Keir Starmer says it is ‘staggering’ and ‘unforgivable’ that he was not told Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting before taking up the role of US ambassador. The comments follow a Guardian investigation that exclusively revealed Mandelson had initially been denied clearance after a background check by security officials, but that the decision was overruled by the Foreign Office. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s head of investigations, Paul Lewis – watch on YouTube

When it comes to theology, Donald Trump’s vice-president clearly knows best. Are we about to see an American break with Rome?

The battle to be the absolute worst Trump henchman can feel so closely fought. But in the end, it’s always JD Vance, isn’t it? You would say Stephen Miller, but Miller’s too hidden to qualify as a front-of-house henchman among the US president’s court of grotesques. Stephen’s clearly been judged so wantonly horrifying that the administration must keep him out of public view. If you enter the store, Miller is the only-for-the-initiated entity alluded to in a whisper by the oleaginous sales assistant. “We do have something in the back – off-the-books, as it were – if sir is after something a little more … specialist.”

But Vance? Vance besets us like the 11th plague – the plague of media appearances. For the next South Park season, I hope the creators give their brilliantly ghastly little vice-president avatar a papal mitre to wear. After all, here we have a man whose pick-me book on his journey to Catholicism has yet to even be published. That tome currently lies in the rectum of HarperCollins, ready to be excreted in June – yet inevitably, Vance is already giving menacing doctrinal advice to the pope as part of the multi-theatre fallout of Operation Epic Facepalm.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

The storied actor has spent years campaigning to protect green spaces. She invites us into her Surrey sanctuary, where each tree represents a lost loved one

A visit to Dame Judi Dench’s garden in Surrey is bittersweet. The 2.4-hectare (six-acre) plot contains enough trees – about 100 – to count as an arboretum. Among them is a carpet of wild garlic and a wildlife pond from which rabbits like to sip. But each of these trees represents someone she knew who has died. As her eyesight has nearly gone, Dench, who features in the latest episode of the Royal Horticulture Society’s new podcast, Roots, navigates her way around the garden via memories and smell. Here, she shares her stories of the garden and discusses the items that mean the most to her.

Resurgence of 90s minimalism has caused an explosion in the popularity of denim, but can a pair ever be worth £800?

Denim mania is surging across the fashion spectrum. At one end is the luxury brand Alaia with an Aegean blue, comfortable yet flattering £800 pair. At the other is JW Anderson’s collaboration with the high street brand Uniqlo and a £34.90 price tag. Both are proving wildly popular.

Alaia’s line has only just launched, so there are no sales figures yet, but demand for its Japanese denim is such that customers are advised to reserve certain styles in store or call ahead before visiting. At Uniqlo, the straight cut are said to be the most popular, on the front row of the most recent fashion weeks, and routinely sell out online. Blame the resurgence of 90s minimalism.

As the president’s second term has wrought new horrors, comedians reflect on whether humor can still ‘deflate the strongman’s image’

During Donald Trump’s first term, as his lies distorted reality and gaslighted Americans, Stephen Colbert said his goal was to remind his audience: “Hey, you’re not crazy.”

But watching political comedy during Trump’s second term – be it a deranged Saturday Night Live impression of a cabinet member, or a rapid-fire late-night monologue full of ICE jokes – it’s hard not to wonder: are we placating ourselves from the enormity of Trump-induced horror?

Trump administration has riled head of Catholic church over use of theology to justify conflict in Iran

The contrast in experience between the two men disagreeing over war and theology was striking.

On the one side was Pope Leo XIV, the first North American to head the Catholic church and the first cleric from the Augustinian order, who this week visited the modern Algerian city where Saint Augustine once lived. For Leo, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine’s ideas, it was the culmination of a lifelong intellectual interest.

As revelations mount and accusations fly, prime minister prepares for MPs’ anger and Olly Robbins’ testimony early next week

Keir Starmer’s claim he was “staggered” not to have been told of Peter Mandelson’s vetting failure has provoked incredulity across Westminster and accusations that he sacked a senior civil servant to save his premiership.

Senior government figures said the prime minister faced “judgment day” next week when Olly Robbins, who is understood to be furious at being forced to quit the Foreign Office, is expected to appear before a powerful committee of MPs.

How did the PM’s chosen US ambassador fail security vetting but still get approved, what exactly did he know, and who is to blame?

Downing Street has tried to do a lot of explaining, as has Keir Starmer himself. But there are still plenty of things we do not know about how Peter Mandelson failed security vetting, and what the prime minister did or did not know about it.

Almost all officials working in Foreign Office HQ undergo process before gaining access to top secret material

After Keir Starmer announced Peter Mandelson as his pick to be ambassador to the US in December 2024, officials in the Foreign Office contacted him to organise the security vetting clearance process.

As with almost all of the 8,000 officials working in the Foreign Office’s Whitehall headquarters, Mandelson required a level of clearance known as developed vetting(DV). This is necessary for individuals in roles that require frequent and uncontrolled access to material marked top secret.

Keir Starmer says it is ‘staggering’ and ‘unforgivable’ that he was not told Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting before taking up the role of US ambassador. The comments follow a Guardian investigation that exclusively revealed Mandelson had initially been denied clearance after a background check by security officials, but that the decision was overruled by the Foreign Office. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian's head of investigations, Paul Lewis

Iran’s parliamentary speaker says strait could close again if US blockade continues, but Trump says it will remain in place until ‘transaction’ with Tehran is complete

Iran’s foreign minister has said that the strait of Hormuz is now fully open to commercial vessels, reinforcing hopes for an eventual end to the war in the Middle East and sending oil prices tumbling despite analysts’ warnings that there will be no immediate widespread resumption of passage through the vital waterway.

In a barrage of social media posts, Donald Trump claimed on Friday that Iran had agreed never to close the strategic waterway again, hailing “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!”

Paul Quinn convicted in light of DNA evidence from 2003 attack that led to notorious miscarriage of justice

• The rape case that became one of Britain’s greatest miscarriages of justice

A man who evaded justice for more than two decades has been found guilty of the “horrific” 2003 rape for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongfully jailed for 17 years.

Paul Quinn, 52, was convicted by a jury on Friday after a fresh forensic analysis found traces of his DNA on the victim.

Experts say Labour’s ‘halfway house’ approach risks losing support from progressives and ‘red wall’ voters

Support for rejoining the EU rather than simply rejoining the single market is growing among British voters, with more than 80% of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green party supporters favouring this option, according to research mapping voter attitudes 10 years after the Brexit referendum.

Labour’s “muted” approach to the issue means it risks losing support among progressive voters and in “red wall” constituencies, experts have said as part of research by Best for Britain.

Arrest by Dubai police comes as Irish authorities issue warrant related to alleged organised crime offences

Daniel Kinahan, alleged to be the leader of the Kinahan organised crime group, has been arrested in the United Arab Emirates.

Irish police said they were aware of the arrest of a man in his late 40s, on foot of an arrest warrant issued by the Irish courts in relation to alleged serious organised crime offences.

Building of artillery positions and roads suggest fresh military efforts likely from the north, says Ukrainian president. What we know on day 1,514

Infrastructure preparations suggest Russia is again trying to involve its ally Belarus in the war, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday. The Ukrainian president made his remarks, posted on Telegram, in response to what he said was an intelligence report issued by Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi. “According to intelligence, road construction in areas leading to Ukraine and the establishment of artillery positions are going on in the Belarusian border area,” Zelenskyy wrote. “We believe that Russia will once again try to involve Belarus in its war.” He said Ukraine had issued instructions to warn the Belarusian leadership of “Ukraine’s readiness to defend its land and independence”. Zelenskyy also said intelligence showed that Russia was “attempting ... to carry out a regrouping of forces - most likely to compensate for a shortage of personnel”. “In this regard, it becomes more evident why the armed forces increased their activity on the territory of Belarus.” He did not provide further evidence. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, allowed his territory to be used for part of Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s wartime experience in the Black Sea could help to ensure freedom of navigation in the strait of Hormuz. “Decisions made regarding Hormuz now will determine how other aggressive actors perceive the possibility of creating problems in other straits and on other fronts,” he said in remarks to a video conference attended by 50 countries and chaired by France and Britain. “We need to be as specific and clear as possible so that in six months we don’t find ourselves in the same situation as in Gaza, where much still needs to be done.” Zelenskyy, whose remarks appeared on the Telegram messaging app, said that in the course of four years of war with Russia, Ukraine had “already carried out a very similar mission in the Black Sea”. He said: “Russia also attempted to blockade our sea and we have experience in escorting merchant vessels, demining, defending against air attacks and the overall coordination of such operations.” Ukraine, he said, had sent specialists throughout the Middle East to help countries benefit from its experience in defending against Russian drones, many designed in Iran. “We can also contribute to maritime security,” Zelenskyy said. Ukraine has clinched security cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and says it is in talks with Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.

A fire broke out at an oil terminal in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region, prompting a large firefighting operation, the region’s emergency operational headquarters said early on Saturday. Officials said 224 firefighters and 56 vehicles were battling the blaze at the terminal in Tikhoretsk, north-east of the region’s main town, Krasnodar. No casualties were reported and there was no indication as to what may have caused the fire. Syskyi said this week that Ukrainian forces were seeking to reduce Russia’s offensive capabilities by keeping up a high pace of strikes on military, defence-industrial and other facilities. In March, Ukraine struck 76 such targets including 15 facilities in the oil-refining industry, the top commander said.

Serbia’s Russian-owned NIS oil company has secured a 60-day sanctions waiver from the US. The waiver will allow NIS, which operates Serbia’s only oil refinery, to continue importing crude oil until the sale of the Russian majority stake to Hungary’s MOL. The previous one-month waiver expired on Friday. The US imposed sanctions on NIS in October last year as part of wider measures targeting Russia’s energy sector over the war in Ukraine, and demanded divestment of Gazprom Neft and Gazprom, its Russian majority owners. Serbian energy minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic called the latest move a sign of progress in the negotiations on the change of ownership between the Hungarian MOL and the Russian Gazprom Neft.

