After my parents split up, my older sister and I lived with our dad while the youngest stayed with our mum. It became an experiment in nature v nurture - and had a profound effect on our relationships

There is a paradox at the heart of sibling relationships and it is this: that children raised in the same family are for ever bound by shared experiences, yet have different childhoods. The paradox is partly (and most commonly) explained by the topic of birth order theory – the idea that your position in the family shapes your personality and potential. Oldest children, for example, are born into an adult world, full of grown-up language and behaviour. Governed by anxious, inexperienced but still fresh parents, they bask in the glow of undivided attention. Their infancy will be markedly different to that of their little brother or sister who will be born into a family. These second-born children have a toddler as their role model/ally/nemesis, no new clothes, and they also have to share their parents’ attention. These parents are a little less fresh and little more savvy. By the time any subsequent children come along, parents are at their most relaxed and most exhausted. Youngest children get away with a lot (spoken as a true middle sibling).

But neat as birth order theory may be, our place in the family roll call cannot fully account for the ways in which we grow up “together apart” as siblings. To do that, we must examine – and in some cases untangle – all of the knottiness underpinning our accepted roles as “responsible firstborns”, “problematic middles” or “spoilt babies”. We need to look at the home environment, the state of the parents’ relationship, their careers, the pressures placed on each child on account of gender or aptitude, the expectations in families where a child has additional needs – or indeed, in the worst-case scenario, where a child may not have survived – before we can begin to comprehend our brother’s or sister’s version of events. Difficulties typically arise because of the slipperiness of memory, often shot through with profound emotions – making it hard to pull together a coherent and agreed-upon story of our pasts.

Even as the first western journalist to interview Ayatollah Khomeini, I had no inkling of what was to come. Perhaps we should have learned from history

Watching Iran in flames, I can’t help wondering whether history is coming a grotesque full circle 47 years after the fall of the US-backed Pahlavi dynasty, or whether western powers are simply repeating past errors by attempting violent regime change from outside.

As a young reporter, I had a ringside seat for part of the 1979 revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed an austere Islamic republic headed by a Shia Muslim cleric with the titles of “leader of the revolution” and “guardian jurist” (vali-e faqih).

Firing Peter Mandelson, convening with Marco Rubio – then handling the fallout of conflict in the Middle East… it’s been a busy time for the secretary of state, and our writer has had a ringside seat

Before Yvette Cooper joins me in a plush side room at the Foreign Office, an aide comes in and draws the heavy curtains. Outside is Horse Guards Parade. I can see a strip of Downing Street, a patch of the No 10 garden, daffodils in bloom. I say that it’s a shame to block the light on such a beautiful spring afternoon. The aide coughs, embarrassed, and explains that it’s actually for security.

So that people can’t see in?

Cern researchers are testing traps capable of moving antimatter, which explodes into energy as soon as it comes into contact with regular matter

When the truck pulls away from the building at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, all eyes will be on its precious cargo, a one-tonne device containing some of the most exotic material on Earth.

The 20-minute test run around the campus, pencilled in for later this month, will mark the world’s first attempt to transport antimatter, a substance so delicate that when it meets normal matter, both are consumed in a burst of pure energy.

Datacentre investment boom is one of the biggest infrastructure gambles of this era, and Britain may be uniquely exposed

Stargate was to be the world’s biggest AI investment: a $500bn infrastructure project to “secure American leadership in AI”. Never shy of hyperbole, its key backer, the ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, promised “massive economic benefit for the entire world” with facilities to help people “use AI to elevate humanity”.

Now, OpenAI appears to be dropping out of a part of the deal – the expansion of a flagship datacentre stretching across a swathe of land in Abilene, Texas, which has become one of the most visible manifestations of a frenzy of investment in the chips and power plants required to build and run AI. There has been a breakdown in negotiations over project financing, as well as the timeline of when the expanded capacity might come online.

The author on failing at atheism, why she lost her place at Cambridge, and bringing back Hilary Mantel

Born in Essex, Sarah Perry, 46, studied English at Anglia Polytechnic University and worked as a civil servant before taking a PhD in creative writing and the gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was published in 2014. Her second, The Essex Serpent, was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016, a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and adapted for television. Her other works include Melmoth and Enlightenment, the latter of which was longlisted for the Booker prize, and Death of an Ordinary Man, which won the 2025 Nero Non-Fiction Book award. She is married and lives in Norfolk.

What is your greatest fear?
Not being loved.

Oil loading operations reportedly suspended at key UAE port after intercepted drone sparks fire

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

Iranian media has reported there is no damage to its oil infrastructure on Kharg Island, following US attacks that Trump claimed had “obliterated” military targets on the Island.

Iran’s armed forces have threatened to destroy US-linked oil infrastructure if its own energy facilities are hit. Kharg Island serves as the export terminal for 90% of Iran’s oil shipments.

Mood among some in Iran shifts from hope of being rescued to dismay at destruction of infrastructure, culture and lives

After years of arrests, disappearances and mass killings of protesters, the hatred in Iran from some quarters for the hardline, oppressive governing regime had boiled into such a desperate rage that many believed Donald Trump’s promise that the US would “come to their rescue”.

Now, after a fortnight of war, with US and Israeli airstrikes killing hundreds as they hit residential blocks, shops, fuel depots and even a school, the mood is changing.

Refusal to kowtow to US president has won public backing – and left Badenoch and Farage playing catch-up

It is not often that Keir Starmer’s allies believe he has Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the run – but on Iran, they think he is on the right side of history and public opinion.

“It could be the making of him,” said Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, who was first out of the blocks to say she thought Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran were illegal. “You’ve not had a British prime minister say no to an American president since Vietnam. This is a big deal.”

Communities displaced and destroyed while death toll rises faster than during any previous war in Lebanon

For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday’s iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, was special.

For a week, they had eaten to the sounds of bombs in their home in Arab Salim. Hamdan eventually decided to leave for Al-Nimiriya, the sleepy town where she had grown up. Surrounded by her parents and siblings in the family home, she hoped they could finally enjoy the festive mood of Ramadan.

Erratic rhetoric, shifting goals and mixed signals leave allies, foes and voters unsure what the president wants from war

“Mr President,” said a reporter. “You’ve said the war is ‘very complete’ but your defence secretary says, ‘This is just the beginning’. So which is it?” Donald Trump’s eyes darted left and right then down. “Well, I think you could say both,” he parried.

The confusing answer at a press conference in Doral, Florida this week did not befit a wartime leader armed with stirring rhetoric and a lucid plan. But it was entirely on brand for the 47th US president. The tumultuous style that Trump brings to election campaigns, dealing with Congress and global trade relations has now been imported to the theatre of war.

Officials sent out repayment letters to about 1,400 people relying on discredited guidance that had been scrapped

Unpaid carers have been issued with demands to repay thousands of pounds for allegedly breaking benefit rules even though officials knew the decisions were based on unlawful and discredited policy guidance.

About 1,400 carers are understood to have been sent letters by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in January asking them to repay sums relating to breaches of carer’s allowance earnings rules that had been scrapped four months previously.

Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds data from flagship medical research leaked dozens of times

Confidential health data has been exposed online on dozens of occasions, a Guardian investigation can reveal, raising questions about the safeguarding of patient records by one of the UK’s flagship medical research projects.

UK Biobank, which holds the medical records of 500,000 British volunteers, is one of the world’s most comprehensive stores of health information and is credited with driving breakthroughs in cancer, dementia and diabetes research. But scientists approved to access Biobank’s sensitive data appear to have sometimes been cavalier about its security.

High-net-worth residents of UAE heading to Ireland and France to wait out missile attacks before tax year ends

Wealthy UK nationals fleeing war in the Gulf are seeking sanctuary in countries such as Ireland and France to avoid hefty tax bills back home.

In the face of possible demands from HM Revenue and Customs, high-net-worth individuals who had been living in the United Arab Emirates and neighbouring countries are hoping to wait out the missile and drone attacks elsewhere rather than return to the UK.

Prices of crucial farming inputs such as fuel and fertiliser skyrocketed just before the spring planting season

The small green oilseed rape plants are buffeted by the wind on a blustery spring day. Sown last August, the crop is starting to shoot up and should be ready for harvesting in July, when it can be turned into cooking oil or biofuel.

The peaceful 230-hectare (568-acre) arable farm owned by James Cox on the edge of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire is a world away from the conflict in the Middle East. However, the consequences of US and Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s retaliation – are already rippling out to affect Cox and Britain’s other food producers.

Greenhouse gases dropped just 0.1% last year as environment minister criticises lack of improvement

Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have again missed targets set by the Climate Protection Act and barely fell at all in 2025.

Emissions decreased by just 0.1% last year compared to the previous year, according to data from the German Environment Agency.

Mayor condemns ‘cowardly act’ on south side of city that caused limited damage and no reported injuries

An explosion has damaged a Jewish school in Amsterdam in what the city’s mayor described as “a deliberate attack against the Jewish community”.

The explosion early on Saturday in a residential neighbourhood on the south side of the city caused limited damage, the mayor, Femke Halsema, said in a press release, as police and firefighters arrived at the scene quickly.

Demonstrators on Sunday will be arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action or intifada chants, says Met

Police have warned demonstrators that they will be arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action or intifada chants at a protest on Sunday.

About 12,000 people are expected to take part in the annual al-Quds Day rally in London, an international demonstration of support for Palestinian rights. The event takes its name from the Arabic version of Jerusalem and was created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Carmaker’s decision to drop NissanConnect EV app on relatively recent cars fuels warnings from experts

Owners of some Nissan Leaf electric vehicles are angry after the carmaker announced it would shut down an app that lets them remotely control battery charging and other functions.

Drivers of Leaf cars made before May 2019 and the e-NV200 van (produced until 2022) have been told that the NissanConnect EV app linked to their vehicles will “cease operation” from 30 March. This means they will lose remote services, including turning on the heating, and some map features.

Former Oldham East and Saddleworth MP remained in Westminster for New Labour’s entire 13 years in power

The former Labour MP minister Phil Woolas has died of brain cancer, his family and close friends have announced.

Woolas, 66, was elected to parliament to represent Oldham East and Saddleworth as part of Labour’s landslide victory in the 1997 general election. He remained in Westminster for New Labour’s entire 13-year stretch in power.

Sprawling compound, including mock-up banks and police offices, uncovered by Thai military during border clashes

It is as if you have walked into a branch of one of Vietnam’s banks. A row of customer service desks, divided by plastic screens, with landline phones, promotional leaflets and staff business cards. A seated waiting area and a private meeting room. All of it features the OCB bank’s logo, or its trademark green colour.

This is not a genuine bank branch, however. It’s one of various “mock up” rooms inside a sprawling compound on the Thai-Cambodian border, where criminal groups are accused of using elaborate and industrial-scale fraud schemes to trick victims into handing over money.

With membership soaring, the Green party is grappling with logistics, culture shifts and a flood of new activists

It is, as one Green activist put it, a never-ending series of “constantly good problems to have”. But how does a party adapt to the sudden trebling of its membership? And when a majority of people in an organisation are new, is it even the same thing anymore?

The basic facts alone are startling. Before Zack Polanski took over as leader last September, the Greens in England and Wales had around 66,000 members. They are now at 215,000, and still rising at speed.

Features woven into the fabric of platforms have been central to landmark social media harm case in US. How do they work?

It was as “easy as ABC”, claimed the lawyer prosecuting a landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google which heard closing arguments this week. The defendants were guilty, said Mark Lanier, of “addicting the brains of children”. Not true, replied the tech companies. Meta insisted providing young people with a “safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work”.

Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and constantly chirruping alerts woven into the fabric of online platforms were central to the six-week trial in Los Angeles, which has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s. But how do these features work and what are their consequences? Are they creating addicts rather than users or are they just giving consumers more of what they want?

Ukrainian-Russian photojournalist Arthur Bondar has amassed a huge collection of pictures from often unknown photographers

After pulling on white cotton gloves, Arthur Bondar carefully takes a handful of 4cm by 9cm negatives from an old cigarette box and holds them up to the light of his study window. Inverted images of a woman on a horse, a group of women tending cabbages in a field, laughing figures at the seaside, a woman posing as a military ship sails by, hover in front of him, almost ghostlike. Although they are tiny, he is able to make out key details such as the insignia on a uniform, or the name of a ship, that trigger his curiosity and give him a starting point for his research.

Arthur Bondar examines some of his negatives. Photograph: Oksana Yushko/The Guardian

Which supermarket Spanish omelette seems as if it’s served plump from the pan, and which is a soggy flop?

• The best supermarket free-range eggs

My second ever chef job was at Glastonbury in 1997, which is now famous as the “Year of the Mud”. We sliced hundreds of kilos of potatoes, peeled onions until we cried, and cracked and whisked untold dozens of eggs. Back then, you couldn’t buy tortilla in a shop, only from a tapas restaurant, but these days there’s an incredible selection in many supermarkets. I normally eat shop-bought tortilla straight from the packet, but during this taste test, I discovered just how nice it is when reheated in a pan. I tried all these tortillas hot and cold, and even the lower-scoring ones were quite enjoyable when eaten warm.

I judged them on taste and texture, which varied from a dense, firmly set egg to the soft and squidgy centre I love. All were relatively minimally processed, but all lacked transparency regarding the origin of their ingredients – though, thankfully, many were made with free-range eggs, which scored them an extra star. Some were made in the UK and others in Spain, but that didn’t always equate to a better product. While supermarket tortilla can’t quite replicate the fresh-from-the-pan experience, the best come surprisingly close.

Excitement in Killarney will reach fever pitch on Sunday, when the actor is hotly tipped to become the first Irish woman to win best actress

If Jessie Buckley wins the Oscar for best actress on Sunday night, County Kerry will need no further proof of a cherished truism: to be born in this corner of Ireland really is the greatest gift that God can bestow. The award would be for Buckley’s performance in Hamnet, but for Killarney, her home town in the county nicknamed the Kingdom, credit will stretch back to her childhood, when she acted in local plays.

“Hollywood here we come!” proclaimed the newspaper Kerry’s Eye, underlining a sense that Buckley’s path to Hollywood for the 98th Academy Awards has been a collective journey propelled by her talent, determination and roots.

Current and ex-staff claim demise of London restaurant can be traced back to the departure of chef’s right-hand man

Dinner by Heston was once one of the world’s most revered restaurants, known for its decadent and unusual dishes such as the “meat fruit”.

But Heston Blumenthal announced this week that he is winding down operations at the two Michelin-star restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge, London, saying it was because the tenancy had “finished”.

Her research popularised the idea of the wood wide web, but the scientific backlash was brutal. As the author of The Mother Tree returns to the forest in a new book, she discusses her battle to reimagine our relationship with nature

In 2018, the ecologist and writer Suzanne Simard was conducting research in the forested Caribou Mountains of western Canada when a thunderstorm rolled in. She was with her two teenage daughters and her close friend and colleague, Jean Roach. They saw flashes of lightning, heard a loud rumble and then they smelled smoke. They were forced to run the half kilometre back to Simard’s truck as the trees behind them caught alight and the air grew thick. As they ran, animals burst out of the forest: a deer, a rabbit, a grey wolf. They reached the truck with no time to spare, all four of them covered in soot and dirt. Overhead, helicopters began circling the orange-black air, dropping water on the flames below.

Wildfires have become an ever bigger problem in Canada. The 2018 wildfires were the biggest in British Columbia’s history, but this record was broken in 2021, and then again in 2023, when fires consumed an area three times the size of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and the smoke travelled as far as New York City. The cause is not only global heating, which has brought hotter, dryer summers, but also the changing makeup of the forest. When logging companies clear forest, they replant it with fast-growing conifer species, but these trees are much more flammable than Canada’s diverse, native forest.

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

Six Nations updates from Dublin; kick-off 2.10pm GMT
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Ireland: Jamie Osborne; Rob Baloucoune, Garry Ringrose, Stuart McCloskey, Tommy O’Brien; Jack Crowley, Jamison Gibson-Park; Tom O’Toole, Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong; Joe McCarthy, Tadhg Beirne; Jack Conan, Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris (capt).

Replacements: Rónan Kelleher, Michael Milne, Finlay Bealham, Darragh Murray, Nick Timoney, Craig Casey, Ciarán Frawley, Bundee Aki

• Italian takes advantage of Mercedes teammate’s technical trouble

• Lewis Hamilton third in qualifying and sprint race for Ferrari

There was an inescapable sense of joy and satisfaction for Kimi Antonelli as he became the youngest pole sitter in Formula One history. Tellingly, there was an air of vindication from his Mercedes principal, Toto Wolff, as the teenage protege came good when it mattered by claiming the top spot for the Chinese Grand Prix.

The Italian took pole by beating his older and more experienced teammate George Russell into second, albeit after the Briton endured a technical problem in Q3 and had time to set only one quick lap.

Natalia Arroyo, Marisa Ewers and Maggie Murphy are savouring their autonomy in the club’s major roles and are aiming high amid tough challenges

“After you,” Marisa Ewers says, as we walk through a doorway on the ground floor of Aston Villa Women’s fresh-looking dedicated women’s facilities at the club’s Bodymoor Heath training ground. It soon becomes clear that Ewers is hoping to open doors figuratively as well as literally by inspiring other female players to follow her and embark on a career in the boardroom.

The former midfielder ended her career at Villa in 2022 and has progressed to become the club’s director of women’s football. As they prepare to dedicate Sunday’s home league game against Manchester City to International Women’s Day, it is noticeable that Ewers is alongside several other women in senior leadership roles at Villa. The club welcomed Maggie Murphy as managing director earlier this season and in Ewers, Murphy and the head coach, Natalia Arroyo, Villa are a rarity in having those three specific roles all filled by women, even before mentioning executive board members such as the chief people officer, Lisa Bailey, the head of football administration, Sharon Barnhurst, and the general counsel, Victoria Wilkes.

The revamped Hundred will bring us the awkward spectacle of men in chinos struggling to keep the lid on a Pandora’s box of political volatility

When the England and Wales Cricket Board promised, in a glaze of beaming positivity, that the Hundred would bring a new audience, new energy, a shiny new online presence, it probably didn’t have in mind a barrage of hate-threats and terrorism accusations against the 34-year-old female owner of what was previously the Northern Superchargers.

But hey, it’s all energy. It’s eyeballs. Can we clip some of this up? Just blue-skying here, but what are the hate-threat merch opportunities? Is there any way, and there are no bad ideas in this room, we can leverage some really strong online nuclear war chat?

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Michael Carrick is also talking positively before Manchester United take on Aston Villa at Old Trafford tomorrow. He’s not letting his first defeat as United’s interim manager get him down.

“What’s going to be the reaction?” asked Carrick. “What’s the emotions in the group? What’s the motivation for the next game? And driving that forward.

It was a big shock when Keith Burkinshaw’s talented side went down – but will the current team avoid that fate?

Glenn Hoddle was in tears in the dressing room. Others sat in disbelief, wondering what the future held.

Tottenham were the first English club in the 20th century to win the league and FA Cup Double, in 1961, and the first to lift a European trophy when they won the Cup Winners’ Cup two years later. They were renowned for playing attractive football and the goals of Jimmy Greaves.

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.”

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.

• 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.

He is stuck in a quagmire. His goals are elusive. His bombing does not force a surrender. He has no exit strategy. Good morning, Vietnam

Donald Trump is lost in his fog of war. He compounds confusion with improvised fabrications as his naive expectation of a lightning victory has been sunk in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, he felt certain, would easily follow the “perfect scenario” of Venezuela, accede to naming a leader who would instantly do his bidding, and there would be no disruption of the oil markets – “a strong game plan”, stated Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, who defends each of his changeable excuses with equal ferocity.

There may be few if any facts underlying the delusions upon which Trump constructs his vapid explanations and evanescent strategies. The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel hopelessly sensible people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness.

For these art forms to thrive, they need to attract young people. The Oscar contender’s comments are just the conversation starter they need

• Rebecca Humphries is an actor and author

Timothée Chalamet thinks no one cares about opera or ballet. He told Matthew McConaughey so. Also, the entire world.

“I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more’,” Chalamet said in a recorded conversation for Variety.

Rebecca Humphries is an actor and author

A smashed window here, a provocative sticker there. In an age when protest feels increasingly meaningless, it’s no wonder that acts of petty symbolism are on the rise

First comes the hummus: studded with chickpeas, anointed with a little reservoir of olive oil, greedily smeared up with hunks of pitta bread and messy fingers. Then the tabbouleh, then some homemade falafels, and then the lentil soup, and already the senses are overloaded, plates and bowls spilling off the edge of the table. But there shall be no reprieve, for the mains are coming.

Maqluba for the meat-eaters – traditional Palestinian upside-down chicken and rice, decorated with lightly browned cauliflower florets, topped with razor-fine almonds. Stuffed aubergine and courgette for the veggies. Before you ask: yes, there will be dessert, and it’s baklava and homemade chocolate. Home time, and slowly you winch yourself upright, stagger sideways towards the door and vow never to do something so gluttonous and decadent ever again.

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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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

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

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”.

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

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.

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

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

A stellar delight from Steve Carell, as he helps his daughter navigate marital difficulties, while the Cabaret star and Hollywood legend opens up about the price of fame and childhood trauma. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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

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

Glen Powell indulges in some murder most profitable, and the influential rap collective arrive in the UK complete with a clutch of peerless classics

How to Make a Killing
Out now
Loosely inspired by the much-loved Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, here is a dark comedy that sees Glen Powell play an upwardly mobile schemer who isn’t afraid to murder his way to his inheritance. Directed by John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal).

Reminders of Him
Out now
Maika Monroe (It Follows) stars as a woman who goes to prison following a car accident in which her boyfriend (Rudy Pankow) is killed. On release, she finds herself drawn to a handsome local bar owner (Tyriq Withers). Romance based on the bestselling Colleen Hoover novel.

Everybody to Kenmure Street
Out now
When the Home Office sent vehicles to Glasgow’s Kenmure Street to potentially deport some residents, everyone from the activist known as Van Man to a local imam to various schoolchildren spontaneously blocked the street. This documentary, winner of a special jury award at Sundance, tells the story of eight extraordinary hours in UK protest history.

A Pale View of Hills
Out now
Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in the UK, explores her memories of summer in 1950s Nagasaki, alongside an attempt to reckon with the more recent suicide of her daughter. Adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel, starring Suzu Hirose, Fumi Nikaido and Yō Yoshida, and written and directed by Kei Ishikawa. Catherine Bray

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.

Exclusive: Lough Neagh, which supplies drinking water for 40% of NI, contains genes resistant to last-resort antibiotics

Genes capable of creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs have been detected in the UK’s largest lake, which supplies drinking water to about 40% of Northern Ireland.

Testing of water from Lough Neagh, which has a surface area 26 times bigger than Windermere, found genes resistant to a wide range of antibiotics, including carbapenems – drugs reserved for life-threatening infections when all other treatments have failed.

First major study on ‘AI psychosis’ suggests chatbots can encourage delusions among vulnerable people

A new scientific review raises concerns about how chatbots powered by artificial intelligence may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people.

A summary of existing evidence on artificial intelligence-induced psychosis was published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry, highlighting how chatbots can encourage delusional thinking – though possibly only in people who are already vulnerable to psychotic symptoms. The authors advocate for clinical testing of AI chatbots in conjunction with trained mental health professionals.

Missiles were launched from an area near the capital Pyongyang, according to South Korea’s military

North Korea fired more than 10 ballistic missiles into the sea on Saturday, South Korea’s military said, as the US and South Korean forces conducted military drills and Donald Trump renewed overtures towards Pyongyang for dialogue.

Japan’s coast guard said it had detected what could be a ballistic missile that fell into the sea. It appeared to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, public broadcaster NHK said, citing the military.

As the sun sets on a tax-free scheme used by nearly a million people, there are calls for a better deal on retirement saving

Emilia Farr opened a lifetime Isa when the accounts went on sale in 2017 as a way to save for her retirement. But having built up a pot of £76,000, the self-employed IT worker was shocked to hear that the accounts are being pensioned off.

“For me, [opening one] was a no-brainer. I treat it like a pension, and the government bonus is a real incentive to save,” says Farr, 40, who lives in London.

She adds: “If you’re employed, even if you do nothing, you have a pension – but it’s very different for the self-employed.”

Lifetime Isas have proved to be a hit with millennials and generation Z: the number of “live” accounts has jumped by 45% in two years and now stands at almost a million (an estimated 964,000 in 2023-24, according to the most recent official data).

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.

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: 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.

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”.

US test of 120 umbilical blood cord samples identified 42 Pfas compounds, which do not naturally break down

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New peer-reviewed research shows fetuses likely have much higher levels of Pfas “forever chemicals” in their blood than previously thought.

Testing of umbilical cord blood typically looks for a small number of common Pfas compounds, like Pfoa and Pfos. However, thousands of Pfas exist, and a new Mount Sinai study tested 120 umbilical blood cord samples that were previously found to contain up to four compounds.

US workers are finding it difficult to afford basic necessities as the president claims ‘the economy is roaring back’

US workers are still struggling with the cost of living despite Donald Trump’s campaign promises to fix the US affordability crisis.

The Guardian spoke to workers as an exclusive poll showed cross-party concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of the US economy.

Dr Brian Elmore witnessed a public health crisis unfold at the border near El Paso. He reflects on why it was like a ‘perverse Groundhog Day’

In late spring 2024, Dr Brian Elmore was working out of a mobile clinic, providing medical treatment to migrants in Ciudad Juárez, just south of the US-Mexico border wall. One of his patients, a Venezuelan man with a fractured arm and a detached left chest from his sternum and clavicle, told Elmore that Mexican immigration officials broke his arm when he first got to town, and that rubber bullets fired by Texas national guardsmen had caused his chest injuries.

The man somehow had managed to fashion a shoddily made splint for his arm, but his chest would require surgery. When an ambulance arrived, the criminal group that controlled the riverine area refused to let him leave. The Texas guardsmen looked on from the US side of the river. “It was heartbreaking,” Elmore said of the spectacle.

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

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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.

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

• Business live – latest updates

• 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

• Business live – latest updates

• 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.

This yawnsome homespun six-parter from the creator of Yellowstone aims to teach the womenfolk a lesson by dropping them into untamed, plain-talkin’ Montana. It’s full of terrible jokes and cloying aphorisms

Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) is laughing at trout. “Hah-hah,” says the rugged retiree, up to his buttocks in river as a Yellowstone cutthroat sploshes obligingly into his net. “I’m keepin’ it, and you’re cookin’ it,” he barks at his younger brother, Paul, who would rather Preston release the hapless vertebrate back into the wild but nevertheless respects his sibling’s need to connect with his inner Cro-Magnon (“the love of fishin’ goes back to early man …”).

Paul is played by Matthew Fox, who was once in Lost but is now marooned in a drama that requires him to say things like: “I make a memory a day, brother … sometimes more.” Despite this, Paul, too, is laughing. “Heh,” he says, as he and Preston splash and frolic in their matching utility slacks. “Heheheh.”

Films about prison abuse, ovarian cancer, women’s rights in Iran and more have impressed the Academy, but what real-world impact have they had?

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

The year 2025 was a banner one for nonfiction film, with several extraordinary documentaries that provided windows to unfathomable acts of courage, heart and vulnerability. Less so, unfortunately, for nonfiction cinema, it’s a difficult time for the production of politically challenging documentaries, whether in and about the US or abroad, and many projects struggled to find distribution after torturous paths to completion. (Cutting Through Rocks, the first Iranian documentary ever nominated for an Oscar, still has no streaming distribution and is only available in select theaters.)

Nevertheless, five incredible films make up the Oscars documentary slate this year – films that demonstrate how individual actions can challenge immense systems of oppression; how national agendas trickle into the idiosyncratic, marginal every day; and how one can find transcendence in the smallest of daily miracles. The very existence of these films feels improbable: one is composed almost entirely of police footage acquired through legal action. Another was filmed on contraband cell phones within Alabama state prisons. There’s a remarkably candid approach to processing terminal illness; an unprecedented record of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda efforts, filmed by a schoolteacher in rural Russia and smuggled out of the country; and an extremely rare glimpse into small-scale women’s rights efforts in north-west Iran.

Bob Mortimer returns to defend his crown, as comedians make screamingly funny TV in an attempt to make each other laugh for a prize

I was once shouted at for smiling during a breakup. I had to switch careers when I realised my favourite thing about being an actor was making other actors corpse on stage. Situations in which humour is forbidden are hilarious to me. It’s the pressure-cooker analogy, I suppose. “I’m the kinda guy who laughs at a funeral,’” sang Barenaked Ladies, and I’ve never related more to a lyric. Which makes the return of Last One Laughing UK (Thursday, Prime Video) very relevant to my interests.

The show is an elimination competition in which 10 comedians are locked in a softly furnished room for six hours, trying to make each other laugh while keeping a straight face themselves. Laughter and smiling are punishable by yellow cards, then red cards, leading to dismissal. It’s hosted by Jimmy Carr – who has such an odd laugh, it’s possible the entire format was crowdfunded by offended gulls who didn’t want to hear it any more.

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.

How Queen Victoria’s personal life nearly brought down the monarchy. Plus, pugil-sticks at the ready as the Gladiators semi finals begin. Here’s what to watch this evening

9.15pm, Channel 5
“Even Queen Victoria’s own children start to call him mother’s lover.” A juicy history documentary that investigates the sovereign’s much rumoured romance with her servant John Brown. Experts including archaeologist Raksha Dave and Dr Amy Boyington share everything they know about the scandal that could have seen the end of the monarchy. Hollie Richardson

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.

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.

Dragged along by my dad to see Pentangle, I heard something ancient that kickstarted my obsession with this country’s folklore – an enchanted, subversive and strange version of a Britain where I could truly belong

I was 15 years old; at that fumbling, awkward age on the precipice of adulthood, desperately trying to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, and where I belonged in the world. I grew up feeling perpetually “in-between”: half-white, half-black; half-British, half-Caribbean, and on the faultline between what sometimes felt like two worlds at war.

One night in 2008 my dad took me to see Pentangle play at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. The band had risen to fame in the late 60s, known for fusing British folk melodies with blues and jazz syncopation. I must have stood out in the crowd – among the bearded men in sandals and socks – with my big hoop earrings and scraped-back hair. And although I dragged my feet on the way in, when I stepped out of the concert later that auspicious summer’s evening, I was changed for ever.

A Ford Cortina the colour of the sky against brightly coloured houses in Cape Town was a gift to the Scottish photographer

Edinburgh native Robby Ogilvie was visiting South Africa when he took this image. “I’d spent the first week in and around Kruger national park, photographing the culture, landscapes and wildlife, before moving on to Cape Town.”

Along with a friend from South Africa, Ogilvie visited the neighbourhood of Bo-Kaap. “The area is known for its brightly coloured houses, but it also carries a rich and complex history. There was a real feeling of community, and many of the houses felt like open studios; artists had taken over spaces to exhibit and sell their work.”

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.

Where will the best picture gong go? Has Chalamet blown his chances? And will anyone speak out on Iran?

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Happy Oscars Eve eve to you all. The film industry’s glitziest night takes place on Sunday, at an ungodly hour for those of us covering it from the other side of the Atlantic. Coffee will be essential for anyone staying up, as will the Guardian’s annual liveblog, covering every last minute of the ceremony as well as its red carpet run-up. Head over to the homepage on Sunday evening for that, plus news and commentary on the night’s events.

There’s plenty to read before that too: our annual Oscar hustings, making the case for each of this year’s best picture nominees (I sided with Sentimental Value); an interview with Academy top dog Bill Kramer; a piece on the increasingly toxic discourse around many of this year’s nominees; and Guardian film editor Catherine Shoard’s reader Q&A on this year’s race and the state of film in general. There will be plenty more to come over the weekend too.

Robin, 68, a retired property manager, meets Jacquie, 69, a retired secretary

What were you hoping for?
To meet someone with a nice personality and similar interests.

Divers come for one of the world’s most significant marine reserves, but there’s plenty to do on land too – from hiking trails and beaches to seafood tavernas

Greek divers surface around me shouting about “megalo” groupers. I’m surrounded by enormous grins above the water and big fish below. A happy place to be. A bunch of us, divers and snorkellers, are hanging around Agios Petros reef off the island of Alonissos, and there’s a reason the groupers are big here. The National Marine Park of Alonissos Northern Sporades, established in 1992, is Greece’s largest working marine protected area (MPA) – two bigger MPAs have just been created, but are not yet operational. The protective measures appear to be working, judging by the size, abundance and diversity of marine life – glassy waters teeming with colourful fish and precious shells make swimming here an absolute dream.

For those who like to go deeper, Alonissos is the site of Greece’s first underwater archaeological park and museum – the impressive Peristera wreck, with its giant cargo of amphorae preserved from the 5th century BC. This one is for certified divers descending with accredited local dive centres. I’m with one of those schools, Ikion Diving, but today we’re doing something more accessible. We’re in the village of Steni Vala for the launch of a citizen science project, the Highly Protected Mediterranean Initiative (much more fun than it sounds). Ikion is partnering with the universities of Thessaloniki and the Aegean to offer free snorkelling and diving trips logging native and alien species. I’m worried about my fish ID skills, but the effervescent biologist Katerina Konsta runs a great briefing and we’re given dive slates with images to mark (imparting a childish delight at playing scientist).

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

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

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

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”.

She wasn’t a great one for dispensing wisdom. Instead, she fought for me whenever I most needed it

Mum was a brilliant non-giver of advice. Now Dad, he had his pearls. “If you do something, do it with a good heart.” It sounded platitudinous to me, but he had a point. And then there was his favourite: “If you think something bad about someone, say it up there [pointing to his head] but not out loud.” Dad was a good man, but that infuriated me.

Mum played a bigger part in my life. She often had to fight like crazy for me – to keep me in school when I’d told the dinner lady to fuck off at the age of five (no, I don’t know where it came from); to take on the doctors who labelled me a malingerer when I had encephalitis; to allow me back into mainstream education after I’d had three years off, and finally to persuade the University of Leeds to let me in after I’d messed up my A-levels.

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?”

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.

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”.

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”.

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)

Ruabon grouse moor, Wrexham: Mating season is upon us. Will I be lucky enough to spot a courtship lek?

I’m shooting grouse on the moor today. There are two kinds here: red grouse, a gamebird reared and shot in its thousands; and its larger, rarer cousin, the black grouse. The latter is supposedly spared by a ban that remains voluntary despite catastrophic declines in recent decades. As it’s not shooting season, which runs from August to mid-December, I shoulder a camera, not a shotgun, hoping to snap one of these increasingly rare birds.

Springtime is when black grouse start to breed, so I arrive before dawn, which is when they lek – a courtship dance where they fan their tails, peck and scuffle with their rivals.

Every night I wake up to find the dog staring at me, but tonight a terrifying noise disturbs us all …

In the middle of the night I feel the warm breath of a creature stirring my hair. It’s too dark to see anything, but I know from experience that the dog is standing by the bed, chin resting on the mattress next to my head, gently exhaling into my face.

The point is this: to wake me up without waking my wife.

From Glengarry Glen Ross and Lawrence of Arabia to Liz Truss and Lord Salisbury, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which dictator spent his last days in power playing Candy Crush?
2 What children’s TV production company was founded by Anne Wood?
3 Rome’s Ludus Magnus was a training school for whom?
4 Where were Liz Truss and Lord Salisbury both appointed prime minister?
5 Referring to 17 metals, what does REE stand for?
6 In the title of an 1886 novel, what is David Balfour’s predicament?
7 Which fish has the scientific name Electrophorus electricus?
8 What sport is the subject of the documentary Love Means Zero?
What links:
9 Booker T & the MG’s; Manfred Mann; Ben Folds Five?
10 Genoese; Lepers; Millionaires; Rat Stabbers; Red Devils?
11 Moonfleet; Three Men in a Boat; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Consider Phlebas?
12 Glengarry Glen Ross; Lawrence of Arabia; The Great Escape; 12 Angry Men?
13 Arbuthnot Latham; Coutts; C Hoare; Weatherbys?
14 Horn; Agulhas; Leeuwin; South East; Whiore?
15 Nicholas Breakspear and Robert Prevost?

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

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