‘Validation was an insatiable monster’: Dave Grohl on Foo Fighters’ punk-rock return – and life after his infidelity

In his first newspaper interview after fathering a child outside his marriage, Grohl discusses his changed outlook, his grief for Taylor Hawkins, and the 430 therapy sessions he’s had

‘I’m just going to recline.” Weighing up the seating options in a luxury London hotel suite, Dave Grohl opts for the sofa. He lays his head and swings his legs round until his black leather boots are resting on the upholstery, and clasps his hands across his stomach. Punk-rock disregard for shoe etiquette aside, it’s the classic pose of the psychoanalysed. “I’ve been in therapy six days a week for 70 weeks,” he says. “I did the math the other day: over 430 sessions.”

Even by US standards, that is a lot – but if anyone needed to work out who they are and why they were doing what they were doing, it was Grohl. Nirvana ended traumatically after the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, but their drummer Grohl quickly formed a new band, Foo Fighters, stepping up to frontman and turning them into the definitive stadium rockers of the new century with hits such as Everlong, Best of You and The Pretender. Grohl was often described as “the nicest man in rock”, a label his team tells me he dislikes, but he was certainly genial and seemed to be settling into middle age with hobbyist projects – documentary series, memoir, horror-comedy film – between a series of world tours and middle-ranking Foo Fighters albums. He had married second wife Jordyn Blum in 2003 and they’d had three daughters together. Bassist Nate Mendel tells me: “When we were first rehearsing in the mid-90s, Dave said: I just want this band to be low-drama, and for it to be fun.”

Published: March 20, 2026, 5:00 am

I’m tired of always paying for my friends on nights out. What can I do about it? | Leading questions

We all see money differently, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. If you want your friends to see it your way, you’ll have to communicate it

• Read more Leading questions

I’m a university student with a good part-time job. I make about $250 a fortnight and I have always been taught how to look after my money and save responsibly. My two closest friends are both unemployed, but by choice. No matter how much I help them apply for jobs, they never do.

I often go out on the weekends drinking or partying, where naturally I spend money on alcohol, maybe some food and an Uber ride home.

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:49 pm

I asked my husband for five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact. It was harder than expected

A happiness researcher called prolonged eye contact ‘the best thing ever’, claiming it can bring couples closer. Does it really work?

In January, business professor and happiness researcher Arthur C Brooks appeared on the Modern Wisdom podcast to offer advice on optimizing morning and evening routines. His tips seemed reasonable – think exercising early and no alcohol before bed. Then, for couples, he made a kookier suggestion: every night before going to sleep, spend five minutes holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes.

“This is the best thing ever,” he enthuses, explaining that it can help with mood management and to strengthen your relationship.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:00 pm

Buzz kill: US breweries shutter as fanfare over craft beers appears to fade

Covid-related downturns and reductions in alcohol consumption have taken a toll on a once booming industry

In the early 2000s, Chris Bell, then a student at University of Colorado Boulder, followed a common path among people interested in brewing beer. He started doing so at home, then spent years working at established craft beer makers Long Trail Brewing in Vermont and Avery Brewing in Colorado before opening Call to Arms Brewing Company in 2015 in Denver.

In a crowded market, the business was successful. Its More Like Bore-O-Phyll beer won a gold medal in the fresh or wet hop ale category at the 2018 World Beer Cup. A local outlet called it one of the city’s best breweries, and it had a 4.7 rating from more than 400 reviews on Google.

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

Dear allies of America, please don’t confuse our president with us | Robert Reich

We are trying our best to resist him, contain him and remove him from office as quickly as we possibly can. Thank you for your patience

Donald Trump is alone.

That’s different from the United States being alone.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Inside China’s robotics revolution

How close are we to the sci-fi vision of autonomous humanoid robots? I visited 11 companies in five Chinese cities to find out

Chen Liang, the founder of Guchi Robotics, an automation company headquartered in Shanghai, is a tall, heavy-set man in his mid-40s with square-rimmed glasses. His everyday manner is calm and understated, but when he is in his element – up close with the technology he builds, or in business meetings discussing the imminent replacement of human workers by robots – he wears an exuberant smile that brings to mind an intern on his first day at his dream job. Guchi makes the machines that install wheels, dashboards and windows for many of the top Chinese car brands, including BYD and Nio. He took the name from the Chinese word guzhi, “steadfast intelligence”, though the fact that it sounded like an Italian luxury brand was not entirely unwelcome.

For the better part of two decades, Chen has tried to solve what, to him, is an engineering problem: how to eliminate – or, in his view, liberate – as many workers in car factories as technologically possible. Late last year, I visited him at Guchi headquarters on the western outskirts of Shanghai. Next to the head office are several warehouses where Guchi’s engineers tinker with robots to fit the specifications of their customers. Chen, an engineer by training, founded Guchi in 2019 with the aim of tackling the hardest automation task in the car factory: “final assembly”, the last leg of production, when all the composite pieces – the dashboard, windows, wheels and seat cushions – come together. At present, his robots can mount wheels, dashboards and windows on to a car without any human intervention, but 80% of the final assembly, he estimates, has yet to be automated. That is what Chen has set his sights on.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:01 am

Middle East crisis live: Trump reportedly considering plans to occupy or blockade Iran’s Kharg Island

Axios reports that the US is considering occupying or blockading the island to force the reopening the strait of Hormuz

• Iran says it will show ‘zero restraint’ if energy infrastructure is targeted again

• ‘Doomsday scenario’: a visual guide to the oil and gas site attacks

Kuwait’s state oil firm KPC said its Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, causing a fire in some units, with no initial casualties reported, the state news agency said.

Firefighters responded immediately, with several units shut down as a precaution to ensure workers’ safety.

Published: March 20, 2026, 11:01 am

‘The saddest day for Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem’: al-Aqsa mosque closed at Eid

Palestinians say the move is part of a wider Israeli strategy to leverage security tensions to tighten restrictions

For the first time since 1967, al-Aqsa mosque – Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site – will be closed at the end of Ramadan on Friday, with tensions rising among Palestinians as Israeli authorities keep the complex shut, forcing worshippers to hold Eid prayers as close as they can to the sealed site.

On Friday morning hundreds of worshippers were forced to pray outside the Old City, as Israeli police barricaded the entrances to the site.

Published: March 20, 2026, 5:00 am

'They are brainwashed': Iranian diaspora clash over Middle East war | The View From

As the war between Iran, the US, and Israel escalates, another battle is playing out on the streets of London where the Iranian diaspora is divided over the future of their homeland. Some condemn the strikes on Iran as imperial overreach; others see them as a chance to end decades of authoritarian and theocratic rule. Over the last two weeks, The Guardian has filmed with protestors from both communities, capturing their anger and their hopes as Iran’s fate hangs in the balance.

Published: March 20, 2026, 9:15 am

Heatwave scorching US west ‘virtually impossible’ without climate crisis, say scientists

Unseasonably warm and even dangerous temperatures this week were up to 30F above average for the time of year

The record-breaking heatwave scorching the US west this week would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis, a team of scientists has determined.

Millions of Americans from the Pacific coast to the Rockies baked under unseasonably warm and even dangerous temperatures this week, with temperatures up to 30F (17C) above average for the time of year.

This article was updated on 20 March 2026 to make clear that the heatwave temperatures would have been about 1.4F (0.8C) cooler in 2016, rather than in preindustrial times. For that, the correct figure would have been about 4.7F (2.6C) cooler.

Published: March 20, 2026, 7:01 am

IRS glitch masked $51m in political donations, finance watchdog says

Exclusive: Error in second half of 2025 came after IRS saw over a quarter of its workforce reduced after huge cuts by Doge

A technical glitch at the understaffed Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is masking millions of dollars in campaign contributions to state-level election groups, including key governor and attorney general races, a campaign finance watchdog has told the Guardian.

A total of $51m for the second half of 2025 remains unaccounted for due to this technical error, according to the Center for Political Accountability (CPA), a non-profit that tracks corporate spending.

Published: March 20, 2026, 11:00 am

Meta AI agent’s instruction causes large sensitive data leak to employees

Artificial intelligence agent instructed engineer to take actions that exposed user and company data internally

An AI agent instructed an engineer to take actions that exposed a large amount of Meta’s sensitive data to some of its employees, in the latest example of AI causing upheaval in a large tech company.

The leak, which Meta confirmed, happened when an employee asked for guidance on an engineering problem on an internal forum. An AI agent responded with a solution, which the employee implemented – causing a large amount of sensitive user and company data to be exposed to its engineers for two hours.

Published: March 20, 2026, 6:00 am

Los Angeles man blinded by officer’s projectile at anti-ICE protest, claim says

Jesus Javier Gomez Islas, 23, says in filing against LAPD he has permanently lost vision in one eye due to unjustified munition fired at his face

A 23-year-old Los Angeles man who attended a recent immigration protest outside a federal building says he was blinded in one eye by a law enforcement projectile.

Jesus Javier Gomez Islas filed a claim against the LA police department (LAPD) on Thursday stemming from permanent injuries he says he suffered at a 31 January demonstration outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. The federal facility has been the site of frequent protests against Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and was the site of “ICE Out” rallies that week.

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:00 am

Delcy Rodríguez replaces Venezuela’s top military commanders

Interim president announces changes after firing defence minister, who was close to Maduro, the leader ousted by US

Venezuela’s interim president has said she has replaced all her senior military commanders, the latest in a flurry of changes since the US ousted Nicolás Maduro.

Delcy Rodríguez announced the changes in a social media post a day after firing the long-serving defence minister, who had been close to Maduro, and replacing him with a former intelligence chief.

Published: March 20, 2026, 9:15 am

ABC pulls new season of The Bachelorette over domestic violence footage

Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of hit dating show won’t air as scheduled after newly leaked video

ABC has decided to pull the new season of hit dating franchise The Bachelorette after footage of its central star physically assaulting her former partner was leaked.

Taylor Frankie Paul, who gained fame on reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, had been cast as the central Bachelorette for the 22nd season, which was due to start on Sunday.

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:36 pm

Fuel spikes, flight delays and storms threaten US spring break travel

Record 171 million passengers are expected to fly this spring, even as TSA funding lapse risks longer airport lines

Spring breakers in the US could see their long-awaited trips to party destinations disrupted by a trifecta of issues: airport security delays, high gas prices, and chaotic weather.

The potential for flight delays comes as US airlines expect that they will see a record-shattering spring travel season. Airlines for America, an aviation industry group, said that 171 million passengers are expected to fly – a 4% increase from the 2025 spring travel period.

Published: March 20, 2026, 11:00 am

Georgia woman charged with murder after police say she took pills to induce abortion

If prosecuted, case against 31-year-old would be one of first in Georgia since it passed 2019 law banning most abortions

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A 31-year-old Georgia woman has been charged with murder by police who say she took pills to induce an illegal abortion.

If state prosecutors decide to move forward with the murder charge brought by local police against Alexia Moore, her case would be one of the first instances of a woman being charged for terminating a pregnancy in Georgia since it passed a 2019 law banning most abortions.

Published: March 19, 2026, 11:05 pm

JP Morgan Chase to use computer estimates to monitor hours worked by junior bankers

Company says tool to compare self-reported hours with computer estimates is for ‘awareness, not enforcement’

JP Morgan Chase has started to compare the hours junior investment bankers claim to have worked against logs on its IT system.

The US bank said it would begin issuing reports to junior bankers that compare computer-generated estimates of their work weeks against their self reported timesheets as part of a pilot scheme.

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:11 am

Trump-appointed panel approves 24-karat-gold coin featuring his image

Federal law says living presidents can’t appear on currency, but commission approves design for US’s 250th birthday

A federal arts commission on Thursday approved the final design for a 24-karat gold commemorative coin bearing Donald Trump’s image to help celebrate the US’s 250th birthday on 4 July.

The vote by the US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members are supporters of the Republican president and were appointed by him earlier this year, was without objection. It clears the way for the US Mint to begin production on the coin, whose size and denomination are still under discussion.

Published: March 20, 2026, 12:53 am

Why is the FBI buying people’s location data and how is it using the information?

FBI director, Kash Patel, revealed agency had resumed purchasing private information en masse in possible constitutional violation

Kash Patel’s disclosure Wednesday that the FBI has resumed buying location data on Americans has many people, including members of Congress, wondering: how does private information get into the hands of the US government in the first place – and how can federal law enforcement use that information to track peoples’ whereabouts?

Federal law enforcement agencies generally must obtain a warrant, which requires establishing probable cause in the eyes of a judge, to gather historical or real-time cell phone location data. The US supreme court has ruled that the fourth amendment to the US constitution, which protects against “unreasonable search and seizure”, prohibits the warrantless collection of individuals’ location histories. Buying such information, usually en masse, can circumvent this requirement, leading many privacy advocates to label the practice unconstitutional.

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:30 pm

Trump news at a glance: president claims ignorance of Israel’s plan to strike Iranian gasfield, exposing rift

Trump claimed on Truth Social that he had known nothing about the targeting of Iran’s gas reserves in advance – key US politics stories from 19 March 2026 at a glance

The US-Israeli war against Iran has exposed further divisions between the two countries after an Israeli strike on Iran’s largest gasfield angered US allies in the Gulf and prompted Donald Trump to say he knew nothing in advance about the attack – a claim that Israeli officials disputed.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he had spoken to Benjamin Netanyahu following the strikes on Iran’s South Pars gasfield – part of a reserve shared with Qatar – and had told the Israeli prime minister to refrain from further attacks that could escalate a regional war on energy infrastructure.

Published: March 20, 2026, 1:17 am

Independent autism committee that challenges RFK Jr’s overhaul draws criticism

Kennedy’s appointees promoted ‘treatments’ like bleach enemas, but new committee has only one autistic member

The first public meeting of US autism advisers – notably, since Robert F Kennedy Jr reshaped the committee – was cancelled recently with few details, coinciding with the creation of a rival organization that has prompted some questions within the autistic community about their focus.

Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who has long argued for a debunked link between vaccines and autism, chose entirely new members for the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) in late January, with fewer autistic people and several anti-vaccine advocates.

Published: March 19, 2026, 11:00 am

How a Minneapolis childcare center survived the ICE surge – and is moving forward

Dozens of volunteers, mostly over the age of 70, offer rides and serve as interpreters

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On a February afternoon at a Spanish-immersion childcare center in Minneapolis, dozens of toddlers grabbed puffy coats out of cubbies as parents shuffled them out the door.

Down the hall, Michael, the husband of the center’s director, stared intently at a monitor streaming the building’s security footage, watching for any vehicles that might be carrying agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since January, when federal agents descended on the Twin Cities as part of Operation Metro Surge, he’s been leaving his own job early to volunteer here every afternoon.

Published: March 20, 2026, 11:00 am

‘It does feel like an intimidation campaign’: why is US tech giant Palantir suing a small Swiss magazine?

An investigation by journalists working with Republik magazine may have struck a nerve by suggesting the company has failed in Switzerland

It was over beers on an autumn evening in Zurich in 2024 that a group of journalists with an independent Swiss research collective began to discuss investigating Palantir, one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

Three years earlier, Palantir had advertised that it was setting up a “European hub” in the Swiss municipality of Altendorf, a sleepy town of roughly 7,000 people on the shores of Lake Zurich.

Published: March 20, 2026, 6:00 am

‘It’s not sustainable’: US farmers reeling as Iran war pushes fertilizer costs up

Closure of strait of Hormuz – a key fertilizer production and transportation route – has squeezed farmers as prices jump

Rodney Bushmeyer has been farming as long as he can remember. Bushmeyer’s father was a farmer, as was his grandfather.

The family-run Bushmeyer Farms in Illinois dates back more than 100 years, when his ancestors came to the US from Germany. They acquired the first 80 acres cost-free as homesteaders, cleared the land, and worked it.

Published: March 20, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Hybrid organ’: how a union of trees and fungi could revolutionise forest management

A US startup supplies spray for fast-growing loblolly pines with the hope of increasing biodiversity – and reducing the need for artificial fertiliser

At a commercial tree nursery near Evans, western Louisiana, 5m pine seedlings are packed on to 12 vast circular irrigation tables, each as wide as a football field. Last September, many of these young trees were sprayed with what looked like muddy water.

The substance was in fact a liquid extract teeming with hundreds of species of wild soil fungi. Brad Ouseman, the nursery manager, is confident he will see results from this fungal inoculation, which is intended to improve yields and reduce the need for artificial fertilisers.

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:00 am

The Oscars red carpet was in a skip. Then a woman took it home for her flat. What else could be repurposed?

A dumpster-diving TikToker struck gold the morning after the Academy Awards. But why are they binning carpets after one brief use? And where can we find the uneaten chocolate Oscars?

The Oscars are over, and the world has moved on. No longer are we debating the merits of any particular film, or the validity of any given win. Now there are only two sets of people who care about the Oscars; the agents of the winners, who are all busy renegotiating their clients’ contracts, and amateur Los Angeles-based carpet fitter Paige Thalia.

Thalia found a small amount of viral fame this week, after she discovered the Oscars red carpet languishing in a skip the morning after the ceremony, and decided to kit out her home with it.

Published: March 20, 2026, 6:00 am

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat review – the episode with the sex toy is stomach turning

A corporate getaway is the new setting for this hoax reality show in which all but one person is an actor. Luckily, that person has a real ‘captain fun’ attitude – even when faced with icky situations

In 2023, Freevee (owned by Amazon) aired Jury Duty, a hoax reality show starring an unsuspecting member of the American public who was unaware that everyone else deciding the outcome of a trial in an LA courthouse alongside him was in fact an actor. It was frequently ridiculous – not least when X-Men actor James Marsden was parachuted in as a member of the jury. It did, however, have a lot of heart, and a lovable mark in the form of Ronald Gladden, a sweet man who blindly followed the “hero’s journey” he was unaware was being meticulously plotted by producers, and who took the eventual reveal very well. Some questioned the ethics of this Truman Show-esque premise, although Gladden seemed fairly undamaged by his accidental fame. Certainly, you imagine that his prize – $100,000 and a two-year deal with Amazon – would have helped to soften any initial feelings of “WTF”.

And so to season two, which retains the Jury Duty brand name but takes place at an annual retreat for Rockin’ Grandma’s hot sauce, a company that – spoiler alert – doesn’t exist. Taking the starring role this time is twentysomething Anthony Norman, an office temp who quickly becomes the company’s most beloved employee. It is, we learn, the final Rockin’ Grandma’s retreat for CEO Doug Womack, who is set to retire and hand over the company to his son, the lackadaisical, cod-Jamaican-accented Dougie, a former ska band member who is somewhere between Chet Hanks and the Dude from The Big Lebowski. Like Gladden before him, Norman is kind and obliging to a fault, and a big fan of organised fun – the perfect candidate to take over the running of the retreat when HR boss Kevin taps out after a humiliating social faux pas. One minute Norman’s the new guy – the next he’s running around in a yachting cap, declaring himself the new “captain fun”. For somebody who thought he was merely taking on a short-term job – and being filmed for a documentary about the corporate world – his seemingly unending reserves of enthusiasm and commitment to the dysfunctional world of Rockin’ Grandma’s are commendable.

Published: March 20, 2026, 5:00 am

Breakfast with Gosling, grilled by Spielberg, burned by Star Wars: Lord and Miller are cinema’s hottest duo

From directing The Lego Movie to becoming a single entity, Phil Lord and Chris Miller have had quite the ascent. Now, sending one of the globe’s best actors to his cosmic doom in Project Hail Mary, they’re aiming for the stars

When Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were starting out in Hollywood – long before they became a popcorn-flick industry unto themselves with The Lego Movie, the Jump Street films, the Spider-Verse franchise and their latest, Project Hail Mary – the duo found themselves summoned before a panel at the formidable Directors Guild of America (DGA). Lord and Miller wanted to be credited, as they would be for the rest of their career, as co-directors, and that was something the DGA – which, as Miller puts it, prefers “one set of hands on the steering wheel” – was uneasy about. In order to get approval, the pair would have to plead their case to some very famous peers.

“It was like a Senate hearing,” says Miller, his eyes widening at the memory. “Steven Spielberg and Jon Favreau and all these people asking questions like: ‘All right, but what happens if one of you gets sick? What are you gonna do?’ It was … interesting.”

Published: March 20, 2026, 8:00 am

Grace Ives: Girlfriend review – bedroom-pop auteur goes widescreen for a gorgeous sobriety epic

(True Panther/Capitol)
The New Yorker’s third album leaves behind her DIY origins to channel cult pop classics by Lorde and Sky Ferreira

New Yorker Grace Ives broke out as a bedroom pop artist, self-producing 2nd, her 2019 debut, on her Roland MC-505 and carefully expanding her sound for 2022’s appealingly messy Janky Star. Her third album abandons caution in windswept, hyperdetailed songs that streak by like big city streetlights and shimmer with cosmic awe.

Ives escaped her bedroom in more than one sense. Janky Star reflected her development of a healthier relationship to substances, yet she hit new lows after its release, making sobriety non-negotiable. She went to write in California, finding safety in a fresh context rather than trying to change alone at home. Her determination and vulnerability fuel Girlfriend, which shares the conspiratorial sweetness and broken-mirror glitter of cult pop classics by Lorde (Melodrama) and Sky Ferreira (Night Time, My Time).

Published: March 20, 2026, 9:30 am

Reheated rivalry: why I’m the champion of leftovers

Bringing food back to life is a great kitchen skill. No, you can’t just microwave it

There is nothing lovelier than seeing a cook do their thing. By “doing their thing”, I do not mean just going about kitchen work – that is often excruciating to watch (why are they cutting onions like that?) I mean doing their thing: their culinary equivalent of a Mastermind subject, that one dish or process that they do so well, and with such evident pride, that the most crotchety backseat cook is forced to shut up.

Take my partner’s method for making fish-finger sandwiches, which involves frying the fish fingers in butter, then creating an in-pan sweatbox to melt artisanal cheese on to them and custom blending condiments. It creates, on average, as much washing up as a full cooked dinner. Others have a special pancake hack or carrot cake recipe, and people tend not to let these things go unnoticed – it’s always my salad dressing, possessive, but we forgive their hubris, because each of us has “A Thing” of our own.

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:00 am

‘Weirdness, paranoia and extremity’: why HBO’s Neighbors is TV’s most fascinating show

The Josh Safdie-produced docuseries draws us into a bizarre variety of alternately relatable and scarily alienating neighbor disputes

Once upon a time, I worked as a local reporter in small-town Montana. The job, in which I had to make actual cold calls and regularly attend local council meetings, was extremely instructive; nothing teaches you about the idiosyncrasies of people like showing up at their door and hearing their community concerns. During my time there, we ran several extremely in-the-weeds stories about a rancher’s proposed water bottling plant, which was vehemently opposed by neighbors for its offensive sight and sound (and, secondarily, potential pollution). The details of the fight – and it was a very contentious fight – are hazy now, but the lesson is not: if there is one thing I learned from local reporting, it’s that nothing, absolutely nothing, turns people into the most ghoulish versions of themselves like threats, real or perceived, to one’s property.

I recalled this water bottling brouhaha a lot while watching Neighbors, a brilliant new docuseries on HBO which captures this lesson in its most contemporary, cancerous American iteration better than perhaps anything I’ve ever seen. (Taylor Sheridan’s mega-popular drama Yellowstone, essentially a property rights soap for dads, doesn’t come close.) Over five riveting episodes – the sixth and final premieres tonight – Neighbors takes a hyper-stylized, fish-eye lens to disputes of proximity and the fuzzy limits of personal space. The issues at hand are at once mundane and completely unhinged: a gay couple in Kokomo, Indiana, are furious that their neighbor has built a farm, with its attendant goat smell, in their cul-de-sac; a retired state senator in Texas resents the woman across the street for building a nine-foot-tall concrete “cartel” wall around her house; two tanned, blond women in Florida viciously fight – physically, emotionally, via competing surveillance systems – over a cumulative 35 sq ft strip of grass between their two driveways. It is extravagantly petty, extremely stressful (naturally – executive producers include A24 and Marty Supreme team Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein) and often completely unhinged. It is easily the best TV I’ve watched this year.

Published: March 20, 2026, 9:03 am

A bust of Barbra Streisand and beautiful memories: Richard E Grant’s garden – in seven extraordinary items

The actor has played many classic roles and his love of film is clear in his garden, from the Saltburn proscenium arch to the pergola where Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd have partied the night away

Step into Richard E Grant’s garden in Richmond, London, and you’ll be met with a rather unconventional sight. Instead of the daffodils and tulips you’d usually find in an English garden at this time of year, Grant’s space is full of props and decorations from the films he’s starred in – from Saltburn to Carrie Cracknell’s 2022 adaptation of Persuasion.

After any job, he says, “I go to the production department and try and buy or bribe my way” to get pieces to put in his garden. The space has, until now, been a private spot for Grant to entertain his actor friends. But now he has shared it with the world as part of the Royal Horticultural Society’s new podcast, Roots. I took a look around it – here are some of the weird and wonderful things that can be found there.

Published: March 20, 2026, 5:00 am

This is a key moment in the war on Iran – and Starmer must resist the UK being dragged into it any further | Simon Jenkins

This is not Britain’s war, it’s Trump’s and Netanyahu’s. The prime minister should be wary of becoming ensnared like Blair was with Iraq

Is this the turning point? A deranged US president and an Israeli prime minister facing prosecution are seeking to entice the armies of the world into the stupidest war of the 21st century. Israel’s strike this week on Iran’s South Pars gas field was clearly meant to provoke an Iranian retaliation so massive as to ensure a ferocious response from Donald Trump. Thus escalation beckons. This is how small wars become big.

There is only one way of calling a halt. It is for Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran. Yet both leaders clearly see themselves as trapped. Trump, having already claimed to have won the war, now feels lonely. Though he has amassed the largest aggressive force of modern times, he pleads with his one-time allies to come and give him moral support. But Trump started this war. He must face the wound to his pride that may go with stopping it. He must then complete the harder task of getting Israel also to stop.

Published: March 20, 2026, 8:00 am

Why are UFC fighters training the FBI? | Dave Schilling

The two-and-a-half centuries of American life have all been building to this, the natural evolution of our culture

I’m a regular guy, just like you. I promise. There’s no one more normal than someone who publicly declares they’re normal. Here’s me, the average, everyday Joe, who can’t get enough of people beating the crap out of each other. I love a good scrape, a sloppy donnybrook, or a casual beating. This is what defines me as an American.

When I go to the cinema and large stretches of the film don’t involve actors smashing each other with baseball bats, I immediately start texting my friends about how boring Hamnet is. What’s all that clear liquid coming out of that man’s eyes? It’s not blood. Shouldn’t he be swearing revenge against his enemies right about now?

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

Is anyone as ill-suited for great office as Donald Trump? Yes, Pete Hegseth – that’s why Potus likes him | Emma Brockes

Bizarre outbursts at the press, a backstory full of mishaps – the US ‘secretary of war’ earns his keep as the loyalty hire par excellence

Has there ever been a more ludicrous political character than Pete Hegseth, the US government’s so-called secretary of war, who makes Ronald Reagan look understated and urbane? Last week, Hegseth launched an attack on the American press for its coverage of Iran, which he called insufficiently “patriotic”. (A CNN commentator and former Republican congressman came back with “punk” and “cry baby” to describe Hegseth’s own demeanour.) When he stands at the podium with his Mr Incredible jaw and head extended, turtle-like, way out in front of his body, all you can think is this: which is a greater threat to American national security, Iran’s nuclear ambitions or Hegseth’s failure to meet even the most entry-level requirements for a person in his position?

The majority of Americans who know who he is – only about 70% of them, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center – don’t like the guy, and his petulant outbursts last week at the Pentagon can’t have helped. Since Donald Trump appointed him in January last year, what has become evident about Hegseth is that, like so many bullies, he backs down sharpish if he meets any significant pushback. “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst,” snapped Hegseth to a Fox News reporter last June in a phrase we should all have had printed on T-shirts. (Jennifer Griffin elegantly countered “I take issue with that,” and Hegseth backed away and pivoted to another point.)

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:00 am

From trackers to gummies and CCTV, society has been gripped by sleep hysteria | Alice Gregory

We’re obsessing about sleep like never before. But much of the messaging is exaggerated, distorted and unhelpful

A few decades back, people didn’t care as much about sleep. Margaret Thatcher led by example, getting only four hours a night. But over recent years, there’s been pushback on the narrative that sleep doesn’t matter. It does. Anyone who has worked night shifts, had their nights disrupted by a newborn baby or delved into gruesome historical literature about sleep will agree.

In the 1960s, a high-school student in the US, Randy Gardner, was kept awake for 11 days for a study on the impact of sleep deprivation. He experienced symptoms including delusions, irritability and a lack of coordination. More recently, scientific literature has highlighted links between the way we sleep and our mental and physical health. This has all led to the realisation that sleep matters, and it becoming a particular focus of the wellness industry. There are sleep trackers, podcasts, influencers, supplements and smelly sprays to help. Sleep dismissal appears to have now been replaced by sleep hysteria.

Alice Gregory is co-director of the Royal Holloway Sleep Laboratory and author of Nodding Off: the Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:00 am

The legend of Cesar Chavez will never be the same after multiple rape allegations | Moira Donegan

The righteousness of the farmworker struggle persists in the face of a man who chose not to live up to its values

Cesar Chavez, one of the founders of the United Farm Workers, who died in 1993, led a movement for the rights and dignity of a long-abused, neglected and exploited agricultural workforce. Through a series of marches, hunger strikes, boycotts and union drives, Chavez and his movement succeeded in winning crucial labor and civil rights protections and advancing the cause and status of the Latino civil rights movement nationwide.

He also, according to a new report from the New York Times, sexually harassed and assaulted women in his movement, and sexually abused and raped the daughters of some UFW organizers when they were girls.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:00 am

We can tell you who will really get rich from this oil crisis – and how we can stop them | Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk

Soaring oil costs signal the great transfer of wealth away from households, but also a new opportunity to redistribute it

The strait of Hormuz is now at the centre of the world. While the US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic leads to death, destruction and pollution across the Middle East, the whole of the global economy is bracing for the fallout from the conflict. Shipping through the narrow passage has come to a near halt. Already, crude oil prices have shot to above $100 per barrel, up from $60 a barrel at the beginning of the year, while gasoline prices are jumping and airlines are announcing price hikes. Governments of oil-importing countries are scrambling to contain the fallout, announcing measures ranging from shorter work weeks to conserve fuel to price regulations. What they are not yet discussing – and what they should – is who, exactly, is about to get very rich from this.

The 2022 oil and gas crisis offers a template. It was the last time we saw a price explosion of this magnitude, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In our recently published paper in Energy Research & Social Science we map, in unprecedented detail, where those profits went. We also suggest there are ways to prevent profiteering, and redistribute the gains and losses from these shocks more fairly.

Isabella Weber is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of the forthcoming book Anti-fascist Economics. Gregor Semieniuk is an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and researches the economics of climate change mitigation

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Trump thinks brute force will arrest the US’s decline. His heavy-handed actions in Iran are only accelerating it | Owen Jones

From Venezuela to the Middle East, this is gangsterism fused with colonialism. It repudiates the moral language through which US power once justified itself

Gone are any pretences about saving the Iranian people. “They really are a nation of terror and hate,” Donald Trump says of Iran. Asked if he would like to help its people, he replied: “I’d like to, if they can behave, but they’ve been very menacing.” Perhaps even he sensed the counterproductive ugliness of this, hastily adding that they are “great people … smart, brilliant, energetic”.

It gets worse. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran had “plans of taking over the entire Middle East” and “completely obliterating Israel,” adding: “JUST LIKE IRAN ITSELF, THOSE PLANS ARE NOW DEAD!” Pronouncing the death of a nation hardly screams liberation.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

The Guardian view on the Iran war escalation: as Trump breaks things, who will pick up the pieces? | Editorial

The US president wanted an easy win, but the conflict is spiralling following Israel’s attack on a gas field and Iranian retaliation across the region

Shortly after the US and Israel began their illegal assault on Iran, with the US president still preening himself over the kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro the previous month, a state department official joked that Donald Trump had a new foreign policy credo: “Decapitate and delegate”. It was a reversal of Colin Powell’s invocation of the “Pottery Barn rule” ahead of the invasion of Iraq: you break it, you own it.

Gen Powell, then secretary of state, was warning that wars can escalate beyond expectation and are harder to exit than enter. It remains unclear what precisely the Trump administration expected from this conflict – perhaps not least to the White House itself – but it is certain that the president was not paying heed when people described the likely consequences.

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.

Published: March 19, 2026, 6:36 pm

March Madness: VCU fight back from 19 down to oust UNC in first-round stunner

• Rams overcome 19-point deficit to beat No 6 UNC

• Coach lashes out after High Point stun Wisconsin

• No 1 Duke survive upset scare against No 16 Siena

• Nebraska end NCAA drought with rout of Troy

Terrence Hill Jr made a stepback three-pointer with 15 seconds left in overtime and 11th-seeded VCU erased from a 19-point second-half deficit to stun sixth-seeded North Carolina 82-78 on Thursday night in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Hill finished 7 for 10 from three-point range and scored 20 of 34 points after halftime as VCU (28-7) won their first NCAA Tournament game since 2016.

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:39 pm

Luka Dončić erupts for 60 as surging LA Lakers extend win streak in Miami

• Dončić drops 60 as Lakers win eighth straight

• LeBron posts triple-double in Miami return

Luka Dončić scored 60 points, LeBron James had a triple-double on a night where he tied the NBA record for games played, and the Los Angeles Lakers pushed their season-best winning streak to eight games with a 134-126 win over the Miami Heat on Thursday night.

It tied the second-most points Dončić ever scored in a game, behind a 73-point night against Atlanta in 2024 and matching a 60-point night against New York in 2022. Dončić also broke the record for a Heat opponent, topping the 58-point effort from James Harden for Houston on 28 February 2019.

Published: March 20, 2026, 4:50 am

Sixteen international games and a franchise overseas: is the NFL’s global ambition good or greed?

Having lapped its rivals in the US landscape, the most powerful American sports league is pushing for supersonic expansion of its calendar and its geography

“Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they’re getting hoggy.” When Mark Cuban, then owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, fired that line at the NFL in 2014, he was partly goading and partly gloating.

It felt directionally true. The NFL looked bloated, arrogant and vulnerable. Decades-long skeletons were tumbling out of the closet. Crisis followed crisis: concussions, Colin Kaepernick, sinister owners, cheating scandals and an almost Nixonian attempt to institute law and order. Youth participation declined. Football felt, if not dying, then at least dated, creaking under the weight of its own mythology.

Published: March 20, 2026, 9:00 am

Premier League and Carabao Cup: things to look out for this weekend

Igor Thiago looms over Leeds, Newcastle need to bounce back from Barça and Viktor Gyökeres aims for hero status

• Premier League top scorers: latest top-flight standings

Though Manchester United continued to win after playing brilliantly against Manchester City and Arsenal in Michael Carrick’s first two games as manager, the quality and coherence of their performances decreased thereafter. Lacking balance without the injured Patrick Dorgu, they’ve been rescued on three separate occasion by Benjamin Sesko’s goals – goals that eventually forced him into the team at the expense of Amad Diallo. But though Amad is easier to omit than Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha, both of whom are older, dearer and more productive, without him United lacked a dribbler: a player eager to run at opponents, who isn’t necessarily seeking the quickest route to goal, and whose quick feet in tight spaces are invaluable against disciplined defences. It is no coincidence that on his return to the starting XI, against Villa last weekend, United delivered their best display since those early weeks. Sesko’s form will again demand his inclusion at some point soon, but next time it is unlikely to be Amad who makes way. Daniel Harris

Bournemouth v Manchester United, Friday 8pm

Brighton v Liverpool, Saturday 12.30pm

Fulham v Burnley, Saturday 3pm

Everton v Chelsea, Saturday 5.30pm

Leeds v Brentford, Saturday 8pm

Newcastle v Sunderland, Sunday 12pm

Published: March 20, 2026, 12:00 am

It’s a knockout: why are there so many goals in the Champions League? | Jonathan Wilson

Theories range from obvious mismatches to Premier League clubs not being able to defend from open play

There were 68 goals in the last 16 of the Champions League, which is not only a lot but goes against the trend of the previous four seasons. What’s going on? Has football suddenly become more attacking again? This surely can’t all be down to Premier League sides struggling to defend against teams who don’t just rely on corners but actually attack from open play, can it?

An average of 4.25 goals a game is highly unusual, particularly given the recent context. Before 2008-09 there was only one season when the knockout phase of the Champions League yielded more than three goals a game; between 2008-09 and 2019-20 there was only one season when goals per game dipped below three. There then followed four campaigns in which the average did not climb above 2.72 (and in 2022-23, it was as low as 2.34), before bouncing back to 3.29 last season (including the playoff round). The playoff round this season produced 3.94 goals per game – and there were no Premier League teams involved; this is not purely an English issue.

Published: March 19, 2026, 7:30 pm

The MLS ‘sprint season’ explained: 14 games, playoffs, cup qualifiers and more

• 2027’s short season will precede full calendar switch

• Five Concacaf Champions Cup berths will be awarded

• No inter-conference play until MLS Cup

The typical cliche for a regular season is that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. In 2027, Major League Soccer will be the exception.

On Thursday, MLS revealed how its short 2027 “sprint season” will be formatted as it nears flipping its schedule to a fall-to-spring format next year. The competition’s structure will be familiar in many ways, with the regular season table seeding a postseason bracket and culminating with MLS Cup. Lasting just under three months, it’ll proceed at a breakneck pace that could be an enthralling departure from the league’s usual flow.

Published: March 19, 2026, 6:00 pm

Inter Miami’s Concacaf exit is a reminder that time rolls on for Lionel Messi

The Herons are out of the Champions Cup after defeat to Nashville. Now it’s back to the same old hits for the club

Concacaf may not have the world’s most hallowed Champions League. The confederation is so aware of that fact that it rebranded the competition as a Champions Cup two years ago.

Nonetheless, winning the continental competition is the ultimate aim for MLS’s most ambitious clubs, even though (or perhaps because) only one of its last 25 installments has seen an MLS team crowned as Concacaf’s best. Liga MX continues to dominate the competition, boasting 21 winners since 2001, even as MLS improves. Even Costa Rica’s Liga Promerica has more titles since the turn of the century thanks to back-to-back victories for Alajuelense and Saprissa in the mid-2000s.

Published: March 19, 2026, 1:52 pm

New bill would bar ICE raids near World Cup matches in US host cities

Nellie Pou’s bill follows refusal of ICE chief Todd Lyons to rule out enforcement near stadiums and fan festivals

A New Jersey congresswoman introduced legislation on Thursday to block immigration enforcement from conducting raids within a mile of a Fifa World Cup soccer match or fan festival in the US this summer.

The Save the World Cup bill, introduced by Nellie Pou, a Democrat, is meant to assure visitors that they will not be detained and to remove the chilling effect of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations on the events, she said in a release. The World Cup’s first US match begins on 12 June.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:26 pm

Striking gambit: Erling Haaland invests in new world chess championship

• ‘There are clear similarities to football,’ says Norwegian

• Compatriot Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, likely to play

Erling Haaland has become a significant investor in a new world chess championship tour that is expected to star his fellow Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, the Guardian can reveal.

The deal was agreed shortly before Manchester City played at West Ham last Saturday, with Haaland shown on Sky Sports wearing a Norway Chess cap as he entered the London Stadium – without anyone noticing.

Published: March 19, 2026, 1:25 pm

Nasa returns moon rocket to pad and targets 1 April launch

After series of delays, US space agency hopes to carry out first crewed flyby of the moon in more than half a century

Nasa has begun returning its towering SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to its Florida launch pad before a planned flyby of the moon, after completing necessary repairs.

Artemis engineers began the manoeuvre, which can take up to 12 hours, at 8pm local time. The US space agency will then begin the final preparations before its next launch window opens on 1 April.

Published: March 20, 2026, 9:25 am

China has been preparing for a global energy crisis for years. It is paying off now

As other Asian economies race to conserve energy, China has huge reserves of oil and gas as well as alternative energy sources like wind and solar

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Xi Jinping has been preparing for a crisis like this for years. China must secure its energy supply “in its own hands”, its president was reported to have said during a visit to one of its vast oilfields in 2021.

The US-Israel war on Iran plunged the Middle East into a deep conflict, with the strait of Hormuz – one of the most important waterways in global trade – all but closed and key energy facilities across the region under attack.

Published: March 20, 2026, 1:14 am

Three flight attendants taken to hospital after Delta flight hits severe turbulence on descent into Sydney

Flight 41 from Los Angeles encountered patch of rough air shortly before landing in Sydney, leaving four crew injured

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Three flight attendants were taken to hospital from Sydney airport on Friday morning after their plane hit a bad patch of turbulence just before landing.

Delta Air Lines flight 41 from Los Angeles encountered the turbulence during its descent into Sydney, with four crew members injured, a Delta spokesperson confirmed.

Published: March 20, 2026, 4:09 am

Hungary officials ‘gave Ukrainian forced injection’ after raid on bank vehicles

Kyiv sources say they think injection contained relaxant meant to make people more talkative in interrogations

Hungarian security operatives administered a “forced injection” to one of the Ukrainians detained earlier this month during a dramatic raid on bank vehicles carrying gold bars and tens of millions of dollars and euros in cash, sources have told the Guardian.

Hungary’s TEK anti-terrorism police detained seven Ukrainians from the state savings bank, Oschadbank, on 5 March. They were accompanying a convoy of two armoured cars from Vienna to Ukraine, as it transited Hungary in what Kyiv claims was a regular transfer of state funds. Hungarian officials have claimed it was money for the “Ukrainian war mafia”, without giving details.

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:18 am

Longtime Epstein lawyer ‘had no knowledge’ of his crimes, he testifies to House committee

Attorney for survivors says ‘claimed ignorance’ from Darren Indyke, co-executor of Epstein’s estate, is ‘deeply troubling’

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Darren Indyke, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime lawyer, told US House lawmakers on Thursday that he “had no knowledge whatsoever of Jeffrey Epstein’s wrongdoings” during his employment.

The deposition before the House oversight and reform committee on Thursday morning is behind closed doors, but according to a copy of Indyke’s opening statement provided to the Guardian by his attorney, Indyke told lawmakers that that his primary role “was to provide corporate, transactional and general legal services to Mr Epstein and his companies, and I did so”.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:02 pm

Historic March heatwave in US west shatters high-temperature records

Some highs in California, Nevada and Arizona recorded at 25-35F above normal, with widespread alerts and closures

States across the US south-west recorded blistering temperatures at the tail end of winter, including some of the hottest March temperatures ever recorded in the US, with forecasts indicating hotter days are still to come.

California, Nevada and Arizona were all under heat warnings on Thursday amid record-breaking temperatures.

Published: March 19, 2026, 11:56 pm

From black rain to marine pollution, the war in Iran is an environmental disaster

In this week’s newsletter: with US-Israeli strikes hitting oil refineries, military bases and nuclear facilities, monitors are warning that the conflict will have devastating effects

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If the first casualty of war is the truth, the environment can’t come far behind.

The black rain that fell across Tehran two weekends ago was perhaps the most symbolic symptom of a litany of environmental devastation being wrought on Iran by the US-Israeli war machine since the start of the month. As I reported last week, we already know the conflict will have major long-term environmental repercussions.

Revealed: the world’s worst mega-leaks of methane driving global heating

‘Drinking from a fetid pond’: superbug-creating genes found in UK’s largest lake

Butterflies crossing oceans, moths navigating by the stars: unravelling the mysteries of insect migrations

We need to be honest about Iran – and how our rampant greed for oil is causing mayhem | George Monbiot

‘Very damaging’: how the Iran war is hitting energy-intensive industries

Democrats urge windfall tax as big oil set to make billions from Iran war

Published: March 20, 2026, 7:00 am

US states sue Trump EPA over decision to repeal bedrock climate finding

Lawsuit says rescission of endangerment finding – which ruled greenhouse gases threaten public health – was illegal

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A coalition of 24 states, alongside a dozen cities and counties, has sued the Trump administration over its decision to revoke the bedrock scientific determination underpinning virtually all US climate regulations.

The new lawsuit, filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Thursday, is being led by the states of Massachusetts, California, New York and Connecticut. It argues that the Environmental Protection Agency’s February rescission of the 2009 endangerment finding – which the White House described as the “single largest deregulatory action in US history” – was illegal.

Published: March 19, 2026, 7:54 pm

Women and girls bearing brunt of water shortages globally, UN warns

Unesco calls for action as lack of access and sanitation hit health, education and food security of women

Women and girls are bearing the brunt of water shortages and a lack of sanitation around the world, hindering the economic and social development of poorer countries, the UN has warned.

Women are responsible for collecting water in more than 70% of rural households that do not have access to mains water across the developing world. Women and girls collectively spend 250m hours a day collecting water globally.

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:00 am

US moves to soften capital rules: ‘Big banks can declare mission accomplished’

Fed officials expected to lower capital requirements for banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase by 4.8%

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US federal regulators are trying to soften bank requirements, loosening the amount of capital US banks must have, in what would be some of the biggest changes to bank restrictions since the 2008 financial crisis and a huge win for financial institutions.

On Thursday, US Federal Reserve officials are expected to vote to lower capital requirements – the funds they need to cover risky assets – for the biggest banks by 4.8%, which could free up capital for banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:38 pm

Cryptocurrency firms suffer heavy losses in Illinois primaries after spending big

Cryptocurrency’s biggest Pac spent more than $10m for their candidates, only to be defeated by those who are anti-crypto

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The cryptocurrency industry spent big and lost often in this week’s Illinois primaries.

As the industry prepares to make massive donations in the 2026 midterm elections to replicate its success in 2024, the Illinois losses mark an early setback for firms that are trying to establish themselves as power players in American politics.

Published: March 19, 2026, 6:46 pm

US startup advertises ‘AI bully’ role to test patience of leading chatbots

$800-a-day position involves exposing a chatbot’s inconsistencies as it forgets, fudges or hallucinates

Imagine a day at work where your main task is to pick a fight with a computer. No meetings, no emails – just you, a chair and a chatbot with the maddening tendency to think it has the cleverest mind in the room.

The job title alone raises an eyebrow: “AI bully”. But this is precisely what a California startup called Memvid is offering: $800 to spend eight hours testing the patience and memory of artificial intelligence.

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Meta on trial over child safety: can it really protect its next generation of users?

New Mexico prosecutors allege Meta prioritized profit, even as child abuse surged on Instagram and Facebook

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Meta is facing a reckoning over its child safety practices as a trial surfaces fresh allegations that the company prioritized profit incentives and engagement over protecting children.

The landmark trial in New Mexico has now completed its fifth week, with the state attorney general resting the case on 5 March. Proceedings are expected to continue for another week as Meta presents its defense before the jury begins deliberations.

Published: March 19, 2026, 9:00 am

Marmite maker Unilever in talks to merge food business with US-based McCormick

Group, which also owns Dove and Hellmann’s, will focus more on personal care products if deal agreed

Unilever, the owner of Marmite, Dove and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, is in talks to combine its food business with the US-based spice and seasoning maker McCormick.

The Anglo-Dutch food company – which last year spun off its ice-cream division, the home to Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum and Wall’s – has entered discussions over the future of the “highly attractive” business.

Published: March 20, 2026, 9:40 am

BTS release new album Arirang ahead of comeback concert

Boyband drops album that speaks to its Korean roots ahead of Seoul comeback concert, with more than a quarter of a million fans expected to attend

K-pop stars BTS released a new album on Friday billed as reflecting the maturing boy band’s Korean roots and identity, as buzz built ahead of their open-air comeback concert in the heart of Seoul.

The Saturday night gig, which is expected to draw around 260,000 people, will be BTS’s first after a hiatus of almost four years while all seven members served compulsory military service. It comes ahead of an 82-date world tour.

Published: March 20, 2026, 5:33 am

Tropical Cyclone Narelle barrels west after ripping off roofs and downing trees in far north Queensland

Second landfall expected over weekend in NT as Queensland premier says relatively limited damage so far ‘an incredibly good news story’

• Live updates: Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle – latest news

• Cyclone Narelle path tracking map

• How did global heating fuel Tropical Cyclone Narelle?

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Tropical Cyclone Narelle weakened in intensity on Friday evening after barrelling into far north Queensland as one of the state’s fiercest cyclones in living memory – downing trees, ripping off roofs and swelling rivers.

As of 4pm local time, the Bureau of Meteorology downgraded Narelle from a category 3 to category 2 storm, meaning while it was less severe there were still destructive winds near the centre of 100 km/h and wind gusts up to 150 km/h.

Published: March 20, 2026, 8:24 am

Glamming up ‘dirty war’: teens in Mexico glorify 1970s secret police on TikTok

AI videos let young people adopt the guise of DFS agents, sparking debate over glorifying corruption and impunity

Young people in Mexico are taking to TikTok to imagine themselves as agents from the country’s 1970s secret police, the DFS – a force which was infamous for torturing, murdering or disappearing thousands during the country’s “dirty war”.

The trend, which has sparked condemnation by some users on the social media platform, has seen young people use AI to transform themselves into agents glorifying the “absolute impunity” afforded to the notoriously corrupt and brutally violent secret police.

Published: March 19, 2026, 11:00 am

Chain of Ideas by Ibram X Kendi review – anatomy of a conspiracy theory

This careful analysis of so-called ‘great replacement theory’ offers a lens through which to view our broken politics

Informationsüberflutung? Weltschmerz? I’ve been searching and I don’t think even the Germans have a word that fully captures just how overwhelming the news cycle is right now. The zone has been well and truly flooded; just as you start trying to process one shocking event, something new hits the headlines.

Chain of Ideas, a new book by professor Ibram X Kendi, doesn’t provide a one-world encapsulation of our modern woes. But, in a meticulously researched 500 pages, it lays out an essential framework for parsing current events.

Published: March 20, 2026, 7:00 am

‘My taste is superb. My eyes are exquisite’: Dianne Wiest’s 20 best film performances – ranked!

The Oscar-winning star of Bullets Over Broadway and Hannah and Her Sisters has three major movies coming up. To mark her 78th birthday, we cast an eye over an (almost) immaculate back catalogue

Every great performer should have at least one baffling movie on their CV, and this curio, produced by Ismail Merchant, is Dianne Wiest’s. The plot is bananas: she plays an opera singer leading her gay teenage son to believe that his father (Simon Callow) is dead, by taking the boy to visit a fake grave each year. Guess what? He’s alive! Not for long, though: he’s soon murdered by his own gay pickup, with his son witnessing it all from inside a wardrobe. Wiest flails around Paris in a turban and a tizzy, while Jane Birkin is a fake therapist under the illusion that she is Vanessa Redgrave. The real Redgrave pops up briefly, as does Jerry Hall, because why not?

Published: March 19, 2026, 2:19 pm

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come review – comedy horror sequel goes big and you should stay home

There’s even more screaming, running, swearing and exploding rich people in a follow-up to the 2019 sleeper hit that expands mythology we didn’t need expanded

To give 2019’s grating comedy horror Ready or Not some reluctant credit, it did arrive before Trump-era eat-the-rich became an entire, increasingly exhausting subgenre in itself. The film, about a woman finding out her new husband’s wealthy family members are game-playing devil-worshippers, was clearly indebted to/inspired by Get Out, but it landed before The Menu, Blink Twice, Triangle of Sadness, The Hunt, Knives Out, Infinity Pool, Opus and the many, many others, a medal for speed if not much else.

The follow-up has then taken a surprising amount of time, mostly due to the team behind it (directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) being busy with the rebooted Scream franchise as well as toothless vampire dud Abigail, but also one imagines because of the difficulties in extending a film in which everyone, bar final girl, had spontaneously combusted at the end. In a world where both horror and superhero franchises have increasingly started to resemble daytime soaps in their absurd, no-rules-apply plotting (not dead, all a dream, different universe, etc), Ready or Not 2: Here I Come was still inevitable regardless of logic. What’s odd given the seven-year gap is that the second film takes place directly after the first, a la Halloween II, with heroine Grace, played by Samara Weaving, looking noticeably, understandably different.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:31 pm

‘Our lead actor doesn’t know he’s in a television show!’ The return of an unbelievable TV hoax

Jury Duty’s first season convinced a member of the public he was taking part in a documentary about how courts work – but it was really a reality show where everyone else was actors. Its company retreat-based sequel ups the stakes brilliantly

If ever there was a TV show that you’d think should be left at a single season, it would be Jury Duty.

The Amazon series became a slow-burning, word-of-mouth hit through 2023 for pulling off a frankly unbelievable stunt: successfully convincing one man, Ronald Gladden, that he was taking part in an LA courtroom documentary when, actually, everything about the process was staged and he was the only participant who was not an actor.

Published: March 19, 2026, 1:06 pm

Huw Marc Bennett: Heol Las review – exhilarating Welsh folk injected with synths, sitars and surf rock

(Albert’s Favourites)
The multi-instrumentalist puts his magical spin on traditional Glamorgan tunes, fusing the past, present and future in a momentous third album

The traditional music of south Wales has rarely sounded as cosmic as it does in the hands of Huw Marc Bennett. The producer and multi-instrumentalist’s third album, Heol Las (Blue Street) takes traditional tunes from Glamorgan – known for its production of coal and steel, as well as its hills and rugged coastline – and submerges them in languid arrangements, touched by global influences and woozy doses of surf rock and sitar.

As Bennett’s album drifts from the industrial valleys to the Gower peninsula, it thrums with a fitting beauty and energy, Carol Haf (Summer Carol) opens proceedings with pastoral fingerpicking, before a drumbeat breaks the tune into a guitar solo like a meditative raga. Cân y Saer Maen (Stonemason’s Song) builds up a similar heavy magic in the interplay of fuzzy organ, acoustic and electric guitars. When a doomy bass note drops, Seth Bye’s fiddles add contrapuntal layers and the heady air thickens.

Published: March 20, 2026, 8:30 am

Underscores: U review – ultra-imaginative auteur has pop’s most brilliant brain

(Mom+Pop)
Performing, writing and producing everything herself, April Grey pares back her hyperpop electronics for an LP in thrall to 90s pop-R&B, with songs that big stars would die for

April Grey is a US bedroom producer beloved of an impressive range of other artists – experimental pop duo 100 Gecs are fans, so is rapper Danny Brown and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker – but thus far it’s been hard to accurately pin her down. It’s a challenge to sum up the sound of the first album she recorded under the name Underscores, 2021’s Fishmonger, or its follow-up, a concept album based around three young female inhabitants of a mythical Michigan town called Wallsocket: there really was an awful lot going on on both of them. But if you were forced to come up with a shorthand description, you might plump for hyperpop meets emo pop-punk, a sonic cocktail that, as you might imagine, occasionally proved a bit too flavoursome for its own good.

There was no getting around the heavily-caffeinated pop thrills provoked by her best work, but while Wallsocket was bombarding you with distorted guitars, stammering vocal samples, dive-bombing brostep basslines, honking rave electronics, nu-metal riffs, heaving shoegaze textures, gunshot sound effects, vintage video-game bleeps, drums that split the difference between dancefloor pulse and the double-time thunder of hardcore punk, and vocals alternately delivered in a bratty drawl or a full-throated, heavily distorted scream, there were definitely moments when you wished Grey might consider the wisdom of the old adage about less sometimes being more.

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:45 pm

Through the Centuries: Songs of Madeleine Dring album review – puts paid to any idea that she was not a serious composer

(Chandos)
Whately/Drake
Kitty Whately and Julius Drake perform the fervent, fun and intoxicating works of a British musician whose fresh assessment is richly deserved

Born in 1923, Madeleine Dring studied at the Royal College of Music, where her teachers included Herbert Howells and Vaughan Williams. An unconventional career, including stints in theatre, pantomime and cabaret, was cut short by her death from a brain aneurysm at 53. Already considered a maverick, the fact that much of her music remained unpublished until the late 1990s threatened to condemn her to obscurity.

Enter Kitty Whately and Julius Drake, whose wide-ranging survey puts paid to any idea that Dring was not a serious composer. Drawing on poets from Shakespeare and his Elizabethan colleagues to the composer’s contemporaries, Dring’s canny knack for word-setting proves as effective as her ability to find a distinctive new melody for an old chestnut such as It Was a Lover and His Lass.

Published: March 19, 2026, 3:00 pm

Príncipe Discos: how Black DJs from Lisbon’s suburbs made Europe’s most exciting record label

From near-empty dancefloors to sold-out nights at Lisbon’s biggest club, the imprint has spent 15 years championing Afro-Portuguese beats, reshaping the city’s musical identity in the process

It’s just after 11.30pm on a Friday in early March, and the air at Lux Frágil is already thick with excitement. Groups of people are streaming in through the Lisbon club’s staircase, past a giant disco ball, and local DJ and producer Xexa is dazzling the crowd with a live set of vocal-sprinkled synthscapes. Soon, the downstairs disco will be heaving with sweaty dancers for scene heroes DJ Marfox, DJ Nervoso and Dariiofox, bodies bumping to the pulse-quickening batida.

Come the early hours of Saturday morning, the upstairs floor is bursting at the seams, with partygoers spilling on to the balcony overlooking the River Tejo, as they raise a 15th birthday toast to Príncipe, Portugal’s gamechanging dance music label, which has taken over the world-renowned nightspot for the first time.

Published: March 19, 2026, 2:01 pm

The Names author Florence Knapp: ‘I’d love to write with Maya Angelou’s warmth’

The debut author on the brilliance of Charlotte Brontë, coming late to Harper Lee, and aspiring to write like Claire Keegan

My earliest reading memory
The summer I was four, my mum read EB White’s Charlotte’s Web to me and my older sister. I don’t recall much of the story, only that my mum was unable to go on reading through her tears. And when a relative took over, after just a few pages, she too had to pass the book on, this time to my father to try and finish dry-eyed. That afternoon, at a subconscious, cellular level, I absorbed something about the emotional impact a well-told story can have on both children and adults, and how it can gather everyone to the same imagined space.

My favourite book growing up
I loved Shirley Hughes’s books, for the pictures as much as the words. Her illustrations of unmade beds and busy kitchen tables invite you right into the heart of family life and were a reassuringly cosy backdrop to whatever drama might unfold. Moving Molly was a favourite, and stoked a lifelong nostalgia for the details that make a place home.

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:00 am

The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey audiobook review – secrets and lies in suburbia

Gemma Whelan and Stephen Mangan are among the cast in this multi-voiced tale of family tensions and trauma, set during the 1985 Live Aid charity concert

It is July 1985, two days before Live Aid, the historic charity concert taking place simultaneously in London and Philadelphia to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Goth teenager Hanna Gordon has been asked by her mother, Lydia, to distribute invitations to their neighbours for a get-together at their house “in aid of the children”. Hanna suspects Lydia’s intentions may not be entirely charitable and that she wants to show off their new barbecue. Hanna’s longsuffering dad, Peter, isn’t keen, complaining “it’ll cost a fortune to feed the whole bloody street”.

Hanna, who is keeping a secret from her family, may be mortified at her mother’s party plans but she nonetheless does what she asks, delivering the invitations around their suburban cul-de-sac while only dimly aware of a mysterious figure lurking in the shadows. When Lydia spots the same figure a day later skulking in their garden, it is clear something is afoot on Delmont Close.

Published: March 19, 2026, 3:00 pm

A Queer Inheritance by Michael Hall review – the National Trust’s LGBTQ history revealed

It’s recently been accused of turning ‘woke’ – but the institution has been gay since the beginning, argues this deeply researched book

When it emerged that the National Trust had put vegan scones on the menu, it was seized on by some newspapers as a marmalade dropper – or strawberry jam dropper, perhaps – proof that the institution was woke. Wait until they hear about all the queer men and women who helped to make the Trust what it is today. The charity’s 5.4 million members and others visit its grand piles for a nice day out and a tea towel, unaware that they are surrounded by the ghosts of these figures. They are brought to life by Michael Hall, a former architecture editorof Country Life and author of books on Waddesdon Manor and the gothic revival in Britain.

Some of them, such as the buttoned-up Henry James, who lived at Lamb House, Rye, merely lent their lustre to properties that were later taken over by the trust. Others introduced features to the estates that continue to delight trippers to this day. They include Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, partners in a lavender marriage, who created the gardens at Sissinghurst, appropriately enough.

Published: March 19, 2026, 9:00 am

Mare by Emily Haworth-Booth review – profound story of a woman’s love for a horse

Where does it come from, this passion for an animal that isn’t even hers? An astonishing debut delves into deep truths about love, motherhood and care

Mare, Emily Haworth-Booth’s wonderful first novel for adults, is about a woman confronting three life-altering crises. The first is an early menopause that means that she can now never have a child. Second, after years of success as a children’s book writer, she finds herself bereft of ideas. The third should, by all rights, be the least important: a passion for a horse that isn’t even hers. She pays to ride, feed, groom and muck out for the animal a few times a week. Perverse though it seems, this horse soon becomes the centre of her life: her beloved.

In a sense, Mare is about childlessness. It opens with reflections on motherhood: “I knew a mother who said, You want to know what it’s like? Write a list of all the things you love doing and then cross them out, one by one.” But also: “I knew a mother who knew all the other mothers. As she walked through the park … this mother stopped every few strides to be greeted by other mothers, some with buggies, some pregnant. Other mothers stuck to this mother like burrs. Meanwhile I hung by her side, dragged along like a limp kite.” The narrator has decided against having a baby, not for things-you-love-doing reasons, but because the idea of her child’s future in this ailing world terrified her. Considering it, her mind filled with images of “abandoned landscapes hostile to life. Burning cities, flooded cities, desertified meadows.”

Published: March 19, 2026, 7:00 am

Resident Evil at 30: how Capcom’s horror opus has survived and thrived

From owing a debt to obscure Japanese horror Sweet Home to the influence of Aliens and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the franchise continues to petrify players three decades on

To many of us playing and writing about video games in the 1990s, Resident Evil seemed to come out of nowhere. The emerging PlayStation and Saturn consoles were all about slick, bright arcade conversions – the shiny thrills of Daytona and Tekken – and Japanese publisher Capcom was in a rut of coin-op conversions and endless sequels to Street Fighter and Mega Man. Scary games were rare at the time and mostly confined to the PC. So when the news of a horror title named Biohazard (the Japanese name for the series) started to emerge in 1995, it caught the attention of games journalists as it seemed radically out of step with prevailing trends. Games were about power, but as early demos quickly revealed, Resident Evil was about vulnerability.

Thirty years later, it’s still here. The series has sold more than 180m copies worldwide, with 11 core titles and dozens of spinoffs and remakes, as well as film, television and anime tie-ins. Its characters and monsters are icons, its tropes now embedded in game design practice. What has allowed it to not only survive but flourish in such a rapidly changing industry? Why do we still let it scare us?

Published: March 20, 2026, 10:00 am

In the killer world of online gaming, there are no hits any more – just survivors

The fates of two ostensibly similar online games released this year, Marathon and Highguard, prove that success is becoming close to unattainable

What does success look like for developers of online video games? In 2026, the answer could not be clearer: no one has a clue.

Consider Highguard, 2026’s first big flop. Signs were promising on its launch on 26 January, with a peak of 100,000 concurrent players on Steam – plus those enjoying the game on PlayStation and Xbox, which do not make player counts public. As a free-to-play game, the barrier to entry for Highguard was low. And thanks to a prime advertising placement at the end of December’s The Game Awards – a buzzy spot usually reserved for known hitmakers, not free-to-play upstarts – curiosity was high.

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:30 pm

‘The male ego is even more fragile than it ever was’: Kim Gordon on shyness, AI and Zohran Mamdani’s cool

As she releases her new solo album, Play Me, the former Sonic Youth star answers your questions on acting for Kristen Stewart, doing Basquiat’s photocopying, and who really invented punk rock

Did you plan to change rock music for ever? Were you envisaging a decades-long career, or was it all a bit more haphazard? Nepthsolem
When Sonic Youth first started, there had been such a high bar set for music that achieved something that people hadn’t done before, it was difficult to know how to add to that. There was the Velvet Underground, who cast a huge shadow, and then all the no wave bands, and when you’re faced with all that coolness, and you feel like you don’t belong, how do you make something happen? You have to focus on the thrill of making something that is like nothing that existed before. It sounds pretentious to say, “We wanted to do something new”, but that was it, and then you have to see what happens. And that’s still my approach. Honestly, I had no intention of doing solo records – I’d been playing in an improv-based project with Bill Nace, Body/Head, but that was all. And it was this producer in LA, Justin Raisen, he kept bugging me to make a solo record. There was no plan; in the end, again, I was like, let’s see what happens.

Your memoir, Girl in a Band, is one of my favourites. It reads almost like a novel. Have you ever considered writing a novel? timwthornton
I’ve thought about it. I consider myself more as a visual artist who writes, rather than a writer. I won’t say I won’t ever try to write a novel, but writing is always a challenge, just the getting started part, and I’m such a procrastinator. But once I get into it, I really, really enjoy it. It’s the thinking I love. A lot of times I actually don’t know what I think about something until I start writing about it.

Published: March 19, 2026, 3:30 pm

PEN America announce 2026 World Voices festival with Judith Butler and Bill McKibben

The 2024 festival was cancelled after multiple authors pulled out over the non-profit’s stance on the Israel-Gaza war

The literary free speech organization PEN America has announced plans for their 2026 World Voices festival. The four-day event will take place in New York and Los Angeles from 29 April to 2 May and feature writers from over 140 countries, with in person appearances from authors including Judith Butler, Bill McKibben, Cory Doctorow, Megha Majumdar and Katie Kitamura.

In a press release, the event is billed as a “testament to literature’s ability to unite us, and to counteract the closed mindedness that has resulted in a nationalist maelstrom. It continues to affirm PEN America’s commitment to championing writers and their work.”

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:00 pm

Indian film board blocks release of Oscar-nominated Gaza drama The Voice of Hind Rajab

Distributor says authorities warned screening Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama could harm India–Israel relations

The Indian release of The Voice of Hind Rajab, the Oscar-nominated Tunisian film about the death of a five-year-old girl during the Israel-Gaza war, has been blocked by the country’s ratings body, according to the film’s Indian distributor.

In a report by Variety, Manoj Nandwana of Mumbai-based Jai Viratra Entertainment said that he was told that if the film was released, it would “break up” India-Israel relations.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:24 pm

‘We keep secrets because we’re scared’: Guvna B on porn addiction and recovery

After writing about a racist attack on his last album, the award-winning musician wanted his new work to be happier. Then life took him down a different path. He discusses stigma, shame and how he got help

The past five years have been punishing for Isaac Borquaye, AKA the British rapper Guvna B. In 2021, he was left without sight in one eye for several months after being targeted in an unprovoked racist attack at his local coffee shop in east London. It left him shaken, but also motivated him to write his searing 2023 album The Village Is on Fire, which questioned structural racism. The album’s cover featured a closeup image of his bloodied eye.

In the opening track, the 36-year-old musician intersperses his own words – “Coffee in his hand and he dashed it in my face / Five seconds later, right hook to my socket” – with voice notes his cousin, the actor and writer Michaela Coel, left him in the days after the attack. The record immediately became one of his most streamed, with listeners drawn not only to his frank recounting of the attack but also to his thoughts on youth violence and gentrification, and his grief at the death of his father in 2017. His new, equally confessional album – more on which shortly – tackles even more thorny themes.

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Forget daffs – it’s edible alliums like wild garlic that spell spring in the garden for me

You can pep up your cooking by growing wild garlic, crow garlic and three-cornered leek

Unlike most gardeners, I’m not especially captivated by spring bulbs. I do love that they symbolise the return of fairer weather, but I only have the tulips and narcissi that I adopted when we moved here and, every autumn, I fail to consider planting more to replenish their dwindling numbers. Lucky for me, I also adopted the kind of spring bulb that I’m more inclined towards – because they’re edible. Wild alliums are what I’m really looking for to herald the arrival of spring.

Too many edible wild plants are only edible in theory, in my opinion. I’m mostly of the “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” school of foraging. But that’s not the case when it comes to the most well-known member of this wild allium group. The strongly flavoured leaves of wild garlic (Allium ursinum) cover the woodland floor wherever they are resident, producing clusters of white, star-shaped flowers that are edible too – but leave most of them for the pollinators please! I’m a big fan of this delectable plant and am fortunate enough that it has made a home in my front garden. As with all foraging endeavours, make sure you’re 100% certain you have identified the plant correctly, pick where you are allowed, and always leave plenty behind. Fortunately, when it comes to this group of plants, it’s fairly easy to know if you have gone wrong as all the leaves should smell strongly of and taste like garlic or onions.

Published: March 20, 2026, 11:00 am

Experience: I’ve been on more than 2,000 hot-air balloon flights in 124 countries

I loved Tanzania – we flew over hungry lions in a national park

I can still remember my first flight, in 2002. It was magical. I was working as a tour guide in Myanmar. I met a British balloon pilot called Phil, who had a spare place on a flight. He offered to take me, too.

I don’t particularly enjoy flying in planes, but this was different. We floated gently with the wind, out in the open air. There was no turbulence. It was so serene and picturesque as we flew over temples. I immediately fell in love with ballooning.

Published: March 20, 2026, 5:00 am

You be the judge: should my boyfriend hold my hand in public?

Chantelle would like Hugo to show more affection when they are out. You decide who is being touchy
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Friends and family have noticed that we don’t hold hands and it’s become a running joke

I find holding hands annoying. Besides, I’m quite caring and I tell her I love her on a daily basis

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:00 am

Stir-fries, crab cakes and carbonara: Georgina Hayden’s crab recipes

Sweet and delicate crab is a taste of spring. Here are five dishes perfect for lighter, sunnier days

It’s hard not to be excited by the arrival of spring and all the produce that will soon be gracing our kitchens. Asparagus, spinach and new potatoes can’t come soon enough, but it’s not just fruit and vegetables that I count down the days for – there’s plenty of seafood to celebrate too, and in particular crab. Sweet and delicate, its freshness mirrors the arrival of brighter, sunnier days. If you’re lucky enough to pick through a fresh crab, then it needs very little in way of adornment – a squeeze of lemon perhaps, and warm bread and salty butter. Thankfully for the time-poor among us, you can also buy pots of it pre-cooked and picked, which is glorious lightly spiced in a dip or for folding through pasta. However you decide to enjoy crab, though, make sure it is allowed to sing.

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

Can an Austrian hostel give a luxury ski chalet a run for its money?

Ski accommodation can be prohibitively expensive, but a cosy youth hostel puts the Montafon resort and its glorious runs within reach for those on a budget

‘Want to come skiing in Austria at half-term?” I asked my 13-year-old son. “It’ll be just like one of those luxury chalet holidays, only we’ll make our own beds, cook our own dinners and carry our gear back to our accommodation ourselves.” Osian didn’t hear the caveats. “Sounds amazing,” he said, his eyes glazing to a cinematic sweep of white powder and the chance to perfect his 360.

For many families, the dream of a catered chalet – and its ready-lit fires, homemade strudels and chauffeured lift shuttles – remains just that. Apartments offer access to the slopes at less vertigo-inducing prices, but they tend to come with a minimum seven-night stay. If you only have a few days to spare, or a budget that won’t stretch to a full week’s lift pass, hotels fill the gap, but then you’re back navigating the moguls of cost.

Published: March 19, 2026, 7:00 am

Crossbreed dogs show more behavioural problems than pure breeds, study suggests

Research finds cockapoo, cavapoo and labradoodle dogs display more undesirable behaviours than breeds they derive from

The UK has oodles of doodles but a study might offer paws for thought: researchers have found some of these designer crossbreed dogs show more behavioural problems than the pure breeds from which they derive.

Crosses between poodles and other dog breeds have become increasingly popular in the UK, with research suggesting the trend is – at least in part – driven by the expectation such dogs will be hypoallergenic, healthy and good with children.

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:01 am

Jeffrey Epstein’s elite relationships visualised: the banker, the economist and the director

Day 2 of our Guardian analysis of more than a million Epstein emails exposes the child sex offender’s deep relationships with more high-profile figures

• Day 1: the prince, the billionaire and the politicians

The Epstein files have led to intense scrutiny over links between the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the rich and powerful. But the vast trove of information has made it difficult to assess the extent of some of those connections.

In this second of a two-part series, The Guardian has focused on Epstein’s links to high-profile people in business and the arts – including the renowned economist and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, the New York film director Woody Allen and Jes Staley, the former head of Barclays.

Published: March 19, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Criminal’ or ‘kids throwing snowballs’? How a viral snow fight provoked Mamdani’s schism with NYPD

Though two men were arrested for allegedly pelting officers with snow, the mayor waved off the incident

A blizzard brought New York to a standstill on 23 February, with schools across the city closed. Restless young people without anywhere to go began to gather in Washington Square Park, summoned by Instagram chatshow Sidetalk, which wanted to stage an almighty snowball fight. A sea of young men in ski goggles gathered, armed with phones in one hand and balls of ice in the other. Cannonballs of snow flew across the sky. Others backflipped off snowmen or wrestled on the snow. The scene was of good-natured pandemonium.

“But it started getting chaotic once people were throwing gigantic blocks of ice. That’s when I left,” says Gabriella Yankovich who stopped by on her lunchbreak. “Boys being boys.”

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:00 am

People aged under 25: are you still looking for a job after a year of unemployment?

We are looking to speak to young people including university graduates, school leavers who didn’t go on to higher education, and those who took up apprenticeships

Are you under 25 and still looking for a job after a year of unemployment? If so, we would like to speak to you.

The latest official figures from the Office for National Statistics showed unemployment increased to 5.2% in the final quarter of 2025, the highest rate since the start of 2021. Young people have been bearing the brunt of this rise, with 16% of those aged 16-24 unemployed, nearly an 11-year-high.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:17 pm

Humanoid art and Eid al-Fitr preparations: photos of the day – Thursday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Published: March 19, 2026, 2:24 pm