Homelessness charity distances itself after Osbourne says she plans to attend far-right ‘unite the kingdom’ march

The homelessness charity Centrepoint has said it will cut ties with its celebrity ambassador Sharon Osbourne after she expressed support for a far-right rally being organised by Tommy Robinson.

The charity, of which the Prince of Wales is patron, has been moved to distance itself from comments made by Osbourne. The TV personality indicated this week that she would be attending an event organised in London by Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Data shows only a third of concluded claims in scheme for those wrongly classed as illegal migrants resulted in pay outs

The Home Office has refused to pay compensation for more than half the claims made by victims of the Windrush scandal, new analysis by the UK’s public spending watchdog has shown.

The National Audit Office’s (NAO) “government’s compensation and financial recognition schemes report” found that by January 2026, 11,475 claims had been received to the scheme. It was set up in 2019 to compensate mainly Black Britons whose lives were upended by being wrongly classed as illegal migrants by the Home Office.

Simon Patterson will tell his story outside a courtroom for first time, in agreed book deal with publication details yet to be released

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Simon Patterson, the estranged husband of Australian mushroom murderer Erin Patterson, will tell his story for the first time outside a courtroom, in a memoir with a publishing deal already agreed.

Patterson has so far remained publicly silent about last year’s trial, which captured global attention and spawned multiple documentaries and podcasts.

Exclusive: The club, owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, received the grant without a contract or final state aid assessment in place

Wrexham AFC, the football club part-owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, was given a £3.8m government grant without a contract or a finished state aid assessment in place, raising questions over whether the award was lawful.

The club has received £18m in taxpayer-funded grants – far more than any other in the UK – to help to redevelop its stadium, the Racecourse Ground (Y Cae Ras in Welsh).

As Orbán is rejected, there is cautious optimism new leader can restore ties – but issues such as EU accession loom large

Like many Ukrainians, Oleh Kupchak was delighted when Péter Magyar won Hungary’s election last weekend, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power. “We were euphoric. Everyone was following the results closely. There were toasts,” said Kupchak, who has visited Budapest several times. “We didn’t love Orbán,” he added.

Ukraine celebrated Orbán’s landslide defeat in a series of jokes and memes. Several likened him to the Star Wars character Jabba the Hut, and shared an image of Orbán fleeing from a drone. Others portrayed him sitting on a bench in Russia, alongside Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin former president Viktor Yanukovych, and his exiled Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.

Paul Quinn’s conviction, 23 years after the attack, exposes how a victim was repeatedly failed and an innocent man wrongly jailed

• Paul Quinn found guilty of rape

One of Britain’s most shocking miscarriages of justice began before dawn on a summer day in Salford more than 20 years ago.

A young woman had walked the darkened streets alone for about five miles when she was honked at, wolf-whistled and was so frightened she hid for a while in undergrowth.

Gina Rinehart, who’s been called Australia’s ‘female Donald Trump’, has long fought claims from the family of her father’s business partner – as well as her own children

• Full Story podcast: How Gina Rinehart lost hundreds of millions of dollars in court

Australia’s richest person is reeling after a landmark court decision found her company must pay royalties worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a rival mining dynasty.

Gina Rinehart, a multibillionaire with political connections in both the White House and the Australian parliament, has been described by members of the US conservative movement as “a female Donald Trump”. The 72-year-old, who inherited her father’s iron ore empire in Australia’s Pilbara region, has fought multiple claims against the family company Hancock Prospecting that were first launched in 2010.

Transplanted from YouTube, this nostalgic, low-budget revival offers some welcome musical performances – but the chat is superficial

The biggest chatshow news of 2026 so far has been Claudia Winkleman’s foray into celebrity chin-wagging, not least because there was something slightly hubristic about the beloved Traitors host taking on the genre. Not because of any shortcomings on Winkleman’s part, but because chatshows seem almost impossible to get right (especially for female hosts; the UK TV landscape is littered with single-series attempts by Nigella, Davina and Lily Allen).

As the country was watching Winkleman, however, another veteran broadcaster was debuting their own new(ish) chatshow to far less fanfare – and far less pressure. In February, Chris Evans began putting out episodes of TFI: Unplugged on YouTube. Produced by Virgin Radio – where Evans has hosted the breakfast show for the past seven years – this was a lo-fi endeavour that saw the presenter joined by a handful of guests in a poky studio lined by dressed-down staff members professionally obliged to laugh and whoop. Still, the guests were good (Danny Dyer, Chris Hemsworth, Bono, Noah Wyle) and the show quickly built a decent audience – so much so that Channel 4 considered it worth its while to acquire a run of six episodes that have just begun airing at 11pm on Fridays. Will this revival of the 1990s juggernaut turn out to be the real chatshow story of the year?

The last season of this once hugely funny comedy absolutely tears out of the blocks in its best outing in years. But it’s still not the show it once was – despite the brilliant performances

For a while there, Hacks represented the height of comedy. Actual funny comedy, as opposed to trauma-ridden half-hour dramas like The Bear. When it won an Emmy for best comedy in 2024, it felt like Hacks and Hacks alone was at the vanguard of proper comedy.

That seems like a while ago now. Since then, The Studio came along: another entertainment business satire, only one with bigger stars, better production values and sharper barbs. At last year’s Emmys, The Studio won everything in sight, while all Hacks could muster were a pair of trophies for Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, playing a rich but disconnected comedian and her put-upon writer respectively. So the question is this: can Hacks rally in its final season?

Growing numbers in the capital Honiara are playing the street card game Pass for a chance of a big payout, while risking big losses

As the school day ends in Honiara, *Irene, a 43-year-old teacher in a floral dress with a yellow daisy in her bun, steps on to a minibus.

After 10 minutes, Irene gets off the bus, walks down an alley, and enters a damp, smoky shelter. Plastic tables fill the space and playing cards are scattered on the floor. Irene has stopped by a hidden gambling table in a western suburb of Honiara to play Pass, a street card game gaining popularity in the Solomon Islands capital.

From next-day delivery to kids’ TV shows on demand, have we forgotten how to wait for … anything? The good news is that patience is a skill that can be cultivated – by parents and children alike. Here’s how

Your kids want to know why their new book (ordered 18 hours ago) is “taking so long” and need you “NOW” because Netflix “isn’t loading” (it “tu-dums” milliseconds later). For parents who had dial-up internet, endless TV adverts and long car journeys soundtracked by Dad’s AM Test cricket, modern kids’ inability to be patient can feel galling. Except, with our Deliveroo habit and boiling-water taps (who has time for a kettle?), we can be just as bad.

“Our environment and culture has trained our nervous systems to expect immediacy,” says Anna Mathur, psychotherapist and author of How to Stop Snapping at the People You Love (As Well As the Ones You Don’t). “The issue is our brains are plastic; they adapt to the level of easy dopamine we’ve got at our fingertips.” Our brains are changing, confirms child psychologist Dr Michele McDowell: “A recent study indicated the brain instantly responds to notifications and takes seven seconds to refocus. Consequently, the brain is becoming overstimulated and is increasingly more responsive. Over time, this erodes the brain’s capacity to tolerate waiting and to be patient. So each time your phone pings, it’s reshaping your mind’s ability to wait.”

It has long been soured by scandal, but MasterChef is back with new judges – and they don’t want anyone to have a bad time. Grace Dent and Anna Haugh talk about eating like T rexes and why they don’t think about the show’s past

Grace Dent grew up with MasterChef. She and her dad would watch it together at home in Carlisle. “We used to laugh our heads off at the critics,” she says. “Just utterly ridiculous people, with their overblown egos, thinking their opinions on food matter. Who are these people? And then lo and behold …” She smiles. Dent, who is also the Guardian’s restaurant critic, is the show’s new co-host with the Irish chef Anna Haugh; both have been guest judges across various MasterChef series for several years. Watching the programme as a child did alter the course of Dent’s life. “There was also a little thing in my head, thinking that looks like an amazing job. You get to go to restaurants and talk about it?”

The two hosts knew of each other, says Dent, sitting next to Haugh, “because the restaurant and hospitality world, especially in London, is minuscule”. But in working alongside each other, “our relationship definitely took a much closer turn because we were together,” Haugh steps in, “all the time. Finishing each other’s sentences.” Dent hadn’t reviewed Haugh’s London restaurant Myrtle. “And I wouldn’t review it now. For a start, it would be quite difficult to sneak in. I might arrive in a wig and glasses.” Haugh laughs. “I would love that. If you come, you have to wear a wig and glasses.”

Researcher Valentina Bianchi says holding in information can take a mental toll. Here’s how to manage it

• Tell us: do you use AI for fitness?

Usually nothing makes me happier than receiving a message that starts with “don’t share this, but …”. Yet as I played the voice note on my phone, my gleeful anticipation turned to dismay.

It was a juicy bit of gossip, but one I ultimately would have preferred not to know. Now I also had to conceal it from others.

I’m an adult. Why do I regress under my parents’ roof?

I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

People say you’ll know – but will I regret not having children?

Some of today’s far right is openly violent and undemocratic – and even in its less extreme forms, far-right populism is a profound threat. But that doesn’t mean it is just a re-run of history

Politics, before it is about anything else, is about emotion. We all base our judgments about the world – the state of the country we live in, for instance, and what we’d like to do about it – on a mix of rational calculation and instinct. But for these judgments to be shaped into a political programme whose ideals are shared by millions of people, and for us to place our trust in leaders who promise to realise those goals, we really have to feel it. What, then, might be the particular set of feelings evoked by the following?

“The Britain that I love is being ripped apart by diversity, equality and inclusion.”
Suella Braverman, former home secretary, February 2026

The Blues’ star talks candidly about treatment-room frustrations, transfer talk and how he’s learned to love living down south

There are two sides to Cole Palmer. There is the shy character who can fool you into thinking he has nothing much to say for himself. On the other hand there’s the artist with the ball at his feet. The player with the “Ice Cold” celebration copied by kids in playgrounds everywhere. The improviser who makes the price of a ticket worthwhile.

“I know what you’re saying,” Palmer replies as, on a sunny afternoon at Chelsea’s training ground, we talk about the contrast between his shy conversational style and his ability to make an impact on people when he steps on the pitch. “I don’t really say too much in general but when I’m on a pitch I try to. I feel like it’s two different personalities. Off the pitch it’s quiet. I find it hard to speak to new people. But when I’m on the pitch I feel it just comes freely.”

An emotional Frank Lampard basked in the historic achievement of leading Coventry City back to the Premier League after an absence of a quarter of a century. The Sky Blues have returned to the big time for the first time in a generation, after a turbulent period in which they changed stadiums, hit financial rock bottom and plummeted to the depths of League Two as recently as 2017-18.

Lampard was front and centre of celebrations after a 1-1 draw at Blackburn that put the seal on a famous promotion. It has been a long time coming. The former England midfielder lauded Bobby Thomas’s equalising goal as an “incredible moment” in the champagne-soaked celebrations on the Ewood Park turf. “Because of how the game had gone, you were worried,” said Lampard. “We knew we were very nearly there, but to get it over the line like this for this club after 25 years, wow.”

• Arsenal coach sees trip to Etihad as ‘a big opportunity’

• Bukayo Saka still unavailable with an achilles problem

Mikel Arteta will go all out for victory in Sunday’s Premier League title showdown at Manchester City and has not thought for “one second” about setting up for a draw.

Arsenal are six points clear of City, albeit they have played an extra game, and a stalemate could move them decisively towards the trophy they crave. According to Opta’s projections, Arsenal would have an 89% probability of winning the title if it finished all square at the Etihad Stadium.

Will an Oklahoma City repeat end an NBA-record run of seven different champions in seven years? Our writers make their picks ahead of Saturday’s postseason tip-off

Wemby will no doubt be the answer to this question at some point in the (perhaps not-too-distant) future. But for now, I defer to those with at least some playoff experience. For my money, Jokić still reigns supreme as the best player alive, and for that reason, he’s my pick. CDL

Neither former world champion was at obligatory event as two British prospects look forward to moment in spotlight

If there were any doubt remaining that Ronnie O’Sullivan retains a gravitational pull on the world of snooker, few moments hammered home the point better than Friday’s launch of this year’s World Snooker Championship when the seven-time champion became the story without even being there.

The first ball will not be potted in Sheffield until Saturday morning and the first headline has been generated by a player not in action until Tuesday. When the traditional photo of the world’s top 16 took place as usual outside the Crucible on Friday afternoon it did so without two of the sport’s biggest names in O’Sullivan and Judd Trump.

Saturday’s Women’s Six Nations hosts hope to end 28-game losing streak against the Red Roses in front of record crowd

Murrayfield usually looms over Scotland women’s home games. Its fortress walls arch over the team’s regular home at the Hive like a villain in a children’s cartoon. The two rugby stadiums are direct neighbours in Edinburgh but on Saturday Scotland are swapping one for the other and making history by hosting their first standalone match at the home of Scottish rugby against the old enemy England in the Women’s Six Nations.

Almost 30,000 tickets have been sold for the game, obliterating the current attendance record for a women’s rugby game in Scotland. That record stands at 7,774 and was set in the 2024 Six Nations when the team played the Red Roses at the Hive. It will not just be a record for rugby either: the expected crowd is the biggest for a standalone women’s sporting event in Scotland too. The captain Rachel Malcolm, who won her first cap for Scotland in 2016, never thought a standalone game would materialise.

• Barcelona increasingly unlikely to make loan permanent

• United keen to sell forward but few can afford wages

Marcus Rashford could have a summer of transfer limbo in store despite Michael Carrick admitting the door is not completely closed on the forward playing for Manchester United again. Rashford is currently on loan at Barcelona but it is becoming increasingly unlikely the move will be made permanent, which will obligate a return to Old Trafford where he would receive a wage rise if the club qualify for the Champions League.

The 28-year-old has not played for United since December 2024, spending the past 16 months out on loan at Aston Villa and Barcelona, who have the option to purchase Rashford for €30m (£26m). United sit comfortably in third, seven points above Saturday’s opponents, sixth-placed Chelsea, but will not want to see the gap close come full time at Stamford Bridge.

• Price hikes for MetLife Stadium travel prompted outcry

• Plans confirmed at Friday briefing include $80 bus option

• NJ governor Sherrill spars with Fifa over cost burden

New Jersey’s transit agency has confirmed it will charge $150 for a return ticket to World Cup matches at MetLife Stadium this summer.

The price for a round-trip ticket from New York’s Penn Station to MetLife Stadium is typically $12.90. Reports this week of the elevenfold increase were met with outcry from fans and sparked a back-and-forth between New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, and world football’s governing body, with costs mounting across the board, including parking priced as high as $225 at the mall adjacent to the stadium.

• Mercedes driver doesn’t want to lose four-time champion

• ‘Natural’ for lack of competitiveness to start taking its toll

George Russell has said he would understand if Max Verstappen chose to leave Formula One after the four-time champion recently cast doubt on his future in the sport because of his dissatisfaction with current regulations.

Russell, who is second behind his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli in the world championship, insisted Verstappen had nothing left to prove.

Nothing about No 10’s version of the Mandelson debacle makes sense as the excuses factory works overtime

On days like these you reckon the prime minister would have more chance of being believed if he had said the dog ate his homework. After all, it’s quite possible that Keir Starmer has not yet realised he doesn’t have a dog. His amnesia and lack of curiosity are a piece of performance art. Almost up there with Boris Johnson. Keir would probably take that as a compliment.

As it is we are left with a dilemma. Occam’s razor. Either No 10 thinks we were born yesterday. Or everyone in No 10 was born yesterday. The excuses factory has been working overtime. But most people have already made up their minds.

If only the PM had been the process-obsessed technocrat he was once painted as, this disaster wouldn’t have happened – and he wouldn’t be on the brink

Keir Starmer is dull and managerial, they said. He’s a process-obsessed technocrat, they said. He is, his opponents argued long before Starmer won a landslide election victory nearly two years ago, a bad choice for prime minister – indeed, unsuited to politics itself – because he is not so much a leader as a lawyer, animated less by ideology than by official documents and boring details.

If only.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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George Robertson has joined Reform and the Tories in making the case. Look welfare recipients in the face and say that

The benefits budget is now a magic money tree. Whenever Conservatives or Faragists make wild promises – tax cuts, more police, more punishment, more bonuses for marriage – and are asked how they would pay, the answer is always “welfare”. The sums are enormous. “Only the Conservatives will cut welfare spending by £23bn and get Britain working again,” the party insists.

More unexpected was the klaxon from the Labour peer George Robertson this week, demanding a cut in benefits to finance defence. “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget,” said the ex-Nato chief, wanting to pluck this juicy plum to fund defence. Good to see him slapped down sharply by the government: there is no “zero-sum game” between these two budgets, said the chancellor’s deputy, James Murray.

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Not least because JD Vance’s show of support for Viktor Orbán appears to have had opposite of desired effect

So much of the news is depressing these days. The wars in Iran, Lebanon and Ukraine. The cost of living crisis. At times it feels as if the world has tipped into the surreal. Donald Trump posting photos of himself on his Truth Social account as the Risen Christ. A step too far even for Nigel Farage. And the US president picking a fight with the pope. Leo is a terrible man, apparently, for not endorsing war. Trump has yet to work out that on the whole popes are not in favour of illegal wars.

Dissent cannot take hold in soil rendered barren by emigration and embargo. Political opposition needs academic and cultural exchange if it is to prosper

The chancellor of the exchequer and the IMF agree. Britain’s economy is about to take its greatest hit for decades. This is collateral damage from the US’s war on Iran and the closing of the strait of Hormuz – and will be made worse by sanctioning Gulf oil exports. Britain has already been weakened by four years of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine. Now its economic growth is to be crushed, its government’s popularity is plummeting and its prime minister may face removal.

This was what sanctions were supposed to do to the enemy, not to the UK. Their unprecedented severity was to teach Vladimir Putin the error of his ways. His friends were to plead with him to stop. Yet, in the years after sanctions took hold, Russia’s rate of economic growth was higher than Britain’s. Meanwhile, sanctions against Iran in the 2010s were meant to halt its nuclear programme. They appeared to encourage it. Now they are meant to undermine the Tehran regime and topple the ayatollahs. There seems to be little chance of that.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Lives could have been saved, had some of the adults involved acted differently. To prevent another Southport, parents must feel able to seek help

It was shortly before Axel Rudakubana left the house that his mother is thought to have found the discarded packaging for a knife.

His parents already knew that their 17-year-old son was ordering weapons by post; that he was watching graphic online footage of atrocities and had previously attacked a boy against whom he had a grievance. At home, his behaviour was so threatening that his own family walked on eggshells. But even though the only times their reclusive son had voluntarily left the house in the previous two years were with violence in mind, they still didn’t call the police when they realised he was gone.

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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.

These days, I’m feeling more aligned with Catholicism than I have since my first communion. I’m not alone in that

I’ve had my ups and downs with the church of my childhood.

On the one hand, as a “cradle Catholic”, I’ve received the sacraments, often get to Sunday mass, and am the product of a Catholic education, right through Georgetown University, with its Jesuit history. My father was a “daily communicant” – he received the Eucharist every morning before heading to his law office; his sister, my aunt, was a nun, a Sister of Charity with a PhD in classic languages.

Dazzling new additions like V&A East are a source of national pride, but so are much-loved regional institutions

The V&A East Museum, which opens its doors for the first time in Stratford, London, on Saturday, is the latest addition to the buzzing East Bank cultural quarter on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This £135m architect-designed V&A outpost is a short walk from the V&A East Storehouse (on Time Magazine’s list of The World’s Greatest Places to Visit 2026) and Sadler’s Wells East, both of which arrived last year. The London College of Fashion has been there since 2024 and BBC Music Studios are due to open in 2027. Art, design, dance, fashion and music – welcome to London’s 21st-century culturopolis.

This once-neglected area of London – “a place where fridges went to die” as Gus Casely-Hayford, the director of V&A East, put it – has been transformed into a creative mecca. But in many parts of the UK the story is one of falling visitor numbers, job losses and the closure of much-loved music venues and art spaces. These architectural palaces are a far cry from many of the crumbling theatres and museums outside the capital (and their well-maintained European equivalents).

