Tit-for-tat attacks have breached taboo of direct strikes on each other’s territory but Tehran has no ‘immediate’ plans to retaliate

• Middle East crisis – live updates

World leaders urged calm on Friday after Israel conducted a pre-dawn drone sortie over Iran following a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that crossed an important red line that has for decades held the Middle East back from a major regional conflict.

There were tentative hopes late on Friday that the apparent strike attempt against an airbase near the city of Isfahan was sufficiently limited to fend off the threat of a bigger Iranian response and an uncontrolled spiral of violence between a nuclear power and a state with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons quickly.

Tit-for-tat attacks present Sunni monarchies with complicated choices over region’s future

Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel had, by the end of this week, become one of the most interpreted events in recent modern history. Then, in the early hours of Friday, came reports of Israel’s riposte. As in June 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in a moment that ultimately led to the first world war, these shots were heard around the world, even if few can agree conclusively on what they portend.

By one de minimis account, Tehran was merely sending a performative warning shot with its attack last Saturday, almost taking its ballistic missiles out for a weekend test drive. The maximalist version is that this was a state-on-state assault designed to change the rules of the Middle East. By swarming Israel with so many projectiles, such an assessment goes, Iran was prepared to risk turning Israel into a mini-Dresden of 1945 and was only thwarted by Israeli strategic defences and, crucially, extraordinary cooperation between the US, Israel and Sunni Gulf allies.

Israel launched a limited attack on Iranian soil on Friday morning, in the latest tit-for-tat between the two countries

• All our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war

Israel launched an attack on Iranian soil on Friday, in a tit-for-tat battle between the two foes, days after Iran launched an unprecedented strike on Israel with a barrage of drones and missiles, most of which were shot down. The Iranian strike was a response to an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.

The strikes have brought a long shadow war between the two sides into the open and also come against the backdrop of Iran’s support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose assault on Israel on 7 October triggered the invasion of Gaza.

Delays mean just £404m of the money donated by nine countries has been committed or spent

More than half of a £900m military fund for Ukraine run by the British Ministry of Defence has not been used because of bureaucratic delays in handing out contracts.

The UK-led International Fund for Ukraine counts nine countries among its donors. Critics claim its provision of weapons to the frontline has been slow.

Labour also turns down European Commission’s proposal, which would have allowed young Britons to live, study and work in EU

Rishi Sunak has rejected an EU offer to strike a post-Brexit deal to allow young Britons to live, study or work in the bloc for up to four years.

The prime minister declined the European Commission’s surprise proposal of a youth mobility scheme for people aged between 18 and 30 on Friday, after Labour knocked back the suggestion on Thursday night, while noting that it would “seek to improve the UK’s working relationship with the EU within our red lines�.

Department under fire for forcing people to repay huge sums as data shows widespread ill health among those caring for relatives

• ‘We’re already vulnerable’: the carers told to repay huge sums by the DWP

Carers have described suffering an “avalanche of utter stress� due to the government’s “abhorrent� approach to clawing back benefits, as official figures revealed the widespread ill health of those caring for loved ones.

The Department for Work and Pensions has been under fire since the Guardian revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers are being forced to pay back huge sums – and in some cases prosecuted for fraud – over “honest mistakes� that it could have spotted years earlier.

Actor and wife Katherine Schwarzenegger dismantle 1950 Zimmerman house designed by architect Craig Ellwood

Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion.

Last year, the couple purchased the 1950 Zimmerman house, designed by the architect Craig Ellwood, in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood for $12.5m. The residence, with landscaping by Garrett Eckbo – who has been described as the pioneer of modern landscaping – had previously been featured in Progressive Architecture magazine.

Labour leader told PMQs a ‘billionaire peer’ was ‘smearing a working-class woman’ after coverage of Rayner’s tax affairs

The row between Keir Starmer and Michael Ashcroft deepened on Friday after the billionaire Conservative donor demanded an apology from the Labour leader for accusing him of “smearing� Angela Rayner over her tax affairs.

Lord Ashcroft hit back two days after Starmer said at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday: “We have a billionaire prime minister and a billionaire peer, both of whose families have used schemes to avoid millions of pounds of tax, smearing a working-class woman.�

Police officer had stopped Gideon Falter from walking near pro-Palestinian march while wearing kippah skull cap

The Metropolitan police has apologised after an officer used the term “openly Jewish� to an antisemitism campaigner who was threatened with arrest near a pro-Palestine march.

Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, was wearing a kippah skull cap when he was stopped from crossing the road near the demonstration in the Aldwych area of London last Saturday afternoon.

Paolo Barone found guilty of voyeurism after taking photos of sleeping woman on train to St Albans in 2022

A Thameslink train driver who took photos up a woman’s skirt while she was asleep on a train has avoided jail, despite being found guilty of voyeurism.

The driver, Paolo Barone, was on his way home from a shift in September 2022 when he saw that the woman, 51, had fallen asleep on a train travelling from London Blackfriars to St Albans in Hertfordshire.

Force reviewing available information after claims that Menzies used political donations to pay off ‘bad people’

Allegations that the MP Mark Menzies misused campaign funds have been referred to Lancashire police. The force said it was reviewing the available information after receiving a letter “detailing concerns around this matter�.

The PA news agency understands that the Labour party chair, Anneliese Dodds, wrote to Lancashire police calling for an investigation into the allegations about Menzies.

Florida resident in critical condition in hospital after images of incident carried live on television

A man was in critical condition in a New York hospital on Friday after setting himself on fire outside the lower Manhattan courthouse where Donald Trump is on trial in a hush-money case.

Pictures of the incident were carried live on television and spread on X, formerly Twitter.

Gabriel Marinoaica, 20, dragged victim, who could not swim, out of her depth and attacked her

A man who raped a 15-year-old girl who could not swim after taking her out of her depth in the sea off Bournemouth beach has been sentenced to six and a half years’ detention.

Gabriel Marinoaica, who was 18 at the time, grabbed the girl as she played a game of catch with her friends and dragged her off the crowded beach into a water.

Myra Carvalho sentenced to 14 weeks’ imprisonment and banned from seeing singer perform

A woman who stalked Harry Styles has been jailed and banned from seeing him perform.

Myra Carvalho, who appeared at Harrow crown court sitting at Hendon magistrates court in London, was said to have stalked the singer by sending him 8,000 cards in less than a month.

Former Tory chair turned political biographer and publisher is behind books that have put former PM and Labour’s deputy in the spotlights

If this week’s tetchy exchanges between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak at prime minister’s questions proved one thing, it was the ability of the veteran businessman, donor and publisher Michael Ashcroft to set the political agenda.

While Starmer revelled in the publication of 10 Years to Save the West, which was written by the former prime minister Liz Truss and published this week by Ashcroft’s Biteback Publishing, Sunak wanted to focus on another Biteback book – Ashcroft’s own Red Queen?, a biography of Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner.

While most who wrote in favoured some sort of action to reduce the damage caused by tobacco, some warned about the UK becoming a ‘nanny state’

Dozens of people have shared with the Guardian how they feel about Rishi Sunak’s tobacco and vapes bill, which aims to create the UK’s first smoke-free generation. The proposed legislation would not ban smoking outright, but ensure that anyone born after 1 January 2009 would be banned from buying cigarettes.

About half of respondents said they were in favour of the proposed ban, at least in principle, primarily due to the strain that smoking puts on the NHS. Many of them, however, questioned its enforceability and whether there would be unwelcome consequences.

The prime minister’s speech on cracking down on ‘sicknote culture’ was heavy on rhetoric but light on evidence and detail

Rishi Sunak’s big speech on reforming disability benefits was intended to show that the government had a grip on the economic and health challenges of the UK’s rising levels of long-term sickness. Instead, it came over as an administration running out of ideas, high on strident rhetoric, and desperate to cut welfare bills at all costs.

It was a “moral mission�, Sunak declared, to overhaul the current welfare system, which was “unfit for purpose�. Disability benefits were too easy to cheat, too cushy, too easily claimed. The speech was a clear appeal to the notion, in vogue on the right, that “mental health culture� has “gone too far�.

Maker hopes solein, protein grown with CO2 and electricity, will cut environmental impact of farming

Nothing appears remarkable about a dish of fresh ravioli made with solein. It looks and tastes the same as normal pasta.

But the origins of the proteins which give it its full-bodied flavour are extraordinary: they come from Europe’s first factory dedicated to making human food from electricity and air.

He has amassed a huge international social media audience for videos of tidying, ASMR and helping out ‘legends’. Now he has a meeting with a housing minister. Who is he?

On a quiet street in Sydney’s Glebe, Nathan Stafford is standing halfway up a ladder balancing his child’s old shoe, with his phone wedged inside, on the ladder’s top rung. He’s trying to angle his phone to get a good shot of the yard of a public housing unit below. The weeds have run wild and the grass is threatening to reclaim the concrete footpath snaking through.

Moments ago the shoe and the phone were atop a yellow bin he’d dragged to the front door of the home to film the resident, Jo Lee, as she answers his loud knock. She’d asked him to come help.

Tourists have been descending on Achill ever since Heinrich Böll wrote effusively about its inhabitants’ customs and idiosyncrasies

In 1954, the German writer Heinrich Böll landed in Ireland for the first time, headed west and kept going till he reached the Atlantic Ocean. He was seeking a refuge from the brash materialism of postwar Germany, and found it on Achill Island, where waves crashed against cliffs, sheep foraged in fields and villagers went about their business of fishing, farming and storytelling.

The following year he returned with his family and began to observe and chronicle the customs, idiosyncrasies, sorrows and joys of its inhabitants. So began a literary love affair between Germany and a windswept corner of County Mayo that endures 70 years after the Nobel laureate’s first visit.

The Tortured Poets Department depicts a spell of post-breakup mania against the perfect backdrop of the Eras tour – a thrillingly immature reality undermined by safe music

As The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) finally sees its official release, the intention behind the title remains as enigmatic as it was when Taylor Swift announced it two months ago. The title track seems to mock one such tortured poet who carts a typewriter around and likens the budding couple to Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas. “We’re modern idiots,� Swift laughs. The album’s aesthetic wallows in anguish and Swift’s liner notes and social media captions are littered with self-consciously poetic proclamations. And the erratic period captured in the lyrics couldn’t be further from a life of cloistered studiousness.

TTPD depicts a manic phase in Swift’s life last year, the reality behind the perfect stagecraft of the Eras tour. Wild-eyed from what sounds like the slow dissolution of a six-year relationship, she lunged at a once-forbidden paramour with a taste for dissolution, a foul mouth and a well-founded bad reputation. The latter, she makes clear as she sings repeatedly about flouting paternalistic and public censure, was a central part of the attraction: “He was chaos, he was revelry,� Swift sings on But Daddy I Love Him (evidently about the 1975’s Matty Healy).

You need to consider why this bothers you so much and if you should bring it up. Without asking directly, it’s hard to know his motivation
• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a family-related problem sent in by a reader

Over a few drinks, a good friend of mine recently let slip that he keeps a spreadsheet of his friends, which he uses to rank them in tiers. Initially I laughed it off as drunken ramblings, but he then proceeded to show me the actual document, saved on his phone with comments next to people’s names.

I learned that he keeps a running score of his friends based on how often they WhatsApp him, take the time to call him or go to the pub or on a trip abroad together.

At the world’s biggest barrel of laughs, Hannah Gadsby, John Kearns and Rose Matafeo rub shoulders with homegrown stars-in-the-making. Our writer has the time of his life

What’s the biggest comedy festival in the world? Parochial Britons would say Edinburgh. Internationalists may consider Montreal’s Just for Laughs. They would all be wrong. Just for Laughs is out of the running: it filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, its future in doubt. And the Edinburgh fringe is a performing arts festival not just comedy. So for now, if only on that technicality, Melbourne has the biggest comedy festival in the world: a three-week carnival of standup, sketch and beyond, dedicated to nothing but the art of making people laugh.

In 20-plus years writing about comedy, I had never been – until now. But I have felt its influence. Twice recently, the winner of its most outstanding show award went on to win the Edinburgh equivalent. One was Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, arguably the most significant standup set of the last decade, which launched in Melbourne before conquering the world. And as recently as 2022, a former Melbourne champ – recent Taskmaster star Sam Campbell – won Edinburgh’s top prize, of which Australia has now provided more winners than any other non-UK country. The festival also played a weathervane role in the “trans debate�, when its main award – for years known as the Barry, after Barry Humphries – was re-named after the Dame Edna star’s divisive comments about transgender people.

Protests erupt outside Israel pavilion, official Israeli artist pulls out, and Ukraine team puts up posters showing maps of nearest bomb shelter

Billionaires’ yachts and protests; cocktail parties and culture wars; bellinis and boycotts. The Venice Biennale’s opening preview days are always a place of odd clashes and juxtapositions, as artists, curators, critics and wealthy collectors descend on the city to take in often politically radical art.

But this year’s edition vibrates with particular uncertainty and tension – even, perhaps, an end-of-days atmosphere. The biennale, which this year stages exhibitions from 88 national pavilions, has been touched by political currents that originate far beyond the lapping waters of the Venetian lagoon.

The comedian is desperate to make out his jokes about rape and domestic abuse will get him cancelled. In reality, this Netflix special is about as edgy as a Jim Davidson set

The darting eyes are new. As a young man, Jimmy Carr never had so much trouble keeping his eyeballs under control. In Natural Born Killer, the comedian’s new Netflix show, his pupils bounce from one side to the other so frequently it is like watching a game of table tennis. Or, as Carr might say in his affected working-class voice: “Watchin’ a game of fuckin’ table tennis.�

Why does Carr think he needs to swaddle his punchlines in frantic eye movement? Well, the man’s material is so edgy that he actually has to scan the room in case the woke police are in. “This next joke might get me cancelled,� he says at one point, like a teenager smelling his farts and chuckling that he could get thrown out of a sleepover. If delivering material that might as well have been cribbed from a Jim Davidson set can get you “cancelled� (“There’s a reason men propose on their knees – they’ve fucking given up�), Carr might well be.

Jimmy Carr: Natural Born Killer is on Netflix now

• Manager says midfielder asked to leave City two seasons before
• Pochettino confirms Enzo Fernández is playing with a hernia

Pep Guardiola has described Cole Palmer as the “decisive player of the season� and said Manchester City must find a way of negating him in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea. Guardiola also revealed that Palmer asked to leave City for two seasons before making his £42m move to west London in September.

Palmer joined City at under-eight level and made 19 appearances for the club across three years before leaving for Chelsea, and having scored for City in their Community Shield defeat to Arsenal in August, as well as in their European Super Cup victory over Sevilla that followed 10 days later. He will line up against last season’s treble winners as the Premier League joint-top scorer with 20 goals, alongside Erling Haaland, who is a doubt for the semi-final.

• Club’s losses reduced by property deal with sister company
• Chelsea would have lost £166.4m without hotel sales

Premier League clubs reacted with exasperation after seeing that ­Chelsea eased their financial ­position with the £76.5m sale of two hotels to a ­sister company in a deal that appears to have helped the club avoid a breach of profitability and ­sustainability rules (PSR).

Chelsea’s accounts, published last weekend, revealed the club made a loss of £89.9m in the last financial year. That figure would have been £166.4m without the hotels sale from Chelsea FC Holdings Ltd to Blueco 22 Properties Ltd. Both companies are subsidiaries of Chelsea’s holding company, Blueco 22 Ltd.

High prices, rescheduled kick-offs, glaring inequality, PSR confusion – all are riling supporters, yet their loyalty abides

It is about an hour before kick-off at Stamford Bridge and Everton fans are milling outside the gate that leads to the away end. It’s a Monday night and people look tired, having just been dispatched from their coaches at the end of a five-hour journey. Some are waiting for friends, clasping cups of coffee, others are looking for spare tickets. The consistent topic of conversation, meanwhile, is the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules.

“As a fan you just want to go to the game, you want to watch the match, you want to live and breathe your team and your club and everything,� says Hanif Karimi, who follows Everton home and away. “Instead you’re spending your evenings reading through reports just to see what they’ve done to us.�

Quiet man of British athletics on overhauling Farah, taking a risk in running London and Olympic hopes for Paris and beyond

The changing of the guard usually takes place at Buckingham Palace. But at last year’s London Marathon it happened on Tower Bridge, as Emile Cairess blasted past Mo Farah on the way to finishing as the top British athlete in the race.

It was a hell of a performance given it was Cairess’s debut over 26.2 miles – and, strikingly, it also came without the benefit of top-end tech. While everyone else in the elite field was wearing the latest carbon-plated supershoes, Cairess came sixth in 2hrs 8 mins 7 secs in Takumi-Sen 9s, which have no carbon plate and are designed for 5km and 10km races. For good measure, he was also wearing a Casio watch that could have been made in the 1970s.

• World No 1 beats Raducanu 7-6 (2), 6-3 at Stuttgart Open
• Swiatek will face Elena Rybakina in semi-final

Emma Raducanu’s progress in the Stuttgart Open was halted in straight sets by the world No 1, Iga Swiatek.

The Polish four-time grand slam champion, in her 100th week on top of the world rankings, prevailed 7-6 (2), 6-3 to set up a semi-final with Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina. It was, however, an encouraging quarter-final performance from Raducanu, who has slipped to 303 in the rankings after a torrid 2023.

A potential pointer to future home arrives, Ronnie O’Sullivan eyes more glory and champion Luca Brecel returns out of form

For the snooker purists, it was the sight nobody wanted to see just days out from the most prestigious ­tournament on the sport’s calendar. Debate has raged for years about whether or not the world championship will ­eventually have to leave its spiritual home of the Crucible and this week, in the buildup to the 2024 edition, there was what felt a significant moment.

The world championship will remain in Sheffield until 2027 at least but the sight of Barry and Eddie Hearn, flanked by the seven-time world champion, Ronnie O’Sullivan, in Saudi Arabia to announce that Riyadh Season, a state-funded sports and entertainment festival, was to become an official partner for the tournament would have sent a shiver through the spines of those who adore the Crucible. O’Sullivan, never one to shy away from offering his opinion, went one step further. “I think Saudi Arabia could get hold of this tournament, grab it by the scruff of the neck and turn it into a Wimbledon or a French Open or US Open, and really make it a super event,� he said.

• Popular winger has died at the age of 71
• James scored 10 goals in 54 appearances for Wales

The former Wales winger Leighton James has died at the age of 71.

James’s former clubs Burnley and Swansea – where he spent 13 years of a colourful 19-year senior career – were among those to pay tribute to a gifted player who won 54 caps for his country.

• Dutch club relegated in wake of Guardian and TBIJ investigation
• Documents appeared to show financial ties to Abramovich

The Dutch football association has deducted 18 points from Vitesse Arnhem, officially confirming the club’s relegation, in the wake of an investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) that uncovered apparent financial ties between the club and the Russian oligarch and former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.

The KNVB, the governing body of Dutch football, said it had imposed the record sanction because the club, formally known as SBV Vitesse, failed to meet the requirements of its licensing regulations.

Both seem keen to limit hostilities, and key Arab states are ready to resist Tehran. But real change will require new Israeli leadership

When it comes to the Middle East, it’s the pessimists who look smartest. Predict the worst and you’ll rarely be proved wrong. If you are, it’s usually because your forecast was insufficiently bleak.

So put on your gloom-tinted spectacles and assess the events of the last week. You’ll see the dawn of a grim new era, in which the region’s two strongest powers, Israel and Iran, trade blows directly. Last weekend, Iran crossed what had previously been a red line, aiming a barrage of missiles and drones directly at Israeli territory for the first time. In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel responded with a series of drone strikes on targets inside Iran, including Isfahan, site of an airbase and the country’s burgeoning nuclear programme. You don’t have to be Clausewitz to know that two regional powers, one an aspirant nuclear state, the other already there, engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire aimed at each other’s sovereign terrain spells danger.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm BST, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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.

Compulsory maths and English retakes speak of a system that ignores pupils’ real talents. But hope is on the horizon

That time of year approaches when we ritually sacrifice 40% of our 16-year-olds to mark them down as failures. Exam season is coming up – that summer rite when we sit down all the young, hunched over cramped desks day after day for weeks, to sit far too many GCSE papers. The ceremony has one great national purpose: to elevate the 60% who pass their crucial 5 GCSEs including maths and English to a superior destiny on a level 3 course and up – and to stamp down on the rest. Over two thirds of those failing to get that vital maths and English grade 4 are from families in the bottom fifth of incomes.

Then we force them through it again and again in resits most will fail again and again. Dividing the sheep from the goats is harsher after this government ordered everyone failing maths and English to keep resitting between the ages of 16 and 18: colleges and sixth forms lose their funding for any pupil who doesn’t keep resitting. Those hoping they were leaving behind schooling they failed (or that failed them), to escape into the green pastures of a further education college, perhaps for BTecs and City & Guilds qualifications, find they are forced to keep taking the English and maths GCSE medicine. Without grade 4, many courses are closed to them – whole vistas of new horizons, anything above level 2, however good they might be at, say, graphic design, cabinet making, gardening, art, caring, engineering or cooking. “Not everyone needs grade 4 English and maths,� says David Hughes, head of the Association of Colleges.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Her cookery and lifestyle show looks like a sensible retreat from the abuse she’s suffered simply for being a modern black woman

Meghan Markle has bottled it. Or more precisely, she has been making jam. Branded jars of her strawberry preserves, adorned with one of those frilly caps you see at village fete produce stalls, were distributed this week to assorted celebrity friends to post on social media (though possibly not for actually eating, given the restrictions of a Hollywood diet). This housewifely offering marks the debut of American Riviera Orchard, which sounds like one of Jamie Oliver’s children but is in fact the name of the Duchess of Sussex’s new commercial venture, under which she plans to flog everything from tableware to yoga kit to her reinvented self.

In a retro, sepia-tinted launch video, the woman we once hoped would put a rocket up the royal family is seen blissfully stirring a saucepan and arranging flowers. It’s only three years since she wrote an open letter to US congressional leaders lobbying for paid family leave for working parents, sparking wild speculation about a run for political office, but suddenly that feels like a very long time ago. For now at least, it’s goodbye to the much-mocked empowering feminist podcasts and hello to the safety of her Californian kitchen. Meghan is, it seems, entering her tradwife era.

Tobacco is already on its way out. The state should not deny adults the right to make personal decisions for themselves

Just because Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – both opposed to the government’s proposed new smoking ban – hold a belief does not make it wrong. Smoking is unpleasant, but in this week’s parliamentary debate, the word nicotine could have been replaced by cannabis, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, base jumping or mobile phones for children. All have their dangers. But in each case those in favour of restrictions rely on the same argument; if something produces a burden on the state it should be banned. Personal liberty can go hang.

Rishi Sunak’s anti-smoking bill carried the same smudgy fingerprints as his bill on Rwanda. It suggested a late-night Downing Street cabal desperate for somethingeye-catching to inject into the election campaign. It does not ban anyone from smoking, despite appearances. It bans shops from selling cigarettes to an ever-expanding age cohort, currently anyone under 18, with the legal cutoff increasing by one year each year. People born in or after 2009, in other words, will never be able to legally buy a cigarette in Britain. The bill’s target is shopkeepers, charged with juggling the ID cards of hordes of adult purchasers and presumably proxy buyers. The smugglers must be cheering.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

The scandal, revealed by the Guardian, didn’t occur in a vacuum. The right’s casting of the poor as parasitic benefits cheats underpins it all

The unpaid carer’s allowance in this country is £81.90 a week. It’s hard to see what serious thought went into arriving at that figure – any calculation of how much it costs to live on, for instance, or how much an unpaid carer is saving the government. Being without discernible curiosity about the lives of unpaid carers, or their contribution to society, it looks very much like a benefit handed down from on high; so at the very least, you’d expect the Department for Work and Pensions to keep on top of its administration.

That is not what happened. Unpaid carers are allowed to earn £151 a week before it affects the benefit. In nearly 30,000 cases last year, people breached that limit, it’s thought almost always unknowingly, and the DWP allowed debts to rack up, sometimes running to thousands of pounds. This won’t be the first time it’s been observed how bureaucracies that seem lackadaisical and unequal to their own responsibilities become unbelievably tenacious and forceful when it comes to the debts of others. It is accused of intimidatory tactics, against people who may have committed only minor breaches, rewarding them with criminal records and penury that has forced some to sell their homes.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

They might not be Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but the X Factor judges’ ding-dong over Simon Cowell is a joy

All weekend and on into Monday, the row between the TV presenter and erstwhile wife of Les Dennis, Amanda Holden, and the managerial powerhouse Sharon Osbourne has been quite something. In brief: on Celebrity Big Brother Sharon slagged off their joint sometime-boss Simon Cowell. Holden then leapt to his defence in a Daily Mail interview, calling Sharon “bitter and pathetic�. Sharon then delivered a two-page diatribe against Holden, listing her many and lucrative achievements long before The X Factor entered her life, much though she enjoyed her judging stint. “Simon paid me very well. Probably more than what you’re receiving today, but all that, my darling, went on a few handbags.�

Bad actors know that factchecking sites are a vital democratic tool. That’s why they’ve launched their own dishonest versions

Asked by sociologists about his views on the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian in his early 70s shifted the conversation to the massacre in Bucha – one of the worst atrocities committed by the Russian military in Ukraine. Evidence of Russian war crimes was fake, he said: “Take Busha or Bucha or wherever it may be. The way they filmed it, the way the bodies were arranged: it was clearly a fake!�

Two things stand out from this. He parroted, word for word, statements of Russian propaganda about bodies being actors “arranged on the ground�, echoing the claims of War on Fakes, the Kremlin’s imitation of a factchecking organisation. Yet despite his certainty, he did not know anything about the town, to the extent that he could not pronounce its name correctly. Relying on an “anti-fake� outlet modelled on western factchecking, he was not interested in facts but rather in shielding Russia from accusations.

Maxim Alyukov is a political sociologist who is a Leverhulme early career research fellow at the University of Manchester

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.

Both Iran and Israel are calibrating their responses. That does not mean the region should breathe easy

The danger facing the Middle East is not from wild or impulsive action, but from the considered decisions of men who believe they know what they are doing and how their opponents will respond. Their confidence is not reassuring when their judgment has previously fallen short.

On Friday, Iran was quick to play down the overnight strike by Israel, suggesting that it was unclear who was responsible and indicating that there would not be immediate retaliation. Israel had chosen to launch a limited attack on Isfahan, the home of a major nuclear site, without targeting the facility itself. The aim was apparently to send a message about what it could do, not to cause significant damage now. If this is the extent of its response to Iran’s weekend attack, it is far from the worst that many had predicted. The optimistic view is that both sides feel, or at least feel they can claim, that they have restored deterrence to some degree. A moment of respite is welcome. But relief would be premature.

The Royal Academy is examining the part it has played in Britain’s history of slavery and empire – and the usual carping suspects will not be pleased

Very recent visitors from Mars may not know of the regular attacks on the National Trust for being “woke�, but the rest of us have heard plenty. The trust’s latest onslaught on British values has something to do with the lack of butter in the scones. Never mind that they have been made like this for years; Tory MPs and other critics perceive the keen threat to British values posed by margarine.

Such stories never stop coming. This week, Kemi Badenoch, the trade secretary, opined that the UK did not grow rich through “colonialism or imperialism or white privilege or whatever�, but owed its success to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This is the kind of half-digested, badly regurgitated history that leads to a forlorn Tony Hancock asking if Magna Carta died in vain.

Readers respond to Stuart Heritage’s article on coming to terms with baldness

As ever, Stuart Heritage provides the most reliably funny writing in the Guardian (Losing my hair made me miserable. Now I’m as bald as an egg, I couldn’t be happier, 16 April). However, unfortunately I think in this case Mr Heritage is still in denial of his true bald status, despite his conclusions. Let’s not beat about the bush here: I’m talking about compensatory facial hair syndrome (CFHS). Admittedly it’s mild compared with some upside-down heads – usually paired with a lumberjack shirt, a style of shirt that I can clearly see in Mr Heritage’s now redundant profile picture. I suspect he is in the first stages of CFHS.

How do I know? I too suffered from this debilitating affliction. I also suffer from compensatory thick-rimmed glasses syndrome (CTRGS). Now, I’ve kept CFHS in check by trimming my facial hair to grade 3, but I’m told there is nothing I can do about CTRGS.

The suggestion that the drug may be more helpful than regulated care for mental ill health is dangerous, writes Dr Rachel McNulty

Rose Cartwright’s article (I was the poster girl for OCD. Then I began to question everything I’d been told about mental illness, 13 April) claims to expose “the fallacy at the heart of mental healthcare�, arguing that the sector – including but not limited to psychiatrists, occupational therapists, social workers, employment advisers, psychologists, dementia nurses, experts by experience, care home staff, art therapists, carers and support workers – fails to grasp the multifaceted nature of mental health and, instead, reduces it to an illness/treatment model.

I was part of a recent multi-disciplinary team meeting. A psychiatrist shared their concern about patients facing homelessness and asked what might be done. To which a support worker replied that funding for the local homelessness organisation – a key resource for such patients – had just been cut. Everyone, including the psychiatrist, slumped in their chair, knowing that homelessness is a potent risk factor for addiction, mental health crises and suicide. Without such organisations, these risks often become a reality.

Sector may breach the government’s Jet Zero strategy which pledged not to surpass 2019 CO₂ figures

Emissions from UK flights are rapidly returning to pre-pandemic levels, with CO₂ pollution from aviation on track to reach a record high this year.

The increase means the sector may breach a key plank of the government’s Jet Zero strategy, which pledged to not surpass 2019 figures on the way to reaching net zero emissions from aviation by 2050.

Exclusive: 80% of Welsh dairy farms inspected, 69% of English ones, 60% in Scotland and 50% in Northern Ireland breaching regulations

The majority of UK dairy farms are breaking pollution rules, with vast amounts of cow manure being spilled into rivers.

When animal waste enters the river, it causes a buildup of the nutrients found in the effluent, such as nitrates and phosphates. These cause algal blooms, which deplete the waterway of oxygen and block sunlight, choking fish and other aquatic life.

Exclusive: Study released at Cop28 misused research to underestimate impact of cutting meat eating, say academics

A flagship UN report on livestock emissions is facing calls for retraction from two key experts it cited who say that the paper “seriously distorted� their work.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) misused their research to underestimate the potential of reduced meat intake to cut agricultural emissions, according to a letter sent to the FAO by the two academics, which the Guardian has seen.

Researchers say early deaths may have been avoided over 10-year period if technology installed

Research has estimated the health impacts from the coal-fired power plants that operate across India.

Six hundred coal power plants generate more than 70% of India’s electricity. Despite regulations passed in 2015, fewer than 5% of these plants operate with modern systems to clean up air pollutants from their chimneys. In China, 95% of coal-fired power plants were fitted with clean-up technologies by 2013.

Move extinguishes one of the last hopes of legal action over killing of 13 civil rights demonstrators in Derry in 1972

Relatives of Bloody Sunday victims have condemned a decision not to prosecute 15 former soldiers for perjury, calling it an affront to the rule of law.

Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS) on Friday announced the 15 army veterans plus a former alleged member of the Official IRA would not face prosecution for allegedly giving false evidence to the Bloody Sunday inquiry.

Charities say high rates of people signed off work are caused by crumbling public services after years of underinvestment

Rishi Sunak has been accused of making mental ill health “another front in the culture wars�, as critics warned his plan to curb benefits for some with anxiety and depression was an assault on disabled people.

In a speech on welfare, the prime minister said he wanted to explore withdrawing a major cash benefit claimed by people living with mental health problems and replacing it with treatment.

Shifting responsibility for issuing fit notes, formerly known as sicknotes, away from GPs to other “work and health professionals� in order to encourage more people to return to work.

Confirming plans to legislate “in the next parliament� to close benefit claims for anyone who has been claiming for 12 months but is not complying with conditions on accepting available work.

Asking more people on universal credit working part-time to look for more work by increasing the earnings threshold from £743 a month to £892 a month, so people paid below this amount have to seek extra hours.

Confirming plans to tighten the work capability assessment to require more people with “less severe conditions� to seek some form of employment.

First minister of Scotland describes case as a ‘very serious and concerning matter’

Humza Yousaf has said he is shocked by the embezzlement charges levelled against Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the Scottish National party.

Police Scotland announced on Thursday evening that Murrell, who is married to Yousaf’s mentor and predecessor as first minister Nicola Sturgeon, had been rearrested and charged with embezzlement of SNP funds.

Charges to go up by as much as 75% for widest vessels under five-year licence increases that started in April

Finding an affordable place to live on land is hard enough. Now, those who call canals and rivers home face being priced out of the water after plans came into effect to start increasing licence fees by up to 75%.

Houseboats have long been the reserve of those living alternative lifestyles, but in recent years young people and families have flocked to them as rents across the country, especially in London, have soared.

Dozens of secretly filmed, voyeuristic videos feature women often in short dresses on nights out

Women who have been secretly filmed on nights out are being urged to contact UK police after videos posted online have racked up millions of views and attracted an abundance of misogynistic comments.

Police are trying to catch people responsible for dozens of voyeuristic TikTok and YouTube videos that have titles such as “Manchester nightlife� and feature women who do not know they are being filmed.

Nick Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute closed this week in what Swedish-born philosopher says was ‘death by bureaucracy’

Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers. The Future of Humanity Institute, dedicated to the long-termism movement and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism, closed this week after 19 years of operation. Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artificial intelligence. He had also boosted the ideas of its leader for nearly a decade on X, formerly Twitter.

The center was run by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish-born philosopher whose writings about the long-term threat of AI replacing humanity turned him into a celebrity figure among the tech elite and routinely landed him on lists of top global thinkers. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla chief Musk all wrote blurbs for his 2014 bestselling book Superintelligence.

Annual health check to examine whether tax increases or spending cuts will be needed after election

Jeremy Hunt’s plans for a fresh tranche of pre-election tax cuts will be put under the microscope when the International Monetary Fund conducts its in-depth look at the UK economy next month.

IMF officials said the team sent to London to conduct its annual health check would be looking closely at whether tax increases or spending cuts would be needed after the general election.

Matthew Haydon, 48, had once asked to throw a grenade on the children’s TV show Jim’ll Fix It, court hears

A man whose obsession with weaponry once led him to ask to throw a grenade on the children’s television programme Jim’ll Fix It has been found guilty of causing an explosion in his home.

Matthew Haydon, 48, sustained wounds to his chest and hands in a blast at his family home in the Bedfordshire village of Sharnbrook on 10 April last year. Afterwards, he told police of his longstanding interest in explosives, citing his request to the former BBC show.

Acoba chair Eric Pickles says rules on post-ministerial jobs are ‘unenforceable’ after former PM avoids answering questions

Boris Johnson was “evasive�, “avoided answering specific questions� and has “refused to be open� about his relationship with a hedge fund on whose behalf he met the Venezuelan president, a Whitehall watchdog has said.

Johnson met Nicolás Maduro in early February in a paid role as a consultant to Merlyn Advisors, according to reports. This raised questions for the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) which is responsible for providing advice on post-ministerial roles for two years after a minister leaves office.

Katie Fieldhouse says Conservative party failed to act after she reported incident in early January

The Conservative activist who has accused a Tory MP of making a late-night demand for money has said she is appalled by the party’s response.

Katie Fieldhouse has said Mark Menzies called her one night in December at 3.15am asking for £5,000 to pay “bad people� who had detained him in a flat and were not letting him leave.

Report says man carrying knife at time of arrest after attack left two women seriously injured

Swedish police have shot and arrested a man who allegedly injured three women with a sharp object in Vasteras, a town in central Sweden.

The women, aged between 65 and 80, were taken to hospital, police said on their website.

Three police officers charged with involuntary manslaughter in death of Mario Gonzalez, whom they held down on the ground

Three California police officers have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 killing of a man they restrained in a prone position for five minutes until he lost consciousness.

Pamela Price, Alameda county district attorney, announced the charges on Thursday, three years after the asphyxia death of Mario Gonzalez, 26. The officers, Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, face up to four years in prison.

Gabriel Attal says state needs ‘real surge of authority’ in speech in Viry-Châtillon, where 15-year-old killed

The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, is facing criticism for his proposed crackdown on teenage violence in and around schools, after he said some teenagers in France were “addicted to violence�, just as the government seeks to reclaim ground on security issues from the far right before European elections.

In his speech in Viry-Châtillon, a town south of Paris where a 15-year-old boy was beaten and killed this month by a group of young people, Attal said the state needed “a real surge of authority�.

Gerhard Schindler says Russia has been ‘ramping up’ operations in west, as two men are accused of plotting sabotage at military sites

A former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has warned that the discovery of two men suspected of plotting sabotage attacks on military facilities in the country could be just the “tip of the iceberg�.

After the arrest of the Russian-German citizens Dieter S and Alexander J on Wednesday, who are alleged to have been operating as spies on behalf of the Kremlin, Gerhard Schindler, the former chief of the BND, the equivalent of MI6, said it would be naive to see the incident as an isolated one.

With the panel selected, Donald Trump’s trial can enter its next stage, with opening arguments expected on Monday

• US politics – latest updates

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial gained momentum on Friday afternoon with the conclusion of jury selection.

Five alternate jurors were chosen on Friday, following Thursday’s proceedings when the 12 jurors and one alternate juror were picked.

A guide to Trump’s hush-money trial – so far

The key arguments prosecutors will use against Trump

How will Trump’s trial work?

From Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels: the key players

Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities claimed Devin Nunes would be ‘fired on The Apprentice’ amid stock trading row

The CEO of Donald Trump’s social media empire was branded a “proverbial loser� whom the former president “would have fired on The Apprentice� by a trading firm owned by the billionaire Republican donor Ken Griffin on Friday.

In an extraordinary statement, Citadel Securities accused Devin Nunes, chief executive of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), of trying to deflect blame for the company’s recent stock market woes. TMTG hit back claiming Citadel was “world famous for screwing over� small investors.

Protesters into seventh day of hunger strike in support of Palestinians and in effort to demand university divestment

A group of students at Yale University were on Friday into the seventh day of a hunger strike in support of Palestinians in Gaza and in a protest to pressure the university to divest from any weapons manufacturing companies potentially supplying the Israeli military.

The group titles itself Yale Hunger Strikers for Palestine and one protester, the graduate student Miguel Monteiro, described losing weight and feeling dizzy, while attempting to put the group’s efforts into a wider perspective.

Two Polish citizens detained earlier on suspicion of attacking Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov in Lithuania

A Belarusian national has been detained in Poland on suspicion of ordering the attack on a top Russian opposition leader, Leonid Volkov, on Moscow’s behalf, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has announced.

Volkov, a close aide of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was briefly admitted to hospital last month after he was ambushed and attacked outside his house in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and repeatedly struck him with a hammer, breaking Volkov’s left arm and damaging his left leg before fleeing the scene.

Environmental groups say bosses should ‘hang their heads in shame’ as firm bows to pressure from shareholders to cut costs

Unilever is to scale back its environmental and social aims, provoking critics to say its board should “hang their heads in shame�.

The consumer goods company behind brands ranging from Dove beauty products to Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream was seen as perhaps the foremost proponent of corporate ethics – particularly under the tenure of its Dutch former boss Paul Polman.

Cases listed in federal documents raise alarms around emergency pregnancy care, especially in states with strict abortion laws

One woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her to the hospital.

Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound, and the baby later died.

From Puerta del Sol plaza in Madrid to the Tuileries Garden in Paris, guides reshape stories continent tells about itself

Dodging between throngs of tourists and workers on their lunch breaks in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol plaza, we stop in front of the nearly 3-tonne statue depicting King Carlos III on a horse. Playfully nicknamed Madrid’s best mayor, Carlos III is credited with modernising the city’s lighting, sewage systems and rubbish removal.

Kwame Ondo, the tour guide behind AfroIbérica Tours, offers up another, albeit lesser-known tidbit about the monarch. “He was one of the biggest slave owners of his time,� says Ondo, citing the 1,500 enslaved people he kept on the Iberian peninsula and the 18,500 others held in Spain’s colonies in the Americas. As aristocratic families sought to keep up with the monarch, the proportion of enslaved people in Madrid swelled to an estimated 4% of the population in the 1780s.

A braid from a formerly enslaved African buried on the island was the catalyst for Annina van Neel’s work to preserve and share these histories

• St Helena urged to return remains of 325 formerly enslaved people to Africa
• Buried: how we choose to remember the transatlantic slave trade – documentary

At the end of January 2012, I arrived on St Helena after a six-day journey by ship from Cape Town. After being surrounded by water for nearly a week, the sight of land on the midnight-blue horizon was overwhelming. It was as though someone had forgotten their piece of land in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. 47 square miles of volcanic rock, 2,810 miles from the coast of Brazil and 1,610 miles from Angola – an oasis in a desert, an enigma.

I arrived on the island as part of the project team constructing St Helena’s first airport. Previously accessible only by sea, this incredible community, which had been defined by its isolation as an outpost and a place of exile for 500 years, would for the first time be easily reached by the rest of the world.

British overseas territory may face legal action over alleged failure to honour reburial plan after remains found during airport project

• Scraping away generations of forgetting: my fight to honour the Africans buried on St Helena

A British overseas territory is being urged to return the remains of 325 formerly enslaved people to their ancestral kingdoms in Africa, or potentially face legal action.

The remains were excavated in 2008 when an access road to a new airport was being built on the remote South Atlantic Ocean island of St Helena. They were held in storage for 14 years before being reburied.

Too often cemeteries for enslaved people have been all but erased from history but how we remember matters

• Buried: remembering the transatlantic slave trade

For archeologists, what defines people as human is how we bury our dead. Imagine, then, a society that relegates a whole community as legally inhuman, enslaved with no rights. In spite of slavery, African burial grounds are tangible reminders of the enslaved and free – defying oppressive circumstances by reclaiming people’s humanity through acts of remembrance.

When I first visited the British overseas territory of St Helena in 2018 and saw the burial ground in Rupert’s Valley, I was astounded by its size and significance. It unambiguously placed the island at the centre of the Middle Passage – tying the British empire to the institution of slavery in the US, the Caribbean, and globally.

Todd Baker composed the soundtrack for the indie puzzler as he was living through the loss of his mother. On the series’ 10th anniversary, he reflects on the experience

‘The part where the mother and child are separated on a red mountain, in a level quite early on in the game where you have to get back to the mother and find her … I was completing the sound design and music for that in a hospital, right beside my mum when she was sleeping, recovering from open heart surgery.�

Todd Baker pauses for a second. He is recalling the development process of 2017’s Monument Valley 2, an indie puzzler, the highly anticipated follow-up to the one of the biggest success stories in mobile game history. The second game is more experimental than the first; it has more of a story, which in turn changed its feel. Whereas the first title is all optical illusions and impossible objects, the sequel moves away from MC Escher-inspired towers and spires and towards non-Euclidean geometry and brutalism.

In this week’s newsletter: Navigating the ever-changing world of streaming services is head-spinning, so here are our favourite shows on every one right now

• Don’t get the Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up to get the full article here

This week it’s a return to our “a show for every streamer� format, where – yep – we recommend a show to watch for every streaming service. We last did one of these two years ago, and since then the landscape has dramatically shifted. Some streamers have been folded into others (BritBox is now part of ITVX in the UK), some have rebranded (goodbye IMDb TV, hello Amazon Freevee), some have shuttered (RIP Sundance Now), and some, confusingly, have rebranded then shuttered (so long Lionsgate+, formerly Starzplay, we hardly knew thee). And tellingly very few new streaming services have emerged, suggesting that an industry that has had to reckon with the unsustainable levels of growth it had previously encouraged.

Still, even if streaming is in a period of contraction, there’s still an awful lot of services around. Here are our picks for the must watch shows on each of the major streamers, from Apple to ITVX (note to our international readers: this is a guide for UK streaming sites, but hopefully most of the below is available in some form to you too):

With three hit shows – Strictly, The Traitors and the returning The Piano – Claudia Winkleman is TV’s hottest presenter. She talks about being tone deaf, being a style icon … and why she’s allergic to praise

Claudia Winkleman is convinced she gave the ick to Mika and Lang Lang, her co-stars on Channel 4 hit The Piano. “They’re so alarmed by my eating habits,� she says. “My mic’s always on and all they can hear is me munching beef-flavoured Hula Hoops.� To illustrate the point, she launches into an uncanny impression of loud crisp-crunching noises echoing down a lapel mic.

Winkleman recently wrapped filming a new run of the ivory-tinkling talent search, which has meant living off train station food. “I look up each one’s eateries in advance,� she admits. “I adore a Greggs and I’ve fallen in love with Upper Crust. They do a cheddar baguette that’s almost erotic. Obviously, I always have a Burger King. A Murder King, I call it. You know you’re in a different class of station if there’s a Leon. In Liverpool, they’ve got Krispy Kreme. I crashed and burned by 9.48am because I made the mistake of scoffing a tray of Original Glazed for breakfast. I was like: ‘Guys, I need a nap.’ The producer went: ‘Can somebody get Claud a coffee? And no more sugar!’ OK, boss, fair enough.�

Sketchwriter’s take on memoir of PM who screwed up catastrophically and quickly but thinks there’s still work to do

I was impatient to get going. Plans had been made. I picked up my phone. “ChatGPT. Write me a memoir in the style of an excitable five-year-old on acid.�

“We’ve only got 10 years to save the west,� I declared solemnly.

The Oscar-winner and the Nobel laureate have teamed up to make Bread & Roses, a new film about the abuse of women in Afghanistan. In an emotional interview, they warn that the west ignores its message at their peril

“Strong women are not easy women,� says Jennifer Lawrence, “and a woman’s life is lonely. So much of our experience cannot be shared or understood by men, and our rights are in their hands. That’s why we need each other.�

The two other people on our video call nod in agreement. One is Malala Yousafzai, who, with Lawrence, has produced a new documentary about the oppression of Afghan women by the Taliban after US troops withdrew in 2021. The other is Sahra Mani, who directed it.

Making it to the final stage of a creative challenge that gives finalists a chance to be seen at the Brit Awards offered young musician Milo Claes access to industry specialists – as well as invaluable exposure as an artist

Milo Claes is a student at the Brit School whose work has been chosen to appear on TV on 2 March as part of Mastercard’s sponsorship of the Brit Awards. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for the young musician, but his achievement is all the more impressive when you consider that he left his entry to the last minute.

Ahead of this year’s awards, Mastercard challenged students from the Brit School to use their skills to create an original interpretation of Mastercard’s “sonic logo�, which is the audible translation of a brand into a sound. One hundred and eighty students were invited to respond and 14 – including Claes – made it to the final stage, securing the opportunity to have their work featured in Mastercard’s sponsorship campaign. The students will also get to work with industry professionals in their area of interest, giving them rare and real insight into their chosen careers.

Arts student Willow Sawyer has always wanted to be a special effects makeup artist, and now her dreams are more achievable than ever after collaborating with successful artists on a project that will be showcased at the Brit Awards

Willow Sawyer’s ambition is to be a special effects makeup artist, transforming people’s faces and bodies to bring fantastical stories to life. So for the 17-year-old Brit School student, the chance to meet Raphael Arcadios, whose innovative work with costumes, body art and makeup has been featured on catwalks and in magazines such as the Face and Vogue, was a dream come true. “It was amazing to meet them,� says Sawyer. “Being able to talk to them, ask them questions and hear their advice was so inspiring. It made me even more excited about pursuing my ambitions.�

Sawyer is in her third year at the Brit School studying production arts, encompassing everything from set and costume design to lighting and sound. She won the opportunity to meet Arcadios after participating in a recent Mastercard creative challenge, along with 180 other students. Mastercard, which has been the headline sponsor of the Brit Awards for 26 years, also partners with the Brit School to champion the next generation of creative talent. For the challenge, the students were given the task of reimagining the Mastercard sonic, a “logo� in the form of a unique, six-note piano melody, which plays at the end of the company’s adverts, in any art form of their choice.

After submitting his music on a whim to the Mastercard creative challenge, Emeka Onyema-Mathews has become one of 14 talented emerging artists to showcase his work at the prestigious ceremony

“I can’t wait to actually be at the Brits,� says 18-year-old Emeka Onyema-Mathews, who will be in the audience of the 2024 awards, thanks to being one of the winners of a creative challenge tied to the ceremony.

“I’ve never been before,� he says. “I came close a couple of years ago when I was in year 11. My eldest brother had a ticket and me and my other brother just came along, but we didn’t go in. I remember just looking from the outside and thinking: ‘I want to be here.’�

Entering a creative challenge set by headline sponsor Mastercard helped build design student Mahari-Rae Ogilvie’s confidence and supercharged her ambitions for the future

Mahari-Rae Ogilvie has always had a passion for the visual arts. From primary school, when her classmates would ask her to do bubble writing for them, through to secondary school, where she excelled in graphic design, Ogilvie always knew she wanted to carve out a creative career. And now, at just 17, she is enjoying her first taste of professional success thanks to the Mastercard creative challenge.

“My mum can’t stop talking about it,� says Ogilvie. “Sometimes it’s hard to explain what we do on my course, but now my family gets it and they think it’s amazing.�

As the scrap metal touched the power line, everything went black

In 2010, I’d been working in Colorado, in one of the world’s most dangerous professions. As a lineman, it was my job to maintain and repair electrical power lines. I knew the risks, and had already witnessed them when my brother, who worked in the same field, lost his right arm in 2008. That same accident saw a colleague lose his life. I began to question whether it was a career I should stay in. I told myself I wasn’t a quitter, but after 13 December 2010, everything changed for me.

On that day, I was standing on a platform, working on a power line. I was cutting a wire to size and wanted to throw some scrap on to the ground. My colleague was down below me, and I didn’t want to hit him in the head, so I spun around to throw the piece elsewhere. The power line above was protected by a plastic insulating cover, I was being very careful, but in that tiny second the wire touched a part that wasn’t wrapped up. Then 14,400 volts charged through my body. Everything went black.

A margarita using both mezcal and tequila, with a hint of sweet almond for added depth

This take on the margarita uses both tequila and mezcal, with orgeat for a little balancing sweetness. It’s relatively straightforward, but complex in both execution and taste. When we came up with the idea, we applied the same principles as those we have in the kitchen, using only a few ingredients and letting the produce shine. We serve this straight up, but it’s also enjoyable over ice.

Chef Yahir Gonzalez and the bar team, Zapote, London EC2

Jerry Hall’s next husband could manage almost the whole menu without putting in teeth

Le Caprice will to my mind always be Princess Di’s lunchtime gal pal hotspot. I grew up about 250 miles from St James’s in central London, where handmade shoe boutiques nestle beside bespoke fedora specialists, and where the local corner shop is Fortnum & Mason’s food hall. However, via the tabloids, the goings on at Le Caprice often played out in my living room in Carlisle. Behold, HRH Diana, sleek and coquettish, striding into Le Caprice for her bang bang chicken, perhaps dining alongside megastars Mick Jagger, Liz Taylor and Nina Myskow. I guzzled that sophisticated-sounding bang bang chicken vicariously, then headed off to the local Brewers Fayre for my breaded scampi.

Now, on the old Le Caprice site, after closures and some management swapsies, Arlington is here. Some might say not a lot has changed: the decor, menu, clientele, Mayfair money, yacht tans, facelifts and the general sense that many of the diners here are merely passing through London this week, after Gstaad and before Cannes, and checking in on their Mayfair townhouses. Who is going to cook for themselves when you’re on a schedule like that? At Arlington, people table-hop, air-kiss and still eat bang bang chicken, which is just a runnier version of chicken satay, as I learned to my puzzlement on reaching London in the 1990s. It’s satisfying, sweet, crunchy, chickeny stodge, although Arlington’s version has a delectable undertone of barbecue sauce.

A creamy mango frozen dessert with a salty-sour chilli kick inspired by a Mexican street-food favourite

I spent two glorious weeks in Mexico City last year, and nearly every day I bought a large cup of the juiciest mango, all chopped up and sprinkled generously with a bright-red powder that I quickly learned was called Tajín. This is a ready-made spicy mix of chilli peppers, lime and salt that transforms mango into a perfectly sweet, spicy, tangy snack with which I soon became obsessed. I’ve channelled those flavours into this semifreddo for a refreshing, no-bake pudding.

Discover Benjamina’s recipes and over 1,000 more from your favourite cooks on the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

They’re both made of agave, but is that where the similarity ends?

Few spirits are as misunderstood as mezcal. In fact, despite having written about it before, I realised how little I really knew at a recent tasting at the Mezcaleria at Kol, a Mexican restaurant in London run by a chef who used to work at Noma. (In a nutshell, not all mezcal tastes smoky, and almost no bottles contain a worm these days.) Tequila must run it a close second, though, and is still more associated with slamming than with sipping.

Both are made from agave, of which there are many different varieties, but tequila can be made only from blue agave in the state of Jalisco, while mezcal is made in nine other states, most commonly in and around Oaxaca from other types of agave, predominantly espadin. Some agave spirits are not even classified as either, mostly because of where they’re produced, but can also make great drinking.

For more by Fiona Beckett, go to fionabeckett.substack.com

From camping beside glacial lakes in Montenegro to birdwatching in Poland, the continent has no shortage of inspiring wilderness adventures

One of the most incredible bird scenes in Europe took place as I hiked through the Bielawa nature reserve in northern Poland, about 40 miles north of Gdansk. I had left the village of SÅ‚awoszyno via a dirt track and was heading towards KÅ‚anino, the open countryside and fields disappearing from my sight as the hedgerows grew taller either side of me. As I stepped forward, a gap appeared in the hedge and in front of my eyes a flock of nearly 100 cranes, which had been silent, took off across the field, honking with their red-tinged heads and faces, and feathery wing feathers flapping. I could almost touch them. The 19,000-hectare (47,000-acre) park is a mix of forest, wetland and coast.
Rita

We’re keen to hear what people make of the proposal to resume freedom of movement between the EU and UK for young people aged between 18 and 30

The European Commission has proposed opening negotiations with the UK to allow mobility enjoyed before Brexit to millions of young people in a major concession.

Under the envisaged agreement, EU and UK citizens aged between 18 and 30 would be able to stay for up to four years in the destination country, the European Commission said in a statement.

We would like to hear your views on Taylor Swift’s surprise double album

We would like to hear your views on Taylor Swift’s surprise double album, The Tortured Poets Department.

Swift’s 11th studio album was released on Friday, and immediately updated with the addition of 15 unexpected bonus tracks as Swift revealed that it was a secret double album.

… [T]here’s a depth and maturity to this album that makes her competitors look a little wan by comparison. Clearly, the monocultural ubiquity she’s achieved isn’t terribly healthy for anything other than her bank balance – The Tortured Poets Department seems to concur – but if we have to have a single artist dominating pop, we could have picked worse.

We’d like to hear from carers in the UK who have been investigated for alleged benefit fraud by the DWP

Tens of thousands of unpaid carers looking after disabled, frail or ill relatives are being forced to repay huge sums to the government and threatened with criminal prosecution after unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week.

People who claim the £81.90-a-week carer’s allowance for looking after loved ones while working part-time are being forced by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to pay back money that has been erroneously overpaid to them, in some cases running to more than £20,000, or risk going to prison.

Share your recent photos and tell us where you were and why that scene resonated with you

The Guardian Weekly is our international news magazine, featuring the best of the Guardian, the Observer and our digital journalism in one beautifully designed and illustrated package.

We’re now on the lookout for our readers’ best photographs of the world around us. For a chance to feature in the magazine, send us a picture you took recently, telling us where it is in the world, when you took it and why the scene resonated with you at that particular moment.

Try to upload the highest resolution possible. The limit for photo uploads is 5MB.

Landscape images are preferable due to the page design

Tell us as much as you can about when and where the photo was taken as well as what was happening

When we publish an image we want to credit you so please ensure that we have contact information and your full name

Big tobacco ‘working in the shadows’ blamed for killing off NZ’s pioneering plan to protect future generations

• UK politics – latest updates

When New Zealand announced its world-first law to ban smoking for future generations it was widely hailed as a life-saving plan that would prevent thousands of smoking-related deaths, flatten out inequities in healthcare and save the economy billions of dollars.

The pioneering legislation – enacted in 2022 – introduced a steadily rising smoking age to stop those born after January 2009 from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes, alongside a slew of other measures to make smoking less affordable and accessible.

Amnesty International researcher Matt Mahmoudi discusses the IDF’s use of the techonology as a tool of mass surveillance

Governments around the world have increasingly turned to facial recognition systems in recent years to target suspected criminals and crack down on dissent. The recent boom in artificial intelligence has accelerated the technology’s capabilities and proliferation, much to the concern of human rights groups and privacy advocates who see it as a tool with immense potential for harm.

Few countries have experimented with the technology as extensively as Israel, which the New York Times recently reported has developed new facial recognition systems and expanded its surveillance of Palestinians since the start of the Gaza war. Israeli authorities deploy the system at checkpoints in Gaza, scanning the faces of Palestinians passing through and detaining anyone with suspected ties to Hamas. The technology has also falsely tagged civilians as militants, one Israeli officer told the Times. The country’s use of facial recognition is one of the new ways that artificial intelligence is being deployed in conflict, with rights groups warning this marks an escalation in Israel’s already pervasive targeting of Palestinians via technology.

Lim Ki-mo first heard Brazilian music 50 years ago in his home town of Busan; now his consular crooning marks a triumph of soft power

Brazil’s latest music sensation grinned from ear to ear as he moseyed down Copacabana beach contemplating his unusual rise to fame.

“Samba brings me joy and makes me happy,� the 59-year-old crooner said in Portuguese, as he paused to pose for photos in the shade of palm trees.

Experts say Indian PM is hoping to be ‘bigger than Gandhi’ as he aims to win a third term in office

As the distant rumble of a helicopter drew closer, cheers erupted from the gathered crowds in anticipation. By the time India’s prime minister finally stepped on to the stage, bowing deeply while immaculately dressed in a white kurta and peach waistcoat and with a neatly trimmed beard, the chants had reached a deafening pitch: “Modi, Modi, Modi.�

These scenes, at a campaign rally on the outskirts of the Uttar Pradesh city of Meerut, have been replicated across the country in recent weeks as Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) seek to win a third term in India’s election, which begins on 19 April and goes on for six weeks.

More than 50% of the planet’s species live in the earth below our feet, but only a fraction have been identified – so far

Read more: No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent

The sound of an earthworm is a distinctive rasping and scrunching. Ants sound like the soothing patter of rain. A passing, tunnelling vole makes a noise like a squeaky dog’s toy repeatedly being chewed.

On a spring day at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution in Hertfordshire, singing skylarks and the M1 motorway are competing for the airways. But the attention here is on the soundscapes underfoot: a rich ecosystem with its own alien sounds. More than half of the planet’s species live in the soil, and we are just starting to tune into what they are up to. Beetle larvae, millipedes, centipedes and woodlice have other sound signatures, and scientists are trying to decipher which sounds come from which creatures.

The national blood deficit is most pressing in places like Turkana, where malaria, anaemia and violence make heavy demands on transfusion services – and doctors are pinning their hopes on innovation

In his small cubicle in Lodwar County referral hospital in north-west Kenya, Edward Mutebi, the technician in charge of the hospital’s blood bank, greets a nurse from the maternity ward. “We want more blood,� the nurse says. “The previous allocation was not enough.�

Mutebi dashes into an adjacent room and hands the nurse a pack of blood from a freezer, leaving the paperwork for later. Back at the maternity ward, it is a race against time as doctors try to stabilise a mother who has lost too much blood during delivery. Her haemoglobin level is dangerously low.

Influenced by Korn and moving beyond their native Ireland, the band are ready to be one of the biggest in the world. They explain how panic attacks and parenthood came to bear on a bold new LP

Carlos O’Connell isn’t merely excited about the release of Fontaines DC’s new single. He’s “giddy for it. I’m giddy,� he emphasises, reclining in his dressing gown in a sunlit corner of his north London home. His attire is far from rock star loucheness: it’s 9am and the guitarist has already been up for hours with his one-year-old daughter. “There’s no time to get ready!� His effusiveness doesn’t feel like a stretch: the prospect of any new material from the celebrated Dublin band is thrilling enough; the fact that Starburster marks a wholly unexpected sidestep into antic, irreverent, Korn-inspired nu-metal is enough to make any interested parties come over slightly light-headed.

Yet later that afternoon, Fontaines frontman Grian Chatten is finding it difficult to muster the same enthusiasm. Perhaps because he can’t quite bring himself to listen to the thing – or, in fact, any of the band’s forthcoming fourth album, Romance. He tells me this from a more stereotypical hot seat, a characterfully cluttered old-school pub in Camden Town, although he’s not cleaving to rock cliche, either. We are on the Diet Cokes and the only pharmaceuticals around are his ADHD medication, which he remembers to take halfway through the interview. “Want one?� he offers, snapping the blister pack.