David Osenton almost died because of medical mistakes and delays, but new rule allowed Karen to demand a second opinion

• Martha’s rule may have saved more than 500 lives in England since 2024

For six awful days last summer, as her father, David, got progressively sicker in the cardiac ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, Karen Osenton would read the poster above his bed telling patients about their right under Martha’s rule to ask for a second opinion.

Her father, a retired engineer in his early 70s who was normally extremely fit, was by then thin, jaundiced and could barely lift his head from the pillow. But his bed was right beside the nurses’ station, surely they would notice if he needed more urgent treatment?

(Heavenly)
With strong words for Keir Starmer, the Irish rave-rap trio remain unbowed by the controversy around them – and yet this is a more ruminative record than you might expect

Five tracks into Fenian, the listener is confronted by the sound of rapper Móglaí Bap expressing a desire to go and live off-grid outside a small village in County Meath. He does this in characteristic style – prefaced with the line “run along, fuck’s sake, I’m sick of you cunts” – but still, it comes as a surprise. After all, the tales of drugged-out madness on Kneecap’s previous album, 2024’s Fine Art, took place in an exclusively urban environment: at one juncture Móglaí Bap’s bandmate Mo Chara claimed that his preferred milieu was “the snug of a dimly-lit, shit, run-down pub”, presumably one like the lairy Belfast boozer in which much of the album was set. Nothing about Kneecap has given the impression of a band given to wistfully pining after a simple bucolic life.

And yet, who can blame him for wanting to switch off and get away from it all? The two years since Fine Art’s release have been tumultuous for the Irish rave-rap trio, and it’s difficult to discern how much their soaring profile has to do with their music. Fine Art was warmly received – it was potent, funny and original – but quickly drowned out by the din of controversy that began when Mo Chara was alleged to have displayed a Hezbollah flag on stage at a London gig in November 2024. He was later charged with terror offences, which he denied – Kneecap said they have never supported Hezbollah and “condemn all attacks on civilians, always” – and the case was ultimately thrown out of court. In the interim, there were cancelled gigs and tours, a ban from entering Canada and Hungary (decisions Kneecap strongly opposed), and calls from both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch for Kneecap’s 2025 Glastonbury set to be dropped. Badenoch had already quarrelled with them over their lurid republicanism when she was business secretary, trying to cancel a grant they’d been given – and Kneecap prevailed in that case, too.

The King charmed Americans – including the president – while artfully asserting his views on climate and executive power

In the end, it was a royal triumph, as King Charles and Queen Camilla managed to avoid all the mines in their path (the strait of Hormuz is not the only place where they exist), and deftly repair the “special relationship”. For another few weeks, anyway.

There were plenty of reasons to be anxious, on both sides of the Atlantic, before the king’s visit to Washington and New York. It is no secret that Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran has alienated Great Britain, and all of the Nato allies, who were not consulted in advance of the decision and have since been browbeaten for what Trump perceives as insufficient fealty.

Ted Widmer is a former presidential speechwriter, and the author of a forthcoming book in June, The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text (Library of America)

At world-first Santa Marta climate meeting, delegates say it was ‘euphoric’ to finally be focusing on concrete solutions

After a landmark climate meeting in Santa Marta, Colombia, where nearly 60 countries gathered to work out how to end the production and use of planet-heating fossil fuels, what have we learned?

Training ground fun, rock star fans and a Christmas party in Copenhagen were ingredients in the rank outsiders’ triumph, sealed on 2 May 2016

I remember in January, February that season Riyad Mahrez asked: “What do you think we can achieve?” I laughed, but didn’t say anything. Riyad said: “You know, you know.” I am a very pragmatic man … I knew we could do something special, but not to win the Premier League. Now people everywhere recognise me – people from the US, Canada and Asia ask to take pictures: “Leicester! The legend!” Unbelievable. It was a story that was something special for the world.

Glamour? Money? Hope? They’re so last season. With fashion magazines on their knees, where does that leave The Devil Wears Prada 2 – and its famously relatable heroine?

Runway magazine is collapsing. Miranda is eating in the cafeteria and flying economy. Andy is the new features editor. Emily is dating a billionaire. Somebody dies. Amelia Dimoldenberg makes a cameo. But the one unexpected detail in The Devil Wears Prada 2 that I can’t stop thinking about is this: Andy worries that she’ll never be in a position to unfreeze her eggs.

“Left New York for 15 years, not married – never found the right person, and my kids are at a doctor’s office on 85th,” she breezily reports to Emily when they reunite after 20 years. “They’re eggs,” she clarifies, adding that she is excited to have children. And in that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder: was the woman who once had the job “a million girls would kill for” always this relatable?

Essa Suleiman accused of stabbing two Jewish men in Golders Green and Ishmail Hussein in south London

A man has appeared in court charged with the attempted murders of three people during two knife attacks in London.

Essa Suleiman, 45, is accused of stabbing two Jewish men in Golders Green on Wednesday, having already attacked another man over a personal dispute in south London.

Philip Young changes all pleas to guilty after initially denying charges of making indecent images of children

A former Conservative councillor who admitted nearly 50 offences of drugging, raping and sexually assaulting his former wife has pleaded guilty to additional offences of making indecent images of children.

Philip Young, 49, pleaded guilty in January at Winchester crown court to 11 counts of rape and 11 counts of administering a substance with intent to stupefy his former wife Joanne Young, 48, who has waived her right to anonymity.

Exclusive: Sev.en Global Investments could turn state-owned businesses into Britain’s biggest steelmaker

• Business live – latest updates

The owner of the UK’s largest electric steelworks has said the government should find a single buyer for British Steel and Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), a move that would create the country’s biggest steelmaker.

Sev.en Global Investments, owned by the Czech billionaire Pavel Tykač, said it not only plans to invest £100m in the UK – mainly in the electric arc steelworks in Cardiff it bought last year – but also has the ability to invest “hundreds of millions of pounds” more in Britain under its 7 Steel brand.

US president says European countries are ‘absolutely horrible’ to refuse to support operations in strait of Hormuz

• Europe live – latest updates

Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw US troops from Italy and Spain a day after saying he was looking at reducing the number deployed in Germany.

The US president’s threat to Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said America was being “humiliated” by Iran.

Leah Spasova from Oxfordshire fought for 10 years to obtain tubal ligation procedure, while men could get vasectomies

• Analysis: questions over how accessible procedure should be

A woman denied a permanent form of birth control on the NHS over fears she might regret it, while men were allowed contraceptive procedures, has won her case with the health ombudsman.

Leah Spasova, a psychologist from Oxfordshire, spent a decade fighting to obtain female sterilisation at her local trust, a procedure that blocks or seals the fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy. By contrast, men can undergo a vasectomy, a procedure that stops sperm from being released.

Claire Freemantle accused of causing death and serious injury by dangerous driving when four-wheel drive hit school in 2023

The driver of a four-wheel drive that crashed into a south-west London primary school has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving after two eight-year-old girls were killed.

Claire Freemantle, 49, is accused of two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and seven counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving after the incident at the Study Preparatory school in Wimbledon in July 2023.

Electoral Commission considers inquiry after Tories said Reform leader should have declared money from billionaire

• UK politics live – latest updates

• Analysis: Farage’s bid to get ahead of story only raises more questions

The UK elections watchdog is considering whether to investigate an undisclosed £5m gift received by Nigel Farage before he announced his candidacy at the last general election.

The Guardian revealed this week that the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne gave the Reform UK leader the money.

Judge tells Nancy Pexton, 70, she showed no remorse for the ferocious attack on Jennifer Abbott at London flat

A woman who murdered her sister in her London flat and stole her gold Rolex watch has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years.

Nancy Pexton stabbed Jennifer Abbott 10 times and left her body to be found three days later in the property in Camden, a court heard.

Labour called SNP first minister John Swinney ‘shameless’ for claiming credit when it was the result of king’s US visit

Donald Trump’s announcement that he will lift punishing US tariffs on scotch whisky has been overshadowed by a row between rival Scottish party leaders over claiming credit for the decision.

The whisky industry and business leaders were delighted by the US president’s sudden announcement on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he would end the tariffs to mark the visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.

Myth, ritual and community are drawing new energy and believers to Devon town on edge of Dartmoor

Stroll through the Devon town of Ashburton, or pop into the Old Exeter Inn on West Street, and you’re almost bound to bump into a storyteller, a mythologist, a pagan – perhaps even a friendly witch.

The town on the edge of craggy Dartmoor, home to about 4,000 people, is becoming a magnet to those drawn to the old folky ways and the reimagining of 21st-century versions of earthy rural traditions.

Students taking part in university’s annual ritual say images of them in swimwear are being published without consent in national newspapers

When the sun rises at dawn on Friday, hundreds of St Andrews University students will brave the chilly North Sea for the annual May Dip, an undergraduate ritual said to bring good luck in exams. But the students won’t be alone at the beach. In recent years this quirky ritual has become a target for agency and freelance photographers looking to cash in on images of students in bikinis, including some who camp out overnight on the East Sands dunes near the Fife coastal path.

“It ruined my night,” said Anna, one of the students whose photo appeared in a spread published by the Scotsman. “Now when I think about that May Dip, I think about that image, and that’s it.”

Pop psychodrama Mother Mary might look and sound the part but it’s the latest failed attempt to turn the life of an arena-touring singer into a compelling movie

For anyone with even the slightest interest in Hollywood, it is not entirely surprising that Anne Hathaway recently appeared on Popcast, the New York Times critics’ podcast that has become a premier destination for music promotion. After all, the actor – whose last appearance in a musical bagged her an Academy Award – is a major part of one of the best recent movies to show pop stardom on screen. No, it’s not Mother Mary, the new A24 psychodrama for which Hathaway is making the press rounds as a world-famous diva in the midst of a spiritual and sartorial crisis. I’m thinking of The Idea of You, the improbably glossy 2024 romance in which Hathaway’s 40-year-old divorcee hooks up with a much-younger singer who looks suspiciously like Harry Styles.

The Idea of You successfully conveyed the idea that Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) was the breakout star of a crushable 2010s boyband with a feral fanbase called August Moon. And by “successfully conveyed”, I mean the film remixed a string of One Direction-esque iconography – the jaunty rock-lite choruses, fizzy cheerfulness and class clown antics – into actual music videos and convincingly banal bops. The bar is low; many, many films have created bespoke pop stars and/or music for alternate cultural histories, but vanishingly few transcend pastiche. To be an echo is, generally, enough.

Without Christine Marie, Samuel Bateman might never have been jailed for his crimes among the Mormon community of Short Creek. What drives the heroine of Netflix’s hit documentary Trust Me: The False Prophet?

When Christine Marie and her husband, Tolga Katas, packed up their lives in Las Vegas in 2016 to start from scratch in Short Creek, a remote desert community in the Arizona Strip, the odds of fitting in were surely against them. This was the headquarters of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the secretive polygamist sect, known for its patriarchal control, where women and girls wore prairie dresses and “married” wherever they were placed by their leader. Marie, with her blond ponytail, pink cowboy hat, pink boots and pink glasses, was a former beauty queen, ventriloquist and escape artist, now finishing her psychology doctorate. Tolga, once a rock singer, was a videographer, a city dweller who had never been on a hike.

This is the starting point of the Netflix documentary Trust Me: The False Prophet – and unsurprisingly, the couple’s arrival is met with deep suspicion. What follows, though, is gripping TV, recorded as it happened, but paced like a thriller. Having gained the community’s trust, the couple discover a polygamous, predatory paedophile among them, and a situation of horrifying sexual abuse. Working with the FBI as double agents, they infiltrate this tightly knit cult and ultimately gather enough evidence to secure arrests and convictions.

The creator of this singular work of art founded his own TV network to get it aired – and it’s cast is an absolute dream. Mandy Patinkin, Janet McTeer and Patti LuPone are just superb

Details about how a TV series was commissioned or why it ended up on a particular streamer are normally tedious and superfluous: once a piece of art has been made, it stands alone and our assessment of it needn’t be influenced by industry logistics. It’s impossible not to mention, however, that The Artist, a period comedy by writer/director Aram Rappaport, was shown in the US on The Network.

What is The Network? It is a streaming service set up in 2024 by writer and director Aram Rappaport. Its launch show was Rappaport’s TV debut, The Green Veil. That’s right: Rappaport founded a whole new streaming service, then released his own work on it. There’s more to The Network that is of interest, since it also imports original content but only uploads a couple of new titles per week, in the belief that users will value discernment over catalogue depth. But the point is that The Artist, Rappaport’s second series, has been made without him having to pitch it to a network, or take notes from a network, because he is The Network. It is exactly the sort of show you’d think would be made by a man who has the wherewithal, the funds and the sheer nerve to engineer a situation where he can do what he wants. This is not an insult. It might not be a compliment either. It is what it is, and The Artist is not like much else.

The Artist is on MGM+

A revelatory Zurbarán show proves him the equal of Goya and Picasso, Angel Otero takes up a Somerset residency and Daiga Grantina brings nature to abstraction – all in your weekly dispatch

Zurbarán
A mind-bending, revelatory exhibition packed with extraordinary loans from the Prado and other top museums that prove this painter belongs with Goya and Picasso as a Spanish great. Read the review.
• National Gallery, London, 2 May to 23 August

From 1980s Cincinnati into the interstellar darkness, the stories of four women interconnect across the centuries in a gentle hymn to found families

This is the kind of book you pitch by analogy: JG Ballard meets Gabrielle Zevin; Isaac Asimov meets Stephen Chbosky; Ready Player One meets Love, Simon (replete with ferris wheel). I’ve been describing it to friends as a YA Kazuo Ishiguro set adrift in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. It turns out I have two kinds of friends: those who hear that description as praise, and those who heed it as a warning.

Novels that demand comparisons rarely survive them. This one does (though it could do without that mawkish ferris wheel). American author Portia Elan’s debut is a gentle hymn to found families – the kin we choose rather than inherit – and it’s fitting that it reads that way, assembled from allegiances. Elan knows what her characters will discover: stories are how we claim one another.

From a quintessential ‘chocolate box’ cottage to part of a grand stately home

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

The new MP is right that parliament’s drinking culture is fundamentally weird. But to change it, we need to reset the whole institution

Seven o’clock on a Monday night and I am standing in the House of Commons, nursing a glass of vinegary white wine.

All around me are people doing the same, though it’s polite sipping rather than getting sloshed. Waiters ferry bottles between the terrace function rooms, where MPs are hosting dinners or campaign launches like the one I’m at. Between the clanging division bells summoning MPs for votes that will go on tonight until gone 11pm, the Strangers’ bar is doing its usual trade.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Longitudinal studies are a research jewel, shedding light on motor neurone disease, cot deaths, Alzheimer’s and more. Don’t let the security breach in China put you off joining one

One thing Britain is exceptionally good at is collecting and using health data for research, studying cohorts of people over many decades. A shudder of alarm rippled through the research world at the news this week that UK Biobank’s data had been put up for sale on China’s Alibaba site, with the science minister, Patrick Vallance, saying that more attempts to sell the data in China were expected. Some sensationalised reporting failed to make clear enough that no names, addresses, NHS numbers or other identifiers were included, nor that the Chinese government reacted fast in taking listings down and nothing was sold. But would there be a stampede of participants withdrawing from this or other research programmes?

Biobank dashed to reassure its 500,000 members, and as a longtime volunteer I received a message not only explaining what had happened but listing some of the invaluable research findings and remedies that had already sprung from our data. Remarkably, a representative for Biobank told me that only about 100 people inquired about withdrawing, and after each was spoken to, only 50 actually backed out – pretty impressive. Prof Sir Rory Collins, Biobank’s chief executive, says he will personally speak to any anxious participant.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Prices at the pump have leapt since the start of the conflict – but clinging to fossil fuels will only prolong the pain

The car is perhaps the closest thing Germany has to a national symbol. For this reason, the success of the auto industry and the happiness of motorists has long been a barometer for the standing of the Federal Republic.

Since the beginning of the war on Iran, German news has been filled with stories about drivers. Journalists have filed breathless dispatches from petrol stations all over the country, reporting scenes of anger and frustration at the hike in fuel prices.

Tania Roettger is a journalist based in Berlin

While Charles and Camilla were on a three-line whip, MPs watched the excruciating discomfort of civil servants

We don’t often get to see senior civil servants out and about in the wild. They are kept away from the public gaze, sat behind a desk trying to persuade their ministers not to do something too catastrophic to their government department. Quite why they have been been made a knight or a dame just for doing their jobs is one of life’s mysteries. The rest of us have to make do with the occasional email from the boss. But in the last week, two top civil servants have been reluctantly made to give evidence on Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador before the foreign affairs select committee and very instructive it has been, too. Not least to see how much they dislike any extra attention from the public. Their obvious discomfort at being held to account was excruciating to watch.

Wales could be richer than any other area of the UK. I just wish Plaid’s leader would be more confident about independence

If I were living in Wales, next week I would vote Welsh nationalist, for Plaid Cymru. But I would do so for what its leader claims to support but doesn’t talk about enough: independence. Wales is where I have spent a fifth of each year for almost all of my life. Its natural beauty, the charm of (most of) its towns and the talents of its people should render it the richest place in the UK outside London.

So why is it one of the poorest? The figures hardly bear reciting. Wales’s growth rate has limped at barely half of England’s for a quarter-century. Its GDP per head is lower than any region in the UK other than the north-east of England. Wales comes bottom of almost every UK league table on healthcare. The median waiting time for elective treatment has almost doubled since before Covid – much higher than the current level in England. And waiting times in major A&E departments in Wales have worsened over the past two years, with almost half of patients waiting more than four hours for treatment.

Jews in Britain are facing a wave of hate spread by hostile states, and some homegrown. We can only tackle it by working together

Another week, another attack on British Jews; and rather than synagogues being petrol-bombed in the middle of the night, now it is ordinary Jews being stabbed in broad daylight. It’s been described as this country’s biggest national security emergency for almost a decade by the UK’s terrorism watchdog. Finding a solution will mean some hard questions, not just for government and police but for wider society too.

The immediate move is, of course, more policing and more funding for security. The first job of government is to protect its people, and this should be done without question. Prosecutions should be expedited through the courts, as they were with the riots that followed the Southport attack. But physical protection is, in a way, the easy part.

Dave Rich is director of policy at the Community Security Trust and the author of Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism is Built into Our World – and How You Can Change it

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

The Artemis missions are paving the way to civilizational decisions. It’s time to ask not just what we can do – but whether we should do it

This month’s splashdown of Artemis II was rightly celebrated as a technical achievement. Four astronauts traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history and returned safely. It is an extraordinary thing to send people into deep space and bring them home again. Nobody should deny that.

But the real significance of Artemis II lies elsewhere.

Policing and government policy are essential, but not sufficient to address rising hate crime against Jews

The stabbing of two men in north-west London on Wednesday by an attacker described as seeking anyone “visibly Jewish” would be horrifying under any circumstances. That it comes amid rising antisemitic crime in the area, in the UK and around the world makes it all the more frightening.

A community persecuted throughout history faces a fresh wave of hatred and abuse. Shock and grief are mixed with fear, with some British Jews asking whether they can be safe in the UK. This is the third attack in five weeks in the same part of Golders Green alone. Last October, two people were killed in an attack on a synagogue in Heaton Park, Manchester, on Yom Kippur. In December, two men were found guilty of plotting to infiltrate and open fire on a march against antisemitism in the same city. That month, a pair of gunmen killed 15 people at a Hanukah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

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.

By attacking the basic settlement between scientists and the state, the US president has proved that experts can’t avoid these fights

Donald Trump’s war on science has been vicious and hugely damaging, but it is worth noting that he has lost some of its biggest battles. Last year, Mr Trump demanded that US federal scientific and medical research funding be cut by about half. But the budget Congress passed in February actually delivered a slight increase in overall funding – although specific Trump targets such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were cut. He also continues to chip away at science in other ways such as dismissing the board overseeing the National Science Foundation this week.

Maga’s attacks on science have been nakedly political. Its defeats have been politics of a different sort, showing that the bipartisan pro-science consensus is still intact, and for the moment has the power to hold Mr Trump in check. Scientists themselves appear to be waking up to the potential of such politics. The organisation 314 Action, which supports Democratic scientists running for office, reported that more than 700 candidates – vying for local, congressional and gubernatorial positions – have sought its support ahead of the midterm elections this year, three times the usual number. Many gave the White House’s war on science as the reason for their political turn.

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.

Jan Shapiro calls for a searching examination of the assumptions and culture that shape practice across the Send system. Plus Mary Smith sets readers and journalists a challenge based on her granddaughter’s revision sheet

Your report highlights the impact of the inadequate funding of special educational needs and disabilities provision (Schools forced to cut back on support for Send pupils in England, poll finds, 23 April). However, this moment should prompt not just concern about diminishing support, but a more fundamental examination of the system that produces these pressures in the first place.

I lead a school with a significantly higher-than-average proportion of disadvantaged pupils with Send. For us, inclusion is not an add-on but a commitment embedded in relationships and practice. The issue is not solely financial. It is also about approach, language, culture and what schools are incentivised to value. Without that foundation, increased funding alone will not deliver what our Send children need.

Prof Amy Dickman, Prof Adam Hart, Dr Dan Challender and Dr Dilys Roe say trophy hunting benefits lions and many other species by conserving more land in Africa than national parks do

The reason that trophy hunting bans have repeatedly stalled in parliament (Letters, 26 April) is because they are misinformed, hypocritical, ignore the rights and welfare of local communities, and would harm, not help, conservation.

Campaigners should decide if bans are about morality or conservation. If the former, the UK should ban domestic trophy hunting of red deer, for example, but this has never been suggested. If it is about conservation, ministers should recognise that trophy hunting is not a key threat to lions or any other species. Indeed, it benefits lions and other species by conserving more land in Africa than national parks do. Biodiversity is far more threatened by habitat loss, which bans are likely to amplify by reducing income for protected areas. Hunting areas are usually not viable for photo-tourism, which brings its own issues of environmental impact.

Readers respond to the news that people in the UK are spending fewer years in good health than a decade ago

A major cause of the fall in healthy life expectancy (People in UK spend fewer years in good health than a decade ago, study finds, 27 April) is austerity and the continued cuts to social and health spending. In our report Still Digging Deeper: The Impact of Austerity on Inequalities and Deprivation in the Coalfield Areas, which covers Scotland, England and Wales for the period 1984-2024, we highlight how public expenditure cuts since 1984 have disproportionately impacted coalfield areas of the UK.

Since 2010, austerity has been stepped up, and we have calculated that welfare reforms and benefit cuts amounted to £32.6bn over the period of 2010-21. Furthermore, in 2025-26 coalfield local authorities had a combined funding gap of £447m. These are areas where a significant proportion of the working-age population is affected by long-term sickness and experiences poverty.

Readers respond to Polly Hudson’s article decrying physical contact on meeting friends or strangers

I’ve just read Polly Hudson’s piece about shaking hands and I disagree (Teenagers are calling time on the handshake. I salute them, from a safe distance, theguardian.com, 26 April). A hand contact is an open gesture, a mark of trust. It is meant to transmit our humanity. Being human is about learning to connect with each other and that can mean leaving our comfort zone, making the first step – or proffering the first hand – towards a stranger. That first encounter may lead nowhere, or it may be the beginning of an enriching relationship. Either way, to deprive yourself of all those possibilities because of hygiene worries would be so sad. Polly, you could always carry hand sanitiser in your pocket, but please be discreet when using it.
Priscilla Packer
Les Ponts de Cé, France

• I can understand how Polly Hudson feels about greeting someone with physical contact. A handshake is not a hug, kiss or curtsey. It is a simple greeting, with the hand extended and a direct look at who you want to meet and converse with. The contact shows an appreciation for each other not shown by a fist or elbow bump. I find women I meet at work and socially are very comfortable with a handshake rather than any other greeting. It is true that the initial contact with someone defines the rest of the relationship, both good and bad.
James Tuson
Hertford

⚽ Buildup to the weekend’s action across the leagues
⚽ Things to look out for | Fixtures | Standings | Mail Dominic

And with that, I’m handing over to Luke McLaughlin, who’ll take you through to lunchtime. Laters.

One of the biggest games of the bank holiday weekend doesn’t come until Monday night, when Hearts host Rangers knowing they could practically end the visitors’ title hopes – and massively boost theirs – with a win, turning the title race into a two-way fight with Celtic (IF the Hoops beat Hibs on Sunday). The Jambos’ manager, Derek McInnes, is trying not to think about it: “Every team in with a chance of the title will see themselves as right in it, which makes it even more exciting. We’ve got a good enough record in this fixture but we need to concentrate on ourselves and not focus too much about what the opposition are thinking.”

• Jibril Rajoub refuses handshake at Fifa congress

• Infantino to seek third term as president

The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, confirmed his intention to stand for re-election for a third full term next year after an attempt to orchestrate a handshake between the Palestinian and Israeli delegates at the governing body’s congress backfired.

The Palestinian Football Association’s president, Jibril Rajoub, refused to stand alongside the Israel FA’s vice-president, Basim Sheikh Suliman, in an awkward moment towards the end of the 76th Fifa congress after both men had been called to the stage in Vancouver by Infantino.

• Howe under pressure to end Magpies’ losing streak

• Manager confident he retains backing of club owners

Eddie Howe has emerged from a meeting with Newcastle’s Saudi Arabian owners confident he retains their support but also acutely aware that such backing is finite, with the manager admitting “a lot is riding” on Saturday’s visit of Brighton.

Howe will aim to end a run of five straight defeats against Fabian Hürzeler’s side at St James’ Park and is under no illusion of the significance of the task ahead. “We need a win,” admitted Newcastle’s manager. “There’s a lot riding on this weekend for us. You can talk as much as you want but the proof is in how the team performs. I’m under no illusion that needs to be positive.”

Bath’s European player-of-the-year contender on international recognition, the ultimate test in Bordeaux and those budgie smugglers

The shortlist for this year’s Champions Cup player of the year award is an eyecatching one. There are five contenders and four of them – Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Finn Russell, Matthieu Jalibert and Caelan Doris – are established world-class operators. So who is the fifth Beatle? An uncapped Englishman who eats only toast on matchdays and is arguably most famous for parading around in his budgie smugglers.

Step forward Alfie Barbeary, the shaggy-haired Bath colossus looking to smash a few holes in Bordeaux Bègles’ title defence at the Stade Atlantique on Sunday. The 25-year-old Barbeary might not yet be a connoisseur of the region’s celebrated wines – “I know there’s red and white but that’s about it” – but he makes up for that in other respects. Some people are born entertainers and the big No 8 is definitely one of them.

Stadium sharing, men’s broadcast picks and fun runs can all cause headaches in upper echelons of English women’s game

Waiting for men’s broadcast picks, dodging local fun runs and even having to avoid clashing with nearby comedy gigs: welcome to the quagmire of trying to arrange the Women’s Super League and WSL 2 schedule.

The fixture list is often a bone of contention for supporters, and organisers face a painstaking task in trying to organise games in venues where other teams get first dibs.

Updates from seven County Championship matches
This week’s Spin | comment BTL or email Tanya

Thomas Rew is making his Championship debut, alongside brother James, at Taunton. Yorkshire have lost Adam Lyth, lbw Ogborne, for 8. Yorks 26-1.

And an early wicket in glorious Canterbury sunshine, Dawkins dollies a catch back to Haydon. Kent 21-1.

We are in a world where robots compete against humans and while perfect scores might be impressive, they are also dull

It hurts to miss an unmarked shot in basketball. And it certainly seemed to pain the Alvark Tokyo shooter, halfway through April’s Japanese league game against Shimane Susanoo Magic. As the ball bounded off the rim, the player wheeled away, head lowered, eyes downcast. The disappointment looked glaringly real.

Which is interesting, because it was not. The player could not have cared less. They literally could not care at all, and not just because this was a half-time exhibition. It was because they were a robot, created by Alvark Tokyo’s team sponsor, Toyota.

Coventry-supporting Japanese has used his rebel streak and risk-taking instincts to spur on Oliver Bearman this season

There is no one quite like Ayao Komatsu in Formula One. Haas’s Japanese team principal, a rugby-playing Coventry City fan who left his home country to escape the constraints of conformity, is F1’s rebel without a pause.

As Haas enter their first home race of the season in Miami this weekend, they are on a roll. Fourth place in the championship is the highest position held by a US team after three races in the sport’s history and Komatsu has engineered it in a sport he once viewed as his great escape.

The Mets have the second-highest payroll in baseball. They also own the worst record in the major leagues

A franchise once known as baseball’s lovable losers are, for the moment, merely baseball’s most expensive losers.

The New York Mets wrapped a shocking April by losing 5-4 to the Washington Nationals on Thursday, dropping to a major league-worst 10-21 and burrowing even deeper into last place in the National League East – making them somehow even worse than their old rivals the Philadelphia Phillies, another wealthy-yet-terrible team. The Mets will (probably) not play at their current 52-win pace all year but their sordid first month has done immense damage to their postseason hopes. Their chances at October baseball were 87% on Opening Day, according to the analytics site FanGraphs. They are now less than three-in-10 to make the playoffs, and that projection seems pretty generous for a team who have lost 17 of their last 20 games.

Yara CEO warns of global auction that would leave poorest countries scrambling for supplies they can ill afford

The Iran war could have “dramatic consequences”, causing food shortages and price rises in some of Africa’s poorest and most vulnerable communities, the head of the world’s largest fertiliser company has said.

Svein Tore Holsether, the chief executive of Yara International, said world leaders needed to guard against soaring prices and shortages of fertiliser causing a de facto global auction that would leave the poorest countries, particularly in Africa, scrambling for supplies they could ill afford.

Court heard woman asked businessman to stop but he did not, even when she started crying

James Holder, a cofounder of the clothing firm Superdry, has been found guilty of raping a woman after a night out in the Gloucestershire town of Cheltenham.

The court heard Holder, 54, had been due to get a taxi back to his mansion in the Cotswolds with a male friend. Instead, the pair got into the victim’s taxi and went to her flat, where Holder raped her.

Watchdog says legal challenges from Consumer Voice and three lenders ‘create fresh uncertainty for millions of consumers’

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The UK financial watchdog is facing four legal challenges against its £9.1bn compensation scheme for victims of the motor finance scandal.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that it will defend the scheme “robustly” as the “fastest, simplest route for consumers and the most efficient way for firms to put things right”.

Advice charity also helping thousands of tenants before Renters’ Rights Act comes into force on Friday

Solicitors say they have been inundated with requests to serve last-minute section 21 no-fault eviction notices before they are banned when the Renters’ Rights Act comes into force in England on Friday.

The legislation, which has been hailed as the biggest change to renting in a generation, bans no-fault evictions, limits rent increases and abolishes fixed-term tenancies.

Patient safety mechanism which gives patients the right to seek a second opinion having ‘lifesaving impact’, says health secretary

• ‘I am invoking Martha’s rule’: how a woman saved her father from near death in hospital

More than 500 people have received potentially life-saving care thanks to Martha’s rule, which gives hospital patients the right to seek a second opinion about their health.

They were moved to intensive care or a specialist unit after they, a loved one or a member of NHS staff triggered the patient safety mechanism, which the NHS in England began using in 2024.

Research conducted at 2022 Commonwealth Games found catering and fireworks were main causes of pollution

This summer, large-scale sporting events will take place, including the men’s football World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, but research reveals that such events have unexpected air pollution impacts.

About 6,000 athletes from 72 counties and nearly 3 million people attended the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, making it the UK’s largest sporting event since the 2012 London Olympics. More than 300,000 spectators went to the Alexander Stadium for the athletics events, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.

Observers say pressure on IMO negotiations appears to be linked to countries that have invested heavily in gas

About a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) passed through the strait of Hormuz, a strip of sea less than 30 miles wide at its narrowest point, before it was in effect closed by the US-Israeli attack on Iran, which sent the price of oil soaring and left an estimated 20,000 seafarers on 2,000 vessels stranded.

Their plight has shone a spotlight on the complex and dirty relationship between shipping and the fossil fuel industry. The sector is one of the most polluting, with most ship engines fuelled by what has been called the dregs of the oil refining process, heavy and carbon-intensive diesel too filthy for any other purpose. Shipping produces about 3% of global greenhouse gases, a portion set to rise as trade globalises further.

A Canadian social enterprise hopes to help solve the urgent need for retrofits and shortage of skilled workers

John Mava was looking for work when a construction project started behind his house. When he visited the site and saw how different construction was in Canada compared with his native Nigeria, his interest was piqued.

“I said it would be great for me to have knowledge about this,” said Mava, who learned that in Canada, construction uses timber rather than bricks and has a focus on the environment.

Birdwatching no longer niche, old-fashioned pastime, says RSPB as research shows 47% increase in hobby since 2018

Birdwatching is the second fastest growing hobby for generation Z after jewellery making, according to a multiyear study of more than 24,000 people.

Almost 750,000 gen Zers (16 to 29-year-olds) in Britain regularly enjoy watching birds, a -1,088% increase since 2018, according to research by Fifty5Blue published by the RSPB.

Exclusive: women ‘massively underrepresented’ in next week’s local and devolved elections, campaigners say

Women will be massively underrepresented on ballot papers across the UK next week, campaigners say, with research revealing that almost twice as many men as women are standing as candidates across the local, mayoral and devolved elections.

Democracy campaigners say men of all political stripes are likely to dominate local government, with women’s views on issues from social care to bin collections sidelined by the huge gap between the numbers of male and female candidates.

Resignation of non-executive chair Chris Train announced after publication of damning Commons committee report

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MPs have accused the leadership of South East Water of incompetence over repeated water outages for tens of thousands of customers in a damning report, and expressed no confidence in their ability to reform the company.

After publication of the report, SEW announced the resignation of its independent non-executive chair, Chris Train, saying new leadership was needed to “oversee a critical period of positive, transformative change”.

People describe unnatural process as survey finds nearly half of job seekers have been interviewed by AI

Nearly half (47%) of UK job seekers have had an AI interview, research from the hiring platform Greenhouse has found.

In its survey of 2,950 active job seekers, including 1,132 UK-based workers, with additional respondents from the US, Germany, Australia and Ireland, it found that 30% of UK candidates had walked away from a hiring process because it included an AI interview.

Drivers seem undeterred by high fuel prices and gloomy weather forecasts, while engineering works spell delays for railway passengers

Drivers have been told to expect the UK’s busiest May bank holiday traffic in years, despite high fuel prices and the looming end of the sunny spell threatening to dampen the long weekend.

More than 19m leisure trips by car were expected over the long weekend from Friday to Monday, according to research by the RAC motoring organisation – the most since 2016. Engineering works are also likely to disrupt rail journeys this weekend.

Four students are in critical condition and security guard and suspect also injured after stabbing in Tacoma

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Five people were recovering in the hospital on Friday following a mass stabbing incident at a high school in Washington state.

A high school student was charged with multiple counts of first-degree assault after five people were hurt during the stabbing incident on Thursday at a campus in Tacoma.

UN Women report says AI, anonymity and lack of effective laws are increasing the risks of engaging in digital spaces

Women in public life are facing growing and increasingly sophisticated forms of online violence, the UN has said, warning that “AI-assisted ‘virtual rape’ is now at the fingertips of perpetrators”.

Female rights campaigners, journalists and other public communicators face a deepening threat due to a combination of artificial intelligence, anonymity and the absence of effective laws and accountability, a report by UN Women found.

Walkouts, marches and other gatherings planned for ‘May Day Strong’ demonstrations across the country

Thousands are set to join an economic blackout for International Workers’ Day on Friday, as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country. Organizers are calling for “no school, no work, no shopping” with walkouts, marches, block parties and other gatherings planned into the evening.

May Day has long been an annual day of protest for the labor movement, and this year, many active movements are converging to fight for “a nation that puts workers over billionaires”. Demanding no ICE, no war, and taxing the rich, the May Day Strong coalition includes labor unions, immigrants rights groups, political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and the organizers behind the No Kings protests. Friday’s economic disruption builds on a similar coordinated effort out of Minnesota in January, when tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents took off from school and work to flood the streets in protest of federal immigration agents storming the city.

Exclusive: Letter sent to government about case of Inuit woman whose baby was removed after now-banned test

The United Nations has warned Denmark that the treatment of a Greenlandic mother whose newborn child was removed by Danish authorities as a result of controversial parenting competency tests “may amount to ethnic discrimination”.

Keira Alexandra Kronvold’s daughter, Zammi, was taken away from her when she was two hours old and placed in foster care in November 2024 after Kronvold was subjected to so-called FKU (parental competence) psychometric tests. At the time, she was told that the test was to see if she was “civilised enough”.

EnComm Aviation says the firm’s action has cut off vital support for crisis-hit countries including South Sudan and the DRC

Britain’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, is facing a £120m lawsuit after scrapping support for aircraft used to deliver aid to some of the world’s neediest countries.

EnComm Aviation, a Kenya-based aid cargo operator, claims the decision forced the cancellation of humanitarian contracts and reduced supplies to South Sudan, now threatened by famine, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), among others.

Speculative reports say Amazon is considering relaunching the reality show once hosted by the US president, with his eldest son floated as a possible host

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Amid speculative reports that Donald Trump Jr is being considered by Amazon to lead a reboot of The Apprentice, he’s already received a slightly muted endorsement from the reality show’s former host: his father.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Amazon was considering rebooting The Apprentice, which was hosted by the now US president Donald Trump between 2004 and 2015, for its streaming service Prime Video.

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Exclusive: Accessories chain will be reopened in the UK by its operator in France, Austria, Portugal and Spain

The jewellery and accessories chain Claire’s is expected to return to UK high streets with about 50 stores to be reopened from June onwards by the operator of its shops in France, Austria, Portugal and Spain.

Julien Jarjoura, the French entrepreneur behind jewellery company Une Ligne, which sells online and via museum stores including the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles, said he had the blessing of the US owner of the Claire’s brand, Ames Watson, to open stores in the UK and was signing new leases with UK landlords.

Company details $111.2bn in revenue in first earnings report after announcement of Cook’s pending departure

Apple blew past Wall Street expectations in its first earnings report since it announced CEO Tim Cook would be stepping down.

Cook shared his thoughts about the leadership transition on Thursday, saying: “There’s no one on this planet I trust more to lead Apple into the future” than incoming CEO John Ternus. Asked by an investor what advice he has given Ternus, Cook said: “Never forget the north star for the company. You know, we’re about making the best products in the world that really enrich other people’s lives.”

As stalwarts Sub Pop and Rough Trade celebrate big anniversaries, insiders speak candidly about the challenges they face. Can streaming ever ensure their survival?

In the late 1980s, the fledgling Seattle record label Sub Pop was a mess. It struggled to pay the phone bill; staff would race to cash their wage cheques before they bounced; and the management couldn’t even cover studio time that had been booked for their artists. “We were a big train wreck,” laughs Megan Jasper, who was then the label’s receptionist. “But the funnest train wreck you’d ever want to be on.” One of the label’s mottos became: “Going out of business since 1988.”

Then Nirvana released their debut album on Sub Pop and their success saved the company in the 1990s. Now, as the company celebrates its 40th anniversary, Jasper is the chief executive. “Is it rewarding and is the label still working? Yes,” she says. “But it’s never been easy – there have always been challenges and now there are more of them. Plus, it’s harder than ever for artists.”

Esther Cohen was removed as Greene county’s poet laureate just weeks after the appointment. It’s ‘emblematic of the assault on the arts writ large’, some say

In 1985, just before the poet Esther Cohen, her husband, and two friends bought a house in Greene county, their realtor warned them not to: it was too “wild” and different from what they knew. To Cohen, that sounded ideal; she has lived in the same rent-stabilized Upper West Side apartment since 1973 and loves the city but longed for an escape from her bubble of leftist and liberal Jewish urbanites.

Greene county is 120 miles north of New York City. The birthplace of the Hudson River School of Art, it has waterfalls and majestic views of the river and the Catskill Mountains – the perfect place for a writer to find quiet in the summertime and on other occasions throughout the year.

She made local friends quickly. “I went to the farmer’s wife at the farm stand nearby and said, ‘I want to have a potluck. Will you come and host it with me?’” Cohen said in an interview in her Upper West Side apartment. She’s been hosting big summer potlucks ever since for a “big mix” of neighbors: “Everyone comes who is around. And everyone is welcome.”

In January, Create, a local arts council partly funded by the Greene county legislature, appointed Cohen the county’s first-ever poet laureate. She recalls thinking Greene county, with its overwhelmingly Republican legislature, might not want to be represented by a Jewish transplant from New York City. But she was encouraged by community members to apply and was delighted when she won. She signed an agreement with Create and asked that the ceremony in her honor take place in April, as part of National Poetry Month. As laureate, her job would be to promote poetry in the county and participate in local literary events. She would earn an annual $1,000 honorarium.

Season two of the Oregon hospital series starts with the launch of a birthing centre. Plus, Bill Bailey’s moving portraits series. Here’s what to watch this evening

11.10pm, BBC One
If the nonstop emergencies of The Pitt are a bit too unnerving, why not try a dose of Justin Spitzer and Eric Ledgin’s good (and occasionally excellent) mockumentary, set in an underfunded hospital in Oregon? As season two kicks off, Joyce is stressed about the launch of the new birthing centre, while Alex desperately tries to cling on to her blissful Hawaii holiday vibes. And Bruce’s aikido training proves useless when he’s attacked in the car park. Hannah J Davies

A fraught drama about a gang of teenagers on a party island. Plus, turn it up to 11 – the legendary rockers are back!

Michael B Jordan and Juno Temple voice indistinctive body-swap caper for kids with muddled empathy message

This March’s Pixar adventure Hoppers might not have been a vintage offering but it was a minor, much-needed victory for a studio whose magic touch had faded over time. It was a rare non-sequel that appealed to both critics (a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (with $164m it was Pixar’s biggest original hit domestically since Coco) and had just about enough of the head plus heart formula many of us had grown to love and, recently, miss.

Its success has reminded us just how it should be done right (or at least right enough) and how many, many others have failed to get even close to that place. Smarter competitors have found their own lanes – the maximalist mania of Illumination’s Minions movies, the specific, zeitgeist-y superhero stories of Sony’s KPop: Demon Hunters and Spiderverse – but there’s been a weak yet constant flow of obvious attempts to replicate what Pixar does so well. What nudges Swapped – a Skydance film once intended for Apple that now lands on Netflix – that much further into the shadow is not just how it follows the general template but how it also seems to be a closer copy of Hoppers itself. It’s more unfortunate timing than anything but it’s hard to watch without thinking briefly back with even a less memorable Pixar film seeming like a stone cold classic in comparison.

Steve Coogan stars as a cop infiltrating a heroin-smuggling ring in the nerve-jangling new show from the creator of The Gold. Plus: more silly espionage fun!

De Profundis/Hollingworth
(Coro)
Aiming to perform Renaissance music as it was originally heard, De Profundis find richness and precision in the Spanish composer’s finely wrought settings

The Spanish composer Cristóbal de Morales, Palestrina’s predecessor at the papal chapel, was internationally famous in the mid-16th century, his music reaching as far as Mexico and Peru. His choral music is gaining attention again today, not least from the chamber choir De Profundis, whose adult male lineup seeks to replicate the standard choral sound on mainland Europe at the time. This is the third release of their planned series of 12 recordings encompassing all Morales’s masses and magnificats.

The Magnificat Secundi Toni is a finely wrought example written for Rome that blossoms into six vocal lines towards the end. Framing it are Morales’ two mass settings based on L’Homme Armé, a song dating from the time of the fall of Constantinople which spawned its own tradition of mass settings – more than 40 survive from this period. The two masses use the song in different modes, giving the five-part mass a more mellifluous, less sombre air than the four-part one; in the five-part mass the addition of organ and bajón – a medieval precursor of the bassoon – adds to the richness of the texture. Robert Hollingworth, also known as the director of I Fagiolini, conducts precise and sonorous performances.

With a feral energy and a Liam Gallagher growl, the Dublin band’s beguiling music is a great evolution of a venerable genre

From Dublin
Recommended if you like Lankum, the Mary Wallopers, the Pogues
Up next Debut EP It’s a Hell of an Age out now, playing festivals this summer and touring the UK in autumn

Madra Salach means “dirty dog” in Irish, which feels about right for a group of lads bringing a feral, snarling energy to the country’s latest folk revival. Their sound builds ably on some of the architects of that resurgence – the eerie shruti box droning and carefully layered instrumentation of Lankum, the shimmering wails of Lisa O’Neill. Add a hint of Liam Gallagher to the mix – frontman Paul Banks’s voice has an astonishing force and clarity, and he affects a tempestuous, attack-and-withdraw relationship with the microphone – and you’ve got a very exciting package indeed.

(Nyege Nyege Tapes)
Reinvigorating the South African mapanta subgenre, producer Serokolo 7 blends folk vocal melodies with seething 180bpm rhythms, creating a barrage of sound

South Africa pulses with electronic music. From the slow-bubbling feel of amapiano to the frenetic pace of Durban’s gqom, Soweto’s marimba-heavy shangaan electro and the sample-heavy 90s house of kwaito, each region seemingly lays claim to its own sound. The latest subgenre to reach international ears is mapanta. Originating in villages of the Marota people in Limpopo, this intensely fast and highly compressed music was originally an adrenaline shot for the early hours of 1980s wedding parties. It faded at the turn of the century, but mapanta has recently been updated by 27-year-old self-taught producer and sound system operator Serokolo 7.

On his debut album, Serokolo presents a masterclass in mapanta’s rural celebratory sound. Splicing together samples of animal howls with hammering marimba rhythm, scatter-gun electronic percussion and snatches of vocals, the initial impression is of relentless cacophony. Opener Naba Ba Papedi sets the tone, its folk vocal melodies blended with a cranked-up drum’n’bass beat that fizzes without reaching a cathartic crescendo or drop. That sense of seething tension continues on the breakbeat cymbal splashes and chopped vocals of Zoro and the glittering video-game melodics of Dinaka.

A timely exhibit at NYU celebrates the anti-fascist folk artist – despite the university’s recent suppression of campus protests

Bea Esteves Mendez knew as much about Woody Guthrie as most people her age – which is to say, she knew This Land is Your Land – when one of her professors put on a recording of All You Fascists last semester. It’s an upbeat folk anthem written at the height of the second world war that connects the forces of oppression abroad with those, like Jim Crow, that festered at home. “Well I’m a gonna tell you fascists, you may be surprised, people in this world are getting organized,” Guthrie sings, shouts, whoops and whistles in his distinctive Oklahoma twang. “You’re bound to lose. You fascists bound to lose.”

“It was our first time really sitting down to listen to a Woody Guthrie song, and we were like, ‘Wow,’” said Mendez, 19, a sophomore at New York University. “‘This could have been written today.’”

Yiewsley by Daljit Nagra; Mer de Glace by Małgorzata Lebda; The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith; Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak by Rishi Dastidar; Dark Night by St John of the Cross, translated by Martha Sprackland

Yiewsley by Daljit Nagra (Faber, £14.99)
Given the relish with which Nagra pushes and pulls at English, it’s worth noting that Yiewsley is a real west London suburb. This location allows him to continue his career-long exploration of childhood working-class Sikh experience and, through it, wider questions of identity. But as Nagra turns 60, location is becoming increasingly a matter of time as well as space. The classic struggle of each first generation to arrive in Britain, and the pressure on its kids to make good, now sits within a 1960s and 70s time capsule. Enoch Powell and the National Front cast violent shadows, but parkas, school blancmange and cricket strike a sweeter, almost elegiac note.

Mer de Glace by Małgorzata Lebda, translated by Mira Rosenthal (Fitzcarraldo, £12.99)
Much as they have in prose, Fitzcarraldo are awakening British poetry publishing to the glamour of braininess. Mer de Glace is named for a dying French glacier, but the sequence is set on the 1,047km-long Polish river Vistula, along which Lebda ran in 2021. Images of fires and firesides recur: we are all of us out in a wild, vulnerable world. This is ecopoetry at its most profound and informal, challenging and pleasurable. Rosenthal’s quietly fluent translations give us “books that help us close the mouth of night”, light as “Baltic mercury” and, as the runner nears the end of her journey, a “pelvis tilting / towards the open sea”.

The American author on the magic of Yasunari Kawabata, the hidden layers of Henry James and coming late to the genius of Muriel Spark

My earliest reading memory
I remember reading throughout my childhood, but it’s hard to identify my earliest memory of reading. In a lot of ways, it’s as if my childhood began when I learned to read. I do remember taking a copy of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons off the shelf when I was maybe 10 or 11 – far too young to be reading it. I was suitably scandalised and excited by it.

My favourite book growing up
I read a lot of Theodore Dreiser growing up, for reasons that are mysterious to me now. I don’t know how I came to him: he wasn’t assigned in school and no one in my family was reading his books. But his focus was on female characters and perhaps even then, that felt notable. I started with Sister Carrie, then read Jennie Gerhardt and An American Tragedy, but Sister Carrie was the one I returned to again and again.

A miserable misogynist is on a quest for redemption in Toltz’s fourth novel, which fizzes with dynamic prose but struggles to engender empathy for its protagonist

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In his fourth novel, Steve Toltz – best known for the Booker prize-shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole – takes on the story of one man’s loneliness to deliver a satirical and surprisingly moving ode to human connection. Much like his earlier works, this one is filled with con men, tall tales and black humour, making for a bitingly funny exploration of life’s misfortunes.

A Rising of the Lights opens with an absurd premise: two ne’er-do-well parents, in the middle of their divorce, roll dice to split up their twin children; one child will go with each parent. After winning him in this cruel game, Russell “Rusty” Wilson’s mother tells him they’ll be moving to Melbourne from Sydney – only to deem it “too much hassle”, circle the block and bring him right back to where they started. It’s an arresting opener that foreshadows the following 300 pages of Rusty’s life.

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A Rising of the Lights by Steve Toltz is out now in Australia (Penguin, $34.99)

Luke Kennard, Sophie Ratcliffe and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

This is a really good year for new fiction. I don’t think anyone writes about contemporary Englishness as astutely, mercilessly and affectionately as Claire Powell, and her latest novel, All In, puts her perfectly observed characters in the pressure cooker of an all-inclusive holiday. It’s a kind of meta-beach read, and I loved it.

Meeting ‘my people’ – video gamers with very long memories – took me back to an era of machine play that lacked megabytes but had far more tangible presence

I want to tell you about the game that has made me the happiest this month. It’s a game I didn’t complete. It’s a game I didn’t even start. I just held it. And smiled. I have played the game before, but not for many years. Forty of them to be precise.

The game is Daley Thompson’s Super Test for the ZX Spectrum.

Hitman developer IO Interactive’s pluralistic take on the British secret agent – his first video-game outing in almost 15 years – promises a Bond for all eras. Here’s what you need to know

If you want to tell the tale of a young James Bond, you first need to pick which James Bond he’s going to grow into. This was the task handed to Hitman developer IO Interactive, the studio taking digital custody of the spy in 007 First Light, Bond’s first video game in almost 15 years. So what’s it to be? Will their agent take baby steps towards Sean Connery’s gruff masculinity, or is he practising Roger Moore’s arched eyebrow in the bathroom mirror? That’s if he’s a “movie” Bond at all. For a generation of gamers, the character exists most vividly as a hand at the bottom of the screen in GoldenEye 007.

As it turns out, 007 First Light’s Bond, depicted by Patrick Gibson (cornering a specific market, having played the serial killer-to-be in the Dexter origins show) is an amalgam: the facial scar is an Ian Fleming detail, but the sweet-talking charm is straight from the Pierce Brosnan playbook, and the second you barge a goon into a bookcase you know someone’s been studying Casino Royale on a loop. Trying to devise a Bond for all fandoms could risk satisfying none, but in the demo we played, the performance works. Crucially, Gibson brings an outsider’s unease that’s all his own, anchored by the arrogance that’ll one day be weaponised by MI6.

PC; Grey Alien Games, Night Signal Entertainment
An innocent-looking charity shop find draws you into a compulsive world of demons, ogres and retro delights

For a while in the mid-1990s, meta horror movies were the genre everyone was talking about. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream, the Blair Witch Project – these films simultaneously examined and exploited genre conventions, seeking to scare audiences while also distancing them from the narrative action. You didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp in shock, you weren’t sure what was story or what was framing. Did that just happen or was it a dream sequence? You just had to go with it.

Now developers Grey Alien Games and Night Signal Entertainment have brought this multilayered approach to the card game solitaire, infusing a straightforward puzzler with a bloody gush of meta meaning and a dollop of nostalgia just for the self-reflexive hell of it. In Forbidden Solitaire, lead character Will Roberta picks up an old 1990s game called, yes, Forbidden Solitaire, in a charity shop vaguely recalling some internet myth about it being cursed. He discovers that the game is a sort of narrative card-battler set in a haunted dungeon filled with monsters and treasure – and then you, the player, are transported from his computer desktop into the game. So you’re both him and you.

Pragmata, Saros and Vampire Crawler bring together aesthetics, responsiveness and creative opportunities in joyous ways that can’t be defined, only experienced

Game feel is one of the most elusive concepts in the glossary of interactive entertainment, at once perfectly clear and difficult to define. Obviously, it refers to what a game feels like to play, but where does that feeling come from? How does it manifest? Or consider it from a different angle. When the chef Samin Nosrat started her career at the renowned Chez Panisse in California, she began to understand that what diners really responded to in their food were four key factors – salt, fat, acid and heat – and how these elements interacted. This idea formed the basis of her bestselling cookbook. It perhaps also inspired a video game audio director to once compare game feel to eating a potato chip: the salt and fat are part of it but so are the crunch and the sensation of the chip dissolving in your mouth (pdf). Game feel is a combination of elements – the responsiveness of the controls, the intuitiveness of the action, the aesthetics of the world and the creative opportunities they engender – all coming together in the right quantities.

I’m thinking about this a lot right now, because three games released in the last few days illustrate the idea of good game feel beautifully. The first is Pragmata, Capcom’s sci-fi action adventure in which you explore an abandoned colony base with the help of a child-like android, who lets you hack robotic enemies, lowering their defences before you blast them to pieces. The hacking mini-game takes place on a grid with nodes that add power-ups to your hack attack. As you progress, you add new types of nodes, as well as new weapons, and the interplay between these elements is complex, multifaceted and fun. This takes place in a linear world filled with hidden areas, so exploration is guided but discovery is possible. You run, jump and glide – it all feels seamless. It is joyous simply to be there.

Globe theatre, London
A spunky Helena and an inspired Puck elicit cheers and laughter in Emily Lim’s generous, creative and clever show

I can’t remember the last time I got the giggles in the theatre but director Emily Lim’s joyful take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream just about undid me. It’s generous, creative and clever, always with an eye to making the audience feel included. With gloriously extravagant costumes (concept by Fly Davis), a set that spontaneously blooms from designer Aldo Vázquez, hearty folk music by Jim Fortune and effervescent comic performances, this is the rarest of things: a Dream the whole family can enjoy. Just cover the kids’ eyes for the slightly naughtier bits.

The Globe is the perfect space for Lim who has spent much of her career folding drama and community together, particularly on the National Theatre’s Public Acts project. The audience interaction elements aren’t just a fun add-on here but a vital part of the show. In fact, we’re so fully integrated into the action that in the closing scenes, one happy spectator – as part of a brilliant running gag – joins Puck on stage for a hand-tying ceremony to spontaneous cheers all round.

ICA, London
Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the 80s and endured the financial crash as they set out as artists – their fury is intoxicating

This is a bitter, resentful exhibition by a handful of bitter, resentful artists. Americans Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the mid-1980s, coming of age in a world at its financial peak, but becoming adults just as the 2008 financial crash turned everything to crap. They saw a land of opportunity and boundless possibility, and then had it all kicked out from under them. Of course they’re resentful; we all should be.

Jenna Bliss’s first video here sets the mood. Shaky, handheld images of the New York skyline and public artworks in the city’s financial district are overlaid with text such as “We survived Y2K but now the real world source code is malfunctioning” and “Save the banks to save us all”. That’s the vibe: millennial despair at a world built to keep the banks rich and the rest of us placid.

Donmar Warehouse, London
Two couples, both of whom have lost sons, meet in Fran Kranz’s unflinching look at restorative justice

Fran Kranz’s 2021 film Mass, featuring two sets of parents whose sons have died in a high-school massacre, was originally written as a play. Restored as such, in Carrie Cracknell’s production, it takes place in the backroom of a church where their across-the-table encounter encapsulates a pained instance of restorative justice.

Gail (Lyndsey Marshal) and Jay (Adeel Akhtar) are the parents of Evan, one of 10 children murdered by the teenage shooter, Hayden, the son of Richard (Paul Hilton) and Linda (Monica Dolan), who then killed himself.

Royal Festival Hall, London
Featuring music that inspired the designer, this show brings together Le Gateau Chocolat, dancers in body stockings and a formal orchestra to mild effect

The small print tells us this show has no connection to the fashion house of McQueen, nor does it feature any of Alexander McQueen’s designs. You could think it’s a cynical attempt to get bums on seats for classical music, but it is created by McQueen’s longtime musical director, John Gosling, alongside Robert Ames, conductor of the London Contemporary Orchestra. The LCO plays music that inspired the designer, all run together like a DJ mix with theatrical lighting and multi-genre guest performers.

Far from “unnatural”, most of the harmonies here are as concordant as Classic FM, mostly film soundtracks (The Hours, The Piano, a couple of John Williams’) and tearjerkers (Dido’s Lament, Barber’s Adagio for Strings). The friction, however, is all in the combinations. For example: two dancers posturing in nude body stockings – one has hooves instead of hands and tights over her face – and then behind them, the cello section in formal white tie and tails. Hearing Handel cut with the Rolling Stones in a jaunty string arrangement, or a blast of Nirvana, feels like your GCSE music teacher trying to be cool, although the blaring siren of Armand Van Helden’s Witch Doktor is genuinely unsettling.

From the Dome of Discovery to the massive cigar-shaped Skylon, the spectacular cultural showcase was an exhilarating sight in 1951. The Tories demolished those prime exhibits yet, 75 years on, it has a significant legacy

‘We ought to do something jolly … we need something to give Britain a lift.” So said Herbert Morrison, a key figure in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government, selling to the cabinet the idea of a Festival of Britain. It kicked off 75 years ago this weekend with a service of dedication at St Paul’s, lasted for five months and consisted of a nationwide celebration of British achievements in the arts and sciences. But did it succeed, and did it leave any lasting legacy?

I say it was a national event but there is little doubt that much of the focus was on an exhibition on London’s South Bank which reclaimed a huge tract of derelict land and attracted 8.5 million visitors. As an 11-year-old schoolboy, I was one of them, making the pilgrimage from Leamington Spa with my family. I still recall the excitement of the Dome of Discovery which was a vast scallop shell containing segments devoted to earth, sea, sky, the polar regions and outer space. The site was also dominated by the massive cigar-shaped Skylon, described as a kind of “luminous exclamation mark”. After a morning on the South Bank we spent an afternoon at the Battersea Park Pleasure Gardens where there was a funfair, a miniature railway and, best of all, a theatre resurrecting old-time music hall. Returning home, I felt as if I had been to an exhausting but exhilarating party.

The patriarch of the Weasley family in seven wizarding films has also been prolific as a small screen detective and comedy catchphrase master. Assuming it suits you, he’ll be here with answers

Twenty-five years have now passed since the first Harry Potter film and, with the HBO reboot due out this Christmas, Warner Bros is ramping up the celebrations. Key among them is the unveiling of a new feature at the studio tour showcasing key moments, costumes and props from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

And this is why Mark Williams is now taking your questions – although, as Potter purists will know, his character doesn’t actually appear in the first film. Arthur Weasley does, however, play a pretty big role in the other seven movies, so let’s muggle through regardless.

A new reboot of the 1999 horror hit will feature two of the original stars and the directing team as executive producers

The reboot of The Blair Witch Project will now boast those involved with the original as producers after they voiced their frustration.

The 1999 indie smash was made for $35,000 but made $248m, becoming one of the most profitable films ever made.

Pop star was arrested in March after she was pulled over for driving erratically on US 101 in California

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Britney Spears was charged in California on Thursday with driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, authorities said.

The 44-year-old pop star was charged with a single misdemeanor count of driving under the combined influence of alcohol and at least one drug, the Ventura county district attorney’s office said.

The day I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, I knew my life would end with euthanasia

I chose to die at 44 because ALS (motor neurone disease) left me paralysed. I still loved my life, even to the last day.

It all started in December 2023, when I lost strength in my right arm, and my pinky finger was going in all directions. I went to see my GP and did physiotherapy because they thought it was a nerve blockage.

Peonies, padel rackets and a genuinely good low-alcohol wine … whatever your plans this bank holiday, we’ve rounded up our top spring essentials so you can make the most of it

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The weather may or may not play ball, but a spring bank holiday is a reason to kick back, get outside and get together with friends.

To help you make the most of the long weekend, we’ve rounded up some of our most-loved seasonal favourites. Whether it’s tools to spruce up your outdoor space, tipples to sip in the garden, a fake tan to jump-start your summer skin or fashion to take you from spring to summer, here are some of our favourite springtime products.

Most suitcases look hardwearing, but which ones actually are? We dropped bestselling brands’ luggage from a ladder to find out …

• The best carry-on luggage

A suitcase is like the portrait in the traveller’s attic, accumulating more than its fair share of knocks and scrapes while we refresh ourselves on the road. We trundle them over cobbles, see them tumble from luggage racks on the train – and if we choose to fly, there’s a fair chance they’ll be mishandled before we reunite at the carousel.

For our testing, we pushed eight suitcases to the limit by dropping them on to a hard surface, as if they’d been fumbled by a baggage handler. Air travel is especially tough on suitcases, so you might get away with choosing a less-resilient case if you make the climate-conscious choice to travel by rail or sea.

Best suitcase overall:
Away the Large

Best budget suitcase:
Tripp Holiday 8 Large

I spent a month testing anti-consumption strategies, from cash stuffing to ditching Amazon Prime, to find the ones that genuinely cut my spending

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I’m pretty careful with money, I say as I trip over piles of Amazon Prime boxes. I’ve never really been the shopping type, I insist as I stare at drawers groaning with unworn Asos clothes. Look how much I care about the environment, I tell myself as I click “buy now” on yet another battery charger I bought to replace the one, two or five I’ve lost around the house somewhere.

You don’t have to be a shopaholic to be drowning in stuff. All it takes is an averagely mindless approach to impulse buying, until one day your home is heaving with a personal landfill of tat.

You told us your favourite subscriptions for cutting costs and reducing household waste. Plus, Anya Hindmarch’s shopping secrets and marathon essentials

• 33 easy plastic-free kitchen swaps

Whether they’re full of harmful chemicals or packaged in plastic, it’s no secret that many household cleaning products aren’t great for the planet. But “taking a more sustainable approach to washing and cleaning doesn’t have to be inconvenient”, said Hannah Rochell in her recent roundup of the best sustainable subscriptions. From vegan washing detergent in a natty recyclable tin to compostable scourers, her guide is full of delivery services that make greener living less effortful.

Her list wasn’t exhaustive, though, so we asked you for the subscription services you swear by for cutting costs, reducing household waste and making your life easier. (And no one has any commercial links to these companies – we always check.)

‘A cherry-cola colour and funky, acidic aroma’: the best supermarket balsamic vinegars, tasted and rated

The best fake tan for a sunkissed, streak-free glow – tested

Ditch power tools, build a hedgehog highway: how to create a nature-friendly garden

How I Shop with Anya Hindmarch: ‘I would label everything if I could’

The best hair straighteners for foolproof styling, tried and tested by our expert

A sophisticated sour flavoured with a dense and intense rhubarb cordial

The spiced rhubarb base doesn’t make quite as much as you might imagine, because it’s reduced so much that you end up with a super-thick and very intense cordial. That said, any leftover cordial also works well as a soft drink mixed with water and lemon juice to taste; it’s pretty tasty poured over thick yoghurt and/or fruit, too.

Stan O’Brien, Vivien, Edinburgh

Bright green, tangy and tender, this cake is a delicious way to sing in the spring

There is a particular green that belongs to spring: pale and luminous, it’s softer than the dark foliage of winter, and quieter than the glossy abundance of summer herbs. Spinach, the colour of new growth, captures this moment perfectly. Tender and almost impossibly vivid, this cake loses its metallic edge in the heat of the oven, leaving a gentle, vegetal brightness. Baked in a shallow tin and spread with cream cheese icing, when sliced into squares, it produces the perfect ratio of cake to icing and tastes uncommonly good.

What we inherit in the kitchen isn’t only a list of ingredients, but a living tradition – one that shifts with our lives, our fridges and the people we feed

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“Chicken, leek, flour, a few more ingredients.” That was it: my grandma’s WhatsApp response to me earnestly asking if she’d mind sharing her time-honoured chicken pie recipe. She wasn’t being obtuse – well, not deliberately. She had simply never before committed a dish that was second nature to paper, let alone an iPhone screen.

It wasn’t how she’d learned it and it wasn’t how I’d go on to learn it, either. I knew I’d have to make her chicken pie many times to get it even close to her standard, that I’d have to learn by watching as well as by asking, and that even then there’d be elements I’d miss. Such is the nature of a family dish – indeed, of any dish that has taken time, repetition and love to master, and for which, even then, perfection remains ephemeral. There is more to their method, meaning and flavour than can ever be confined to and conveyed by a recipe.

With ‘oeno-flation’ as it is, it’s hip to be square and branch out into less exclusive – and cheaper – varieties from often overlooked regions

The sommelier Honey Spencer, of Sune in east London, struck a real chord on Instagram earlier this year: “I’m so fucking sick of expensive wine,” she lamented. There followed an angry plaint about the “unrelenting rise” in the cost of bottles from “artisans making wine properly … and FORGET BURGUNDY”. In a difficult climate, this is “one of the hardest pills to swallow” for the restaurateur.

It’s not an easy swallow for the customer, either, given the mark-up on hard pills these days: according to UKHospitality, the price of wine has gone up 40% since 2020, which will surprise no one who has quietly wept into a £59 rioja.

This is a fairly common problem with decades-long friendship, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Do you respond to the person you knew, or the one you’re tired of knowing?

• Read more Leading questions

An old friend – we first met over 50 years ago – used to be kind, supportive and good company. But she has become a self-absorbed and petulant know-all. She is the centre of her own little world, and all her friends – me included – are expected to run around after her and cater to her needs.

She constantly brings up her health issues, disregarding the fact that other people in our friendship circle also have health worries. The label “narcissist” has been mentioned by some!

These negative comments about bodies and faces permeate society and could lead to some tough talks with friends

Hi Ugly,

How do I respond to my friends when they criticize their bodies, faces, skin?

Why is this column called ‘Ask Ugly’?

How should I be styling my pubic hair?

How do I deal with imperfection?

My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done

I had presumed I would love her instantly – but a traumatic birth led to devastating numbness

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was waiting for an overwhelming rush of love, but when I looked at my newborn baby what I felt was utter despair. No matter how much I smiled at her, crooned at her, fed, patted, caressed and changed her, I was absolutely numb.

I had yearned for her. Growing up in Italy, I was surrounded by images of perfect motherhood. Every rural crossroad has its tiny shrine to the Madonna and Child. I was certain by the end of my teens that I wanted to have at least one baby.

The actor and producer on being a teenage model, making My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the secret to long-lasting love

Born in Hollywood in 1956, Rita Wilson’s first role was in The Brady Bunch at the age of 15. She went on to appear in Frasier and The Good Wife, as well as romcom classics such as Sleepless in Seattle and Runaway Bride. She produced the highest‑grossing romcom of all time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, as well as Mamma Mia! and A Man Called Otto, which starred her husband, Tom Hanks, and son Truman. Alongside her career on screen, she has released music since 2012. Her sixth studio album, Sound of a Woman, is out on 1 May.

My mum took this photo of me in Hollywood. I’d just started high school and was joyful, open and optimistic.

Small top-tier Android is great to use, being fast, AI-loaded and with reasonable battery life, but falls short of rivals on camera

Samsung’s compact flagship phone hasn’t changed much in a year, but the S26 is still one of the best smaller handsets available as rivals grow larger and larger.

The S26 is the cheapest and smallest of this year’s top Samsungs, dwarfed by the top-of-the-line S26 Ultra in size and price. But like everything with a memory chip at the moment, the S26 has increased in price by £80 or the equivalent to £879 (€949/$899/A$1,349). At least it has double the starting storage.

The chancellor’s changes will come into force in April 2027, affecting everyone from savers to landlords and sole traders. Experts say to act now

Millions of people will be affected by a range of savings, investment and tax changes that take effect in just under a year’s time.

“April 2027 may feel some way off, but when it comes to financial planning, a year is not a long time,” says Jason Hollands at the wealth management firm Evelyn Partners.

Apple laptop sets new performance bar with more storage, new chips and plenty of options, but now has two-tier specs depending on processor

Apple’s Macs have been on a roll this year with the brand new budget MacBook Neo and a faster MacBook Air M5, but now it’s time for its workhorse MacBook Pro to be upgraded with the fastest, most powerful M-series chips.

The latest MacBook Pro comes in two screen sizes and a large range of chip and configuration options. The 14in version starts with the M5 chip costing £1,699 (€1,899/$1,699/A$2,699) and then jumps to the more powerful M5 Pro from £2,199 (€2,499/$2,199/A$3,499) before climbing further for the 16in version or the top M5 Max chip. A pricey machine for professional workloads.

It cheerily addressed letters to my late spouse, and threatened penalties if he terminated his contract

After my husband died suddenly, I discovered he had been paying £171 a month for our EE broadband and TV contract. EE initially offered me a monthly deal at £44.99 on the phone.

There followed two letters, one day apart, cheerily addressed to my late husband. The first stated that he would have to pay £1,007 to terminate his contract; the second giving a termination fee of £520. The letters told him he could take the contract with him when he moved house.

This underdiagnosed condition, which causes leg pain and swelling, affects one in 10 women, yet most doctors haven’t heard of it

The first thing Becca Gold noticed was her pants.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2023, her pants stopped fitting. Her legs became puffy, with a rippled texture and heavy ache. Within a year, the 32-year-old, Austin-based podcaster went up four pant sizes, gained 30lb and found herself in constant leg pain. She had always had a little bit of cellulite, she says, but while her upper body appeared mostly unchanged, now her legs seemed to belong to a “different person, overnight”.

Madeleine Finlay sits down with co-host and Guardian science editor Ian Sample to talk through three eye-catching stories from the week, including the news that the number of years people in the UK are spending in good health has declined compared with a decade ago. Also on the agenda is the science, tech and nutrition behind two runners at this weekend’s London marathon breaking the two-hour threshold, and an answer to why some old houses feel particularly spooky

People in UK spend fewer years in good health than a decade ago, study finds

Spooky feelings in old houses may be caused by boiler sounds, study suggests

Report calls for tough action to combat ‘escalating and unsustainable burden’ of liver-related problems in Europe

Governments in Europe should impose much higher taxes on alcohol and unhealthy food to tackle the continent’s 284,000 deaths a year from liver disease, experts say.

Taxes on those products should rise sharply enough for the money raised to cover the huge costs they place on health services, the criminal justice system and social services.

Physical phone-blocking devices, powered by NFC wireless technology, are becoming a popular solution for doomscrolling. Brigid Delaney puts one to the test

Wake up, 100 messages from group chat overnight about something – what? another assassination attempt; a village destroyed in Lebanon; the football result in England; the weather in Iran being manipulated; the pesticides causing lung and bowel cancer, so everyone who eats salads is now at risk of cancer; meditate for 20 minutes, then fire up x.com, a place I thought I’d never want to revisit, with its carnival barkers and supplement salesman, and have you seen the Lego thing calling Trump a paedo?, you gotta see the Lego thing, and this is before my first coffee, yet x.com is the coffee and the tea, whatever Elon has done to the For You algorithm is evil genius, it’s like the global collective id, nasty and funny and addictive and compelling – like gawking at a car crash, like soaking in a hot bubble bath of anger, and memes, and geopolitical dramas, and Trump, Trump, Trump – soaking in Trump, and then, For Me (just as Elon promised).

So begins the circuit around my phone, that goes all day and night, around the tiny screen with its icons (when a born-again Christian once told me he had favourite icons, for a long time I thought he meant apps, not pictures of the Virgin Mary). I started to feel like I was in Canberra, on one of those enormous roundabouts, rotating between the icons – not Joseph, not Jesus, but X and WhatsApp and TikTok and even LinkedIn for Christ sakes – round and round from one app to the next, just checking, checking in case something is happening. I watched tiny videos and maybe, occasionally, got distracted by the novel I am meant to be writing, which is due on 31 July. But the novel is boring, just a static Word doc on a screen, it’s not giving; it’s taking hard work. So I spend six minutes with my novel, and then it’s time to go back to my phone, to circle the roundabout visiting all my icons again, like a demented Stations of the Cross, because I can’t focus, I just can’t focus on work right now when there is so much good scrolling to do …

Fashion’s Oscars - aka the Met Gala - arrives this Monday. But before we see this year’s outfits, our writers revisit the looks that still spark debate, delight and the occasional meme

The first Monday in May is fast approaching, which means the next iteration of the Met Gala – the biggest night in fashion – is on its way.

While we eagerly wait to see what co-chairs including Beyoncé (her first Met in a decade) wear, how Anna Wintour handles honorary chairs Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez on the steps (the couple have provided most of the funding for the gala and its exhibition), and how much impact the anti-Bezos protesters have, we thought it would be fun to hit pause on predictions and instead indulge in some Met Gala nostalgia.

There’s more to this classic look than simply wearing your nightwear as daywear. Try it with a T-shirt or a silky bomber – and always with a slick of lipstick

Jennifer Rauchet, wife of Pete Hegseth, caused partisan uproar by supposedly wearing a bargain dress to the formal event – but what it says about our attitudes to fast fashion is more interesting

Although far less important than the political violence at the White House correspondent’s dinner in Washington over the weekend, the sartorial choices of the Maga administration are now getting airtime – and one dress is causing a particular furore.

It is being reported that Jennifer Rauchet, wife of the US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, wore what appeared to resemble a gown listed on Shein for $42 (and similar to another on Temu for half the price).

Get it right and leather trousers have the power to make you look just that tiny bit cooler than everyone else in the room

Leather trousers are not for the fainthearted. They come with … baggage? Mythology, perhaps, is a gentler way of putting it. Either way, you know what I mean. Leather trousers can be suggestive of pelvic-thrusting rock frontmen. Noisy motorbikes. They hint at midlife crisis or teenage rebellion. They are a lot.

But leather trousers – along with gym clothes in public and cancelling plans at the last minute – have been normalised in polite society. There is a new breed of leather trouser-wearer. You know who I mean: she looks as if she could be an architect, perhaps. She is chic and understated (neutral colours, not too much jewellery) and she’s wearing a nice pair of trousers that just happen to be leather, rather than wearing leather trousers in a let’s-get-the-shots-in kind of way. Again, if you know what I mean.

These are the less explored corners of Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin and Porto that you’ve ‘stumbled into and ended up staying’

• Tell us about a great trip in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

When friends came to visit while I was studying in Berlin or I wanted to flaneur through the city, I would go to Maybachufer, a neighbourhood in the Neukölln district. Wander from U-Bahn station Kottbusser Tor in the direction of the Landwehrkanal and peruse the multicultural market taking place Tuesdays and Fridays. You can also attempt to haggle in your best German at the fortnightly Sunday flea market. Useful phrase: das ist zu teuer für mich (that’s too expensive for me). Stop for a bite to eat (or an Aperol spritz) alfresco at buzzing La Maison and spend the afternoon sat by the canal next to the Admiralbrücke historic wrought iron bridge, or at the nearby independent cinema Moviemento, which shows a wide variety of English-subtitled films. End the day with a döner kebap from one of the many takeaways or restaurants nearby and a trip to one (or more) of the local bars: Multilayerladen for its laid-back, homely aesthetic or Soulcat Music Bar for 50s and 60s music on vinyl.
Kitty

The natural world is the headliner at these joyous gatherings, while the support acts include live music, immersive art and fire ceremonies

Winner of the UK’s best micro-festival in 2025, Between the Trees returns to Candleston Woods in the spectacular Merthyr Mawr national nature reserve (between Cardiff and Swansea) this year. Designed to reconnect people to the natural world, the programme features science and nature activities, folk music and storytelling. Workshops in the Eco Hub include micrographia sessions – exploring the world of insects on the reserve – and nature crafts. The Seren area has plenty of new talks and walks on offer, including stories of Welsh witches and forage-and-taste outings. With camping spots next to a wild beach and huge dunes, the site itself will ignite plenty of awe.
27-30 August, weekend tickets £195 adults, £50 children, betweenthetrees.co.uk

Gentle cycling is the perfect pace to enjoy the region’s sunflower fields and medieval towns – with gourmet food and fine wine along the way

As I cycle in golden light through the Loire’s vineyards, I have the sudden wish to wear a flowing floral dress, tuck a sunflower behind my ear and answer only to the name Delphine. Opulent chateaux, honeyed stone villages, blazing fields of sunflowers … the Loire is so ridiculously and relentlessly beautiful it’s no wonder artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Émile Vernon made it their home.

A short zip across to Paris on the Eurostar and then an hour south on the TGV to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps and it feels as if we’ve stepped into a live JMW Turner landscape (he toured the region in 1826).

From the Cambrian Mountains to Cardigan Bay, the 83-mile Teifi Valley Trail is a grassroots initiative designed to revive a once-thriving area

Up here, the river was a mere gurgle; a babbling babe finding its way into the world. A few sheep roamed, a kite wheeled and a spring-clean wind ruffled the tussocks on the barren hills and rippled the pools. It was a stark yet striking beginning. As we followed a brand new fingerpost, skirted Llyn Teifi – the river’s official source – and picked up the fledgling flow, there was a sense great things lay ahead, for us both.

The Teifi rises in Ceredigion’s Cambrian Mountains – the untramped “green desert of Wales” – and pours into Cardigan Bay 75 miles (120km) south-west. It’s one of the longest rivers wholly within Wales and, historically, one of its most significant: the beating heart of the country’s fishing and wool-weaving industries, 12th-century abbeys at either end, Wales’s oldest university en route.

You’ll need a large area and a sunny aspect, but this plant is a true delight when homegrown

If you read my recent piece about celeriac, you’ll know that I’m trying to make an effort to write about crops that I don’t actually grow myself – this is my next instalment. Unlike celeriac, which I don’t like, I don’t grow sweetcorn because I simply don’t have the right space and conditions. So if you’re fortunate to have the room and sunny aspect for it to thrive, I’m jealous. When freshly plucked and shucked, homegrown sweetcorn is beyond delightful.

As you might suspect, sweetcorn grows best during long, hot summers – so get your seeds started now as they’ll want some warmth to germinate (in a propagator ideally) and pleasant weather as they get growing. As with so many of the best summer crops, it likes fertile and moisture-retentive soil, and as much sun as the summer days have to offer. Seedlings more than 8cm tall are ready to be planted out, but resist putting your seedlings into the ground until the days are warm and the risk of frost is well passed. And keep some fleece handy to throw over them should the temperature drop unexpectedly.

I thought my mother was ashamed of my taboo profession. Then I realized our experiences were more similar than I thought

My first viral personal essay was titled: “In Defense of Casual Sex”.

It was 2008. I was 24, living in San Francisco, and working at the online magazine Salon. I was responding to a series of books about hookup culture, including one warning young women that they were ruining themselves for love and marriage by sleeping around.

Carol thinks Scandinavian-style sandwiches are unwieldy and messy, while Lucas wants to get the most from his fillings. You decide who’s the bread winner
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Food should not fall out while you eat a sandwich, and your hands shouldn’t be sticky with sauce

Two slices of bread feels a bit excessive. It’s too much bread compared with the filling

With voter loyalty a distant memory, the Lib Dems’ cost of living policies and criticism of Trump could gain them ground

It has been an election buildup dominated by the rise of Reform UK and the Greens, and the contrasting woes of Labour and the Tories. But there is a chance that on 8 May the Liberal Democrats, largely ignored in recent weeks, could wake up as the biggest party in English local government.

This is just one of several paradoxes for the party’s leader, Ed Davey, and his team. They are fifth in many national polls, with a rating barely changed from 2024. But Lib Dem bosses are sanguine, convinced that UK politics is now so different, so atomised, to make headline polling almost irrelevant.

It showcased the biggest stars of the day, including Stan Laurel, Harry Houdini, Morecambe and Wise and Shirley Bassey, before becoming a bingo hall, a church and a squat. It was almost turned into flats. What next for Manchester’s forgotten music hall?

It doesn’t look like much from the outside. An inelegant, industrial redbrick block; if you didn’t know, you might guess it’s a biscuit factory. Make that a former biscuit factory, because this is clearly somewhere that was rather than is: entrances are bricked up, drainpipes hang loose, shrubs sprout from crumbling masonry, pigeons come and go from holes in the roof. Pretty much everything within reach of a spray can has been reached; there are tags, Marvel characters, the perhaps surprising news that “God is dead and sheep killed him”.

You know those rocks, though, that look like any old rocks, but when you smash them open they have amazing, sparkling, coloured crystals inside? Amethyst and the like. Well, this building is a bit like them. If you took a wrecking ball to it (and it’s not inconceivable that this will happen), inside you’d find a splendid Edwardian galleried auditorium with gilded rococo plasterwork and plush red velvet seats … albeit covered in pigeon shit.

In 1980, two US airmen reported an extraordinary encounter near a military base in the east of England. What really happened?

In 1996, Nick Pope wrote his first book. Open Skies, Closed Minds was a semi-autobiographical examination of well-known UFO cases mixed with his own research. Pope worked at the UK Ministry of Defence for more than two decades, from 1985 to 2006. For three of those years – 1991 to 1994 – he worked on what was known colloquially in the department as “the UFO desk”. The desk’s official name, the Secretariat (Air Staff ) Sec (AS) 2a, was responsible for assessing the defence significance of reported UFO sightings.

To promote the book, Pope appeared on BBC Newsnight. The UK’s flagship news programme was famous for its adversarial interviews that left even the most formidable politicians and intellectuals looking like startled deer. Given the subject matter and the platform, this could have gone horribly wrong, but Pope held his own. “I wasn’t nervous, probably because I’d been media-trained by the MoD,” he says. “The irony was that when I was posted to the UFO desk, I occasionally had to go on television in my role as the department’s subject-matter expert and play down both the phenomena and the true extent of our interest and involvement in the subject.” His interrogator that night was Peter Snow. “What do you believe now that you didn’t believe five years ago?” Snow began.

If you’ve changed your holiday plans, we’d like to hear from you

Rising fuel prices, aviation fuel prices, and changes to travel rules such as the new EU border system, EES, are causing some holidaymakers to reconsider their travel plans. Holiday companies have predicted an increase in bookings for UK summer breaks after a jump in interest from Britons fearful of flight cancellations linked to the Iran war.

Have you changed your summer holiday plans in light of recent world events? We’d like to hear from you.

We’d like to hear how you’re adapting your expenditure as the cost of living rises amid the conflict in the Middle East

Rising prices and economic uncertainty linked to the conflict in the Middle East are putting pressure on household budgets across the world.

The International Monetary Fund has warned the conflict is pushing up the cost of energy and food, increasing borrowing costs and weighing on economic growth. Surveys suggest millions of households are already making changes to cope – cutting back, dipping into savings or taking on debt.

What was your experience? Have you found another place to rent?

Solicitors have said they were inundated with requests to serve last-minute section 21 no-fault evictions prior to the Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force in England today.

Citizens Advice said thousands of people facing a no-fault eviction had approached it for help in the last month.

As David Attenbourugh turns 100 years old, we would like to hear your memories over the years – including any encounters you’ve had with him in the wild

As David Attenborough turns 100 years old on 8 May, we would like to hear your memories of the great naturalist and broadcaster over the years – including any encounters you’ve had with him in the wild.

What is your standout memory of Attenborough? Have you ever met him? You can share your stories – and pictures – below.

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