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

The prime minister’s explanation has shifted between being misled and admitting error, raising questions about vetting, accountability and what he knew

In February, the prime minister apologised to victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying he had “believed (Peter) Mandelson’s lies” before making him Britain’s ambassador to the US. By March, that account had shifted. Faced with evidence that he was warned the appointment posed a “reputational risk”, but gave the peer the job anyway, Sir Keir Starmer accepted on a trip to Belfast that he “made a mistake”.

On Thursday responsibility appears to have moved again – this time on to officials. Sir Olly Robbins, the top civil servant in the Foreign Office, was forced out after the Guardian reported that Lord Mandelson had been denied security clearance for the role. No 10 said it was not told. These are not complementary explanations. They are competing ones. Either Sir Keir was misled, ignored warnings, or was failed by the system.

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 on the purpose of Nato and the merits of increasing military spending in straitened times

I was pleased to see your editorial challenging the rightwing narrative from George Robertson, who is demanding less welfare and more warfare (The Guardian view on defence spending: should the UK’s security rest with Donald Trump?, 14 April).

Why not extend the argument about the purpose of UK defence strategy to Nato more generally? The role of Nato is tied to the declining power of the US, as we can see when Donald Trump resents paying for it, but then expects support when he lashes out at other nations such as Iran.

It is not Keir Starmer’s resignation that is needed, but a shake-up of Whitehall and our constitution, writes Labour peer David Blunkett

The enormous controversy about the vetting process leading up to, and following, the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador in Washington reveals a labyrinth within Whitehall and our constitution – which is a revelation even to those of us who have been in public life for over half a century (Revealed: Mandelson failed vetting but Foreign Office overruled decision, 16 April).

Three quite separate elements can appear contradictory, but can all be true at the same time. So, Keir Starmer could have been entirely telling the truth at the dispatch box last September when he said that all processes had been followed.

Paul Foxall responds to a review of the restaurant by Grace Dent and recalls dining with Max Wall and Michael Pointon

I was in harmony with Grace Dent’s review of Simpson’s-in-the-Strand (Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, London WC2: ‘A rollicking list of cosy British joys’ – restaurant review, 12 April). In past years such great clowns as Charlie Chaplin and Grock were celebrated visitors. It was later the haunt of clown Max Wall, who loved the menu of old English fare. As close friends, the writer Michael Pointon and I spent leisurely lunches while Max entertained us with his memories of variety. He always ordered roast leg of lamb followed by treacle pudding, washed down with a bottle of Beaujolais Villages.

On one spring day in 1990 after our meal and his usual byplay with the admiring staff, Max had a fall on the steep stairs and remained unconscious until an ambulance arrived to take him to Westminster hospital, where he died that evening.
Paul Foxall
Collingbourne Ducis, Wiltshire

Vincent Straub advises on rethinking sexual pleasure – in response to an article about straight male authors avoiding the subject

Luke Kennard’s thoughtful piece on straight male authors avoiding writing about sex is well taken (Too hot to handle? Why it’s time for straight male authors to rediscover sex, 12 April). We should welcome more literary courage. But the more urgent conversation isn’t in the pages of fiction – it’s happening (or failing to happen) on dating apps, in classrooms and at parties.

Research shows that we need to rethink sexual pleasure in research, healthcare and society. There is growing evidence on the bidirectional links between sexual function and mental health. Yet many young people are not equipped by their teachers or parents with honest, embodied knowledge about sex and pleasure, let alone that of their partners.

Reports of alleged crime led to protests in the Surrey town this week, after claims woman in her 20s attacked

Police investigating a rape incident in Epsom have said they have “not found any evidence” of the offence as reported. The reports prompted protests in the Surrey town this week.

Sarah Grahame, assistant chief constable at Surrey police, said the force was continuing to investigate a report that a woman in her 20s had been raped by a group of men on 11 April in Epsom after she left the Labyrinth Epsom nightclub. The alleged attack is said to have happened between 2am and 4am outside a Methodist church.

Eight-line poem found on the back of a manuscript sheds light on Spanish poet’s preoccupation with time

A previously unknown verse attributed to Federico García Lorca has been discovered 93 years after the celebrated Spanish poet and playwright is believed to have jotted it on the back of one of his manuscripts.

Lorca is thought to have written the eight-line poem in 1933 while working on the collection Diván del Tamarit, a homage to the Arab poets of his native Granada.

DJ spent almost three decades working for corporation and was best known for Radio 1 show from 1985 to 2000

• Andy Kershaw – obituary

The broadcaster Andy Kershaw, best known for the BBC Radio 1 show he hosted for 15 years, has died aged 66, his family told the corporation.

His long career working for the BBC began in 1984 as host of the rock music show The Old Grey Whistle Test. He co-presented the corporation’s television coverage of Live Aid.

Trump’s ‘favourite field marshal’ has been a key figure in mediation efforts and now much rides for Asim Munir on the success of talks

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Stepping off a plane on Wednesday evening, Field Marshal Asim Munir walked straight into the warm embrace of Iran’s foreign minister and chief negotiator, Abbas Araghchi. Dressed in full army fatigues, the powerful chief of Pakistan’s military cut an unusual figure as a beacon for peace. Yet that was just the role he intended to play.

Munir had rushed to Tehran in what many saw as a last-ditch attempt to revive Pakistan’s efforts to mediate an end to the war between the US and Iran. Four days earlier, the US vice-president, JD Vance, left Islamabad, after more than 21 hours of talks between the US and Iran failed to broker a deal.

Boy, 16, among those charged in connection with attempted firebombing at Volant Media offices in Wembley

Three people, including a 16-year-old boy, have appeared in court charged in connection with the attempted firebombing of a Persian media company in north-west London.

Oisin McGuinness, 21, Nathan Dunn, 19, and a 16-year-old boy appeared together in the dock at Westminster magistrates court on Friday charged with arson with intent to endanger life.

Santa Marta conference born out of frustration at Cop summits, where renewable progress has been stalled by major polluters

Everybody knows fossil fuels cause climate breakdown, but until recently, mention of them was all but erased from the annual UN climate summits. Last year, two weeks of discussions ended without fossil fuels being mentioned in the final outcome.

Frustration with those talks led a small developing country with a large fossil fuel sector – Colombia, the largest coal and fourth biggest oil exporter in the Americas – to rewrite the rules. With co-convener the Netherlands, and support from more than 50 countries, Colombia will host a groundbreaking new global conference this month to begin the long-awaited “transition away from fossil fuels”.

Seven deaths and 15 injuries have been recorded in the past year as crocodiles move their habitats closer to human settlements

• Warning: contains graphic descriptions of crocodile attacks

Ng’ikalei Loito was walking out of the warm waters of Lake Turkana on a sunny afternoon, having just finished swimming with her two sisters-in-law, when she suddenly felt the crushing force of a crocodile’s bite on her legs.

In excruciating pain, she instinctively clung to a partially submerged tree that was within reach and screamed for help, as the crocodile tried to drag her under the water.

Ng’ikalei Loito sits on her tricycle outside her house in Kalokol town in Turkana

Exclusive: Experts say scheme will help repair damaged marine ecosystems while sequestering large amounts of carbon

More than 15m juvenile oysters are to be released into the North Sea in one of the biggest rewilding projects in UK waters.

The scheme, which will use a unique rearing process, hopes to re-establish a huge oyster bed around Orkney that experts say will create a “trophic cascade” of climate and ecological benefits.

Pollution is ‘silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years’, say researchers

Research reveals air pollution is advancing the average age that people in the UK acquire long-term illnesses. For some conditions people could be getting ill more than two years earlier because of the air pollution they breathe.

The first author of the research from Prof Hualiang Lin’s group at Sun Yat-sen University said: “Our study demonstrates that air pollution is not just a risk factor for falling ill; it acts as a silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years.”

Noah Sibanda died after he was physically restrained while being put to sleep at Fairytales Day Nursery in Dudley

A nursery worker has been sentenced to more than three years in prison and the nursery fined £240,000 after a 14-month-old boy was restrained and died in their care.

Noah Sibanda died after he was physically restrained face-down with a blanket over his head while being put to sleep at the Fairytales Day Nursery in Dudley in December 2022. He was left unchecked for two hours before he was found unresponsive. He was pronounced dead an hour later in hospital.

Film-maker says it is ‘incredible honour’ to pick up baton from Michael Apted who died in 2021

Asif Kapadia will bring the long-running ITV documentary series Up to an end with a concluding instalment that will air this year.

The series, which began in 1964 and was voted the most influential UK TV show of the last 50 years in 2024, has followed a group of people from childhood to adulthood at seven-year intervals and now checks in on them as they approach old age.

All previous episodes in the Up series are streaming on ITVX in the UK

Chancellor aims to curb rising household bills as she consults on reforms to weaken link between gas and electricity prices

Rachel Reeves is poised to raise the government’s windfall tax on low-carbon electricity generators to help limit UK household energy bills, the Guardian understands.

The chancellor is ready to hike the levy introduced in 2022 to target the excess profits made by the owners of older renewable energy and nuclear plants as electricity market prices soared after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Media tycoon vows to appeal after dismissal of action against Gambling Commission for awarding Allwyn the franchise

The media tycoon Richard Desmond has vowed to appeal after a resounding defeat in his claim for up to £1.3bn in damages from the Gambling Commission over its decision not to award him the 10-year licence to run the national lottery.

Mrs Justice Smith dismissed Desmond’s claim on Friday, in a sometimes scathing written high court judgment that reserved particular criticism for “inexcusable” failings on the part of Desmond’s legal team.

Opposition accuses Narendra Modi government of using quotas as cover for redrawing electoral map

The Indian government has failed to pass a bill to increase female representation in parliament after being accused of using the plan as a guise to redraw the country’s electoral map.

It was the first time in 12 years in power that a constitutional amendment proposed by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government was not passed by parliament.

Meta paused work with Sama last month after allegations about staff viewing private scenes filmed by smart glasses

More than 1,000 low-paid workers in Kenya have been abruptly sacked by an outsourcing company contracted by Meta, in what activists said was a shocking move exposing the precariousness of tech jobs in the global south.

Sama, a company based in Nairobi to which Meta outsourced content moderation and AI training work, announced on Thursday that the workers were being laid off after Meta terminated a contract.

Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé, who moved to the US to marry a GI she met in the 1950s, was arrested in her nightgown at their home

An 86-year-old French widow arrested and detained by US immigration agents has been released and allowed to return to her home country.

Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé was arrested in her nightgown at the home she shared with her late husband, a retired US army captain, in Anniston, Alabama, more than two weeks ago. She had overstayed her 90-day visa, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Departing PM Viktor Orbán admits ‘political era has ended’ as EU says ‘clock is ticking’ to resolve important issues

EU officials have arrived in Budapest for high-stakes talks aimed at reshaping the bloc’s strained relationship with Hungary, weeks before the new government takes office, as the country’s departing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, admitted a “political era has ended” and suggested he would stay on as leader of his party in his first interview since the election.

Speaking to the pro-government outlet Patrióta, Orbán described Sunday’s election as an “emotional rollercoaster” after the opposition Tisza party won a landslide victory, bringing an end to his 16 years in power.

Release of new Claude model, so far limited to US firms, will expand to British institutions in coming days

British banks will be given access in the next week to a powerful AI tool that was deemed too dangerous to be released to the public, as a series of senior finance figures warned over its impact.

Anthropic, which has so far limited the release of the new model to a small clutch of primarily US businesses, including Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, said it would expand that to UK financial institutions.

Chair’s decision to not seek re-election ‘not as a result of any disagreement’, company says in filing

Reed Hastings, the Netflix chair, is leaving the streaming service he co-founded almost 30 years ago as the company regains its footing after losing out on a $72bn (£53bn) deal for Warner Bros Discovery.

In a 14-page letter to investors released on Thursday, Netflix said Hastings would not stand for re-election at its annual meeting in June and planned to focus on philanthropy and other pursuits.

Exclusive: A trove of previously redacted documents was filed as part of the tech giant’s anti-trust battle with the state of California. Amazon denies it engages in price-fixing

Hundreds of previously redacted records reveal how Amazon has put pressure on independent sellers using its platform into raising their prices on the sites of competitors such as Walmart and Target, so that Amazon can appear to have lower prices, California authorities allege.

The global conglomerate became concerned even if a competitor was selling an item for as little as a penny less, according to one segment of the newly unredacted evidence.

Dan Frumkin’s pay package comes after bank’s near collapse and rescue by Colombian billionaire

Metro Bank’s chief executive has been handed a £2.6m pay packet – the largest in its history – a year after slashing 1,000 jobs in response to the lender’s near collapse.

The figure is more than double the £1.2m Dan Frumkin was paid in 2024. Metro pushed through the pay bump and complex bonus scheme for the former RBS and Northern Rock banker at a shareholder meeting last year.

From lurid pranks and late-night drives, to why playing in the Revolution was like joining the marines – Prince’s friends and collaborators recount their memories of one of the music world’s most majestic and mercurial performers

George Clinton, singer and leader of Parliament-Funkadelic

The naturalist revisits the family of apes he had a goosebump-inducingly famous encounter with 50 years ago. You’ll find yourself overcome with awe

The most famous sequence in all of wildlife film-making happened 48 years ago. During the filming of Life on Earth – the groundbreaking BBC show that set the blueprint of nature programming as we know it today – David Attenborough crept through the forests of Rwanda, and unexpectedly found himself being playfully set upon by a family of gorillas. As they clambered over him, Attenborough turned to camera and said: “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know.”

Almost half a century on, the sequence still has the power to give you goosebumps. This is possibly why it has formed the backbone of a new documentary. A Gorilla Story is a much starrier affair than its predecessor – it was directed by the Oscar-winning James Reed and boasts Leonardo DiCaprio as an executive producer – but its conceit is fascinating: after all this time, how are those same gorillas doing?

The streamer has strangely kept this witty and detailed college comedy from critics but it’s far better than one has come to expect

The initial fruits borne from Adam Sandler’s early days deal with Netflix were largely rotten; empty-brained and dated comedies like The Ridiculous 6, The Do-Over and Sandy Wexler. But as Sandler matured, so did his decision-making and outside of his increasing attempts to work in smarter, more textured dramatic fare, his production company Happy Madison has found success by going sweet without risking a sugar crash.

His animated adventure Leo had real warmth and insight to it while his performance in the charmingly trad basketball drama Hustle was strong enough for many to see his lack of Oscar nomination as a cruel snub. But it was 2023’s coming-of-age comedy You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah that showed where his company’s most fertile future might lie, as shepherd to a younger generation of film-makers who want to tell stories about teens that don’t patronise or undervalue. Filling the film with roles for his family – wife and two daughters all in – might have seemed like one of the more obviously bleak signs of how nepotism has corroded Hollywood but, against all odds, it worked and he’s found another role for eldest Sadie in another winner, the bizarrely buried college comedy Roommates.

Late-night hosts reacted to Trump’s plans for a triumphal arch, high gas prices and RFK Jr’s odd interest in roadkill

On Thursday night, late-night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s tense back and forth with the pope over the war in Iran, high gas prices and outlandish details from a new biography of Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The first series’s insightful look at bipolar disorder is gone. For its second outing, it’s a knockabout tale of a relationship gone wrong – which isn’t always easy to buy into

The second part of the title of Camilla Whitehill’s Channel 4 comedy drama is a reference to mood disorders. Bipolar, to be exact – the condition her protagonist Maggie has been diagnosed with. The first part is a reference to pretty much everything else. Big Mood tackles big topics and chases big laughs. There are big adventures, big gestures and big cameos. It’s undeniably ambitious, but does all this add up to something truly meaningful? It can be difficult to tell.

Series one introduced Maggie in the midst of a manic episode: she had pestered her alma mater to let her deliver a speech in the hope of seducing her old history teacher. That quickly gave way to a depressive one, during which she attended her 30th birthday party unshowered and on the verge of tears. The reason for this rollercoaster was Maggie’s decision to stop taking her medication; she believed it was impeding her creative capabilities and her career as a playwright. Eventually, she agreed to go back on lithium, only to experience terrifying hallucinations and confusion – she’d been poisoned by an erroneous prescription filled out by an overwhelmed psychiatrist.

Jolie has star power as an American film-maker who gets diagnosed with breast cancer while filming in a blandly drawn Paris fashion show

As this film’s producer-star, Angelina Jolie shows honesty and courage in tackling a story that so closely mirrors her own experience of having a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer. But sadly, the film itself feels specious and shallow, insisting with bland and weirdly humourless confidence on the glamorous importance of the fashion world in which it is set.

Jolie’s character, Maxine, is an American indie film-maker just arrived in Paris, having been picked to direct the opening short movie for a super-prestigious fashion show. Her character is first-among-equals in the ensemble cast. Anyier Anei is Ada, a fledgling model from South Sudan who is to be the show’s star; Ella Rumpf plays makeup artist and would-be writer Angèle, trying to convert her experiences into an edgy fictionalised memoir; Louis Garrel smoulders and frowns as only he can as Anton, the first assistant director on Maxine’s film; and Vincent Lindon is the rumpled, caring Dr Hansen, who has the unhappy task of telling Maxine that his American colleague has passed on to him the results of her recent biopsy, and that she has breast cancer. (He sadly watches her walking away down the pavement from his high window after their consultation, while smoking a pensive cigarette.)

Barbican Hall, London
Vilde Frang revealed the expressionistic bones of Korngold’s Violin Concerto in her performance of this 1945 work, part of a concert that included Imogen Holst’s Persephone and a drama-filled reading of Shostakovich’s 5th

Persephone, which Imogen Holst wrote as a student in 1929, starts off sounding so familiar that you might think you have wandered into a concert of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé by mistake. But so what? The music that follows that opening passage of suspiciously evocative rippling woodwinds is a delectable 12-minute tone poem showcasing a composer with her own ideas about texture, colour and tonality, as well as the myth itself.

Holst tells a story of rebirth, building towards a glowing culmination that references the music of the beginning. In between there’s no depiction of lustful kidnap, but a darker music takes over, the strings feeling their way into an uneasy fugue, the muted brass playing clustered chords that are then pounded out by the whole orchestra. Perhaps Holst had been listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring as well as Daphnis, but you can’t argue with those as models for a student composer in 1929 – or in fact at any time since.

(Geffen)
On this giddy first taste of the US pop star’s third album, she sets aside her rock bona fides to revel in the opulent flush of a crush-come-true. But why does it seem so doomed?

Is there anything better than an ink-fresh pop lyric so nailed-on that you can’t believe 60 years of songwriters didn’t get there first? Or like, at least 20, ever since Googling crushes became an entirely normal component of modern romance: “One night I was bored in bed / And stalked you on the internet,” Olivia Rodrigo sings on her comeback single, a casual admission with its own innate melody destined in turn to stalk listeners’ brains all summer. Her perfect couplet heralds an ecstatic chorus about the giddy terror of getting exactly what you wanted, exactly how you wanted it, and barely being able to breathe or stifle puking: “The most alive I’ve ever been / But kiss me and I might drop dead!”

Acute, obsessive, unsparing songs about romance, always with a self-aware handle on their intensity – or a wink at how lovestruck girls get labelled “crazy” – have become Rodrigo’s trademark. (She calls her benign form of online stalking “feminine intuition”.) Now 23, she broke out as a pop star in 2021, after a lifetime as a Disney Channel fixture, and pulled off one of the quickest, most effective and indelible acts of redefinition of any musician to emerge from that entertainment monolith. (Even her pop peer and fellow Disney alum Sabrina Carpenter took five albums to find success on her terms.) Rodrigo’s debut single proper, Drivers License, was an epic heartbreak ballad, though the sticking points of her debut album, Sour, were the pop-punk ragers. She convincingly translated that into her second album, 2023’s Guts, which drew on the influence of her mum’s riot grrrl records; she scored mentorship from St Vincent, brought the Breeders to support her on tour and got the Cure’s Robert Smith to duet with her when she headlined Glastonbury in 2025.

(Pentatone)
This thoughtfully curated programme of work by three British composers explores the guitar’s expressive potential, and new arrangements of Harrison Birtwistle’s piano originals are a revelation

On his new album, Sean Shibe surveys the guitar’s expressive potential through the lens of three British composers. There are interlocking themes here – Spain, 20th-century painters, antique musical forms – but this thoughtfully curated programme can be equally enjoyed piece by piece as a series of mind-expanding flights of fancy.

Thomas Adès’s Forgotten Dances pays homage to the baroque dance suite, the composer’s quirky titles imbuing traditional forms with an additional imaginative layer. Overture, Queen of the Spiders, for example, combines stately harmonics with sneaking slides and the occasional pounce (“fatal for the fly!” in the composer’s words). Barcarolle – The Maiden Voyage is a nostalgic lapping gymnopedie; Carillon de Ville a pealing tribute to the guitar-playing Hector Berlioz. In Vesper (for Henry Purcell), Adès reimagines the consolation of the older composer’s Evening Hymn. Shibe’s playing throughout is acutely articulate and technically impeccable.

The sibling duo’s follow-up EP spikes their off-kilter pop with new darkness, adding atmospheric balladry to their glorious racket

From South London
Recommended if you like Charli xcx, Confidence Man, Klaxons
Up next UK tour starts 21 April

If this was April 2008, Punchbag, AKA south London siblings Clara and Anders Bach, would be headlining an NME tour alongside Alphabeat and Frankmusik, while the Popjustice forum would have hailed them as the new face of “wonky pop”. The sonic calling cards of that ramshackle iPod-era micro-genre – off-kilter, unvarnished electropop piled high with myriad other genres – were streaked across Punchbag’s debut single Fuck It. A sweaty riot of 90s rave, maximalist bass and Clara’s spit-soaked vocals, it felt tailor-made for soundtracking an awkward snog on Skins. Last May it was joined by three other frantic bangers on the duo’s debut EP, I’m Not Your Punchbag, the highlight of which, You Used to Be So Sexy, sounds like a GarageBand-produced the Veronicas had they grown up in east London as opposed to Brisbane.

The Keeper by Tana French; The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman; Mrs Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung; A Killer in the Family by Amin Ahmad; The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary

The Keeper by Tana French (Viking, £16.99)
The final book in French’s Cal Hooper trilogy sees the retired Chicago detective drawn into a power struggle for the future of the small Irish town he has made his home. Ardnakelty is a place where everyone is interconnected, with grudges and loyalties lasting for generations, and Hooper, now engaged to local widow Lena and mentor to 16-year-old Trey, is becoming a part of its fabric. When the body of Rachel Holohan, girlfriend of the son of local bigshot Tommy Moynihan, is recovered from the river, the consensus is suicide, but Trey convinces Hooper to investigate. Tommy doesn’t like people interfering in his business, especially when it emerges that Rachel was concerned about his plans for the town. An immersive, slow-burn of a book, as much about the march of time and the inevitably changing nature of Irish rural life as it is about solving a crime, The Keeper is dense, compelling and superbly atmospheric.

The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman (Virago, £20)
Set in a Chelsea boarding house in 1953, Garman’s debut novel opens with Jimmy Sullivan – who “wore spiv’s shoes and spoke in unmistakable Cockney tones” – bleeding to death under the dispassionate gaze of the landlady and her lodgers. The big Victorian house, presided over by bohemian literary widow Honor Wilson, is home to a debutante fallen on hard times, a wannabe writer, a young cinema usher with social aspirations, and a Jewish poet who managed to escape Hitler but lost his wife and child in the process. All have secrets, but none more than Honor herself, and the arrival of Jimmy, who claims to be the son of an old family retainer, threatens them all. This is not only an excellent mystery, but an evocative portrayal of a group of people displaced socially and geographically by war and its aftermath, with the moral and topographical landscape of 1950s London superbly rendered.

A clever and beautiful survey of dogs in painting, with a brilliant interpretation of their role at its heart

Thirty-five thousand years ago, in the Ardèche region of France, Paleolithic artists drew a spectacular bestiary on the walls of the Chauvet cave. Their focus was apex predators, so there were lots of lions, as well as mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. Dogs were nowhere to be seen, and yet in the soft sediment on the limestone floor of the cave, there are traces of canid pawprints next to human footprints. Two fellow creatures, most likely a boy and a dog, stood together, about 10,000 years after the art was made, looking up at the walls in wonder. Here was a moment of shared contemplation, followed perhaps by a glance to see the other’s reaction.

In this luminous book, the American cultural historian Thomas Laqueur explores what he calls “the dog’s gaze”. The dog was the first animal to live companionably with humans, and Laqueur argues that this marks the boundary between nature and culture. It is this threshold status that has, in turn, qualified the dog to play a rich, symbolic part in western art. Just having dogs in a picture – snuffling for picnic crumbs in Seurat’s La Grande Jatte or trooping home in Bruegel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow – becomes a way for an artist to pack an image with extra resonance and second-order meaning.

The premise – Instagram influencer is confronted by pioneer reality – is genius. But does this high-concept debut live up to the hype?

Could Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear be the first great tradwife novel? This was my hope: finally, a literary response to the unhinged social trend of women cosplaying “traditional Christian values” – pronatalism and obeying one’s husband – to large social media followings. I am not immune to hype, and Yesteryear has been hyped to high heaven, prompting massive auctions for the rights, and landing a film deal with Anne Hathaway.

You have to admit that the premise – Instagram tradwife wakes up in what appear to be the actual pioneer days, and finds that traditional wifedom is not as much of a hoot as her whitewashed social media re-enactment had implied – is genius. As one of the “Angry Women” our heroine Natalie so disparages, I was looking forward to some sweet schadenfreude.

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

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

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

PC, Xbox; Sad Cat Studios
This pulpy sci-fi thriller is a beautiful, if deferential, homage to the genre greats, with a poignant real-world echo

For all of cyberpunk’s cautionary tales of shady corporations and transhumanist folly, it is the genre’s arresting imagery that looms largest in the pop culture imagination. Petroleum flares light up the perpetually rainy Los Angeles of Blade Runner; in the novel Neuromancer, the sky is the “colour of television, tuned to a dead channel”.

Replaced, a new 2D action-platformer from Belarus-based outfit Sad Cat Studios, leans into the steel and sprawl that the genre is famed for. The game also offers a wrinkle to cyberpunk’s longstanding, somewhat overfamiliar visual palette: it floods the screen with softly diffusing sepia and warm primary colours, particularly in the densely populated residential areas you’re able to explore. The mood is comforting rather than ominous, cosy rather than clinical, as if this dystopian sci-fi has been touched by an unlikely hand – that of cottagecore godfather Thomas Kinkade.

Replaced is out now; £16.99/$19.99

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox, PC, Switch 2; Capcom
Engineer Hugh is sent from Earth to investigate a malfunctioning research station and meets a young android who helps him fend off murderous mechs

When Pragmata was announced alongside the PlayStation 5 in 2020, its shiny trailer promised slick sci-fi action in outer space. While it certainly delivers those futuristic thrills in spades, what I didn’t expect was a tender tale of paternal love. This is Capcom’s belated, surprisingly soulful first entry into gaming’s sad dad genre.

In this near-future fiction, a corporation named Delphi has established a research station on the moon’s surface to experiment with advanced 3D printing tech, using “Lunafilament” to easily recreate everything from tools to entire buildings. Predictably, things soon go very wrong. As the station suddenly goes dark, engineer Hugh is sent from Earth to investigate.

Pragmata is out April 17; £49.99

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

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

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

‘Unc’ (short for uncle) is meant to disparage older players, but the industry should make games for all generations

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

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

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Jack Furness’s unconventional staging for Welsh National Opera sees the orchestra play up a storm under Tomáš Hanus in Wagner’s legend of the man condemned to sail the oceans for eternity

In 1839 the 26-year-old Richard Wagner almost drowned during a perilous voyage across the Baltic from Riga. It was this experience that he claimed inspired The Flying Dutchman, the legend of the man condemned for eternity to sail the oceans in his ghost ship gave him the narrative for his first mature opera. Wagner thought of his libretto as a poem, and it certainly grapples with some of the epic questions: birth, life, love and death.

Welsh National Opera’s new staging, directed by Jack Furness, begins with a woman in childbirth, the wild and stormy surges of the overture coinciding with her contractions. So Senta is born, destined, as a small child, to see her mother die, whisked away on her hospital bed into the great abyss. Senta will be a damaged soul, obsessed to the point of derangement by the story of the Dutchman, whose single hope of redemption, the love of a true woman, becomes possible only on touching land once every seven years. Backstories seem to have become a necessary accompaniment to any opera’s overture, which anyway spells out the whole trajectory in its leitmotifs. The strength of this intervention is visual, in the widely sweeping circles run first by Senta the young girl, then as a young woman, a parallel to the Dutchman’s septennial cycles, their dresses symbolic of the blood-red sails of his ship, all metaphors which later return.

Chisenhale Gallery, London
The Irish artist scrambles your brain by cleverly combining calming pastel pinks with austere military health units and suffocating smells

The Chisenhale Gallery smells weirdly sweet. Somewhere between butter and Parma Violets, but more acrid, intensely chemical. It’s an olfactory assault, half soothing and familiar, half violent and unnatural.

That’s the strange, unsettling middle ground that young London-based artist Racheal Crowther likes to inhabit. Just look at what she has done here in her first institutional exhibition, in which baby pink gentleness and terrifying hard-edged military aesthetics collide.

Dance House, Cardiff
Tudur Owen’s Welsh-language play about a second world war veteran is unashamedly heartfelt and anchored by very fine performances

This play by Tudur Owen tells the story of a curmudgeonly second world war veteran, an unexpected windfall, a clogged toilet and an entire Welsh village’s trip to London in 1994. It has the air of a fable that veers into more anguished terrain. PTSD, generational trauma, social exclusion and the weight of irreconcilable grief are never far from the surface.

One of Wales’s most popular comedians and broadcasters, Owen also stars in the eponymous role (the play’s title translates as Huw Alive). The Welsh-language production’s uncanniness is partly predicated by an expectation that there will perhaps always be an ironic punchline to puncture Huw’s unamused visage. But these seldom come and instead this is a play told with absolute and unironic sincerity, its heart unabashedly worn on its sleeve.

At Dance House, Cardiff, until 18 April. Then touring until 8 May.

Shaftesbury theatre, London
Twenty years since its West End debut, the sweetly subversive musical returns with a few tweaks and a lot of heart

The trigger warning “puppet nudity” does not begin to cover it. You will also see puppets having sex, singing about being “a little bit racist” and gleefully owning up to their predilections for porn.

Avenue Q’s cute subversiveness is back, 20 years after these fuzzy-felt Sesame Street wannabes took the West End by storm. Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s Tony award-winning musical is not exactly shocking now but it’s very amusing as these creatures (plus some humans) fall in love, have existential crises and create merry havoc.

Worshippers made their way to the Japoma stadium in Douala to hear the pontiff speak on Friday

With Imax more popular than ever, a new way to watch movies – HDR by Barco – has been quietly rolling out but what difference does it really make?

At this year’s CinemaCon, an annual gathering where film studios show off their upcoming wares to excite the exhibitors they hope to showcase them, Disney announced a new way to see a movie, sort of: InfinityVision. Despite the cutesy Marvelized name, it’s not a superhero-specific experience; it’s a certification for premium large-format (PLF) auditoriums. The idea is that any InfinityVision-certified screen will adhere to or exceed standards – vaguely described so far – in size, sound quality, and picture brightness/clarity. There are supposedly 300 such screens already certified around the globe, though there doesn’t seem to be an actual list explaining which ones they are yet.

The practical reason for this additional layer of branding is that Disney’s Avengers: Doomsday is premiering in December on the same weekend as the third Dune movie, which has a deal to occupy coveted (and limited) Imax screens for several weeks. This essentially locks Earth’s mightiest heroes out of one of the marquee names in exhibition; InfinityVision seems intended to reassure viewers that their other options, presumably the various Dolby, RPX, and other branded PLF auditoriums that already exist, are as impressive as possible. Call it screenmaxxing.

Touching on everything from late-stage capitalism to Adele, the work of the late writer is proving increasingly influential. Now a documentary on him is looking to live up to his ideals

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? was published in 2009 to critical silence. Journalists and academics initially dismissed Mark Fisher’s book, ignoring the cultural theorist’s requests for coverage and interviews, and even the then owner of his publisher, Zer0 Books, lamented that it was unmarketable. Fisher, also prone to self-doubt, questioned the relevance of his thesis and the gravitas of his personal approach after attempting, and failing, to write a traditional systematic work of theory. As of December 2025, more than 250,000 English-language versions of Capitalist Realism have been sold, with translations available in Spanish, Italian, Arabic Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Hebrew, Korean and Danish. Fisher, unassumingly, had aspired to sell a few hundred.

Revered for writing honestly, if not brutally, the academic turned polemicist was adept at encapsulating the public mood. Fisher, who initially gained a following through his k-punk blog (2003-2016), popularised the notion that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, first attributed to the American Marxist philosopher Fredric Jameson. Featuring essays centred on popular culture, work, mental health and education, Capitalist Realism – released just after the 2008 financial crisis, and created during the pro-business politics of Tony Blair’s New Labour – is a slim, comprehensible volume that challenges our profit-driven economic system and reflects on the endemic feelings of hopelessness experienced by many, then and still today.

The Sony world photography awards announce the four overall winners of the 2026 competitions: professional, open, student and youth. Citlali Fabián receives the prestigious photographer of the year title, and 10 category winners for the professional competition are announced, whilst Joel Meyerowitz is honoured as 2026 outstanding contribution to photography recipient

• Exhibition at Somerset House, London from 17 April - 4 May 2026

Though welcomed by chefs and campaigners, many schools say the government’s plan to remove ‘grab and go’ options from the menu is a step too far

It is lunchtime at Richard Challoner school, a Catholic comprehensive for boys in New Malden, south-west London. The familiar smell of school lunch is beginning to waft around the corridors.

In the canteen, there is a moment of calm as the kitchen team make final preparations before year 7 descend – a mass of chatting, laughing boys, with backpacks swinging and empty tummies grumbling.

With prices at the vets soaring by more than 60% since 2016, tests such as MRI scans for dogs can exceed £3,500

Why does my vet charge more than a private hospital for humans? I’ve been quoted £1,500 for an MRI scan for my dog. When I looked at how much it would cost for a person to have the same type of scan privately, it was about £700.

As technology improves, the treatments and diagnostics available for pets are getting closer to what is on offer for human patients. While we used to rely on a vet to assess what was going on inside an animal, they can now recommend hi-tech scans to see exactly what’s happening. But progress costs money.

Rum is having a Renaissance. Whether you want spiced, fruity or flavoured, here are the best bottles from our taste test of 30 small-scale and indie labels

• The best gins for G&Ts, martinis and negronis

Shaking off its whitewashed island vibes and kitschy pirate associations, rum – like gin and tequila before it – is having a revival. With UK rum sales reaching £1.1bn at the end of 2023, and the category expected to rise by 3% annually by 2027, rum is among the few spirits bucking the global downward trend. It’s also experiencing the same appetite for “premiumisation” as the rest of the spirits industry: less of the poor-quality punch spirit and more high-quality artisanal or luxury-branded rum.

What is rum? Basically, it’s a spirit made from sugar cane, either in the form of cane molasses or fresh sugar cane juice, which is then fermented and distilled. The liquid can then be aged in oak barrels, matured in ex-liquor casks – such as sherry or bourbon – or infused with flavourings (the best rums use natural botanicals rather than synthetic extracts). White rum is made by taking the virgin distillate and bottling without ageing, while golden or aged rums will take on colour and flavour from time in barrels or casks; dark rums may also have extra molasses added at a later stage. Spiced or otherwise flavoured rums are usually white rums that have been flavoured after distillation.

Our gardening expert puts 19 bypass secateurs to the test to find the best for comfort, sharpness and tackling tough stems

• The best pressure washers, tested

Secateurs are the single most valued tool in the gardener’s trug, an implement as personally prized as the bricklayer’s trowel. With time, their weight and shape wear familiarly into the hand, becoming a companionable tool for all garden tasks, from pruning woody shrubs and cutting back perennials to slicing twine and preparing cut flowers.

There are two main types of secateurs, bypass and anvil (see below for their differences explained), and I’ve focused on the former here. If well looked after (we’ve included care instructions at the end of this article), a quality pair can last decades; as a result, gardeners declare staunch loyalties to particular models.

Best secateurs overall:
Burgon & Ball bypass secateurs

Best secateurs for tough stems:
Felco Model 2

Transporting little ones by bike is fun, practical and good for the planet – here’s how to get started

• The best bike panniers and handlebar bags

In the least weird way possible, strapping children to bicycles is a longstanding tradition in my family. My grandparents used to haul their three kids around in a rickety wooden trailer hitched to the back of their tandem (see picture below), and some of my earliest memories involve being wedged into a bright red child seat with a gargantuan foam mushroom of a helmet obstructing my upper peripheral vision. Now that my son is old enough, it’s our turn to pick up the baton.

Turns out, there are a lot of ways to strap a kid to a bike, and I’ve spent the past six months researching all the options to figure out what’s best. I’ve also spent lots of time using trailers and rear-mounted seats, as they were most appropriate for my son’s age and my bike setup.

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

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

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

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

Best juicer overall and best on a budget:
Nutribullet juicer

Best compact centrifugal juicer:
Philips Viva Collection juicer

A knickerbocker-style punch with notes of berry compote and scones

Named after a community-focused cafe in Dublin, this drink has a flavour profile that brings to mind berry compote and scones. It’s delicious as a single serving, or make a big batch and serve as a punch to share with friends. At Homeboy, we garnish it with a little raspberry dust, but at home a little lime flag perched on the side of the glass also works well.

Lizzie Wharton, head bartender, Homeboy, London N1

Brightly coloured yam, long enjoyed in east Asia, has been appearing in drinks, desserts – and, of course, TikTok feeds

Bright purple coffees and cocktails made with a root vegetable called ube have hit the high street in the UK after the yam’s striking hue caused a sensation on social media. Many are calling ube the “new matcha”, and it has a nutty, creamy, sweet taste, like a mix between coconut and vanilla.

Ube coloured and flavoured drinks became popular in the US last year, after an earlier boom in Australia. Farmers in the Philippines, where the root vegetable is often sourced, have been struggling to meet demand.

Chewy in the middle and crisp at the edges, like a classic, but sandwiched together with a luxurious ganache

Anzac biscuits are closely associated with Anzac Day on 25 April, which commemorates the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who served in the first world war. Made with oats, coconut and golden syrup, the biscuits are said to have been popular because they travelled well and kept for long periods, making them suitable for sending to forces overseas. My version here, a slightly less austere take on the classic, sandwiches two small biscuits with a lightly salted, olive oil-enriched dark chocolate ganache. The result is crisp at the edges, soft within and not too sweet.

Tonic is much more than a bit player in a G&T. A lot of it’s good enough to drink solo

If a tonic is something that “makes you feel stronger and happier”, my tonics come in the form of good wine, bad chocolate and an ageing whippet called Ernie. Recently, though, I’ve found myself craving the OG tonic – tonic water – which started life as a malaria treatment in the age of the British empire.

In the 17th century, Jesuit missionaries brought quinine, a bitter compound found in the bark of American cinchona trees, to Europe. They knew that indigenous people had been using it to treat fevers, and by the 1700s it was routinely being used as an antimalarial in tropical colonies. But there was a snag: quinine is unpalatable. To offset its impossible bitterness, it was combined with water and sugar to make a drink that enabled those stationed in the tropics to self-medicate every day. By the Victorian times, that self-medication had taken on a different aspect; not only had tonic water become fizzy, but it was routinely combined with gin for a drink now emblematic of the British Raj.

People down the rabbit hole don’t always realise their experience isn’t universal, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. You might have more luck trying a new tactic

• Read more Leading questions

My friend of 30 years keeps sending me social media posts and videos that I either don’t find funny or are disturbing. We live far away and rarely see each other, so we communicate through a messaging app. I’ve told her many times that I prefer positive or cute things, and I don’t follow American politics.

Her life is difficult and I understand why she spends so much time on social media. Last week she sent me multiple videos each day that were not of interest to me at all, including one with women slapping each other. She often buys into conspiracy theories until I disprove them. All of it upsets me. It’s like she doesn’t know who I am. I’m not replying to any of these messages but she keeps sending them.

Dougie and Teresa don’t see eye to eye when it comes to supermarket packing. You decide whose argument checks out

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

She says if you’re bagging stuff at the checkout, you’re holding up the people behind you

He just doesn’t understand the system. The packing shelves at the back are there to help customers

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

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

Graham, 76, Pangbourne

Occupation Property manager

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

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

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

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

From running through open countryside in historic beauty spots to pounding the streets of London

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

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

IW, Northampton

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

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

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

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

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

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

I tried not to think about the 1,300 metres of solid rock over my head

Running has always been a passion of mine. I started as a child in the Yorkshire Dales, moving to cross-country at university, then graduating to marathons. I loved the challenge. After my wife, Stephanie, and I married in 2012, and went on to have two daughters, Grace and Rose, I still ran for pleasure, but competitive events took a back seat as I focused on my family and career.

Then one day I heard about a marathon my company had been invited to join. It had been over 10 years since my last big race, but I put my name forward. “I’m surprised,” a colleague said. “You do realise it’s totally underground?” It turned out the race was in a Swedish zinc mine, 1,120 metres below sea level. That made it the world’s deepest marathon, and everyone who completed it would be a Guinness World Record holder.

Informal migration, plus climate change and rising numbers of cases globally, are complicating the tireless efforts of landlocked Eswatini to eradicate the killer disease

The freezer is filled with blue-lidded tubes of cows’ blood, ready to be defrosted and used to feed the colony of mosquitoes. “Also, you can use your arm,” says Nombuso Princess Bhembe, who tends the mosquitoes at Eswatini’s national insectary, an unremarkable building in the town of Siphofaneni, part of the southern African country’s push to eliminate malaria.

But the landlocked nation of 1.2 million people, formerly known as Swaziland, is facing headwinds from not only the climate crisis, aid cuts and insecticide resistance but also economic migration from countries with higher case numbers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once the preserve of childhood underwear, the patterned knit is now bringing nostalgia and comfort to adults in a fast-changing, unpredictable world

In this very on-brand April, where sun and showers jostle for supremacy and a chill wind is making 16C feel like 9C, you might have spotted pointelle popping up everywhere. On her recent world tour, Rosalía appeared on stage in Paris wearing a pointelle bodysuit. Then Sabrina Carpenter appeared on the cover of Perfect magazine hanging backwards off a bed wearing cyan eyeshadow and a pointelle underwear set. It’s peeping out from underneath shirts and jumpers in air-conditioned offices and on buses. For spring, the heritage knitwear brand Herd is offering “featherlight yet warm” jumpers in its signature pointelle. John Lewis, which said yesterday that online searches for pointelle were up 60% week on week, is selling bandana-scarves and pyjamas made of the same material.

The fabric, more associated with girls’ vests, thermal-wear and underwear, is, according to Merriam-Webster, “an openwork design (as in knitted fabric) typically in the shape of chevrons”. Sometimes peppered with hearts, florals, diamonds or zigzags instead, you probably had a pair of pointelle ankle socks, possibly with a little cotton ruffle. Or maybe you remember that era in the 00s when Whistles churned out lacey pointelle camisoles that grazed bellybuttons inches above Juicy Couture track bottoms.

Got denim overwhelm? Go back to basics with a simple pair of straight leg jeans

Whether you want to tackle hyperpigmentation or brighten mature skin, these are our expert’s favourite formulas for a glowy complexion

• The best LED face masks, tested

Vitamin C is having a moment in skincare because of its ability to gently brighten, reduce pigmentation and support collagen production. It also helps to neutralise free radicals – those unstable molecules generated by UV light and pollution that can lead to premature ageing – making it an essential part of your morning skincare routine (alongside an SPF).

But is a vitamin C serum suitable for everyone? And if so, how do you know which one is right for you? “Individuals with sensitive, reactive or rosacea-prone skin should approach L-ascorbic acid – the most commonly used active form of vitamin C in skincare – carefully, as it can trigger inflammation in compromised skin barriers,” says pharmacist and skincare expert Dr Sonal Chavda-Sitaram.

Best vitamin C serum overall:
CeraVe skin renewing vitamin C serum

Best budget vitamin C serum:
Elf Skin Brighten + Glow vitamin C + E + ferulic serum

British designer aims to bring eco-friendly awareness to the high street in second collection with retailer

Stella McCartney, the luxury fashion designer who refuses to use leather, fur or feathers, is returning to the high street for a sustainable collection with H&M.

The collaboration between the British designer and the Swedish retail company will go on sale in May.

From the epic landscapes of the Highlands and Islands to intimate local community events, our readers share their best finds in Scotland
• Tell us about a cool neighbourhood in a European city – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

After trekking in from near Oykel Bridge, our group stayed the night at Choire Mhoir and Magoo’s bothies (conjoined Mountain Bothies Association and non-MBA bothies, both free) in the northern Highlands. Emerging from the bothies come morning, a fog hovered between the mountains leading up to the summit of Seana Bhràigh, peaking out above, and Loch a’ Choire Mhóir below. As the sun rose, the fog steadily lifted, but not before creating a magical fogbow above the loch and bothies.
Rory

The Lincolnshire village, the height of fashion a century ago, offers fascinating history, a woodland cinema, excellent cycle routes and a deeply restorative feel

It was 6.30am, the cockcrow slot at Jubilee Park lido, and still not quite light. I hadn’t wanted to come this early – it was the only time I’d been able to book. But as I slid into the pool – heated to a delicious 29C – I realised it was a gift. Vapours rose dreamily into cool air laced with owl hoots and the whiff of dewy blooms, and I swam into a sunrise that became more vivid with every stroke. A man in the next lane paused to admire the reddening dawn too; he was hungover, he said, but had come to do his morning lengths nonetheless. A cure of sorts.

Bath, Harrogate, Buxton – Woodhall? This Lincolnshire village isn’t one of Britain’s headline spa towns. Most probably don’t know where it is – 18 miles (29km east of Lincoln, for the record. But at the turn of the 20th century, Woodhall Spa was among the most fashionable places to be seen, to be healed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much is Meghan making from this? Why is she appearing as a guest judge on MasterChef? Why has she joined an AI fashion discovery platform? Maybe a better question is, why the hell not?

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I am standing across the street from a five-star hotel in Sydney’s eastern suburbs wearing sunglasses and a large hat like a low-budget private detective.

My noble aim is to spot Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, or at the very least scope out the exclusive women’s wellness retreat – shrouded in mystery – where she is slated to appear on the final day of her and Harry’s whirlwind four-day trip down under.

If your garden is not big enough for the fruit tree you’d like, this technique may be the answer. It’s handy for healing snapped stems, too

There’s a cherry tree outside the gym I go to. I walk past it as I arrive and leave, and gaze out of the window at it between sets. At this time of year, it blossoms in the most stunning way. The flowers on one side are bright white, on the other side they are the warmest pink, and every spring it reminds me of a special skill that I was once taught that I wish I had call to use more – grafting.

Grafting is the method through which two different plants from the same species or genus are joined together to grow as one. It is a technique commonly employed in the cultivation of fruit trees and explains how the cherry tree I described above could appear to be one tree while behaving like two spliced together. The reason it can do this is that the resulting plant benefits from the qualities of the two different original plants. For example, a delicious apple variety that would normally result in a full-size tree could be grafted on to the rootstock of a smaller variety, so that it produces the desired fruit while being suitable for a modestly sized garden.

Lower Botanic Gardens, Belfast: A precious field here provides flood protection and carbon research, and has a productive community garden. Still, it is in jeopardy

Among many languages on the poster at the field’s entrance gate is a declaration in Ulster-Scots: This be oor fiel. Close to my home in the heart of an urban landscape, “our field” in Lower Botanic Gardens invites my idle wandering.

Going by the desire paths that crisscross its floodplain meadow, I follow in many footsteps. Recently rewilded and recultivated for a new age, this council-owned field has always responded to the needs of the times. The field grew vegetables during the second world war, and grew families in prefabricated housing after that war ended. Today, in subtle and transformative ways, this cherished place still provides for and protects local people.

Some fear a fragmented field of hopefuls from Labour, the Conservatives, Greens, Reform and independents could leave city ungovernable

Paul Tilsley was 23 when he was first elected for the Liberal party in Birmingham’s council elections in 1968. At that time, the UK had an unpopular Labour government facing an economic crisis, tensions around immigration and US pressure to back military action abroad.

Such a backdrop may seem familiar, but this May the local elections in Birmingham could not be more different. Tilsley, now a Liberal Democrat, faces a fragmented field with candidates from Labour, the Conservatives, the Greens, Reform UK and independents all competing for his seat and no party expected to win an overall majority on the council.

There has been a steady succession of departures by ministers and senior officials in the past two years

The exit of the top civil servant Olly Robbins from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is the latest departure of an official or minister under Keir Starmer’s two-year tenure as prime minister. Here we take a look at some of the most high-profile resignations since Starmer came to power.

We would like to hear from people who have been so concerned about the behaviour or actions of a child they know that they have considered contacting the authorities

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How long did you have to wait? Perhaps you are in a queue now. Tell us your experience

The new EU entry-exit system (EES) has caused huge delays at border checks, with some people waiting for up to three hours, airports say.

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

Is AI helping with your workouts? We want to hear about it

According to reports, people are incorporating AI into their fitness routines in a variety of ways; they have it write up training plans, design meal plans and workout playlists, and provide feedback on form.

We want to hear from you: how are you using AI in your workouts?

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Crisis in the Middle East, Russian strikes in Kyiv, Orthodox Easter and Karol G at Coachella – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists