seemed to demand. If Arnold fans wanted the sort of late-career statement that turns an ageing action star into a cinematic totem, they instead got an increasingly mortal-looking man who turns up in mid-budget streaming thrillers looking faintly concerned.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Their sporting dominance is all the more striking after winning a solitary medal eight years ago but no country can match them now

With two days of competition left at the Winter Paralympics there is no doubt who will finish top of the medal table. At close of play on Friday, China had a total of 33 medals, the same as their nearest rivals the USA and Italy combined. They have won gold in four of the Games’ six sports – cross-country skiing, curling, snowboarding and biathlon – and are in line for a medal in para-ice hockey too. This sporting dominance is all the more striking because, only eight years ago, China was nowhere.

At the Pyeongchang Games, the Chinese won a solitary medal, gold in the mixed team curling. Three of that team are competing here at Milano Cortina and a fourth, Wang Meng, already has a gold medal around her neck after winning the inaugural mixed doubles alongside her partner Yang Jinqiao. “I’m very, very proud, very, very honoured, and also very grateful,” she said after beating the Korean pair 9-6 following a tie-break end. “I’m so grateful to so many people who have helped us along the way, and [to be] finally standing on this podium”.

• Farmer hat trick powers USA past Czechia 6-1

• Americans reach fifth straight Paralympic final

• USA move one win from fifth consecutive gold

The United States defeated Czechia 6-1 on Friday in the semi-finals of the Paralympic sled hockey tournament in Milan, advancing to the gold medal game for a fifth consecutive Games.

Declan Farmer scored three goals and assisted on the other three as the Americans pulled away after conceding the opening goal. Farmer’s hat trick – his fourth in four games at these Paralympics – set records for most goals and most points in a single Paralympic tournament. He now has 14 goals and 24 points in Milan.

The Winter Paralympics return to Italy for the second time in 20 years. From the fashion capital of Milan to the dramatic peaks of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Milan Cortina will take place across northern Italy, marking the 50th anniversary of the first Paralympic Winter Games.

The Paralympics open on Friday 6 March in the Arena di Verona and the Games will will showcase around 665 athletes competing in 79 medal events across six sports – para alpine skiing, para biathlon, para cross-country skiing, para ice hockey, para snowboard and wheelchair curling. The results of these events will be searchable on this page.

We take a look at the best images from the Games, including skiing, snowboarding and ice hockey

• He shoots 66 to make cut at Players Championship

• Rory McIlroy squeaks into third round with strong finish

Keegan Bradley has admitted to still being “heartbroken” by his American Ryder Cup team’s loss at Bethpage last year. Bradley is also keen to retain the US captaincy at Adare Manor next September, should Tiger Woods knock back the opportunity.

Luke Donald and Europe were set for a Bethpage rout before a rousing US recovery on day three. The visitors still won the trophy for a second time in succession. Bradley, who has returned to playing duties on the PGA Tour, remains wounded by the event and, as is the case with all Ryder Cups, the losing captain has been subject to heavy criticism.

• Manager speaks at length after defeat at Real Madrid

• Players must use ‘guts and nose’ to score, he adds

Pep Guardiola launched a four-and-a-half-minute defence of his team selection in the 3-0 Champions League defeat by Real Madrid. Guardiola chose to play an attacking 4-2-2-2 formation at the Bernabéu stadium on Wednesday and the visitors were ultimately humbled by a Federico Valverde hat-trick to leave them on the brink of a European exit.

“I had to explain it [team selection] before and after? After 10 years? I would not convince you one second, any one of you, anyone,” Guardiola said before City’s visit to West Ham on Saturday. “Why? Because we lost 3-0, destroyed, yeah it’s normal. It’s not personal, believe me, it’s all the managers.

Carrick says Harry Maguire is ready for England return, while Rosenior is happy with Chelsea’s keeper dilemma

George Russell and Kimi Antonelli took a one-two win in Australia and team’s ability to master dark art of energy management is paying off

As Formula One grapples with its new, controversial regulations, there is consensus at least that Mercedes are expected to be on top once more in the second race of the season on Sunday in Shanghai. The team have a fearsome car but most importantly in a formula dominated by the engine, appear to have also stolen a march in optimising the dark art of energy management.

George Russell and Kimi Antonelli claimed a one-two at the opening round in Australia last weekend. In qualifying Russell was eight-tenths quicker than Mercedes’ nearest rival, the Red Bull of Isack Hadjar and in the grand prix itself finished 15 seconds in front of third-placed Charles Leclerc having eased up in the final third of the race.

It is a decade since England beat France across the Channel in the Six Nations and with results spiralling downwards the pressure is on to avoid their worst-ever finish

Plenty of water has flowed down the Seine since England were last at the Stade de France for the business end of the 2023 Rugby World Cup. Back then they came within a point of beating South Africa – the eventual champions – in the semi-final before winning the bronze final against Argentina the following Friday. Their gameplan may have been strictly limited but the outlook seemed rosy for Steve Borthwick’s side.

Now, almost 29 months later, England find themselves back at base camp. The rigid gameplan that was supposed to evolve to suit the players available has been increasingly rumbled and results have spiralled downwards. As their hosts France prepare to try to clinch back-to-back Six Nations titles for the first time since 2007, England will do well to avoid finishing in the bottom two.

With nine games to go, we assess the Premier League teams behind Arsenal and Manchester City who are most likely to fill the remaining berths

Reasons for optimism: Michael Carrick recently professed himself as “definitely a glass half-full” manager so the interim surely looks at the final nine games and sees a huge opportunity. Particularly positive here are the fixtures with Aston Villa (Sunday), Chelsea (18 April) and Liverpool (2 May): three chances for Manchester United to seriously damage the Champions League qualification prospects of the three teams currently directly below them and enhance their own. Carrick’s men are third but only three points above Liverpool in sixth and, with fifth probably enough for a Champions League berth, beating even one of the three would be a big boost to hopes – provided results are rosy in United’s other fixtures.

On fifth anniversary of their takeover, Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac showed off their ‘happy clapper’ credentials

The daily ritual of the modern football fan is well established: check the fixtures and TV listings, then decide which match to half-follow while gawping at social media as a second screen. On most nights in March this year there has been either a Premier League or Champions League game to provide turf-coloured backlight to the doomscroll. Until Friday night.

Clearly the suits at Sky Sports thought Wrexham v Swansea City on a Friday night needed its own sideshow. A clash between two historic Welsh clubs just five points apart in the battle for the Championship playoff places may not appeal to the TikTok generation. If only there were some Hollywood actors on hand to step into the content void, relegating Daniel Mann and Andy Hinchcliffe to second-string commentary choice.

Former Tottenham manager says ‘I would give it a go’ after seeing his horse weaken up the Cheltenham hill

Harry Redknapp is the living embodiment of Spurs’ motto, Audere est Facere: To Dare Is To Do. And on the day one improbable dream ended, with his horse The Jukebox Man fading to finish eighth in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the 79-year-old switched his sights towards another bold adventure: saving Tottenham from relegation.

“It’s a big challenge,” said Redknapp, who managed Spurs between 2008 and 2012. “Do I need the pressure at this stage of my life? Why not? I’d give it a go. I’m not too old. I feel as fit as a fiddle. If they ask me, I think I’d do a good job.”

After 11 straight defeats against Ireland, victory in Dublin would vindicate Gregor Townsend’s faith in his players

Trusting the process. It sounds like a fine idea in principle: although it really depends if your process was any good in the first place.

Gregor Townsend faced down a familiar cacophony of criticism after Scotland’s opening defeat by Italy last month. The same old shortcomings had been exposed, it was said, and another year of disappointment beckoned. Townsend had insisted the embarrassing capitulation against Argentina in November, from 21-0 ahead, was a “line in the sand moment” – only to see that line swiftly washed away in the sheeting Roman rain.

A state visit is a connecting of people, not governments; of cultures, not commentators – our national bonds should be honoured

Should King Charles’s state visit to the United States next month be cancelled? The case for doing so is powerful. America is waging an unprovoked war on Iran in which more than 1,000 innocent people have already been killed. The collateral damage to the global economy, including Britain’s, is becoming astronomical. All Donald Trump can do is insult Britain’s prime minister as a “loser” and “no Winston Churchill” for failing to join him. Should the monarch honour such a man by attending a Washington banquet?

The call is close. The occasion is the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States with the declaration of independence. Of course this merits celebration. But now? British public opinion is emphatically opposed to the US war on Iran. Many more Britons think the royal visit should be abandoned (46%) than think it should go ahead (36%), with 18% undecided. Just as the war is staged by Trump for personal political gain, so he can be expected to exploit a royal visit.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist and the author of A Short History of America: from Tea Party to Trump

A claim that the UK is attracting billions of pounds in AI investment has been debunked. That’s no surprise when our establishment runs on dubious ‘good news’

One trillion dollars. That’s the amount of financial aid Gordon Brown triumphantly announced at the 2009 London G20 summit. (I contributed my own two cents here.) Except it wasn’t exactly real: the number was a mixture of already promised apples and aspirational future oranges.

So it should hardly be a surprise that when ministers proclaimed last year that the UK was attracting billions of pounds of new investment in AI, they were being more than a little economical with the truth. As a Guardian investigation revealed, much of it turns out not to be new at all: existing datacentres rented rather than built, a supercomputer site not yet even started, promised investments that might never arrive and claims of job creation that have little or no connection to reality. The headline numbers are impressive. The underlying reality rather less so.

Jonathan Portes is professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London and a former senior civil servant

Two-thirds of voters want an elected second chamber. The government needs a radical legacy: it should use its rare majority for this

Goodbye (almost) to the hereditary peers, voted out on Tuesday night. But they didn’t go without a vicious tooth-and-nail fight. Labour should be making much more noise about how the Tories blackmailed and threatened to the very last to hold on to the hereditary peerage (almost all Tories), despite 66% of voters wanting a democratically elected second chamber.

Tories in the Lords, fully backed by Kemi Badenoch, did that despite the abolition pledged in Labour’s manifesto. They trashed the Salisbury convention, which expects the Lords to nod through anything in a government’s manifesto that has been approved in an election. But never mind conventions: the good chaps who are supposed to keep the unwritten constitution on its feet are no more. Instead of upholding convention, they vandalised it.

The war on Iran has put fossil-fuel prices centre stage, but don’t believe those who tout ‘maximising the North Sea’ as our salvation

These are burning, smoking lies. As oil and gas prices soar, thanks to the US and Israel’s attack on Iran, the UK’s opponents of climate policy become even shriller. Rightwing politicians, Tufton Street junktanks and the billionaire press tell us our energy security will be enhanced and our bills will fall if we abandon net zero policies, ditch renewables and reinvest in North Sea gas. These claims are not just a little bit wrong. They are the exact opposite of the truth.

Two things have indeed happened in recent years. The price of electricity has soared, contributing greatly to the cost of living, and the proportion of the electricity we receive from renewables has simultaneously boomed: from 3% in 2000 to 47% today. So, they claim, one has caused the other: more renewables means higher prices.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Actor’s remarks about two of the dramatic arts draws a delicious backlash. Plus, Crufts brings back happy memories

I was going to start with the Middle East, but let’s give ourselves a break and, instead, do the final of Crufts from last night. Crufts! As soothing as the Olympics but with lower stakes and cuter contestants. When I was in my first year of high school, my best friend and I used to “play Crufts” – look, it was a different time; at least we weren’t pretending to be on horseback – which entailed someone being the presenter and someone the dog lady, and when the presenter shrilled, “and it’s the Westie! The Westie has won Crufts 1990!” the dog lady had to take off around the living room, leash held high while the crowd went wild.

Why would Trump launch a foreign war when he is so domestically weak? Precisely because he is weak

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, members of the George W Bush administration presented the case for war exhaustively, repeatedly, and in public. The then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who played a major role in green-lighting waterboarding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, wrote an editorial in the New York Times claiming that Iraq was lying about its so-called “weapons of mass destruction”.

Meanwhile, Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, went to a meeting of the United Nations security council in New York. There, before America and the world, he held up a tiny vial of substance meant to represent anthrax, a chemical weapon that had terrorized the US in a series of mail attacks just over a year before; Powell claimed that Iraq had the weapon and was willing to use it. Bush himself routinely addressed the American people, making the case for war. They were all lying, it turned out, but the lie served a purpose: it was a concession to the idea that the American people would have a say in whether or not their country went to war.

Double standards in Europe and elsewhere are laid bare by the muted response to US and Israeli aggression and the killing of civilians

When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the international condemnation from Europe and elsewhere was loud and clear. Leaders did not expect legal threats to shift Vladimir Putin or end war crimes by his troops. But they understood the importance of naming what had happened as an illegal act of aggression, and of seeking to hold those responsible accountable.

The same countries have been strikingly muted since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. This too was an act of aggression. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez has been lonely in his forthright condemnation, though Norway and others also pointed to the breach of international law. Meanwhile, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, offered unreserved support and Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, declared that it was “not the moment to lecture our partners and allies”.

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Writers are voicing their anger at AI theft of their work with ‘Human Authored’ logos and an empty book. The government must listen

In a scene that might have come from a dystopian novel, books were being stamped with “Human Authored” logos at this week’s London Book Fair. The Society of Authors described its labelling scheme as “an important sticking plaster to protect and promote human creativity in lieu of AI labelled content in the marketplace”.

Visitors to the fair were also being given copies of Don’t Steal This Book, an anthology of about 10,000 writers including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Malorie Blackman, Jeanette Winterson and Richard Osman, in which the pages are completely blank. The back cover states: “The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies.” The message is clear: writers have had enough.

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Readers respond to Polly Toynbee’s article praising Louise Casey’s speech on social care funding

Louise Casey may have the power of words behind her (The blistering speech that tells me Britain’s social care deadlock can finally be broken, 10 March), but what she’s uncovered is a truth that local authorities have been voicing for years: the national care service will fail unless ministers stabilise the local systems that underpin it.

Key Cities (a cross-party network of UK local authorities) has long been calling for an urgent funding reset for the social care system. And while the Casey commission’s reforms are welcome, what’s still missing is the transition plan to enable councils to make this happen. A key part of the government’s NHS 10‑year plan must be a significant expansion of joint commissioning, across regional and national scales. This collaboration will finally end the costly push‑pull between those who fund and those who deliver care and, vitally, lay the foundations for effective transformation from local to national provision.

Prof Liv Nilsson Stutz and Prof Sarah Tarlow respond to an article on ethical questions about remains from overseas in UK museums

Regarding your article on “overseas” human remains in British museums (Vast scale of overseas human remains held in UK museums decried by MPs and experts, 7 March), while the public may be surprised, the issue of human remains in museums has been central to archaeologists, anthropologists and museum professionals for decades. The question for us is not whether it is acceptable that human remains can be found in “sacrilegious” conditions (clearly not), but how can we best care for human remains in museum collections? What we find both counterproductive and incorrect is the suggestion that collection managers and museums are unmoved by the ethical challenges posed by the remains in their care.

We recently concluded a large research project examining the ethical treatment of human remains in European institutions. Our survey clearly shows that collection managers, often with very scarce resources, are deeply concerned with the human remains in their care, and overwhelmingly demonstrate empathy and concern for them. Moreover, human remains from colonial contexts tend to receive more, not less, ethical attention than human remains from local or archaeological contexts.

Readers respond to Sam Dumitriu’s article on protecting Britain’s environment

In his article on nature protections (How can we really protect Britain’s environment?, 8 March), Sam Dumitriu of Britain Remade celebrates habitat recovery and calls for more focus on such efforts and less on legal protections for nature. But legal protections are the only thing protecting the habitats we have left.

Over the past 100 years, the amount of healthy natural habitat in England has shrunk: 99.7% of fens, 97% of species‑rich grasslands, 80% of lowland heathlands, up to 70% of ancient woodlands and up to 85% of saltmarshes have been lost.

Dave Lawley recalls his father’s involvement with the Argyle Library Egg

It was sad to read the saga of the Argyle Library Egg (My dad made the biggest jewelled egg in the world. The obsession would destroy his marriage, family and fortune, 7 March) and of the untimely death of Paul Kutchinsky. But repeated references to the egg that he made is akin to crediting Elon Musk with devising the Tesla car. There were six master craftsmen who worked 7,000 hours to create the egg. My father, Geoff Lawley, made all the intricate furniture mounted on the three 120-degree vistas inside the egg.

When the egg could not be sold, my father and the other craftsmen were made redundant by the De Vroomen Alexander workshop. He never worked again, but I’m pleased to report he is alive and well and celebrated his 95th birthday this week, although his memories of his part in the creation of this masterpiece are now fading.
Dave Lawley
Buckland, Hertfordshire

TSA employees have been working in US airports without pay since the partial shutdown began in February

A rising number of US airports are asking for donations to support employees affected by the partial government shutdown with airport security officials missing their first full paychecks Friday.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees have been working in airports around the US without pay since a shutdown began in February after Republicans and Democrats failed to reach a funding agreement. Democrats have since refused to support a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA’s parent agency, without first receiving guaranteed immigration enforcement reforms.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, who was born in Lebanon and became a naturalized US citizen, lost two brothers, a niece and a nephew in the airstrike

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The armed suspect who drove a vehicle into the hallway of a large Michigan synagogue complex that includes a school had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon just last week, an official said on Friday.

A potential mass-casualty event was averted when security guards already in place at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township on the outskirts of Detroit killed the driver before any harm could come to the synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at the early childhood center there on Thursday afternoon.

Education secretary claims lawyers’ criticisms of her department’s policy changes are motivated by profit

Lawyers have been accused of exploiting parents of children with special needs by the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, who said their criticisms of the government’s policy changes were motivated by profit.

Speaking at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) annual conference, Phillipson said the special educational needs overhaul outlined last month would “move the system away from the very adversarial system that we have, where parents have had to fight so hard for support”.

Feature generated editing suggestions inspired by well-known authors and academics, prompting a class-action lawsuit over the use of real names without consent

Grammarly has disabled a controversial AI feature that imitated the style of prominent writers and academics, and is facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit from those whose identities were used without consent.

The feature, called Expert Review, used generative AI to produce feedback supposedly inspired by writers including the novelist Stephen King, the astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the late scientist Carl Sagan.

Exclusive: Government’s work tsar warns that having young people not in work will create ‘long-term scarring effect’

Mayors across England should be given greater powers to tackle the youth unemployment crisis and avoid the “long-term scarring” of regions outside London, the government’s work tsar has said.

Alan Milburn, who is leading a major review into increasing inactivity among Britain’s young people, said the issue could not be solved by Whitehall alone.

With anger stoked by Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business, we look at what has happened to some of the main players

Water companies have been in the public eye for the wrong reasons again recently. South West Water was in the dock pleading guilty to supplying water unfit for human consumption, while the regulator fined South East Water £22.5m for repeated supply failures that affected more than 280,000 people over three years.

As the full scale of the sewage pollution scandal has been revealed to the public over the past six years, key figures working for the regulators and the privatised companies have been heavily criticised. Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business has focused attention on individuals at the heart of the scandal.

Changes to regulation to speed up development could also make it easier to build on sensitive nature sites

Ed Miliband has unveiled plans that could make it easier to build nuclear power plants closer to homes and on sensitive nature sites, as he attempts to speed up the development of energy infrastructure.

The energy secretary set out changes to nuclear regulation, to be carried out this year, which would mean a “win-win for building critical infrastructure while protecting nature and the environment”.

A project in London is helping hundreds of people, providing a genuine alternative to traditional treatments

“What you’ve got there from the sun on your face is a massive boost of serotonin!” says Alison Greenwood, founder of Dose of Nature, the charity successfully prescribing time outside as a treatment for mental health.

Greenwood is striding round Pensford Field, a tiny patch of wildness tucked behind houses in south-west London. The bright day is illuminating the early blackthorn blossom, gleaming off the pond where a heron watches tiny froglets and shadows of birch trees on a wood-chip path. “All these trees and plants are giving off phytoncides, and they’re good for your immune system too,” the former NHS psychologist says.

Exclusive: Campaigners call for government to introduce right-to-roam bill that allows people to walk around their local woodlands

Nearly three-quarters of England’s woods are off-limits to the public, buried government documents show.

The study by Forest Research, which is a government-funded quango, found that 73% of English woodland is publicly inaccessible.

This article was amended on 13 March 2026 to make clear that the inaccessible trees are recorded by the Woodland Trust, but not necessarily on their land.

Campaigners welcome Keir Starmer’s backing of ‘Philomena’s law’ to protect payments for those who accept compensation

Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes can continue to receive benefits in the UK after Downing Street agreed to protect payments.

Keir Starmer bowed to pressure from campaigners to back a bill known as Philomena’s law, which would ringfence survivors’ benefits if they accepted compensation from Dublin.

Synagogues and groups helping displaced people are coming up against hostility driven by conspiracy theories

A leading Jewish refugee advocate has vowed that solidarity work with asylum seekers will continue despite growing harassment from far-right activists targeting Jewish organisations supporting refugees.

Rabbi David Mason, the executive director of the UK Jewish refugee charity HIAS+JCORE, said groups such as theirs had increasingly faced antisemitic abuse and conspiracy theories from far-right activists, most notably online.

Witness statements by Laimonas Jakštys ‘were clearly prepared by others’, insolvency judge rules

A claimant was being fed answers through his smart glasses while giving evidence in the high court in London, a judge has found.

Laimonas Jakštys was “untruthful in denying his use of the smart glasses” and his witness statements “were clearly prepared by others”, the insolvency judge Raquel Agnello KC ruled.

Rudeness, social media posts and AI-generated complaints among issues harming staff wellbeing, union survey finds

Teachers are used to outbreaks of rudeness and defiance from their pupils, but are now saying parents are some of the worst offenders and affecting staff mental health, according to a headteachers’ union.

More than 90% of headteachers and other senior leaders said they had been on the receiving end of “challenging behaviour” from parents including rude or disrespectful responses, while 60% have had verbal abuse and threats within the past 12 months, according to the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).

Armed groups appear to have increased their firepower as they carry out raids deep in Hamas-controlled territory

Pro-Israel Palestinian militia have launched repeated raids, clandestine assassination and abduction operations deep inside parts of Gaza controlled by Hamas in recent months, with new operations launched recently despite the outbreak of conflict with Iran.

The militia, which are all based in eastern parts of Gaza that are under Israeli control after a ceasefire came into effect in October, have received significant logistic support from Israel since last year but appear to have increased their firepower, allowing new and more aggressive attacks in recent weeks.

Bolivian interior ministry says Sebastián Marset is being extradited to US, where he’s wanted for money laundering

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Sebastián Marset, an alleged Uruguayan drug trafficker and one of South America’s most wanted criminals, has been arrested in Bolivia.

Marset, 34, is accused of trafficking tonnes of cocaine from South America to Europe, and also of having ordered the murder of a Paraguayan prosecutor who was shot dead as he honeymooned on a Colombian beach in 2022.

Traditionally jovial affair poses potential debacle for Irish leader at odds with US over foreign policy, tax and immigration

For Ireland’s leaders, it has long been the highlight of the political calendar: a love-fest in Washington with hosts who sport shamrocks and toast Saint Patrick.

Irish delegations are traditionally received on Capitol Hill and at the White House in a blaze of goodwill and backslapping that has them wishing every day was 17 March.

Korey LaVergne, 37, of the Lafayette diocese, charged with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile

A Roman Catholic priest in the south-west Louisiana diocese where the US church’s clergy abuse scandal effectively started decades ago has been formally charged with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile.

A bill of information from the district attorney for Acadia parish charges 37-year-old Korey LaVergne with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile who was 15 at the time of the alleged offenses.

Austrian officials took action after airline ignored court order to pay €890 to unnamed women

Bailiffs have boarded a Ryanair aircraft after the airline refused to pay compensation to a passenger whose flight was delayed.

Austrian officials took action after the budget carrier ignored a court order to pay the unnamed woman €890 (£742) in legal costs and compensation for a delayed flight two years ago.

Monthly GDP figure comes as higher energy prices look likely to drive up inflation, dashing hopes of interest rate cut

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• Analysis: Bleak data shows UK plc in trouble well before Iran war

The UK economy unexpectedly flatlined in January, stoking concerns over growth amid the global energy price shock triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed 0% growth in gross domestic product (GDP), down from an increase of 0.1% in December, as the economy failed to recover from uncertainty surrounding the chancellor Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget.

Zero GDP growth in January will not help Rachel Reeves claim she has put UK in position to weather oil price storm

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• UK economy unexpectedly flatlined in January, ONS data shows

Even before Donald Trump’s Operation Epic Fury on Iran unleashed higher oil prices, threatening the outlook for growth and inflation, the UK economy was flatlining.

That’s the bleak message in the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which showed zero GDP growth in January.

University of Cambridge study finds AI-powered toys can misread emotions and respond inappropriately to children

It was all going well. Charlotte, five, was chatting with an AI soft toy called Gabbo at a London play centre about her family, her drawing of a heart to represent them and what makes her happy. She even offered a couple of kisses to the £80 toy with a face like a computer screen.

It was when she declared: “Gabbo, I love you”, that the fluent conversation came to an abrupt halt.

Actor who played farmhand Bert Fry in The Archers for 24 years, and appeared in early episodes of Emmerdale Farm

Eric Allan, who has died aged 85, was a prolific character actor best known for playing country folk, on radio as the gentle, poetry-loving farmhand Bert Fry in The Archers and on television as the blacksmith Frank Blakey in the early days of Emmerdale Farm (later retitled Emmerdale).

He previously had a starring role in Mike Leigh’s first feature film, Bleak Moments (1971), playing a socially awkward teacher, Peter, who is attracted to Sylvia, an office worker and the carer of her learning-disabled sister. In one scene he fulfilled Leigh’s ambition to portray “a couple kissing the way it happens and not the way people always kiss in movies”.

In the National Year of Reading, teachers say a culture of enthusiasm, from dress-up days, story time and book clubs, can reverse a national decline

Ajmal, 7, is an avid fan of the InvestiGators comic books. They feature two crime-busting alligator secret agents called Mango and Brash. “It’s really funny,” he says, then outlines the plot of his current favourite in exhaustive detail.

Wren, 8, is making her way through Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. “I didn’t read lots when I was in year 1,” she says, but now she’s loving chapter books. A beaming boy called Siva, 8, who’s enjoying one of Neill Cameron’s Donut Squad series, adds: “I like chapter books and I like comic books.”

Get ready for drama and glamour. Hollywood’s annual end-of-season party is on Sunday – here is your guide on where to watch and what to expect

The end is in sight: after months of campaigning, roundtables, red carpets and hot takes, it’s time for the big show. The Academy Awards are Hollywood’s end of season party, its senior prom and sports day all rolled into one, as the film world’s great and good stuff themselves into their tuxedos and/or fanciest frocks for a night of (we hope) entertaining mutual backslapping.

It’s fair to say that, so far, this awards season has been somewhat eventful, from the N-word fiasco at the UK’s normally sedate Baftas to the Timothée Chalamet Balletgate. Now the dust has settled, it looks like a straight fight between Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Thomas Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another for most of the big prizes. Anderson’s chunky auteur project looked for a while as though it might have the edge, but since nomination day, when Sinners got more nods than any other previous film, momentum has appeared to move decisively in its direction. We shall see.

Unfamiliar’s fictitious portrayal of hapless, rules-bound BND comes amid real-world calls to roll back postwar restraint

In the new Netflix series Unfamiliar, two spies working for Germany’s foreign intelligence agency are trying to gauge the intentions of a Russian agent who has recently arrived in Berlin. They come up with a creative solution: hacking into his taxi’s dashcam and seizing footage of the spook as he shakes hands with a well-known hitman.

The six-part show revels in such flagrant disregard for red tape – the kind of brazen derring-do that Germany’s notoriously rule-bound Federal Intelligence Service (BND) can only dream of in real life.

This three-part documentary about women who were exploited and duped into sex work is filled with astonishing detail – while being sensitive to its interviewees

You are invited to an exclusive yoga retreat at “the villa”. When you arrive, it’s a grim building in Romania in which women cavort in micro-bikinis and drink each other’s urine after a mass orgy. You are summoned to meet a spiritual guru in Paris. When you arrive, a woman wraps your sim card in tin foil and drives you to the suburbs. Later you are taken to a dingy flat where you are expected to have hours-long sex with an elderly man whom you must “transfigure” into a less undesirable entity.

If this were a dream, you’d probably wake up disturbed by the weirdness of your subconscious. But for a number of women, this surreally terrifying chain of events was no nightmare. While the finer details of Twisted Yoga’s tale may be intriguingly wild, the broader picture is infuriating and sad.

Despite being set in the 50s, the film masterfully reflects modern-day anxieties, disconnection and obsession with nostalgia, all while reigniting interest in an unsung sport

First things first: the best picture Oscar should go to Marty Supreme for the incredible job it has done in bringing new eyes to ping pong. A declining sport that has to be propped up by subsidy, this movie has single-handedly kept wiff waff alive even though no one cares about it any more. Kudos.

Next, a confession. I watched this film the day it came out and haven’t seen it since*. That day also happened to be my birthday, a big birthday, and I wasn’t entirely steady when I entered the cinema that evening. I have sketchy recollections of the middle section – the bit between the bath collapsing and the plane to Japan. I also didn’t really like it much; I found it inconsequential and a bit amoral and I instantly resolved to forget the words to 4 Raws Remix (sample lyric: “my life is an opera”) as a result.

Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
Joan Tower’s concerto for alto saxophone was brilliantly delivered by Steven Banks, part of a lively concert

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales is marking the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence in a series of concerts, and the UK premiere of Love Returns, by the 87-year-old American composer Joan Tower, was at the centre of this programme with Finnish conductor Tomas Djupsjöbacka.

Tower is best known for her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman and, in this work, a concerto for alto saxophone, she has realised an uncommonly appealing piece. Its title relates to Tower’s use of a melody from her piano piece, Love Letter, written in memory of her late husband, as the basis for a theme and variations structure, as different from conventional concerto form as can be, evolving and gradually accelerating in tempo over its whole span of six sections. The only departure from this is in the fifth of the six: a solo saxophone cadenza, brilliantly delivered by soloist Steven Banks. His sometimes edgy, sometimes honeyed tone was wonderfully expressive throughout, whirling virtuoso passagework countered by aching lyricism, with Djupsjöbacka ensuring that Tower’s orchestral textures offered the optimal balance to the solo lines.

Wigmore Hall, London
In her recital programme of Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern and Schubert, the Austrian pianist brought new insights and expressive playing

Eighty-year-old piano legend Elisabeth Leonskaja throws herself on to the piano stool and into the two tumultuous descending chromatic scales that open Beethoven’s Op 77 Fantasia in G minor in a single gesture. We have a long way to go in a recital programme that reads like an Mittel-European lucky dip – Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern, Schubert – and Leonskaja isn’t messing around.

Of course, there was nothing chance about the programming. The Austrian pianist’s expressive, emotional playing may grab the headlines, but it’s the unerring sense of underlying architecture that’s the thread through her long career. We heard that here, not just within each of the works, but in the shared foundations, and sometimes secret connecting passages, she revealed between them.

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Receiving its UK premiere in a programme with Britten and Walton, Nico Muhly’s trumpet concerto is inspired by the instrument’s biblical – sometimes apocalyptic – associations

Audiences can be fickle. The Hallé’s latest programme featured one of the world’s most celebrated trumpeters, a UK premiere from one of the world’s most high-profile living composers, and one of this country’s most successful young conductors – yet the Bridgewater Hall yawned with empty seats. Whatever the reasons, those who decided against booking missed an exhilarating evening.

It started politely enough, with the rollicking baroquery of Britten’s Courtly Dances from Gloriana. A set of Tudorbethan pastiches, these dances encourage orchestral good behaviour. But conductor Alpesh Chauhan also allowed glimpses of a harsher, modernist world outside in the viciously chirrupping winds and off-kilter repetitions of the central Morris Dance and the gleeful snaps and rattles of the closing Lavolta.

Tinariwen went from Saharan weddings to Grammy-winning acclaim – but violence has forced the desert blues masters into exile. Now, a new generation is stepping in to help

Since their formation in 1979, Tuareg guitar band Tinariwen have been constantly moving. Based variously in Mali, Libya and Algeria, the Grammy-winning group have used their desert blues music as a lament for a wandering refugee status that continues to this day.

Co-founder Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni says the group are currently in Algeria, after band members had to flee their homes in Mali in October 2024. “The Malian military and the Russian mercenary group Wagner have been burning villages, slaughtering animals and raping women,” he says. “No one is talking about what is happening – no politicians or journalists – so we have to let the world know through our music.”

A Tokyo high-flyer tries to befriend her favourite blogger in a novel that wears its aura of black comedy lightly, and its political statements more heavily

Asako Yuzuki’s international bestseller Butter was a taste sensation based on the true story of a Japanese female serial killer and gourmet chef who scammed and poisoned male victims with her culinary offerings. Attempting to get a scoop, a journalist bonds with the convicted prisoner by asking her for recipe tips, and gradually reassesses her own life and values as a result of this peculiar relationship. One review described the book as “the Martha Stewart Show meets The Silence of the Lambs”, but as well as the crime thriller/foodie mashup, a critique of capitalist society and deep-seated misogyny also emerged from the narrative. Yuzuki’s prose style, a mix of the banal and the profound, proved to be catnip for sales.

Hooked is the follow-up for English-language readers, though it was written earlier, in 2015, and like the previous novel is translated with crackling verve by Polly Barton. While a more introspective work, its high-wire plot and uneven trajectory make for a relentlessly dizzying experience. Fans of Butter might even view it as a trial run.

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan; The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan; Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison; Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman; Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan (Head of Zeus, £20)
Better known as a film-maker, Jordan has never stopped writing novels. His latest opens in 2084 in rural Ireland, where Christian Cartwright works for the Huxley Institute in the titular library, secretly misusing its memory storage technology to talk with his dead lover Isolde, restoring her to a semblance of digital life. The story moves between Christian’s experiences and similar events two centuries earlier in the life of his ancestor, Montagu Cartwright, the architect responsible for the Huxley Mansion and local church, who owned an ancient obsidian mirror, believed to have been the famous scrying glass of John Dee. Lyrically written, brimming with ideas, sometimes sinister and often humorous, it’s an enchanting read.

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (Tor, £22)
This debut novel is based on the historic Beast of Gévaudan, a wolf-like creature that terrorised a region of France between 1764 and 1767. But it is much more than another werewolf fantasy. The narrator, Sebastian Grave, seems immortal, writing a memoir in the 21st century about his adventures in the 1700s. Even then he was old, and shared his mind and body with a demon called Sarmodel, whose occult powers helped him to destroy a terrible beast. Twenty years later, the same area is once again ravaged by a bloodthirsty creature: since Sebastian is sent for by the man who had been his boon companion on the first hunt, and his lover, he hopes this means an end to their long estrangement. A wonderfully original, engrossing novel, combining history and fantasy, with a unique narrative voice and fascinating characters.

The Booker-shortlisted author on a momentous teenage encounter with The Bone People, getting a buzz from Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla, and trying to avoid The Lorax

My earliest reading memory
Memories from my childhood are opening up as I read to my own young children at the moment. Something in the pictures of Helen Cooper’s The Bear Under the Stairs or Lane Smith’s The Big Pets takes me back to being four years old and being read to.

My favourite book growing up
I love the Sabriel series by Garth Nix and first read it alongside my father and, later, my younger brother. It was truly a shared joy to be immersed in that world, for a book to give us a new connection to one another.

These essays from the Nobel literature winner open up her novels and offer beautiful imagery

When Korean novelist Han Kang won the Nobel prize in literature in 2024, the committee praised her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. In other words, Han’s work looks both out at the world – towards the 1980 Gwangju massacre fictionalised in her novel Human Acts –  and inward to the human experience, as with The Vegetarian’s portrait of one woman’s claustrophobic struggle.

Much of the appeal of Han’s work is in its mystery, the gaps she leaves for the reader to close. So it is tantalising to have this collection of prose, “a book of reflections” that might illuminate the darker corners of her work.

From war zones and socially virtuous farming to ever-changing boards and role-playing with 167 dice, here’s our pick of the most absorbing table-based entertainment

Video games have long been heavily inspired by physical games, from chess and Scrabble to Dungeons & Dragons. The deck-building collectible card game, for example, has become immensely popular in digital form, thanks to hits such as Slay the Spire, Marvel Snap and Balatro. Now, an increasing number of games are going in the opposite direction, trading pixels for pieces and screens for spinners. Here are six of our favourites.

Company of Heroes 2nd Edition (Bad Crow Games, £119.70)

Josh Wardle hopes his digital take on the cryptic crossword can be a gradual on-ramp crossing the cultural divide between Britain and the US

In 2021, Josh Wardle became a household name almost overnight. His digital game, Wordle, turned a simple guessing game into a global morning ritual: six guesses, one word, and a grid of coloured squares shared across social media feeds.

It became a cultural phenomenon; bought within months by the New York Times for a seven-figure sum.

Last year’s celebrated French hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is nominated in 12 categories this year, with Ghost of Yōtei, Dispatch, Death Stranding 2 and Indiana Jones also making strong showings

The 22nd Bafta games awards are coming up in April, and the 2026 nominations list is dominated by the impeccably stylish French breakout hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 which has 12 nominations, and has already won game of the year prizes at the UK’s Golden Joysticks last November, December’s Game awards in the US and February’s Dice awards in Las Vegas.

Dispatch, a game about a benched superhero roped into running a team of superpowered misfits at a call centre, has nine nominations. Among them is a best performer in a leading role nod for its star Aaron Paul, and one for Jeffrey Wright in a supporting role. Sony’s samurai epic Ghost of Yōtei came out with eight nominations, including best game and best performer in a leading role for Erika Ishii, who plays Atsu.

A lot is riding on the success of the latest multiplayer online shooter from Halo creator Bungie, a DayGlo spectacular that whisks players to a far-off planet mired in an endless battle for resources

In rare quiet moments playing Marathon, you may find yourself overcome by the iridiscently pretty planet Tau Ceti IV. This fictional world seems to radiate a chemical glow: powdery pink skies and lurid green vegetation fill the screen alongside supermassive architecture emblazoned with ultra-stylish, neon graphic design. Yet enjoy the scenery for a split second too long and you might catch a bullet, causing your character to bleed an icky blue substance. In such moments, the camera locks – meaning you must stare down at their unceremonious expiry. Marathon’s considerable beauty is matched only by its clinical brutality.

The road to Marathon’s release has been long and contentious. This extraction shooter – so-called because you must do as much shooting and looting as you can in a given level before making an escape – was first shown off in 2022 with a ravishing trailer (below). Among many startling images, it showed tiny robotic bugs, a little like silkworms, weaving a synthetic body into existence. The game, made by Halo and Destiny creator Bungie, looked weird in a way that blockbuster shooters rarely do, causing excitable stirrings among both shooter stalwarts and art-game aficionados.

Alexis Ralaivao’s provocative paintings, Hiroshige and Hokusai in perspective and a grand survey of flowers in fine art – all in your weekly dispatch

In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World
Lovely flower paintings to herald the spring, but all is not what it seems in this survey of how science, trade and tulip crazes helped shape the modern world.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 19 March to 16 August

(Knekelhuis)
Music boxes, miaows and strange melodies pepper the whimsical and charmingly lo-fi post-punk of Laurène Exposito and Théo Delaunay

The lyrics for Diagonale des Yeux’s debut album were written in the style of an exquisite corpse game, with members Laurène Exposito and Théo Delaunay taking it in turns to patch together ephemeral thoughts and themes in a mix of French, German, English and Spanish. The bizarre, multilingual stories that emerged match the French duo’s ramshackle, home-recorded sound, which features everything from toybox percussion to farmyard sound effects.

Their whimsical approach is anchored in the outsider pop and post-punk of 1980s Europe, which embraced discordant instrumentation and disaffected vocals. These 12 tracks are charmingly lo-fi, built around rudimentary synth and guitar melodies that often careen into strange directions. Acolytes jumps from frenetic punk jam into swooning breakdown and back again within just 90 seconds; Le Rayon Orchidée stumbles groggily to a halt like a malfunctioning music box. Both sing, adding to the theatrics: playing around with effects, they range from pitch-shifted, kitten-like miaows to macho groans.

Sadler’s Wells East, London
Russell Maliphant Dance Company’s arresting evening of three solos includes a spiritual offering performed by the choreographer himself

Watching Daniel Proietto dance Afterlight must be one of the best ways you could spend 15 minutes. This beautifully arresting piece of dance is the antidote to stimulation overload: one single smooth thread of movement finely spun across the spare piano chords of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes. As Proietto circles into deep backbends bathed in a pool of light, it’s like a 21st-century Dying Swan.

This evening of work by choreographer Russell Maliphant comprises only three solos. With Maliphant, nothing is in excess, everything is deliberate: every motion, every pause, every flicker of light; never more than is needed. Maliphant is a Royal Ballet-trained dancer who also studied martial arts and creates meditative, mesmeric works of dance and light in synthesis (lighting designers Michael Hulls and Panagiotis Tomaras are key parts of the creative process).

For fans, this programme comes with a wave of nostalgia. Afterlight was made for a Diaghilev-inspired evening at Sadler’s Wells in 2009. Another solo dates further back, Two, created in 1997 originally for Maliphant’s wife, Dana Fouras, here performed by Alina Cojocaru.

King’s Head theatre, London
Masculinity is not in a good way in this trio of short plays – the first of 10 presented in two venues – which deal in violence, misanthropy and murder

Neil LaBute does not appear to have much hope for humanity. It is not just that the US playwright’s characters in this trio of short plays are cruel and uncaring, but that their total lack of remorse flattens the interest of their stories. LaBute is pinned as a provocateur, but his trilogy doesn’t feel risky so much as misanthropically sour.

Best known for In the Company of Men and The Shape of Things, LaBute has 10 plays presented in three chapters in America the Beautiful, a split-venue UK premiere staged between the King’s Head and Greenwich theatre.

While Academy voters are supposed to keep their picks secret, another batch of anonymous ballots have leaked – giving us some insight on a hard-to-call race

• Oscars 2026: how to watch, nominations, what to read and predictions

It took a great deal of blood, sweat and tweets, but in 2016 the Academy finally took notice and started to embrace both diversity and modernity. The #OscarsSoWhite furore over two straight years of all-white nominees (Michael B Jordan’s Creed snub was in my opinion the cruelest) led to a dramatic shake-up and one that has continued ever since with more women, people of colour and international voters added to what had been an overwhelmingly homogenous base.

It has all led to an Oscars race that is increasingly harder to predict using old-fashioned thinking in ways that have become rather thrilling over time, the idea of an “Oscar movie” now far more slippery. Films such as Parasite, Anora, Moonlight, Anatomy of a Fall, Nomadland, Get Out and The Zone of Interest have now found their way into the major categories in past years, and this year’s crop showcases further progression – from foreign language picks to outsider narratives to pricklier characters than ever before.

Calls for Alexandra Căpitănescu’s Choke Me to be banned as campaigners say lyrics are ‘dangerous’ and ‘reckless’

Romania’s Eurovision entry Choke Me has been labelled “dangerous” and “reckless” for appearing to glamorise sexual strangulation, an unsafe practice that can lead to brain injury and death.

Campaigners against sexual violence said the entry, in which the words “choke me” are repeated 30 times during the three-minute song, was “playing fast and loose with young women’s lives”.

The actors and creator Steven Knight discuss the Shelbys’ big-screen swan song, how fans propelled the show to success, and that undercut

In June 2023, Barry Keoghan texted Cillian Murphy to wish him a happy Father’s Day. The pair had shared the screen six years before, in the film Dunkirk. “Cillian and Colin [Farrell] are people I admire greatly, and always keep in touch with,” says Keoghan. A reply from Murphy pinged back soon after: “Thank you. Would you like to play my son in Peaky Blinders the movie?”

Murphy remembers it a bit differently: that he was the one initiating contact (which is how Tim Roth and Rebecca Ferguson came on board). But he’s happy to let Keoghan’s version be recorded as fact.

İlker Çatak’s Yellow Letters and Emin Alper’s Salvation both won headline honours at the Berlin film festival and show dissenting cinema is thriving in the face of Erdoğan’s repression

‘I want calm in our building,” says the landlord of a couple who have been purged from their jobs in the film Yellow Letters, before asking them to leave the premises. “We’re all responsible for keeping the calm here”. Turkish cinema, however, has never been less inclined to keep the peace. İlker Çatak’s Yellow Letters and Emin Alper’s Salvation, two politically outspoken films that examine Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic regime, shared the top prizes at this year’s Berlinale: the Golden Bear for Çatak and Silver for Alper.

These striking works share a lot more. Both titles are co-produced by Liman, an indie film company from Turkey. Nadir Öperli, Salvation’s producer, co-produced Yellow Letters alongside Enis Köstepen who produced and co-wrote Çatak’s film. Both in their mid-40s, they are key figures in the new wave of Turkish cinema that has risen from the ashes of Yeşilçam, the national film industry body that collapsed in the late 1980s. Aesthetically bold yet accessible, and steeped in Turkey’s rich tradition of dissent, their projects expose Turkey at a precarious moment of political repression and economic hardship.

I was sick and tired of the world treating me like a victim, so I decided to flip the narrative. At 25, I tried out for my local volunteer fire academy

When I was six years old, my entire body went up in flames. It was 1992, in my home town of Hawthorne, Nevada. My older brothers were out playing and I went to call them for dinner. I followed their voices, just a few houses down from ours, to find them playing with a bowl of kerosene they’d found and a lighter. When they flicked the lighter, the bowl caught fire. My brother freaked out and kicked it over in a bid to contain the flames. They weren’t aware I was just inches away.

Soon I was submerged in flames. The pain was excruciating. I was tackled to the ground by a neighbour I’d never met, who covered me in a sleeping bag, extinguishing the flames. It haunts me to this day to think of what he would have seen: a six-year-old boy on fire outside his house.

From luxury Simba and Otty mattresses to brilliant budget buys, here’s what we recommend – and how to know if you’ve found a good deal

• The best mattresses for back pain
• The best mattress toppers, tested

A good mattress improves your sleep, say mattress makers – and they would, wouldn’t they? But they’re right. The older I get, the more I know it. When I was 20, I could sleep anywhere: a friend’s floor, a filthy sofa – even a phone box one night. These days, I won’t get a single one of 40 winks if I’m not lying on a decent mattress. Comfy but firm, cosy but breathable, and with loads of cool spots for my feet.

Today’s best mattresses promise all this and more. Gone are the days when your biggest decision was between a sprung double and a sprung king-size. Pocket springs are still around, but they face stiff – well, medium-firm – competition from hybrid mattresses that combine springs and memory foam to provide that all-important balance of comfort and support.

Best mattress overall:
Otty Original Hybrid

The sport is booming, but which racket will boost your game? Our expert enlisted the help of a padel coach to round up the aces

• The best fitness tech and gadgets

There are ludicrously fast-growing sports – and then there’s padel. According to the Lawn Tennis Association, only 15,000 British players picked up a padel racket in 2019 … but by the end of 2024, that figure was more than 400,000. Of those, about 399,000 are probably mispronouncing it: think pah-dell rather than paddle. But get used to strange looks if you insist on saying it like that.

People love padel because it’s so easy to play. If you can hit a ball with a racket, you can play – and there’s something joyous about whacking any ball over any net. You don’t need to be incredibly fit either: while better players will be constantly on the move, casual players can get away with something akin to walking pace.

Best padel racket overall:
Babolat Counter Origin

Planning a spring clean? From furniture to toothbrushes, books to old phones, here are the best ways to sell, donate and upcycle your unwanted things

• How to have a guilt-free wardrobe clearout

Forget blossom and bluebells, for many of us, the changing season means one thing: time for a spring clean. While you may have tackled the clothes you no longer want without sending them to landfill (if not, have a read of our guide to clearing out your clothes sustainably), other items in our homes are not always as straightforward.

According to the circular living organisation Wrap, 22m items of furniture are thrown away each year in the UK, and worldwide, we discard 2.6m tonnes of e-waste (electronic waste) annually. Many of these items could be resold, upcycled or recycled. The British Heart Foundation reports that 62% of us throw away homeware items that are in good enough condition to be donated to charity. Here are some of the best ways to reuse, recycle and upcycle your unwanted stuff.

Warmer days are coming, but it’s not bare-leg weather yet. Our fashion writer put 25 pairs through their paces so you can wear your spring dresses now – and stop wasting money on bad tights

• 50 women’s spring wardrobe updates for under £100

Tights are a staple in most women’s wardrobes, yet they’re also one of the most frequently discarded. It’s not unusual to leave the house wearing a new pair, only to realise by lunchtime that they’re laddered and ready for the bin.

Tights’ tendency to rip so easily comes down to the delicate nature of the fabric. Once damaged, it usually can’t be repaired, meaning most tights end up in landfill, where the nylon and elastane can take up to 200 years to decompose. An estimated 8bn pairs of tights are bought and discarded each year, according to the brand Swedish Stockings. To make matters worse, producing traditional nylon tights releases nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

Best black tights overall:
Snag 50 denier

Best shapewear tights:
Calzedonia Strong Sculpt tights

Now’s the perfect time to sort your outdoor space, and we’ve got the whole thing covered with our roundup of the best online nurseries. Plus, gardening pros reveal their go-to kit

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With the first signs of spring and that tantalising sense of sap rising, it’s time to venture into the garden. If it’s looking a mess, then don’t despair: these days the received wisdom is to let it stay scruffy over the winter, providing a much-needed habitat for all kinds of wildlife. So the good news is that you’ve been doing your bit, however unwittingly.

Now, though, it’s time to tidy up dead leaves, straggly growth and all those precocious weeds that are trying to get a head start. And if 2026 is the year that you want to up your gardening game – whether that’s planning a new border, or just plugging some gaps – you might be thinking about buying some new plants. We’re here to help.

The best LED face masks, tested

The best Mother’s Day gifts for mums, grannies, aunties and friends

‘I’m going to be very cautious about buying gnocchi from now on’: the best (and worst) supermarket gnocchi, tasted and rated

The best pillows for every type of sleeper, tested

A margarita, but made with smoky mezcal and the nutty backnotes of manzanilla

The impulse behind this was people’s enduring love of a margarita. We generally look to sherries or vermouths as key ingredients in our cocktails, but for this we wanted something that our guests would feel at ease with, while also being a little intrigued. Mezcal’s smoky notes work really well with the citrus notes in a classic margarita, so we opted for that as the base spirit, rather than tequila, while the addition of manzanilla lends the drink a lovely, complementary nuttiness.

Elinor Blair, bar manager, Bar Flor at Wildflowers, London SW1

Something for every mother: a posh bloody mary prawn brioche, crumbly lime and passion fruit curd sandwich biscuits, and an elegant elderflower lemon drizzle cake

Few things say “I love you” more than an unbidden cup of tea, but if you want to show true appreciation to the maternal figure in your life this Mother’s Day, there’s nothing better than a few indulgent snacks to go with it. I love the British tradition of afternoon tea, but I find finger sandwiches in hotel lobbies a little too fussy. I would much rather a fortifying savoury sandwich, a slab of good, old-fashioned cake and buttery biscuits that crumble into a million sweet crumbs.

Blonds really do have more fun – a special-occasion sweet treat that’s perfect for Mother’s Day

It’s often my own impatience that forces me to make no-bake cheesecakes over baked ones. They’re not at all as faffy, though it’s pretty hard to beat the lighter, silkier texture you get with a baked version plus the extra effort is worth it on a special occasion such as Mother’s Day. I’ve sweetened the filling for this one with caramelised white chocolate – it brings a beautiful, creamy, dulce de leche-type caramel flavour that even the biggest white chocolate haters should enjoy. If making your own caramelised white chocolate feels a step too far, however, just buy bars of blond chocolate instead. Top with gently poached rhubarb for a pop of colour and to cut through the richness.

René Redzepi also steps down from non-profit board after accusations of physical and psychological abuse

René Redzepi, the head chef and co-founder of Noma, has announced his resignation from his internationally acclaimed Copenhagen restaurant following allegations he physically abused his staff.

Redzepi had been facing protests in Los Angeles before a four-month pop-up that launched this week. His resignation on Wednesday comes after the New York Times detailed allegations of physical and psychological abuse, including claims that he “punched employees in the face, jabbed them with kitchen implements and slammed them against walls”.

When I was growing up, she rarely dispensed advice. Instead, I watched her closely, holding on to her quiet wisdom

I often picture my mother that wild, hot summer we moved to the house of my childhood. She is 5ft 3in in the long grass, wearing a vest and a pair of small cut-off shorts. She is digging borders and battling the sticky bobs. She is telling me about the patch of tiger lilies and the cooking-apple tree; about the light speckling through the unkempt branches. “Glory be to God for dappled things,” she says.

My mother has always been a rare combination of poetry and practicality – I know few others given to quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins while simultaneously hacking down nettles, or tiling walls while listening to John Betjeman records. She has a remarkable gift for transforming the ordinary: a bedroom skirting board would be decorated with a mouse and a mouse hole; a packed lunch’s sandwiches cut at unexpected angles; the most mundane shopping trip often accommodated a detour to the art shop to admire the bottles of Winsor & Newton inks.

Don’t treat it as a lofty quest, experts say. You can make each day feel more meaningful with humbler methods

What makes your life meaningful?

If you don’t really know, you’re far from alone. “We’re in the middle of a meaning crisis,” says Bill Burnett, executive director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University.

Ayrin and SJ met on a subreddit Ayrin created for people ‘dating’ AI companions. Over time, they started talking to AI less … and falling for each other

• Sign up for AI for the people, a six-week newsletter course, here

People are reporting “dating” artificially intelligent companions – but not every relationship lasts. What’s it like to fall in – and then out – of love with AI?

As part of our newsletter AI for the people, we spoke to Ayrin and SJ, who live thousands of miles apart and made the same decision: to leave their AI partners – for each other. Their names have been changed.

In her wisdom, Mum taught me to roll with the punches, and reassured me that she’d always be there – even when I staggered in much the worse for wear

What my mum taught me best is her expression: “Let’s play it by ear.” That might sound like an excuse for disorganisation and procrastination, but what she’s really saying at the end of every phone call is: “Life happens, plans change, and we’re always here for you – whatever time you decide to roll up.”

That’s her to a T – putting everyone else first. Even now, at 50, if I go out for a drink or to a gig with my brother and crash at my parents’ place, Mum will still stay up to be sure I’ve made it home safe.

Criminals using artificial intelligence tools to take over mobile, bank and online shopping accounts, says Cifas

Criminals are increasingly exploiting AI technology to take over people’s mobile, banking and online shopping accounts, the UK’s leading anti-fraud body has warned.

Last year, a record number of scams were reported to the national fraud database, fuelled by AI, which allows for large-scale deception on “industrialised” levels, according to Cifas, the fraud prevention organisation.

From railcards to route tweaks, here’s how to stop your daily train or car journey breaking the bank

• Revealed: new affordable commuter hotspots in Great Britain

• Homes for sale in new commuter hotspots in England – in pictures

For regular rail travellers, season tickets remain one of the biggest cost savers. A weekly, monthly or annual season ticket will work out much cheaper than paying daily fares, especially if you commute most days.

Faster laptop-level power, rapid wifi and 5G, plus much-improved multitasking make the middle iPad highly capable beyond just watching TV

The latest iPad Air is faster in almost all facets, packing not just a processor upgrade but improvements to most of the internal bits that make the tablet work, providing laptop-grade power in a skinny, adaptable touchscreen device.

The new iPad Air M4 costs from the same £599 (€649/$599/A$999) as the outgoing M3 model from last year and again comes in two sizes. One with an 11in screen, which is the best size for most people and a more expensive 13in screen version, which is ideal if you want a second TV or a laptop replacement.

Screen: 11in or 13in Liquid Retina display (264ppi)

Processor: Apple M4 (8-core CPU/9-core GPU)

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iPadOS 26.3

Camera: 12MP rear, 12MP centre stage

Connectivity: Wifi 7, 5G (eSim-only), Bluetooth 6, USB-C (USB3), Touch ID, Smart Connecter

Dimensions: 247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1mm or 280.6 x 214.9 x 6.1mm

Weight: 464g or 616g

Airline has refused refund after our flight was diverted because of bad weather and we were left on the plane for six hours

I was on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Dublin that took off during Storm Amy in October last year. It was unable to land at Dublin after two abortive attempts and was diverted to Manchester, where we sat on the plane for six hours, with no complimentary refreshments, before being unceremoniously ejected at nearly midnight.

We were told Ryanair staff would organise taxis and hotels, but no crew disembarked with us, and the terminal was deserted.

A psychiatric unit in Norway has been testing its built-in lighting on conditions such as psychosis and depression

At first glance, the psychiatric ward in Trondheim looks much like any other unit caring for patients in acute mental distress. But as evening falls, filters descend over the windows, and the lights shift to a soft amber glow. By removing blue wavelengths that interfere with the body’s internal clock, doctors here are testing an unusual idea: that the design of the ward itself could become a form of treatment.

Light is the main signal regulating the body’s circadian rhythm – the roughly 24-hour biological clock that governs sleep and many other bodily processes. Mounting evidence links circadian disruption to conditions including depression, cardiovascular disease and dementia, and disturbed sleep-wake cycles are a long-recognised feature of mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder.

That first cigarette can lead to a lifetime of dependency, as well as cancer, strokes, heart attacks … Here’s why smokers crave their nicotine hit – and how they can fight back

Smoking is bad for you and you shouldn’t do it. You know both of these things, of course: you’ve been told them in school, on TV and the radio, by doctors, and via the Cronenbergian body-horror of cigarette packets themselves. It’s worth reiterating, though, for two reasons: first, because the effects of having a quick puff outside the pub aren’t just a long-term gamble on your health but an immediate way of making your life worse; and second, because cigarettes remain wildly, impossibly addictive. Some research suggests that as many as two-thirds of people who try one cigarette become, at least temporarily, daily smokers, while a recent survey found that less than a fifth of UK smokers trying to quit actually managed it. Estimates for the average number of times people try to quit before actually managing it range from half a dozen to well over a hundred. So what confluence of factors actually makes cigarettes so difficult to give up – and what does that mean for a wannabe quitter?

“The first thing that happens when you smoke a cigarette is that you inhale a noxious mix of nicotine, various irritants and carcinogens into your lungs, ‘stunning’ your cilia – the tiny, hair-like projections that line your airways – and making them do their job less effectively,” says Lion Shahab, professor of health psychology at University College London. “The other thing that happens very, very quickly is that nicotine gets absorbed through the lungs into the alveoli, into the bloodstream, and then gets transferred into the brain. This is when you start to feel good, and also a key thing that keeps you addicted.”

After operating on victims of the Westminster attack in 2017 and visiting Ukraine and Gaza, Hettiaratchy has seen more horror than most can imagine – but he still believes in humanity, optimism and selflessness

On 22 March 2017, trauma surgeon Shehan Hettiaratchy was running end-of-term exams for his medical students when his phone buzzed. There had been a terror attack near the Houses of Parliament. A man had driven into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, then started stabbing people on the street. Within minutes, Hettiaratchy was in a car with a colleague and heading to St Mary’s hospital near Paddington, west London, where he is the lead surgeon. Victims injured in the attack were due to arrive.

Though Hettiaratchy and his team were used to treating patients with life-threatening injuries – on paper, he says, what they were facing was no different from “a busy Saturday night” – this felt different. There was “a collective fear that we’re under attack – there are people on the streets of London trying to kill our fellow Londoners”.

Since the US has no federal mandate for hearing aid coverage, I found myself in a quandary – I couldn’t communicate with the hearing or the deaf

At the end of my second American Sign Language (ASL) class, during which I had fingerspelled my name Deborah as “F-E-B-O-R-A-H”, I thought it prudent to type a question into my Notes app rather than trying to fingerspell it. “How do I sign, ‘I’m hearing impaired?’” I wrote, showing the typed sentence to my teacher, Courtney Rodriguez. Then I pointed to one of my hearing aids.

Sixty per cent of ASL, Courtney had just taught us, consists of non-manual markers, meaning most of the communication in ASL comes from facial expressions. Puffed cheeks, for example, indicates something big. Pursed lips means small. From the puffed cheeks and pained look on my deaf teacher’s face, I could sense I had hit a big nerve.

The first proper show since Valentino’s death is about the late designer, about beauty – and about Michele’s mother

Valentino Garavani wanted to make beautiful clothes for the women who could afford them. The perpetually tanned designer, whose vision of jet set glamour was matched only by his own yacht-and-pug lifestyle, died in January. So there was an obvious logic in taking the first proper catwalk show since his death off the fashion week schedule and back to Rome, where he lived, worked, and died. Milan and Paris may be the capitals of European style, but Rome looks better.

Garavani left his own brand almost 20 years ago. But his singular approach to beauty has not been without its obstacles for his most recent successor, Alessandro Michele, who took over the fashion house in 2024. “It’s a complicated DNA because beauty is always changing,” he said after the show, which took place in the 17th-century Palazzo Barberini. “This collection is about Valentino. It’s about beauty. But it’s [also] about the tension between me and the brand, a beauty I’m trying to translate.”

Online fashion commentator Lyas’s catwalk watch parties have gone from hastily assembled get-togethers to large-scale spectacles. But how easy is it to walk the line between outsider and insider?

It was the latest Paris fashion week, moments before the Tom Ford show was due to start, when fashion commentator Lyas slipped through the backstage entrance of the Théâtre du Châtelet and went upstairs to get mic’d up.

Having failed to get a ticket to the actual show, 27-year-old Lyas – whose real name is Elias Medini and who has almost 500,000 followers on Instagram – was preparing to livestream it on a big screen to 2,000 of his fellow rejects currently sitting in the auditorium. The night before he had shown Saint Laurent. In a few days he would do the same for Chanel. His aim, he says, is to democratise a famously closed-off industry, and open up the spectacle of fashion week to people who have no chance of ever going themselves.

Is the secret to a decent night’s kip a good sleep kit? Silky pyjamas, cosy socks and a dressing gown you won’t mind being seen in when putting the bins out will certainly help

Experts share tips on dressing as the most authentic version of yourself and avoiding the draw of the latest microtrends

How would you define your personal style? Is it cottagecore? Tomato girl? Whimsigoth? Quiet luxury? Maybe you don’t know what these terms mean (congratulations) and maybe you do (my condolences).

Like unwelcome nose hairs, new microtrends seem to sprout from the depths of social media every other week. In some ways, their pervasiveness has made style seem more accessible than ever. They reduce aesthetics to mathematical equations that you can solve by buying up a bunch of fast fashion. By the time these cheap, mass-produced items dissolve into microplastics – which they will, quickly – other aesthetic trends will have replaced them.

From the rugged north of Scotland to the glittering Aegean, our tipsters recommend islands for slowing down, lazing around and taking in nature
• Tell us about a spring activity or day out – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

A short ferry ride from Vigo (daily and overnight visitor numbers are capped) took us to the tiny archipelago of the Cíes Islands, a protected cluster of islands where seabirds rule and tiny beaches remain unspoilt. There are no cars on the island and only a few small restaurants dotted about. There is one campsite, with little else but the waves of the Atlantic to lull you to sleep. I felt as if I had won the lottery when we visited and knew this would be an experience not easily matched.
Helen E

Over the past 21 years, Village Ways has been leading low-impact tours of remote communities in the foothills of the Himalayas, supporting traditional ways of life and offering a rare glimpse of pristine landscapes and wildlife

Kathdhara village is a riot of colour as the early evening light turns the clouds the rosy hue of Himalayan salt. Bright red chillies lie drying in front of cornflower blue doorways. The pink of a sari and the orange of marigolds pop against a backdrop of verdant terraced fields, where cabbages grow in perfect rows like a picture from a Peter Rabbit book.

Just 22 families live in this remote hamlet in Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary, in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, north-east India. As we stroll with our guide, Deepak, taking in views of the layered hills and soaring, snow-capped Panchachuli peaks beyond, we are welcomed by villagers tending homes and gardens, strings of Diwali fairy lights adding extra sparkle to the scene.

I’m here to explore the foothills of the Himalayas and sample village life on a walking holiday with Village Ways, a pioneer of responsible, community-based tourism in India, which is celebrating its 21st anniversary this year. Dreamed up by Manisha and Himanshu Pande, the couple who run the Khali Estate, a small hotel in the reserve, the goal is to help address urban migration and support traditional rural life through low-impact tourism. Village Ways launched in 2005 with just five villages in the reserve, which guests hike between, and now more than 30 villages are involved in different parts of the country, from Madhya Pradesh to Kerala.

From jazz in Rotterdam and hip-hop in Paris to brass bands on the beach in Blackpool, the Guardian’s music editor chooses the best European festivals that can be reached by rail

Paris has some great festivals, such as Cercle (22-24 May), with dance music stars against the backdrop of planes and rockets in an outdoor aerospace museum, but the most accessible and democratic is Fête de la musique, which began in Paris in 1982 but is now popular across the country. It is a loose event encompassing dozens of free, semi-impromptu outdoor performances all over each host city, including plenty in Lille, which is even cheaper and quicker to get to than Paris on the Eurostar from London.

From packrafting in Luxembourg to cycling in Slovenia and eclipse-spotting in Spain, here are some great ways to get the kids into the wild

Several companies offer affordable multi-activity trips for families in Greece, but if you’re looking for something less frenetic, and a bit more challenging for teenagers, how about Greek island-hopping by sea kayak? Running on regular dates through the summer months, Trekking Hellas’s three-day, two‑night odysseys in the Ionian Sea start in Nidri, on Lefkada, and paddle on past Skorpios to Meganisi, camping out at Lakka before continuing the next day to Mikros Gialos for a second night under the stars before turning for home. There are stops for swimming, resting and barbecues along the way, and some thrilling cave detours, but with about six hours of paddling a day, the minimum age is 14.
From €352pp including kayaking and camping equipment, guiding and meals (trekking.gr)

From a grand country house built by a merchant seaman to a rustic railway worker’s cottage within historic city walls

The sight of blossom against a bright blue sky is one of the joys of spring, and the right tree will keep on giving year after year

Just shy of three years ago, I planted a cherry tree in my garden. It was the result of a deeply postpartum, vaguely chaotic research mission: to find a tree that was small yet substantial enough for my compact London garden. I wanted a pollution-hardy tree with flowers the right shade of pale pink that would bloom around the time of my newborn son’s vernal equinox birthday. Celebrating a baby’s new arrival with a tree or a shrub is one of the most romantic, and hopefully enduring, gifts one can give.

I chose a Prunus ‘Accolade’ (pictured above). It feels funny to associate that tree with the boisterous little boy I live with. But the blossom was undeniably magic. There was a window on our stairway that framed it perfectly. Every time we popped up or down we got a hit of candyfloss pink. Six months later, when we marked his half-years with the autumn equinox, the tree’s leaves would begin to turn golden.

Langstone, Hampshire: A glistening raft of jelly is a promising sign of a frog resurgence after newts dominated for a decade

I register the arrival of spring through small, dependable signs in my garden: queen buff-tailed bumblebees wobbling through purple crocuses in search of nectar; the pungent scent of wild garlic; bluetits prospecting the nest box below my bedroom window; and the wren’s cascading song heralding the start of the breeding season.

Frogspawn used to be one of these markers, but not for many years. Then, 10 days ago, glancing more from habit than expectation, I saw it – a glistening raft moored against the water forget-me-nots. After such a long absence, it felt quietly momentous.

Rotate your trainers, oil your leather footwear and use toe protectors – and whatever you do, don’t chuck your shoes in the washing machine

Now that trainers have supplanted smart shoes for so many occasions, and people replace them as often as fashion and budget allow, shoe maintenance is becoming a lost art. But if you love your shoes, it’s well worth pursuing. How can you keep your favourite pairs going for as long as possible? We asked cobblers for their dos and don’ts.

Less than a decade ago, Google employees scuttled any military use of its AI. Now Anthropic is fighting Trump officials not over if, but how

The standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon has forced the tech industry to once again grapple with the question of how its products are used for war – and what lines it will not cross. Amid Silicon Valley’s rightward shift under Donald Trump and the signing of lucrative defense contracts, big tech’s answer is looking very different than it did even less than a decade ago.

Anthropic’s feud with the Trump administration escalated three days ago as the AI firm sued the Department of Defense, claiming that the government’s decision to blacklist it from government work violated its first amendment rights. The company and the Pentagon have been locked in a months-long standoff, with Anthropic attempting to prohibit its AI model from being used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.

In China, one social media trend hangs on the idea that a life in the US is always one step from disaster, while another in the US has gen Z revelling in Chinese lifestyle hacks

Across two online worlds that are normally splintered, over the last few months there has been a mirroring of sorts. On TikTok and Instagram, young people are diving into the joys of Chinese culture – from drinking hot water to playing mahjong – all under the banner of “Chinamaxxing”. On the Chinese internet, however, the US is losing its decades-long grip on soft power, and is instead being replaced by a darker trend: the kill line.

The kill line is a dangerous place to be. In gaming, the term refers to the point at which a player’s strength is so depleted that one more blow could lead to total wipeout. In China, the term refers to the risks that come with daily life in the US.

Residents near the border with Lebanon hope Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and Iran will finally end years of conflict

On the main street of Metula on Thursday morning there was one thing everybody agreed on: the night had been “difficult”.

The sirens had fallen silent only a few hours earlier when military authorities were sure there would be no further waves of attacks with rockets and drones on targets across northern Israel launched by Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant Islamist movement, and its sponsor, Iran.

We’d like to hear from people in the UK who have seen the cost of goods or services increase or experienced delays, cancellations or other disruptions

The conflict in the Middle East, disruption to global shipping routes and rising oil prices are beginning to have knock-on effects on supply chains and energy markets around the world.

Petrol prices have begun to rise, while turbulence in financial markets has pushed up mortgage rates. Higher transport and supply costs can also feed through into the price of goods and services.

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

As the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate, we would like to hear how people living, working or travelling in the region have been affected.

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

We would like to hear your experiences as a practitioner or someone who has tried this procedure

At the end of February, a report by the Women and Equalities Committee recommend that “high harm” procedures such as the liquid Brazilian butt lift (BBL) should be banned.

The government is “not moving quickly enough”, MPs said, stressing the need for a licensing system for non-surgical cosmetic procedures, noting that a “lack of timely action is fostering complacency in self-regulation” within the industry.

The report warned of a wild west in which procedures have reportedly taken place in Airbnbs, hotel rooms, garden sheds and public toilets. Individuals without any formal training can carry out potentially harmful interventions, placing the public at risk, MPs concluded.

Share your experiences as a practitioner or someone who has tried this procedure.

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

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

Maritime traffic through the strait, the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, has effectively been closed since strikes on Iran began. Some vessels have been diverted or delayed and ports and shipping companies are dealing with heightened security concerns and uncertainty.

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Crisis in the Middle East, Ramadan in Gaza, the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics and Paris fashion week – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists