Campaigning in Newcastle before next month’s local elections shows the rise of the far right, the climate and cost of living are concerning voters as much as the Middle East

Mohammed Suleman, a self-described “straight-talking Geordie”, doesn’t love politics. The taxi driver and businessman prefers to focus on community initiatives. But when the time came, he voted Labour as the lesser of two evils.

Then came the war in Gaza.

Claude Mythos’s apparent superhuman hacking abilities are alarming experts as the Trump administration remains blinded by hostility

In June 2024, a cyber-attack on a pathology services company caused chaos across London’s hospitals. More than 10,000 appointments were cancelled. Blood shortages followed and delays to blood tests led to a patient’s death.

Lethal cyber-attacks like this are thankfully rare. But a new AI release could change that – plunging us into a terrifying new world of chaos and disruption to the digital systems that we rely on.

Shakeel Hashim is the editor of Transformer, a publication about the power and politics of transformative AI

Creating a definitive Top 10 list never fails to spark endless debate – but who doesn’t want to give it a shot? Don your capes and shields, and let the arguments begin …

Putting together a Top 10 list of the best superhero movies of all time may just be the critical equivalent of trying to herd thunder through a spreadsheet. Are we rating the best-made movie, the most influential or the most emotionally ruinous? The genre has exploded over the past 20 years to the point where it long ago swallowed cinema whole: we have crime sagas (most Batman flicks), family comedies (The Incredibles, Guardians of the Galaxy), cultural and political allegories (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, X-Men, Black Panther), pop-art fever dreams (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and even tales of Wagnerian apocalypse (Watchmen, Avengers: Infinity War).

The sense is that these movies are too varied, the emotional criteria too slippery, the personal attachments some of us have to them too embarrassingly primal, to be placed in a clear hierarchy. Is the No 1 comic book movie of all time the film that made fangirls and boys whimper into their crumpled copies of Amazing Fantasy #15? In which case we might be looking at Spider-Man: No Way Home. Or is it the picture that’s so good it appeals to filmgoers who don’t actually like superhero flicks? That would be The Dark Knight. Is Matt Reeves’ gloriously offbeat, Fincher-esque The Batman too weird and languid to make the list? And does Patty Jenkins’ breezily old-fashioned Wonder Woman get downgraded because it was part of a superhero universe that ultimately tanked?

I Am Maximus, the 2024 winner, heads to Aintree on Saturday as favourite to triumph again. Here is a look at the chances of all 34 contenders

One of two previous winners at the top of the weights and he backed up his 2024 success by pressing Nick Rockett all the way to the Elbow 12 months ago before finally crying enough. He had shown precious few hints of his National-winning form in two runs before that exceptional performance under top weight and has more to recommend him this year, having finished second in a Grade One in December and fifth in the Irish Gold Cup. In strict handicapping terms, he should probably find one or two too good, but Aintree aptitude is a serious weapon and another podium place is no forlorn hope.

Verdict: each-way hope on Aintree form, but no top-weight winner since 70s

Mobility, cardio and strength are important, but power – generating force quickly – is the workout element that will help you stay active for longer, say health and fitness experts

Chasing after your dog, catching yourself before you fall, jumping over a big puddle. These activities all have something in common, and it’s not just that they’re the makings of a very bad day. They rely on power: the ability to generate force quickly. It’s an often overlooked part of the fitness menu that experts think deserves more attention.

Mobility, cardio and strength all help us stay active and healthy as we get older. Strength training in particular has boomed in recent years, as the importance of building muscle mass to keep us strong, protect our bones and help us stay mobile as we age becomes more widely recognised. But when it comes to activities such as pushing yourself up from a chair or moving your arms quickly to break a fall, the size of your muscles will only get you so far. You also need power.

Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder are TV’s funniest and nastiest odd-couple in this Emmy-winning smash hit. But co-creator and star Paul W Downs discusses why things are a lot sunnier and sillier for the pair in its final series

It hit the Vegas Strip running. Since it crashed on to our screens in 2021, Hacks has been a critical darling. This tale of a pair of extremely different comics who end up working together takes the classic sitcom set up, injects it with some HBO gloss, and gives us a grippingly watchable central relationship that is frequently adorable – while also featuring some of TV’s most venomous putdowns. It has a 99% Rotten Tomatoes score, 12 Emmy wins, including outstanding comedy series in 2024, and has propelled its cast into the stratosphere. And it’s about to enter its final season ever.

There’s nothing new about its ending, though. “The concept came to us in 20 … 15?” says Paul W Downs, who created the show with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their creative partner Jen Statsky. They even had the ending in mind at the first meeting at which they pitched the show to HBO in 2019. “We really had it fully fleshed out, including the final episode, which we pitched to most networks.”

US vice-president flies to Islamabad for negotiations as Iranians insists Israel end its offensive in Lebanon

• Middle East crisis – live updates

JD Vance has warned Iran not to “try and play” the US at talks planned for Saturday in Islamabad, while Tehran said it would not take part until Israel stopped bombing of Lebanon.

The US vice-president made the comments as he boarded a plane to Pakistan for negotiations that could determine whether a ceasefire holds or the war on Iran resumes with grave implications for the global economy.

PM pushes back after Trump’s threats to leave alliance and says European members must do more in light of Iran war

Keir Starmer has said it is in the best interests of the US to stay in Nato and that Europe must do more to support the alliance in light of the war in Iran.

The British prime minister, speaking at the end of a multi-stop trip around the Gulf to discuss the tentative ceasefire and options to fully reopen the commercially vital strait of Hormuz, pushed back against Donald Trump’s threats to leave the defence alliance.

Summer holidays could be hit unless oil flows through strait of Hormuz recommence within three weeks

Airports have said jet fuel could run short within three weeks in Europe if oil supplies do not start to flow through the strait of Hormuz, raising concerns over flight cancellations in the UK and EU going into the summer holiday season.

Jet fuel shortages will become so acute without the resumption of supplies from the Middle East that cancellations across Europe will be inevitable, disrupting travel plans for potentially millions of passengers.

Follow the latest updates as astronauts prepare for fiery re-entry in Earth’s atmosphere after 10-day mission to fly around the moon

• Artemis II crew to end record-setting mission with splashdown

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The scheduled splashdown of Artemis II in the Pacific Ocean, at 8.07pm ET (5.07pm PT; 12.07am GMT), is now just under three hours away.

The Orion spacecraft has completed its third and final return trajectory correction burn (RTC), a nine-second, precise firing of its thrusters to maintain a correct course for Earth.

Vehicle veered into a ravine on island of La Gomera while transporting a tour group for a boat excursion

A man has died and 27 people are in hospital after a bus carrying British passengers crashed in the Canary Islands, local officials have said.

The incident happened at 1.15pm local time on Friday when the vehicle veered into a ravine on the GM-2 highway near the town of San Sebastián de La Gomera.

Legal action follows war of words with Sentebale chair after Duke of Sussex’s resignation as patron

The Duke of Sussex is being sued by Sentebale in the latest twist in the bitter fallout over the African charity he co-founded.

The charity has lodged papers in London’s high court over defamation claims naming Prince Harry and the former Sentebale trustee Mark Dyer as defendants.

Conservatives disowned Derek Bullock in 2023 after he allegedly used racial slur to call for people of Pakistani heritage to be shot

A Reform UK candidate for next month’s council elections was twice disciplined by the Conservatives over alleged offensive or racist comments, while another shared conspiracy theories about Covid, it has emerged, as the full slate of candidates was confirmed.

More than 5,000 council places in England are being contested on 7 May, along with several mayoralties, and elections for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, in a significant test for all the major parties.

Shooting took place near Woolwich Dockyard train station, and another 16-year-old boy remains in custody

A 16-year-old boy from Romford has been charged with the murder of Eghosa Ogbebor, 14, who was shot dead in south-east London last week, the Metropolitan police has said.

Another 16-year-old was arrested on suspicion of murder on Friday and remains in custody, the force added.

Relacorilant, typically used to treat Cushing’s syndrome, could improve outcomes in platinum-resistant cases

A drug originally used to treat a rare disease could extend the lives of patients with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer, according to a clinical trial.

Platinum-resistant ovarian cancer occurs when the disease progresses within six months of starting platinum-based chemotherapy. This form of chemotherapy is different from other types because it uses compounds that contain platinum to destroy cancer cells by preventing them from dividing.

Ex-hedge fund manager ‘forced to accept’ newspaper likely to succeed in its public interest defence, say his lawyers

Crispin Odey, the former hedge fund manager, has dropped his £79m libel claim against the Financial Times over its reporting of sexual misconduct allegations against him, his lawyers have said.

In 2023, the FT published several articles from 20 women alleging sexual assault and harassment against Odey, covering a period of five decades. He has previously denied the allegations against him.

Local people say road conditions are rugged and weather unpredictable, while some say it has become too congested

The recent death of a British gap-year student on the Ha Giang loop, a popular motorcycle tour through the mountains in north Vietnam, has heightened concerns about a trail reputed to be one of the most dangerous in the country.

Orla Wates, 19, from Surrey, was riding as a pillion passenger when she fell off and was hit by an oncoming truck, according to local media. She was taken to hospital in Hanoi, where she died from her injuries last week.

Triumphal arch would be 250ft tall, featuring a 60ft golden Lady Liberty, at the foot of Arlington Memorial Bridge

The Trump administration on Friday released new renderings of the triumphal arch the president wants to install in Memorial Circle at the foot of the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

As part of Donald Trump’s legacy-building quest during his second term in office, the so-called “Arc de Trump” would stand 250ft tall, feature a 60ft golden Lady Liberty, and include a viewing deck. The phrase “One Nation Under God” would stretch across the top of the structure, according to the latest plans from Harrison Design.

Melania Trump made a surprise appearance at the White House on Thursday to announce that she ‘never had a relationship’ with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Her address has seemingly put Epstein back on the political agenda when focus had been firmly on the US and Israel’s war in Iran. The intervention came at a difficult time for her husband, Donald Trump, as the fragile ceasefire agreed between the US and Iran seemed to be at risk of falling apart, and as US lawmakers are raising the alarm over the president’s mental stability. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian US editor, Betsy Reed

The Bible-thumping US defense secretary is overseeing another strategic disaster in the Middle East. Is this a war or a crusade?

Nine months and six days before a Tomahawk missile tore through the gaily decorated classrooms of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, ripping apart the bodies of schoolchildren, teachers and parents, the personal pastor of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, delivered a sermon at the Pentagon.

“There’s a temptation to think that you’re actually in control and responsible for final outcomes, especially for those who issue the commands and do the aiming and the shooting,” preached Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser, at the first of what have become monthly Christian worship services at the Department of Defense. “But you are not ultimately in charge of the world.”

Swedish artist, now regarded as predecessor to Kandinsky and Mondrian, died thinking world was not ready for her work

The Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died believing the world was not ready for the mystical paintings that would shock the art world half a century later.

The painter, now credited with pioneering the abstract art movement, did not seek recognition after peers rejected her avant garde works. Instead, she ordered that they be hidden for 20 years after her death and never sold.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The interiors guru talks museum shops, sake and loft insulation with the Filter

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Michelle Ogundehin, former editor-in-chief of Elle Decoration magazine, is the head judge on the BBC’s Interior Design Masters and co-host of Grand Designs: House of the Year. She trained as an architect and also works as a commentator and consultant, as well as being a trustee of the Design Museum.

Her bestselling first book, Happy Inside, explores how home shapes health and happiness; her forthcoming book (spring 2027), Your Powerful Home: 4 Steps to a Home that Heals, looks at your home as a partner in your wellbeing, an ethos she shares through her Happy Insiders Club, which offers guided monthly coaching.

New Vic theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme
A residents’ association fights to save its housing in Bob Eaton’s jolly slice of social history, with a live band belting out the songs

At some point in the middle of the second half, you notice how insinuatingly Bob Eaton’s show has taken a hold of you. Until then, you have no reason to see it as more than one of those jolly slices of social history, the type that ticks off the shared experiences of pop and politics, leavened by a soundtrack of rock’n’roll standards and given a local spin with references to disappearing landmarks such as the Shelton Bar steel works.

Eaton was at the vanguard of actor-musician shows when he first staged Good Golly Miss Molly! for the New Vic in 1989, and its story was topical. It is about the residents of Hawes Street in Tunstall, who resisted the council’s plan to demolish their houses as part of a slum clearance programme, and made the successful case for home improvements instead.

At New Vic theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme, until 2 May

Neill says ‘one of the most beautiful and remote places in the world’ will be permanently changed if Bendigo-Ophir wins fast-track approval

The grapevines in Sam Neill’s vineyard in Central Otago – a picturesque region known for its undulating hills and wines – are pregnant with pinot noir grapes, almost ripe for picking as autumn arrives.

“My family has been here for over 150 years. I’m connected to this land like nowhere else on earth,” the 78-year-old actor and winemaker says. “It’s perfect for wine. It’s great for tourism. And it’s one of the most beautiful and strange, remote places in the world.”

Coveted £20 accessory to be marketed as part of sequel’s ticket deal – and is already being touted for resale from £130

In a recent trailer for the highly anticipated The Devil Wears Prada sequel, the cast are seen parading through the streets of New York City carrying an array of designer handbags, including clutches and satchels from Chanel and Valentino.

But among fans of the film there is a very different type of It bag in demand: a popcorn bucket shaped to resemble a structured tote bag is quickly becoming a coveted accessory.

The party’s talk of visa bans for countries seeking reparative justice is not just undemocratic – it displays staggering ignorance about geopolitics

On 29 November 1781, Capt Luke Collingwood faced a decision. He was in command of a ship called the Zong, which departed Accra with 442 Africans to be sold into slavery. However, the crew of the Zong kept getting lost on the way to Jamaica. Now their overcrowded “cargo” was ridden with disease and dehydration. Closing in on their destination, they realised that if these Africans died onshore, this would be a loss for the shipowners. But if they were “lost at sea”, the insurers would cover the cost. Soon, more than 130 people were thrown overboard, starting with the less commercially valuable women and children. At the resulting court case two years later, the main area of dispute was whether this action invalidated the financial payout. None of the city of London’s legal and financial institutions involved considered whether the mass drowning constituted a crime.

This episode from Britain’s inhumane and inglorious history of slavery came to mind this week when I read that in response to a recent, well-supported UN resolution recognising the historic crime of slavery, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK said it would deny all UK visas to people from countries seeking slavery reparations from Britain. Countries such as Nigeria, Jamaica and Ghana, from where Zong set sail all those years ago.

Dr Kojo Koram is professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University. His latest book, The Next Fix, is out on 4 June

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.

It is the voting public in Israel that will settle their PM’s fate later this year. But all they have heard are promises of ‘total victory’ that prove to be hollow

It is a record of abject failure. I am not speaking of Donald Trump, though I could be. Instead, I am talking about his partner in this terrible war.

Naturally, Trump has been the star of the show. He has been the face of the 40-day war on Iran, whether dialling up the threats against the country in foul, bloodthirsty language – “a whole civilisation will die tonight” – or announcing on his own social media platform a two-week ceasefire and the talks that are supposed to begin this weekend in Islamabad. But Trump has had an ally at his side, who only now is entering the spotlight. That ally is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Jonathan Freedland 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.

With the BMA making ‘impossible’ demands and Labour responding with Trumpian threats, negotiations are stuck – and it’s the NHS that will suffer

What’s the off-ramp? When I ask one of the negotiating team close to the health secretary, the bleak answer is, “I don’t know.” Resident doctors in England are on another strike, for six days this time. Labour arrived in office bearing a 22.3% pay rise to end the strike it inherited – and it thought it was all over. But within a year, doctors were out again.

This time, negotiations over many weeks seemed to go well, but fell at the last fence: the doctors claimed there was a last-minute watering down and they returned to their fixed stand – restore their pay to its 2008 level, another 26%. “Impossible” is Wes Streeting’s line. He says resident doctors are “by a country mile the standout winners of the entire public sector workforce when it comes to pay rises”. Everything looks stuck, no pasaran on both sides. Why?

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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

The price of silence from western politicians and media outlets over Israel’s actions in Palestine is now being paid by Iranian and Lebanese civilians

The president of the United States threatened this week to commit genocide against Iran. As Israel engages in continued bombing in Lebanon, killing more than 200 people in a single day, that fact must never be scrubbed away, not least because there is no guarantee the threat will not be revived. But as we descend towards the abyss, we need to understand where our fall began.

“A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Donald Trump wrote on Tuesday. Just over a year ago, he announced: “A civilisation has been wiped out in Gaza.” The connection is not hard to trace. Trump knew Gaza had been razed by Israel, insisting it was “not a place for people to be living”. When he joined forces with the perpetrator of that genocide in an illegal war on Iran, the apocalyptic rubble of Gaza became a template.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Self-help hacks such as ‘cooking from scratch’ or ‘meeting your friends’ may seem ridiculous. But there’s something deeply human at the heart of this trend

Does life, of late, feel just too easy? Are you keen to make it harder than it already is? If that sounds like a genuinely demented question in the week that the world came close to threatened Armageddon, then fair enough. I bridled too when I read last week about friction-maxxing, the supposed trend for doing things in slightly more effortful, time-consuming or analogue ways – cooking from scratch instead of ordering a delivery, finding your way using road signs instead of just plugging in the satnav, or reading a book rather than half-listening to the audio version of it – as a form of creative resistance to the inexorable march of big tech through our lives. Times are tough enough for a lot of people without being made to feel lazy for taking shortcuts.

Besides, the list published this week by the Washington Post of ways to friction-maxx – which included such superhuman feats as seeing your friends in person rather than just WhatsApping them, and actively trying to remember something rather than just falling back on Google – sounds suspiciously like the rebranding under an irritating new name of what used to be considered merely living. Your grandparents would have scoffed at the idea that any of these things were remotely difficult, or that making an effort to do them could somehow make you a better, more resilient person.

Labour’s deals with private companies will ride roughshod over a wilderness so remote there are no people to defend it

Yes, the world is getting hotter, and yes, Britain should produce more renewable energy. But what should be the price of that principle?

The Cambrian mountains in mid-Wales are the national park that never was. In the 1950s, when the official designations were declared, Wales was awarded Eryri (Snowdonia), the Pembrokeshire coast and the Brecon Beacons. The Cambrians were larger and grander than the Beacons, but less accessible and therefore less important. Three parks were thought enough for Wales.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Spurs head coach’s apology for past comments about his former player was important but insufficient. If we want things to change in football, we need some accountability

Roberto De Zerbi apologised in his first interview as Tottenham’s head coach for past comments about Mason Greenwood when the forward was his player at Marseille. Spurs supporter groups, including Proud Lilywhites and Women of the Lane, both of which I co-founded, were among those who criticised him. De Zerbi said he had never meant to downplay male violence against women. (Greenwood denied charges of attempted rape, controlling and coercive behaviour and assault occasioning actual bodily harm in 2022 and the case was discontinued.)

That he responded at all matters. Silence from men in positions of power on these issues is its own problem, and I would rather see someone engage than retreat. But what the response offered was self-description rather than accountability. And in this context, that is not enough. I will come to that.

Military euphemisms can be deadly. Yet the brutal rhetoric of the US and Israel is proving still more lethal

“Metaphors can kill,” the linguist George Lakoff wrote in an influential essay on the Gulf war. “The use of a metaphor with a set of definitions becomes pernicious when it hides realities in a harmful way.” He described the effects of the US employment of business cost-and-benefit analogies, sporting comparisons and the fairytale of the just war with heroes and villains.

All veiled the reality of conflict. Euphemism was long the preferred choice for the US military. Spokespeople discussed “collateral damage” rather than civilian deaths and “surgical strikes”, framing destruction as both precise and part of a necessary and ultimately healing process. Donald Trump chooses naked menace instead. This week he issued a genocidal threat against Iran, having previously threatened to bomb it “back to the stone age” and destroy bridges and power plants – schools and medical facilities having already been pulverised. He said that he was “not at all” concerned about potential war crimes.

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.

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and the Oscar-winning film One Battle After Another are grim parables of today. But they are not without hope

As Margaret Atwood has said, all dystopian fiction is “really about now”. No wonder the genre is flourishing. This week Atwood’s bleak vision of a future America as a patriarchal theocracy returned to TV screens with the adaptation of her prize-winning 2019 novel The Testaments, the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, set in a chillingly recognisable militarised America, swept the Oscars last month.

Back in 1984 when Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, she feared that its central premise – that the US could be transformed from a liberal democracy into Gilead, a theocratic dictatorship after a coup – was too outrageous to convince readers. She need not have worried. By the time the novel was made into the award-winning TV series in 2017, it was all too believable. Arriving just after Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and the rollback of women’s rights, the show felt made for the moment. Atwood was hailed as a prophet. The red-and-white handmaid robes became a symbol of female defiance across the globe. “For a long time we were going away from Gilead and then we turned around and started going back,” Atwood said of her decision to write a follow-up more than 30 years later.

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

Readers respond to an article by Sally Kyd on how road safety rules are being broken and lead to countless deaths every year

Sally Kyd’s article (Too many drivers see road safety rules as a personal affront. It’s time to tighten up UK laws, 6 April) rightly highlights the alarming inadequacy of our current legal framework regarding driving offences. The ambiguity between “dangerous” and “careless” driving not only undermines public confidence, but insults the victims of road violence, as seen in the heartbreaking cases of Mayar Yahia and the Lincoln teenagers. Kyd is absolutely correct: relying on the abstract, subjective standard of a “competent and careful driver” is failing us, especially as road policing diminishes and driving standards visibly decline.

However, while redefining offences and restoring road policing are crucial steps, they largely address the symptoms of poor driving after the fact. To truly transform road safety and reframe driving as a lifelong responsibility, we must proactively mandate enforced, ongoing regulation. Currently, a motorist can pass a test at 17 and never face another assessment, despite decades of changes in vehicle technology, traffic density, and the Highway Code itself. This is illogical and unsafe. We urgently need a system of mandatory periodic retesting to ensure skills do not degrade into the dangerous complacency that Kyd describes.

Dr Nigel Fairweather and Philip Clarke on the newly released Nasa photographs showing the far side of the moon

There has been much excitement about the crew of Artemis II seeing the far side of the moon (Artemis II swings back around after completing record-setting moon flyby, 6 April). Let us remember that on 7 October 1959 the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 (also known as Lunik 3) photographed the back of the moon for the first time. A picture was sent down to Earth and printed in Pravda newspaper using standard wire-photo equipment.

Meanwhile, the Daily Express obtained the photograph via the Jodrell Bank radio telescope but got the proportions wrong, printing it too wide or too narrow (I’m not sure which). I was a schoolboy obsessed with space, so I wrote to Pravda in Moscow asking for a copy of the newspaper with the (correct) moon photograph and they kindly obliged. Incidentally, around the time I had heart surgery a few years ago, I dreamed that I’d been in a figure-of-eight orbit around the Earth and the moon. I awoke from surgery, flung my arms in the air and declared loudly: “I’m alive!” (I’d been told I had a 90% chance of survival.)
Dr Nigel Fairweather
Brixham, Devon

Readers respond to an article by Bim Adewunmi on encountering the reticence of British people after she spent a decade living in the US

It’s funny how returning “home” can feel alien and apprehensive when you’ve spent years living abroad (I’m back in London after a decade in the US – and I miss those friendly New Yorkers, 5 April). There’s a reverse culture shock when your world-expanded self arrives back in a city you’ve known so well, and missed, but now see through a different lens.

In my experience, something always pulls you homeward eventually. You miss the infrastructure, the convenience, the variety and, mostly, the people. Not just your close friends and family, but the general populace too: the shop staff who leave you alone, the fellow commuters who know not to make eye contact, let alone dare small talk, the restaurant bill that arrives with service already included and no pressure to calculate the appropriate tip.

Christian nationalism has as little to do with the true values of Christianity as national socialism has to do with the values of socialism, says Rev Prof Nick Ross

Thank you for your editorial on the religious right (The Guardian view on Britain’s religious right: using and abusing faith in the pursuit of power, 5 April). The truth is that Christian nationalism has as little to do with the true values of Christianity as national socialism has to do with the values of socialism. It is a perversion of the faith … almost an oxymoron in its combination of opposites.

I serve in a church in the heart of Smethwick in the West Midlands, where our congregation reflects the area, being made up of those born and bred in the area, the families of the Windrush generation and new immigrants and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia.

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Wyndham Clark’s birdie putt at 6 looks good. A straight roll. But it drifts a little to the right just before reaching the cup, enough to kink out. That really did look like it was going in. So he remains at -3 for both his round and the Tournament overall. He’s no longer the only player out there in red for his round today: Im Sungjae, who finished second on debut in the November Masters of 2020, birdies 7 and 8 to move into credit today – he’s +3 overall – while the old trooper Freddie Couples birdies 2 to get back to +5. Such a shame about that hideous run at 15, 16 and 17 yesterday - quadruple bogey, double bogey, double bogey – but you can forgive a 66-year-old for running out of gas under the heat of the late-afternoon sun.

The Par 3 Contest winner Aaron Rai starts his second round calmly and confidently. Tea Olive found in regulation, and a long birdie putt that shaves the hole. He remains at -1 after yesterday’s 71, a round that promised more after going out in 33. Meanwhile Wyndham Clark’s run of consecutive birdies comes to an end at 5. Just a par, though he’s now landed his tee shot at 6 into the heart of the green, using the slope to bring his ball towards the flag tucked away front left. He’ll have a good look at birdie from 18 feet, a putt not exactly flat and straight, but as flat and straight as they come around here.

As the shot from Taty Castellanos rolled past José Sá and crawled towards the Wolves goal, West Ham’s bid for survival picked up pace. They looked doomed three months ago, but not any more. Nuno Espírito Santo’s side somehow found the motivation to go again after dropping seven points off 17th place in early January and if this escape act does end successfully, they will certainly look back to the impact made by their winter reinforcements.

While Axel Disasi has brought order to a chaotic defence Castellanos and Pablo Felipe are starting to resemble a modern day John Hartson and Paul Kitson. An old-school kind of front two, they have altered the nature of West Ham’s attack with their running and link-up play. Pablo, only 22, is a workhorse and Castellanos, who looks quite the find from Lazio, got the two goals his running deserved in this crucial 4-0 win over Wolves.

• De Zerbi wants to replicate former manager’s style

• ‘I want to see the Spurs I watched with Postecoglou’

Roberto De Zerbi intends to bring back “Ange-ball” as he attempts to prevent Tottenham’s first relegation in 49 years.

De Zerbi has only seven games in which to impart his complex football philosophy to his players and wants to replicate the rampant, marauding style of the former manager Ange Postecoglou, who won Tottenham’s first trophy in 17 years but was dismissed after finishing 17th in the Premier League last season.

No English stable has won the greatest prize in the sport since 2015 but the selection has all the attributes required

It is more than a decade since a Grand National winner was trained in an English stable, as Lucinda Russell, successful twice since 2017 from her yard in Scotland’s County of Kinross, is the only trainer to break the Irish stranglehold since Oliver Sherwood’s success with Many Clouds in 2015. The home side put up a much-improved performance at last month’s Cheltenham festival, however, and Jagwar (4.00), one of two major contenders from Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero’s stable 50 miles from the track, could extend the English revival in the biggest race of the season on Saturday.

Jagwar will head to Aintree with all of the attributes you could want to see in a modern-day National winner. He has youth on his side at seven years of age and remains open to improvement with just eight starts over fences on his record to date.

• Quarter-final: Bath 43-41 Northampton

• Hosts recover from 21 points behind in first half

There are big games and then there are pivotal contests which define entire campaigns. And when it came to the crunch it was Bath who just had enough power to make the semi-finals of the Champions Cup for the first time in 20 years thanks to a 76th minute try from Ted Hill. There is little to separate the two best teams in England and here was another endlessly compelling battle of wits and wills.

Plenty of work still has to be done to reach the final in Bilbao next month with Bath now set to face the winners of Sunday’s mouthwatering all-French tie between Bordeaux and Toulouse. This was a truly sensational hors d’oeuvre, though, with nine tries in the first half alone. Gone are the days of tiptoeing into knockout matches and hoping to edge it 9-6.

• Last year’s title ‘postponed’ overhaul says manager

• Slot insists he ‘can feel that support’ from fanbase

Arne Slot has said last season’s title triumph “postponed” the end of an era at Liverpool but that the club were under no illusions a rebuild was required when appointing him as Jürgen Klopp’s successor.

Two more links to the Klopp era will be removed this summer when Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah leave on free transfers. Virgil van Dijk, Alisson and Joe Gomez, the remaining players from the squad that delivered Premier League and Champions League success to Anfield under Klopp, will then enter the final years of their contracts.

Ollie Pope’s 103 and Jamie Smith’s 166 helped Surrey’s many England batters take charge against Leicestershire

Midway through its fifth day of action, the first of its second round of fixtures, Ollie Pope became the 11th person to score a century in Division One of the County Championship this season – and five of those play for Surrey. Jamie Smith already has two. The pre-season title favourites may have drawn their opening game but they are looking ominous, in this game and in general, and at stumps were 412 for six.

Things also look ominous for Leicestershire, if in a rather different way, as they settle into the top flight after last year’s promotion. Beaten by Sussex in their season opener, by the second session here, as Smith and Pope cantered towards triple figures, they looked equally underresourced in confidence, ideas and quality. They were buoyed somewhat by a couple of late wickets, if not by glances at the scoreboard.

• Game could be held back without radical change, it says

• It wants more competitive games for young players

Sue Day, the Football Association’s director of women’s football, has defended the governing body’s plans to radically change the structure of the women’s lower leagues, including introducing four Women’s Super League academy sides into third tier, saying she believes the game is at a “crucial turning point”.

On Tuesday the Guardian revealed the proposals, which also include a mid-season split in tier three, a financial package of about £1m and enhancements to the loan system, as well as more relegation spots and playoffs in tier four, as part of a major transformation of the Women’s National League’s structure. Reaction has been mixed, with some third-tier coaches heavily critical.

Four England players will miss the Six Nations as they are pregnant. What do they have in store when they return?

By No Helmets Required

When England begin their defence of the Women’s Six Nations against Ireland on Saturday at Twickenham they will be without Zoe Stratford, Lark Atkin-Davies and Rosie Galligan as they prepare to become mothers for the first time. The England rugby league player Kelsey Gentles – who has returned to her sport as a different player and person – says the World Cup winners should embrace the imminent metamorphosis.

Gentles left the Women’s Super League as a sparkling outside back in 2023; when she returned the following year, having given birth to her daughter Maia, she was a prop who blasted holes in defensive lines. She enjoyed a glorious comeback, scoring the winning try as York Valkyrie clinched the Grand Final, but there were challenges along the way.

Polls suggest lead for opposition candidate before vote on Sunday as both allege enlistment of foreign interference

• Hungary elections: what is at stake and who is likely to win?

Viktor Orbán and his centre-right rival, Péter Magyar, have traded accusations of enlisting foreign interference in a high-stakes election that polls suggest could mark the end of the nationalist Hungarian prime minister’s 16 years in power.

As the two leaders’ campaigns entered their final stages before this weekend’s vote, which is being watched as keenly in Brussels, Moscow and Washington as in Budapest, Orbán said on social media on Friday that his opponent would “stop at nothing to seize power”.

Former UK ambassador to US was photographed in November outside George Osborne’s London home

The former senior Labour figure Peter Mandelson faces a fixed-penalty notice after being caught urinating in public, it has emerged.

Mandelson was photographed in the act while standing outside the home of the former chancellor George Osborne last November, shortly after he had been sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US over his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Amendment calling for step-incest to be included in ban on harmful content passes by just one vote

The government has agreed to ban the production of pornography depicting sex acts between stepfamily members following a vote in the House of Lords.

The government tabled an amendment calling for step-incest to be included in a ban on harmful content, with the support of the Conservative peer Gabby Bertin, who led a review into pornography regulation that was published last year.

Exclusive: Deal for resident doctors was in sight when sudden change by ministers forced latest action, says Jack Fletcher

Ministers killed the chance to end strikes by resident doctors when they suddenly reduced the amount of money they were offering to secure the peace deal, the doctors’ leader claims.

Dr Jack Fletcher accused the government of “playing games” and forcing resident doctors to embark on their 15th strike over pay and jobs, which is disrupting the NHS this week.

Outrage from survivors follows first lady’s statement calling on Congress to hold public hearings with victims of Epstein’s abuse

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More than a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have accused Melania Trump of “shifting the burden” on to them after she called on Congress to hold public hearings with victims of Epstein’s abuse.

“Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony,” said a group of 13 people and the brother and sister of the late Virginia Giuffre, who was one of the most vocal Epstein accusers, in a statement. “Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility not justice.”

Campaigners say birds could die trying to access ancestral nests that were sealed during rail refurbishment

Some swifts returning to Britain to breed will be unable to access their ancestral nesting holes after they were blocked in a £7.5m refurbishment of a Derbyshire railway viaduct, campaigners say.

Nature lovers had appealed to Network Rail to unblock three holes which were among at least nine swift nesting sites on the twin viaducts at Chapel Milton, on the edge of the Peak District.

In a village in Norway, humans representing flora and fauna of all kinds meet to reimagine ‘nature-centric governance’

“My ask of humans is quite large,” says the northern bat to a room of reindeer, wolf lichen, bog, and other beings. “It’s a shift of consciousness, and an understanding that … we are a relation.”

The scene could come from a sci-fi novel imagining a more-than-human uprising. In fact, it’s from a recent “interspecies council” in Oppdal, Norway, in which non-humans – spoken for by humans – convened to discuss the region’s future.

Residents of Fleetwood say continuous foul smell from Transwaste site is causing illness and making life hell

In the week that many families went to the coast for the fresh sea air or the tang of fish and chips, visitors to one Lancashire resort inhaled a rather more unpleasant aroma.

“Welcome to Fleetwood,” read the local newspaper headline. “The town that smells of bin juice.”

Hawaii Volcanoes national park closed due to eruption of one of world’s most active volcanoes, located on Big Island

Amber lava exploded over 200 meters into the air as Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, located on Hawaii’s Big Island, erupted on Thursday.

Lava fountains began to erupt from the volcano after 11 am local time, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). On Thursday evening, plumes of smoke and lava pouring downslope were observable on a livestream camera. So far, the episode has produced 3.6m cubic yards of lava, the USGS said.

Concerns raised over use of travel data in determining whether people are ‘continuously’ in UK, after HMRC fiasco

UK ministers are to start removing post-Brexit residency rights from EU citizens who are no longer “continuously” living in the country.

The initiative is legal under the 2020 Brexit withdrawal agreement but the decision to use travel data to partly determine absences has raised concerns after the HMRC fiasco that saw almost 20,000 parents stripped of child benefits because of inaccurate Home Office border data.

Rebels put forward amendments to courts bill in attempt to stop government plans to cut back on jury trials

Labour MPs are hoping to hijack plans to cut back on jury trials in England and Wales by proposing specialist courts for sexual offences with fixed dates for trial.

Those behind the amendment want to block the wider plan to stop thousands of cases being potentially eligible for jury trials – a measure ministers say is needed to cut court backlogs – and they say the specialist courts alone could still solve much of the problem.

Celebrities including Annie Lennox and Miriam Margolyes sign letter to force after pro-Palestine march route rejected

Annie Lennox and Miriam Margolyes are among artists who have accused the Metropolitan police of giving preferential treatment to a far-right demonstration led by Tommy Robinson over a pro-Palestine protest in London on the same day.

The pro-Palestine movement has had its preferred route through central London for its annual commemoration of Nakba – the mass expulsion of Palestinians – rejected by the Met, while the “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration will take place on the same date in Kingsway, the Strand, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall and Parliament Square. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, posted on X: “London is ours on May 16th.”

Two men and two women were swept away by currents while attempting to board dinghy off French coast

A man has been arrested on suspicion of endangering life after four people died in a small boat Channel crossing on Thursday.

The man, described by prosecutors as a 27-year-old Sudanese national, was arrested by National Crime Agency investigators on Friday.

Former vice-president teases White House bid while Pete Buttigieg also suggests he may launch campaign

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Kamala Harris said she is “thinking about” running in the 2028 presidential election.

“I might, I might. I’m thinking about it,” the former vice-president and 2024 candidate told the crowd at a gathering of the National Action Network (NAN), a civil rights organization founded by Al Sharpton, on Friday in New York City.

Whatever outcome of ceasefire talks, the region will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Tehran

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Gulf nations will seek to add security partners as they rebuild battered economies after the US and Israel’s war on Iran and deal with an emboldened Tehran.

The Gulf will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Iran and its remaining missile arsenal. American bases on their soil turned them into targets for Iran, as it retaliated against a joint attack by the US and Israel.

Suspect arrested but not identified and has allegedly made similar threats to OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters

A 20-year-old man allegedly tossed a molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, before the sun rose on Friday, according to statements from San Francisco police.

The suspect, who allegedly threw the fire bomb at the $27m North Beach residence around 4.12am, has been arrested but not identified. The same person allegedly threatened to torch OpenAI’s headquarters in the city. No injuries were reported.

Clarence Curtis Jordan was convicted in 1978 but hadn’t had a lawyer for over 30 years

The Texas court of criminal appeals has overturned the death sentence of Clarence Curtis Jordan, a 70-year-old man with intellectual disabilities, who spent nearly 50 years on death row – much of that time without a lawyer.

Jordan was convicted in 1978 for the murder of Joe L Williams, a 40-year-old grocer in Houston, and was sentenced to death. In the years that followed, courts determined that Jordan, who has intellectual disabilities, was “incompetent”, making him ineligible for execution under constitutional standards.

Credit can be used to offset future bills as full-year losses at UK division widen to £41.3m and it adds 92 stores

Starbucks’s UK retail arm received a £13.7m corporation tax credit last year, even as its sales increased 6% and it added more than 90 stores.

The credit, which can be used to offset future tax bills, comes after losses widened to £41.3m in the 12 months to the end of September – almost matching the £40m it paid in royalty and licence fees to its parent company.

Prices were up 3.3% over the year, adding to the unpredictability that first came with Trump tariffs

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US inflation soared in March amid the US-Israel war with Iran, with prices up 0.9% compared with last month and 3.3% over the year, according to new data released on Friday.

The spike in the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the price of a basket of goods and services, is the largest in nearly two years and the first official measure of how the conflict has affected US consumer prices, particularly as Iran blocked the strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas would typically pass.

Andy Jassy tells shareholders that long-awaited rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink is ‘on the verge’ of going live

Amazon has said its long-awaited satellite internet rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink will finally go live in “mid-2026”.

The chief executive, Andy Jassy, said in a letter to shareholders that the technology company was “on the verge of launching Amazon Leo” and had secured “revenue commitments from enterprises and governments” for the scheme.

Texas city believes loose rules and low taxes will make the US’s biggest banks come running – can it pull it off?

As the warm sun rises over the Dallas skyline, SUVs and pickup trucks whiz past an unassuming construction site that is helping cement the city’s Texas-sized financial ambitions.

Nestled between towers claimed by Bank of America and JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs has cordoned off 800,000 sq ft for a new Dallas campus able to host more than 5,000 staff. But the $700m (£530m) project is more than a regional expansion plan by one of America’s largest banks. It is another win for the lobbyists behind Dallas’s “Y’all Street” – the Texan city’s aggressive push to steal New York’s financial crown.

Stars including Sabrina Carpenter, Karol G, David Byrne and Addison Rae also head to the desert for the first of two sold-out weekends of live music

Justin Bieber is set for a major live performance comeback at this year’s sold-out Coachella with rainy weather set to be a possible spoiler.

The Canadian singer will face his biggest live stage since he abandoned his 2022 tour over health concerns. Bieber was experiencing “full paralysis” on one side of his face after being diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. “I wish this wasn’t the case but obviously my body is telling me I gotta slow down,” he said at the time.

The 73-year-old has been at the cutting edge of US independent cinema since the 1980s. As Father Mother Sister Brother opens in the UK, he talks about grief, greed and ‘doing crazy shit’ with Steve Coogan

In 1991, Jim Jarmusch was casting for his anthology film Night on Earth. The premise was simple: five taxi drivers in five cities pick up passengers, set to a soundtrack by Tom Waits. The writer-director wanted Gena Rowlands to play a passenger, but she took some persuading. “Night on Earth was the first film she’d made since losing John [the director John Cassavetes, her husband] and she wasn’t sure. Eventually she said: ‘OK, I’ll be in this film for you.’” Jarmusch does a perfect impression of Rowlands, as he does with everyone he quotes – it’s quite a talent.

In the first vignette, Winona Ryder picks up Rowlands, who plays a casting director. Ryder, chewing gum, baseball cap on backwards, lights a cigarette; Rowlands, all old-school Hollywood elegance, sits in the back, asking Ryder about her hopes and dreams. Ryder turns down Rowlands’ offer of potential stardom, declaring that her dream is not to act, but to be a mechanic.

This revival does the impossible: it’s effortlessly funny and refreshing, and Bryan Cranston’s performance is unmissable. They have to make more

At this point, Bryan Cranston is firmly entrenched as one of the world’s finest actors. He has seven Emmys, two Tonys and a Golden Globe to his name. History, quite rightly, will remember him as one of the greats. That said – and this really wasn’t a sentence I expected to write a couple of hours ago – there is a distinct possibility that the greatest work of his entire career might be the scene in the Malcolm in the Middle revival where he thrashes around naked as he is overcome by a drug-induced ego death.

Perhaps this does make some small amount of sense. Although Malcolm in the Middle became best known as an absurd counterpoint to Breaking Bad – the sheer dramatic intensity of the latter playing against the generic sitcom daddery of the former – those of us who always loved the show knew that Cranston spent a lot of it going full throttle.

The foreign affairs series delves into Africa’s burgeoning entertainment industry. Plus: a new generation of big cats. Here’s what to watch this evening

7.30pm, Channel 4
There’s a reason why this Friday evening buzzkill of a documentary strand is approaching its 50th season: it does a brilliant job of finding essential, often bleak stories from around the world and offering a potted guide. This new run begins in Nigeria and the conservative city of Kano, which is home to a prolific film industry. Anja Popp meets Mansurah Isah, one of its few female directors, and explores her battle to elevate women’s perspectives. Phil Harrison

Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling make an unlikely couple in Harry Lighton’s gay biker drama. Plus: an amiable thief finds romance while hiding out in a toy store

Love stories come in all shapes and sizes. Harry Lighton sets his provocative, witty debut film in the world of BDSM. Harry Melling stars as introverted traffic warden – and occasional barbershop quartet singer – Colin, who lives with his parents in suburban London. When he is picked up in the local pub by Adonis-like biker Ray (an enigmatic Alexander Skarsgård), he thinks all his dreams have come true. But Ray needs to be dominant sexually, so if their new relationship is to survive Colin must submit to his every whim. A fascinating exploration of the gay biker subculture and fetish scene that manages to feel transgressive but also touching, a coming-of-age tale in chains.
Friday, 10pm, Sky Cinema Premiere

Elle Fanning stars as a student and single mom who turns to OnlyFans to raise cash, plus a tense, clever new season of Beef pitches two sets of couples against one another

Margo’s English tutor thinks she’s Harvard material. If only he wasn’t using this assessment to flatter her into bed. When, with grim predictability, he leaves her literally holding the baby, Margo (Elle Fanning) realises she has followed in the footsteps of her mother Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer) who had her after a one-night stand with a punter at Hooters. What unfolds is a story of hardscrabble female solidarity as Margo, determined to retain a degree of autonomy, unlocks both an income and her latent creativity via an OnlyFans account. The script is smart, funny and unsentimental and the lead performances (particularly Pfeiffer) are full of warmth and charm.
Apple TV, from Wednesday 15 April

Pushing his winsome songwriting into rootsier territory with a little help from co-producer MJ Lenderman, the New Yorker’s debut album is primed to soundtrack your summer

From New York City, New York
Recommended if you like The Clean, This is Lorelei, The Feelies
Up next Debut album Hercules out 10 July

Tracey Nelson’s self-titled 2025 debut EP was one of the year’s best lesser-heard gems: Five tracks of sparkling, winsome indie-rock that recalled classic antipodean jangle bands the Clean, Twerps and Dick Diver. Tracks such as New Years Flowers and Just Shoot Me Now suggested that Austin Noll – the NYC-based singer-songwriter behind the project – was a classicist with a keen sense for bright melodies and self-deprecating one-liners.

(New Year)
Londoner Alex Peringer breaks from his intriguing and outlandish dance music with this debut album of charming bedroom-pop ballads

A decade ago, Londoner Alex Peringer intrigued underground club circles with his outlandish take on dance music. Structured around dizzying time signatures and wry tales of unfulfilling lovers and pills gone wrong, his tracks referenced everything from UK funky to new wave and sea shanties. Then came several years of near silence – now broken by this self-released debut album, How Long Has It Been? The record acknowledges this break not just in the title, but also in its sound. On first listen, it couldn’t seem more different to Peringer’s early work, with those discordant constructions now replaced by the warm tinkering of the Rhodes electric piano and ostensibly earnest sentiment. But traces of that eccentricity still linger in this collection of atmospheric bedroom-pop ballads.

The record takes winter as its theme, though it feels fitting for this transitional time of year, with its stories of introspection and dodgy weather set against soft, simple arrangements. A handful of subtly wonky elements stop it from sounding overly polished or guileless: Before and After slips in a reference to a “fateful bong”; on the dreamy duet Two Lovers, glitches cut through the twinkling keys and mumblecore guest vocals. Elsewhere, the chords waver on Black Keys, one of several gorgeous and forlorn instrumentals.

(Polydor)
The British singer-songwriter replaces introspection with euphoric choruses, 80s synths and even happy hardcore on her vivid second LP

As a profession, pop stardom has been in existential crisis for some time. It used to be simple – a hit single was the only real qualification – but in a post-monocultural world, the job title is often bestowed as a result of more piecemeal success: a Brit rising star award and Taylor Swift support slot here, 4m monthly Spotify listeners and a Top 5 album there.

This, specifically, is the CV of Lincolnshire’s Holly Humberstone, who has established herself in the pop sphere without ever troubling the singles chart. While an undeniable banger has eluded the 26-year-old, her sound is faultlessly chart-friendly. Like Swift, Humberstone delivers earnestly wordy lyrics in intimate, near-ASMR tones atop 80s synth-pop decorated with a deluge of hooks. For this second album, she has dropped the hint of gothic melancholy that accompanied her debut, Paint My Bedroom Black. Cruel World is peppy bordering on euphoric: inordinately sunny break-up song To Love Somebody is powered by a stadium-ready pre-chorus, while the brilliantly catchy White Noise plugs into nostalgically naff disco to channel imperial-phase Kylie.

Colin Currie Group
(Colin Currie Records)
The fourth Reich album for Currie’s specialist ensemble celebrates the composer’s precise patterns with an enjoyably chilled feel and plenty of dynamic niceties

The Colin Currie Group formed 20 years ago to honour Steve Reich’s 70th birthday with a performance of Drumming. This year, the great American composer turns 90, making this, the group’s fourth Reich album on Currie’s own label, a double celebration.

Sextet, hailing from 1985, features two keyboardists playing piano and synthesisers alongside four percussionists on marimbas, vibraphones, bass drums, crotales, sticks and tam-tams. Shifting patterns interlock with the precision of a Swiss watch across one of the composer’s typical fast, slow, fast, slow, fast arcs. Currie’s recording flickers with subtle nuances with a naturalistic sound less closely mic’d than in Reich’s own classic accounts.

The South African author on discovering Colette, being inspired by JG Ballard, and the subversive joys of Asako Yuzuki

My earliest reading memory
The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, particularly the little red fan the cat holds in the tip of its tail. At the age of five, I was reading The Famous Five, getting to grips with Enid Blyton’s most complex characters, Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin. I was born in apartheid South Africa. The children in the Famous Five series had no human rights problems and it is set in Dorset, a landscape that was totally unknown to me. My bedroom window in Johannesburg looked out on a garden of bone-white grass and a peach tree.

My favourite book growing up
I was delighted to move on to the imaginative sophistication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. CS Lewis’s lucky strike was to come up with the idea that a wardrobe was the portal to another world. Although she terrified me, I wanted to meet the White Witch, who rode on a sleigh pulled by white reindeer.

A Stoic philosopher navigates midlife in this madcap comedy from the author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette

What would Marcus Aurelius have made of the Kardashians? Would Seneca have been amused by mindfulness apps? These were questions I had never consciously pondered before reading Maria Semple’s new novel. Neither, in my irrational and unvirtuous state, had I spent much time considering the application of Stoic philosophy to any other key aspects of modern life.

Semple, best known for her exuberant, ingenious bestseller Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, here presents us with Adora Hazzard, Stoic philosopher and divorcee. Adora lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side, spending her days tutoring the twin sons of an old-money family in philosophy and seeking to live according to Stoic virtues, without recourse to destabilising “externals”. But her settled life is soon disrupted by that most classic of externals, the handsome stranger. “Curse these alluring men who throw us off our game!” (Marcus Aurelius, paraphrased.)

Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley; Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy; Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell; Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley (Gollancz, £22)
In a Britain racked by the effects of climate change, about 50 years from now, Marc Winters’ quiet life as a ranger on a nature reserve in Essex is about to be disturbed. Counter-terrorism officers arrive to question him about events from eight years before, when a cult his sister Izzy was part of had self-immolated. He’d hardly been aware of this group of “deep dreamers”, who thought they could change the world through a sort of mental time travel enabled by psychotropic mushrooms. But now both government agents and deep dreamers alike think Izzy must have passed some vital information to her brother, whether he knows it or not. With no idea of the existential danger he faces, Marc sets out to investigate. Beautifully written, blending close attention to the natural world with hallucinogenic dreams and a mind-boggling premise, this is an eco-thriller like no other from one of Britain’s best SF writers.

Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy (John Murray, £18.99)
When their house is flooded, Astrid and her husband take the refuge offered by her friend Flora in the Brecon Beacons. Astrid was particularly affected by the flood, which damaged paintings intended for her first solo exhibition at a prestigious London gallery. The old chapel her friend is renovating becomes her new studio. But instead of working to salvage her portraits, she becomes obsessed with painting the landscape of lake and sky. She tries to shrug off her bad dreams, strange physical sensations, missing items and the dirty, child-sized handprints on the walls, but disturbing facts about the chapel’s history emerge, and she’s not the only one affected by what appears to be a malevolent haunting. She’s haunted, too, by memories of a student art trip to Florence, a significant turning point in her friendship with Flora. Astrid is her own worst enemy, but her issues – ambition, envy, ambivalence about motherhood – will resonate with many readers. A sophisticated, chilling tale that works both as supernatural and psychological horror.

From an extraordinary debut inspired by a real-life breakdown to a creepy masterpiece, here’s a guide to the Scottish novelist’s works

Next week marks 20 years since the death of the Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist Muriel Spark. She was best known for her 22 novels – uncanny, astute and witty – beginning with her 1957 debut The Comforters. Here, James Bailey, the author of a new biography, Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, guides us through her oeuvre.

***

As The Super Mario Galaxy Movie storms the box office, we look back at the best forgotten games inspired by Tetris, Lemmings and … vitamins?

It should be no surprise that the latest Super Mario movie is smashing box office records – despite the, let’s say mixed, reviews. Nintendo’s iconic plumber has been a pop culture staple for 45 years, starring in some of the bestselling video games ever made, from the original Donkey Kong through to the joyous Super Mario Bros Wonder and the chaotic Mario Kart World.

But as with any storied showbiz career, there have been some lesser works. Who can forget – or actually remember – Hotel Mario, a door-shutting puzzle game for the doomed Philips CD-i console? Or what about Mario Teaches Typing, a 1992 educational game for the PC in which players navigate the Mushroom Kingdom by … correctly inputting words. Yet there have also been genuine treasures lost along the way. Here, then, are seven of our favourite much-overlooked Mario odysseys.

As real astronauts vanish behind the moon, games have long tried to evoke the fragile quiet of drifting through space

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Last week’s launch of the Artemis II space mission was a stunning spectacle, the 17-storey-high rockets erupting into cacophonous life before wrenching the craft through the Earth’s atmosphere. But the images that have come since hold just as much impact: the tiny Orion craft and its four-person crew drifting silently through space, further and further from home.

In his autobiography, the Apollo astronaut Michael Collins described this feeling perfectly. Left in the command module as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface, he wrote: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London
The songs soar and blast in this inventive tale of a toxic romance – though it needs a few tweaks to be truly brilliant

The scope and ambition of this dark musical by Theo Jamieson and Adam Lenson are boundless. A jagged, time- and space-travelling drama about the emotional wreckage of a mutually destructive relationship, it begins with reports of a young astronaut who has gone awol in a shuttle.

Why has Daniel (Stuart Thompson, fabulous) disappeared with such limited fuel and what is the point of his kamikaze journey? A non-sequential backstory emerges featuring his relationship with Emily (Poppy Gilbert, just as good) to build a chopped-up picture of their relationship, rather like The Last Five Years. It shows glimpses of formative traumas and cruelties. Daniel, bullied as a child, seems unconsciously drawn to someone who inflicts similar emotional damage. Emily lives in a state of guilt and betrayal passed on by her parents (especially her philandering film-maker father, who co-opts his teenage daughter into his web of infidelity and deception).

At Southwark Playhouse Borough, London, until 16 May

City Hall, Sheffield
The masterful performer previews her allegorical new album about the ‘fight for democracy over tyranny’ amid a set full of immaculate musicianship

Ahead of her 18th studio album, In Times of Dragons, and on her first tour in three years, Tori Amos is navigating the brutal state of the world in a way only she knows how: by channelling Celtic gods and turning into a half-dragon, half-woman character. The allegorical tales that make up her forthcoming record – “a metaphorical story about the fight for democracy over tyranny” – are evident on the early outing and live debut of Shush. A dark, doomy, track that slowly unfurls like a southern gothic tale, albeit one about battling an evil billionaire lizard demon husband. It’s big, dramatic, world-building stuff. But it’s also emblematic of Amos’s knack for delivering complex, weighty subject matter with deftness and fluidity.

However, this is not a run through of her as-yet-unreleased album. Instead, Amos dives deep into her vast and sprawling back catalogue, from the delicate deep cut Ruby Through the Looking-Glass to the atmospheric, slow-burn jazzy grooves of Little Amsterdam.

Almeida theatre, London
Anya Reiss packs the marriage scandal plot with inspired ideas, from convincing talk of Instagram to a look at sexual dynamics in the crosshairs of contemporary capitalism

Who would Henrik Ibsen’s Nora be in 21st-century Britain? Would her husband, Torvald still be a bank manager and she his “little squirrel” housewife?

Transposing this drama of 19th-century proto-feminism into the present day is a tricky business, partly because the gendered confinements of Nora and Torvald’s “ideal” middle-class marriage are built on thoroughly old-fashioned values: a husband who prides himself as the sole breadwinner, a wife who would spark social scandal if she left her marital home. Adapter Anya Reiss does a heroic job of reimagining this story for modern times, and half pulls it off.

Royal Albert Hall, London
On a tour playing Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister in full on alternate nights, Stuart Murdoch and co wittily reanimate their world of aesthetes and misfits

It’s a double 30th anniversary for Belle and Sebastian, whose first two albums, Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, both came out in 1996. Not that most people heard Tigermilk back then: only 1,000 copies existed until its 1999 reissue. Taken together, though, they were a perfect introduction to frontman Stuart Murdoch’s private universe of aesthetes and misfits (like the girl in Expectations, “making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay”), as instantly inviting as the Smiths’ debut, Wes Anderson’s 90s movies or JD Salinger’s short stories.

The Glaswegians quickly became more diverse and extroverted but it was these two records, performed here in full over two nights, that made them cult worthy. As former bassist Stuart David says in the introductory film, they had a “slightly shambolic magic”.

Drummer who brought an irresistible melting pot of styles to hits by Marvin Gaye, Gloria Gaynor and the Jackson 5

In R&B, soul, funk, disco and other forms of African-American popular music, no performer is more valuable than the drummer who can find “the pocket”: the name given by musicians to that elusive place where the rhythm propelling a song is both profound and irresistible. James Gadson, who has died aged 86, seemed to live his entire working life deep in that pocket, giving momentum to such 1970s hits as Bill Withers’ Lean on Me, Marvin Gaye’s I Want You, Diana Ross’s Love Hangover, the Jackson 5’s Dancing Machine, Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, Smokey Robinson’s Cruisin’, Peaches & Herb’s Reunited and many more in future decades during his career in the recording studios of Los Angeles.

Other artists in related fields also made grateful use of his gifts. He played on Boz Scaggs’ Slow Dancer (1974) and Elkie Brooks’s Live and Learn (1979), Leonard Cohen’s The Future (1992) and, in this century, Rickie Lee Jones’s The Evening of My Best Day, Paul McCartney’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, Lana Del Rey’s Paradise, and several albums by Beck, among others.

Will artificial intelligence save us or destroy us? According to a growing band of thriller scriptwriters, we should be very afraid indeed

Maybe the “H” in Line Of Duty will turn out to stand for “hard drive”? After all, AI has become TV’s go-to villain, as proven once again in last week’s penultimate episode of BBC stablemate The Capture. Sinister puppet-master Simon was unmasked at long last and – spoiler – he wasn’t a person.

“Wait, Simon’s a computer?” asked a baffled agent. “He’s a bit more than that,” replied a smug army bigwig. “We’re using AI to support, map, execute and command ops. Simon factors in more risks and variables than you lot on the ground are capable of knowing. Tell him your objective and he’ll calculate your mission and recalibrate it for you in real time. The stats don’t lie. Simon saves lives.”

An independent review found ‘weaknesses’ in the organisation’s planning and crisis procedures

Bafta has apologised “unreservedly” for the events surrounding John Davidson’s Tourette’s outburst at this year’s ceremony, after an independent review found “weaknesses” in the organisation’s planning and crisis procedures.

Davidson, an executive producer on the Bafta-winning film I Swear, dominated headlines for weeks after involuntarily shouting the N-word as Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

My daughter complained of monsters in her closet – at night she could hear a hum in the wall

It started in September 2023, when my daughter Saylor was three years old. She began having trouble sleeping, and said there were monsters in her closet. She could hear a hum in the wall. We thought it was because she loved the movie Monsters, Inc, given it’s about monsters who visit children’s bedrooms at night. We calmed her down by giving her a bottle of water, which we called monster spray.

But soon she was scared again. By February, she was back in our room. Later that month, I saw a giant cluster of bees buzzing by the attic laundry vent outside the house. I was pregnant with our third child, exhausted, and thought I was hallucinating.

Your top off-the-beaten track discoveries, from gorges in Galicia to vineyards in La Rioja
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Recently travelling from Madrid to San Sebastián, we spent three days in picturesque Briñas in La Rioja, staying at the beautiful Finca Torre de Briñas (doubles from €189 B&B). The neighbouring town, Haro, reached via a 40-minute walk by the Ebro River, hosts several of the largest wine producers in the region (CVNE and Muga are recommended). You can stop in and sample them, before heading into the town centre, which has several tapas spots to fuel the walk back to the hotel. Bliss.
Tom Dickson

Whether you want budget, organic or vegan, these are the best meal delivery services from our writer’s test of nine

• The best chef’s knives – tested

Recipe box services are the best thing to happen to time-poor foodies since, well, sliced bread. They’re cheaper than a takeaway, often less processed than a ready meal, and much more culinarily adventurous than beans on toast.

You have to do the actual cooking, but not the shopping. Recipe boxes contain every ingredient you need (well, most do), often in the exact measurements required. “Meal kits” cut hassle even further by including preprepared stocks, sauces and other flavour bombs, plus ready-chopped veg. All you have to do is put them together following the steps in the recipe, which can take less time than queueing at a supermarket checkout.

They’re pricier than the competition, but have key features: the music doesn’t skitter when you step out of Bluetooth range and they can handle water and dust

• How do Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 compare against hearing aids? I put them to the test

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Over the past eight years, I’ve reviewed dozens of portable speakers from every top brand. And I can confidently say that Sonos makes three of the best portable speakers of them all.

There’s Sonos Play, the brand’s newest portable and the Goldilocks of its lineup in size, sound and features. The Roam 2, a Toblerone-shaped speaker that’s small enough to go anywhere. And the Move 2, a powerhouse that doesn’t sacrifice bass performance.

The little one:
Sonos Roam 2

Floss without the faff with our expert-tested water flossers, from travel-size models to countertop jets

• The best electric toothbrushes, tested

There isn’t much I miss from my pre-Invisalign “gappy teeth” days, but it was far more difficult for food and plaque to get stuck in the gaps – something I took for granted at the time. Using floss between my pre-braces teeth was easy, but ultimately pointless, like using a pipe cleaner to buff the Dartford Tunnel.

With all the gaps closed, that’s no longer the case, and my water flosser has become a welcome part of my dental routine. A water flosser fires an intense jet of water between the teeth to dislodge debris and leave your mouth feeling fresher.

Best water flosser overall:
Waterpik Ultra Professional

Best budget water flosser:
Operan Cordless Oral Irrigator

Our seasoned traveller braved obstacles and mud to put the best cabin bags to the test – from hard-shell to budget, wheeled to lightweight

• The best travel pillows, tested

Let’s start by saying that if you can avoid taking a flight, that would be best. Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global carbon emissions – and the levels released by aircraft could double or triple by 2050.

Regrettably, you can’t always reach your destination by rail, sea or hot-air balloon. If flying is unavoidable, one way to reduce your carbon footprint is to take a cabin bag, rather than hold luggage. This encourages you to pack less, so your baggage is lighter, and less fuel is required to spirit it through the stratosphere. If that doesn’t move you, consider that you’ll also pay lower fees to the airline.

Best cabin bag overall:
July Carry On luggage

Best budget cabin bag:
Tripp Holiday 8 cabin suitcase

An upmarket, smoky ‘tegroni’ that is simplicity itself to make

All you need to make this is a glass and a spoon. We’ve switched out the tequila from the original noughties twist on the negroni and instead brought forward our favourite spirit, mezcal, to bring a lightly smoky profile to proceedings. The perfect pairing for this drink is a campfire, so it’s an especially good one to premix in a flask and chuck in your backpack for a spring camping trip.

Daniel Craig Martin, co-founder, Bar Shrimp, Manchester

Miso brings a level of mouthwatering complexity to these otherwise simple cookies

Everyone has different ideas on what makes the perfect chocolate chip cookie, with everything from thickness and chewiness to the amount of chocolate up for debate. In my opinion, no cookie is worth eating if it’s not well salted; without it, everything feels a little off balance and flat. My not-so-secret way of salting cookies is to use a bit of miso. Not so much that it becomes a miso cookie, but just enough to bring a slightly savoury, umami vibe that makes the cookies a bit more complex-tasting and not sickly sweet.

From the ideal time to go discount-sticker shopping to the best day of the week to visit charity shops, industry insiders offer their advice on how to keep costs down as prices rise

From supermarkets’ yellow-stickered items to apps for free food, there are many ways to lower your shopping bill amid the cost of living crisis. Retail workers share their insider info on how to save money at grocery stores, street markets and charity shops.

The weeks before the full spring bounty arrives are a perfect time to bring a lighter approach to winter crops, and make the most of frozen fruit and spring greens

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Spring may have firmly sprung – I write this with a view of vivid yellow forsythia blossom in next door’s garden, and the melodious warble of full-throated birdsong – but though the greenery may be flourishing in our gardens, it’s a different story at the farmers’ market. Despite a few spindly spears of asparagus and miniature jersey royals making an appearance on our Easter tables last weekend, the new season of British produce doesn’t kick off in earnest for another few weeks yet. That means we’re now heading into the so-called “hungry gap”, an annual quirk of our relatively northern latitude, when temperatures are too high for much winter veg such as kale and brassicas, but too low for the more delicate likes of peas and broad beans to ripen – let alone high-summer treats such as berries, squash and stone fruit.

Happily, many hardy winter crops store well, and are versatile enough to shake off their heavy winter coat of cream and butter in favour of a lighter treatment. The late Skye Gyngell gifted us a carrot, celery, farro and borlotti bean soup, Nigel Slater has an early spring laksa with purple sprouting broccoli (and some spinach, which I suspect you could use frozen), and Nicholas Balfe offers a ceviche with celeriac and a baked beetroot dish (pictured top) – both of which look just the thing to wake up your taste buds. If it stays salad weather, I’m also rather taken by the sound of Thomasina Miers’s purple sprouting broccoli with sunshine dressing. Then again, with a name like that, who wouldn’t be?

Alda feels Rachel should follow jewellery ‘rules’, but Rachel likes to mix things up. You decide whose argument rings true
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I know she’s expressing herself, but when you mix everything up, it looks thrown together and cheap

They’re not Alda’s hands to worry about – I like my mismatched mess. Why does it matter to her?

Experts weigh in on why some people have an inexplicable barrier to responding – and what they can do about it

“There’s no such thing as a bad texter. They just don’t want to respond,” said influencer Delaney Rowe last year on the online talkshow Subway Takes. “People go around thinking being a bad texter is like a pathology, but it’s not. It’s a cop-out.”

“I don’t believe in bad texters,” announced radio host Dan Zolot last year. “If you want to answer you will answer.”

After I collapsed during a run along a beach, my loyal dog Beau sprang into action

When I lost my wife, Jo, to cancer eight years ago, I knew it was time for a fresh start, so I packed up my London home and moved to Poole on the Dorset coast. I longed for a companion, so I welcomed a labrador puppy into my life, naming him Beau in a nod to the time Jo and I had spent living in France.

A gun dog from Derbyshire with a sleek black coat and deep brown eyes, Beau was an adorable and mischievous puppy who kept me on my toes right from the start. When he was six months old, he rummaged in a fisherman’s bucket and swallowed a fishing line and hook. Thankfully, it came out the other end, narrowly avoiding surgery.

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

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

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

More than 80% of the UK’s tradespeople have had tools stolen. Some have lost months of work as a result. With thefts up 16% in a year, can the police and the government do anything to protect them?

If you’re on social media and have even a passing interest in home improvement, there’s a good chance you will have seen Kevin Tingley’s work. The 39-year-old decorator is known as Paint Warrior – and has millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram. He’s in demand, highly skilled, generous in sharing tips from his many years of experience and even has his own range of products on sale in the UK and the US.

But even with his social media army and branded brushes, he’s still not immune to the biggest threat faced by British tradespeople: tool theft. “It was Boxing Day morning,” Tingley says. “I was still in bed, my wife was on her way to the gym. She came running back in and told me that all the doors of my van were open.”

Through no fault of their own, she faces repaying £100 a month until she is 93 or face legal action

My 66-year-old mother has been told that she has been overpaid her civil service pension by £40,000 and must repay it, or face legal action. Once the tax she’s paid on the income is deducted, she owes £32,000.

Her monthly pension payments have now been cut, which means her annual income will fall from £19,700 to £12,000, and she was, additionally, ordered to repay £496 a month for five years. This was later reduced to £100 a month, and a charge was put on her house as security. She’s been told she will have paid everything she owes when she’s 93.

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

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

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

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

Data on almost 28,000 patients suggests understanding gene variations could improve treatments for obesity

Scientists have discovered how genetics may help explain why weight-loss jabs work better for some people than others.

Variations in two genes involved in gut hormone pathways, which regulate appetite and digestion, may help account for different weight-loss results or side-effects when taking glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP1) medicines.

It sends us to sleep and wakes us in the night, excites us and depresses us, gives us confidence one moment, anxiety the next. How does this messy drug wield so much power?

Whatever you think of alcohol, you have to admit that it’s versatile. Ever since the first humans started smashing up fruit and leaving it in pots to chug a few days later, we’ve been relying on it to celebrate and commiserate, to deal with anxiety and to make us more creative. We use it to build confidence and kill boredom, to get us in the mood for going out and to put us to (nonoptimal) sleep. Where most mind-altering substances have one or two specific use-cases, alcohol does the lot. That’s probably why it’s been so ubiquitous throughout human history – and why it can be so hard to give up entirely.

“We often call alcohol pharmacologically promiscuous,” says Dr Rayyan Zafar, a neuropsychopharmacologist from Imperial College London. “It doesn’t just calm you: it can stimulate reward pathways, dampen threat signals, release endogenous opioids that can relieve pain or stress, alter decision-making and shift mood, all at the same time.”

Oxford team’s technology picked up danger signs with 86% accuracy in study of 72,000 patients in England

Oxford scientists have developed a simple AI tool that can predict the risk of heart failure five years before it develops.

More than 60 million people worldwide have the condition in which the heart cannot pump blood around the body as well as it should. Spotting cases before they develop into heart failure would be a big step forward, experts say. Doctors could prepare better for and manage the condition at an earlier stage or even prevent it entirely.

Scientist who established productive growth of HIV in an immortalised cell line, which led to the development of the UK’s first antibody test for the virus

The virologist Robin Weiss, who has died aged 86, was the outstanding scientist of the UK’s response to the Aids pandemic. In 1984 he led the team that identified the CD4 molecule as the cellular receptor for HIV, the causative virus of Aids. Subsequently he established productive growth of HIV in an immortalised cell line, and this allowed the development, with Richard Tedder, of the UK’s first antibody test for HIV, later commercialised by the Wellcome Foundation.

Critically, this test allowed HIV-infected people to be identified accurately and at scale. Robin was the first to demonstrate antibody neutralisation of HIV, a fundamental basis to vaccine development. These major scientific advances were all achieved while Robin was the youngest-ever director (1980-89) of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London.

Designer who left fashion house in January said to be considering options for his 40% stake ahead of talks with lenders

Stefano Gabbana left his post as the chair of Dolce & Gabbana at the start of this year, the fashion house he co-founded with his then partner, Domenico Dolce, has said.

The Italian luxury brand said Gabbana had tendered his resignation, effective as of 1 January, “as part of a natural evolution of its organisational structure and governance”.

Don’t save them for holidays – with the right styling white trousers will be the linchpin of your spring wardrobe

Her rare cover appearance with Meryl Streep may be to promote The Devil Wears Prada sequel, but it also marks a shift from elusive editor to carefully curated personal brand

In the world of magazines, when someone announces they’re leaving a job, their colleagues will traditionally present them with their own personalised mock-up of the magazine’s front cover. Perhaps their face is superimposed on the body of a previous celebrity cover star. There are probably some witty cover lines referencing memorable office moments or their favourite snacks. It’s a rite of passage – and this week, Anna Wintour was bestowed with her very own cover. But instead of a jokey imitation bidding her adieu, it was the real, glossy deal, coming to a newsstand near you on 28 April.

In a somewhat surprising effort to promote the forthcoming The Devil Wears Prada 2, Vogue’s May issue sees Wintour share the cover with Meryl Streep, whose steely Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of the fictional title Runway, is said to have been inspired by Wintour. “Seeing Double. When Miranda met Anna” reads the cover line. While Wintour has fronted various industry titles, including Interview in 1993 and Ad Week in 2017, it’s the first time an editor has placed themselves as the subject. In another fun twist, both Wintour and Streep are wearing Prada.

After decades of focusing on faces, manufacturers, beauticians and surgeons are offering us younger-looking hands. Is this more about money or scientific progress?

I lay my hands on the table, palms down, for inspection. I’m in the consulting room of the president of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine (BCAM) in London. Like most people, I use my hands a lot. I type for hours a day. I go bouldering, which means I have a lot of calluses. I cook, clean, cup my chin while staring out the window. What I’ve never done is to look at my hands as objects of interest in their own right. They’re an afterthought. The means to an end. But now that Dr Sophie Shotter has picked them up in hers and is weighing my flesh and pushing at the skin with her thumbs to see how it moves, I can see faint ripples of diamonds, the texture of crepe paper.

“Your facial skin is very clear, very smooth. When we look at your hands, you’ve got a bit more of that laxity going on,” Shotter says. “You don’t have pigmentation. You’re not covered in sunspots. But the veins and tendons testify to a loss of volume. The extreme end of that is one day we get what people describe as ‘old lady hands’ – significant volume loss with skin fragility overlying it.”

A cycle tour of the Sierra Nevada backcountry proves a bumpy but beautiful ride through cinematic scenery

When you get into a van with an Englishman, five Irishmen and a Scotsman, you know someone is going to end up looking silly. For the next few days, my aim is for it not to be me. The van is taking us from busy Málaga to remote Andalucía for four days of gravel biking, something I have never done and for which I am not sure I am cut out.

Most of my cycling experience is limited to a flat five-mile commute through London, or long-distance road touring holidays. I love sailing across smooth asphalt, and have always been slightly snobby about the rough stuff. Why bump along when you can glide?

In the sparsely populated Queen Charlotte Sound, tourists can accompany the skipper-come-postman as parcels are dropped off via the scenic route. No heart rate check required

For a travel destination famous for offering the adrenaline rush of extreme sports, from bungee jumping to the parachute drop, it’s an unlikely tourist activity – but an irresistible one. If you’re travelling in New Zealand, don’t miss out on the chance to deliver the mail. By boat.

It happens in the Queen Charlotte Sound, part of the Marlborough Sounds in the stretch of water that separates New Zealand’s North and South Islands. For over 160 years, New Zealand Post has ensured the handful of families who live on the bays and inlets of the sound receive the same mail service as every other resident of the country, no matter that they live in isolated homes accessible only by boat. Six days a week, the mailboat leaves from Picton, the skipper doubling as postman for the three- or four-hour voyage – and these days passengers can come along for the ride.

England’s largest forest has an aura reminiscent of parts of Canada or Finland. This year it celebrates its centenary with new trails and dark sky events

Deep in Kielder Forest, on the northern side of the vast Kielder Water stands Silvas Capitalis, a giant, two-storey timber head, one of the most striking of the 20 sculptures tucked between the pines. It’s an eerie sight, almost shocking; its mouth ajar, as if astounded by all it sees. It’s my first visit to Kielder, and my face has been wearing a similar expression since I stepped out of the car at the lakeside trying to take in the scale of the landscapes unfolding around me.

Kielder doesn’t look like England – at least, not the England I know. For a start, it’s vast; 250 sq miles (648 sq km), with 158m trees, mostly sitka spruce conifers planted by hand. And even though it’s a plantation, there’s a wilderness feel that reminds me of Finland or Canada; a great swathe of nature at its most intense. It’s a working forest, involving 500 full-time jobs (not including tourism) and 2026 marks the centenary of the very first plantings, when the UK was in need of timber reserves after the demands of the first world war.

Ancient hill carvings of horses, crosses and crowns have fascinated artists, writers and travellers for centuries. I went in search of their stories

In the churchyard next to Wilmington Priory in East Sussex, I found a yew so ancient and stooped that its trunk had eaten half a gravestone. Its boughs were supported by long poles, a creepy sight that made me shudder. I had come here to see something just as strange, but more benign than this folk-horror vision – the figure of the Long Man of Wilmington on the hillside opposite, on the steep scarp of the South Downs. He treks over the hill, a stave clasped in each hand. Climbing Windover Hill, just beneath the South Downs Way, I saw that while he was once a chalk giant, his lines are now marked with concrete blocks.

The Long Man may be Anglo-Saxon in origin – the shape is similar to the design on a buckle discovered in Kent in 1964 by the archaeologist Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, which probably represents the god Odin (or Woden); but he may be a much later adornment for the hillside, made to be viewed from the priory. His form entranced the photographer Lee Miller and her husband, the artist Roland Penrose, who lived close to the Long Man. Penrose painted a surrealist representation of the Long Man on the inglenook fireplace at Farleys, their home – for them the figure was a protective spirit. It also inspired the composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor, the folk collective the Memory Band, and Benjamin Britten picnicked at its feet.

These gatherings of specialist nurseries are brilliant sources of exciting specimens and expert knowledge

Gardeners, a horticultural pal of mine has always said, are an inherently thrifty bunch. Some of us will pay a hefty price for a particularly good pair of secateurs or boots, but in general, the car boot sale spade can be a trusty companion, certain perennials exist to be divided, and seeds are to be saved, swapped and sown. I think that’s why all the plastic tat sold in garden centres – often with a tenuous connection to gardening, at best – winds us up. As one particularly old-school garden writer once espoused, plonking annuals in a window box isn’t gardening, it’s shopping.

Still, there are certain commercially minded events that I look forward to with the same fervour I did the Clothes Show at Birmingham NEC as a teenager (if you know, you know); this month is particularly good for them.

From a modernist townhouse in London to a historic farmhouse overlooking Bridgewater canal

You might think of puzzling as leisurely, but it’s now a sport. I entered a national competition and discovered a passionate community

A PhD student in Berkeley. A 12-year-old in Texas. A content creator in Washington. An undergrad at Stanford. A former math teacher turned homeschool mom in Texas. After a three-day competition in Atlanta, Georgia, these people became national champions for a burgeoning hobby: speed jigsaw puzzling.

I have been a lifelong jigsaw puzzle lover. But in recent years, I have observed the quintessential way to slowly pass time transform into a competitive sport. So I traveled to the USA Jigsaw Nationals to test my skill against the best puzzlers in the country.

In the final week of Rhik Samadder’s diary, he basked in the rosy glow – literally – after AI’s wall paint suggestion

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Sometimes, when the hose of my vacuum cleaner knocks over a potted plant, adding a layer of drudgery to an already miserable chore, I feel ground down by domesticity. Futurity once promised us robot butlers. What happened?

The despair led me to this week’s quest. Can AI actually transform my day-to-day existence?

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

Ever Andrés Mercado won a World Press Photo award for his work on the Manacillos festival, which takes place among the Afro-descendant community of Yurumanguí. Here he talks about the ancestral ritual and why it’s so important

Every year, hundreds of Afro-Colombians climb into wooden boats and set sail down the Yurumanguí River. They navigate dense rainforest, scramble through mangroves, and battle charging river currents, to disembark about 12 hours later in the remote village of Juntas.

It is here that they reunite and gather for an ancestral ritual: the Manacillos festival.

People living in the Juntas village of Yurumanguí use the festival as a way to unite and attract more people who, for years, had to flee the territory.

Tribalism has not faded over the past decade. Instead, new research reveals our politics has become ever-more polarised and fractious

On 23 June 2016, the British voter changed. Before that day, they picked a party, usually red or blue. By that morning, only two tribes mattered: remain or leave. And they kept mattering long, long after the result was declared. Rather than bin those short-lived and now stale allegiances, voters made them their personas. No longer a “Labour man” or a “Conservative family”, they became instead “remoaners” or “Brexiters”. Even today, 60% of Britons still identify themselves by where they scrawled a single cross in a one-off poll 10 years ago.

Ask about the difference Brexit has made and the answer normally concerns policy or high politics: how our economic trajectory has become bumpier, or how the Tories keep getting into punch-ups with each other. But it became so much bigger than Boris v Dave. The civil war blazed through the country, and recruited nearly all of us to one side or the other. The effects still ripple through our elections and media today.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

The actor on singing with Brian Wilson, why War and Peace is the best book ever written and what drew him to his latest film, The Wizard of the Kremlin

You were wonderful as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy. Did you get any feedback from the great man himself? Fran2016 and Aubrey26
Thank you. I spent a bunch of time with Brian before filming. If you asked him about the world, you might only get a little bit out of him. But if you asked about music, he’d light up. I loved talking with him. I also got to sing with him and his touring band a few times, which was amazing. We filmed in the studio in which they recorded Pet Sounds, and he came on set, which was a trip. I didn’t get much feedback in terms of my performance – it was more getting to know each other and learning about his life.

Which was more challenging in Little Miss Sunshine – the first half where you don’t speak, or the second half where you break your vow of silence? mattyjj
I remember the first few days, filming the dinner table scene where they’re eating chicken and I don’t speak. It felt like the directors were saying: “OK, maybe give us a little more,” because they couldn’t quite see what I was doing. But when they watched it back, they said: “It’s there, we see it,” which was a wash of relief. It’s a great question, because sometimes the words are harder, but stepping into the unknown of not speaking was pretty challenging.

Have you been affected by the recent rise in mortgage rates? What will this mean for you?

The crisis in the Middle East is also being felt far beyond the region, with the conflict undermining broader business and consumer confidence.

One aspect of this has been the impact on the UK mortgage market.

We’d like to hear about the local election leaflets you’ve received from political parties in your area

Have you received local election leaflets through your door? We’d like to see them. In an era of political turmoil, we’re particularly interested to see who each political party sees as their rival in their local area.

You can tell us about the leaflets you’ve received – and share pictures of them – below.

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

With Iran and the US agreeing to a two-week conditional ceasefire, we would like to hear how people living, working or travelling in the Middle East have been affected by the conflict.

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

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

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

The US and Iran have agreed to a provisional two-week ceasefire, which includes a temporary reopening of the strait. But maritime traffic through the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman remains affected, with vessels still facing delays, diversions and heightened security risks as the situation evolves.

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Crisis in the Middle East, Russian shelling in Ukraine, Artemis’s lunar flyby and World Press Photo winners – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing