‘I had poked the bear right in the eye’: my fight to renounce my Russian citizenship

When Putin invaded Ukraine, he raised murder to the level of national policy. I felt guilt by association. And I had to act

One morning in May 2025, I walked briskly down Bayswater Road along the northern edge of London’s Kensington Gardens until I reached the gates of the Russian embassy. Its formidable outer wall, already topped with razor wire, now had the additional protection of a crowd control barrier. But there was no crowd, just a lone man feebly protesting from the other side of the road. In the early days of the war, the embassy was besieged by angry protesters. Back then, you couldn’t walk down a British street without spotting the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. That time was long gone.

Feeling uneasy, I was ushered inside by a guard who patted me down and checked the contents of my backpack before pointing the way inside. I knew this routine from my previous visits. Even the guard – a friendly Nepali man who knew about three words of Russian – hadn’t changed in years. I used to come here to renew my Russian passport and, on one noteworthy occasion, in March 2000, to vote in the Russian presidential elections. This time, I had an altogether different purpose: I was here to renounce my Russian citizenship.

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:00 am

How KFC, AKA Korean fried chicken, took over the world

The dish, adapted from one brought by US soldiers after the Korean war, has sparked thousands of variations and sits at the forefront of the K-food wave

Inside a teaching kitchen south-east of Seoul, I coat a whole chicken – cut into eight parts – in batter and dip the pieces carefully into a bowl of powdered mix until covered in a light, fluffy layer.

A chef watches intently. “Don’t rub it,” he says. “Keep it delicate.”

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:32 pm

Iran is a turning point for Europe’s liberation – from Donald Trump

The US president’s cry-wolf threats are losing their effect while European leaders are, at last, shifting from sycophancy to opposition

Europeans are on what might be called “a journey” when it comes to the US-Israel war against Iran, now apparently in a ceasefire after Donald Trump’s 11th-hour U-turn, calling off, for the time being, his threat to annihilate Iranian civilisation. The crisis in the Middle East marks the latest painful step, after the shock of the US’s betrayal of Ukraine and Trump’s threat to seize Greenland, in Europe’s emancipation from Washington. The journey is not linear, and it is dreaded by most European leaders. But the direction of travel is undeniable.

Initially, most European politicians in power all but endorsed the illegal US and Israeli attack against Iran. If the sycophantic Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, stood at one end of the spectrum of European opinion and Pedro Sánchez at the other, most European governments were tacitly closer to Rutte’s embrace of Trump than to the Spanish prime minister’s principled opposition.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:00 am

‘Masquerading as a university’: inside the brazen rightwing plan to conquer American schools

As teachers eagerly adopt its free lesson plans and the White House boosts its videos, PragerU is intent on one goal: attracting young people to conservatism

In the fall of 2013, a silver-haired conservative radio host named Dennis Prager flew to Texas to woo a pair of rightwing billionaires. A few years earlier, Prager had co-founded a digital education non-profit, Prager University, which created snappy five-minute videos that promoted capitalism and “Judeo-Christian values”. The billionaires, fracking tycoons Dan and Farris Wilks, were big fans.

Inside Farris Wilks’ home theater, the brothers and more than 20 members of their family sat transfixed as Prager outlined a plan to transform PragerU from a niche internet oddity into a mainstream media empire. He just needed a lot more cash.

Published: April 8, 2026, 12:00 pm

Is this the end of Viktor Orbán’s regime? - podcast

Flora Garamvolgyi on JD Vance’s visit to Hungary in the run-up to the country’s elections on Sunday

“Hungary has been a model for the Trump presidency for a while now,” the Guardian journalist Flora Garamvolgyi tells Helen Pidd. “And US Republicans looked at Hungary for these past years as a model to follow.

“[Viktor] Orbán is currently on his fourth consecutive term. And the fact that he has been so successful and he had similar narrative, similar ideologies to US Republicans in terms of immigration, for example, I think they have found a link to connect with Orbán and they were studying his success.”

Published: April 9, 2026, 2:00 am

Are OnlyFans models the best way to explain the climate crisis?

Actor Megan Prescott has joined with Adam McKay in the hope that showing bite-size web videos of women undressing will persuade us to save the world. Will it work?

The world, as we know, is in trouble. The last three years have been the hottest ever recorded. Global emissions are still at record highs. The planet is now consistently flirting with the 1.5C limit it promised not to cross. Increasingly, it feels as if we need a genuine miracle to stop us from sleepwalking into catastrophe. Could that miracle be an environmental warning from a woman in her pants?

This is the stated desire of Headline Newds, a new series of web videos by actor Megan Prescott, film-maker Bree Essrig and “climate narrative strategist” Jessica Riches. Released through the not-for-profit Yellow Dot Studios – belonging to Adam McKay, creator of movies The Big Short and Don’t Look Up – Headline Newds is made up of bite-size videos in which the climate emergency is broken down and raunchily explained to us by a variety of OnlyFans models.

Headline Newds is available via Youtube, Instagram and OnlyFans.

Published: April 8, 2026, 2:35 pm

Middle East crisis live: Trump warns Iran to comply with ‘real agreement’ as ceasefire in doubt over Israeli attacks on Lebanon

US president warns that the US will start ‘shooting’ again unless Iran fully complies with deal

• Middle East ceasefire in serious doubt as Israel assaults Lebanon and Iran blocks oil tankers

The UK foreign minister, Yvette Cooper, has said Lebanon must be included in any ceasefire agreement. In other remarks now being reported by Reuters, Cooper added that shipping through the strait of Hormuz must be toll-free.

Amid ceasefire talks, Tehran has proposed fees or tolls on vessels to safely pass through the strait. Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested the US and Iran could collect tolls in a joint venture, while the White House said the priority was reopening the strait without limitations.

And my principles and values made sure that our decisions were that we wouldn’t get involved in the action without a lawful basis, without a viable, thought-through plan.”

Published: April 9, 2026, 8:30 am

Nato ‘wasn’t there’ over Iran, Trump says after tense meeting with Rutte – Europe live

Secretary general says Trump ‘clearly disappointed’ with alliance as US media report White House is considering a plan to ‘punish’ some members

Trump’s strong views on Nato and Greenland understandably carry extra weight in Denmark, where political parties are still locked in talks to form a new government after last month’s election.

The question of Greenland’s future is not going anywhere anytime soon, and our Nordic correspondent Miranda Bryant spoke recently to a Greenlandic pro-independence politician elected to the new Danish parliament.

Published: April 9, 2026, 8:48 am

US ignoring evidence Russia is helping Iran because it trusts Putin, says Zelenskyy

Ukraine’s president tells podcast he has tried to draw White House’s attention to collaboration between Moscow and Tehran over strikes on US bases

• How the Ukraine and Iran wars are starting to overlap

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The US has ignored compelling evidence that Russia has been helping Iran to target US bases in the Middle East because it “trusts” Vladimir Putin, according to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Speaking in an interview with Alastair Campbell on The Rest is Politics podcast, Zelenskyy said he had tried to draw the White House’s attention to the close collaboration between Moscow and Tehran.

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:00 pm

Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann pleads guilty

New York architect admits to murdering eight women, whose remains were mostly found along Long Island’s coast

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Rex Heuermann, a Long Island architect accused of seven murders known as the Gilgo Beach killings dating back to 1993, pleaded guilty on Wednesday – and added an eighth murder to his gruesome tally.

Heuermann, who has been held in custody since he was arrested on a Manhattan street in July 2023, appeared in court in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, and changed his plea to guilty in the murders of women whose remains were found years after they disappeared.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:00 pm

‘Ketamine Queen’ sentenced to 15-year prison term for role in Matthew Perry’s death

Jasveen Sangha had pleaded guilty last year to selling the Friends actor a fatal dose of the drug

Jasveen Sangha, who pleaded guilty last year to selling a fatal dose of ketamine to actor Matthew Perry, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday.

Known as the “Ketamine Queen”, Sangha was the fifth defendant to take a plea deal and admit guilt in the case and received the harshest sentence. Federal prosecutors had asked for the 15-year sentence for her role in Perry’s death and that of another individual, citing the “far-reaching scope of defendant’s illegality [and] her callous response to the deaths she helped cause”.

Published: April 8, 2026, 7:13 pm

Hawaii doctor accused of trying to kill his wife found guilty of attempted manslaughter

Prosecutors alleged Gerhardt Konig, 47, had planned to kill Arielle Konig during a birthday trip to Honolulu

A Hawaii anesthesiologist who was accused of trying to murder his wife on a cliffside hike last year has been convicted of attempted manslaughter, a lesser charge.

A Honolulu jury returned the verdict against Gerhardt Konig, 47, on Wednesday after a day of deliberations.

Published: April 9, 2026, 2:13 am

FBI arrests ex-Fort Bragg employee over alleged classified leak to journalist

Courtney Williams accused of sharing material with reporter examining deaths and drugs at US military base

The FBI has arrested a former military special operations employee accused of providing classified information to the media, the agency’s director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday.

The US Department of Justice said in a press release that the former employee, identified as Courtney Williams, 40, was arrested on Tuesday and indicted on Wednesday for allegedly sharing classified material with a journalist.

Published: April 9, 2026, 2:02 am

Pam Bondi will not appear at scheduled House hearing on Epstein files, DoJ says

Justice department says Bondi will not appear for House deposition since she was ousted as US attorney general

Former US Attorney General Pam Bondi, the former US attorney general, will not appear next week for a scheduled deposition before the House oversight and government reform committee to answer questions about the justice department’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and its release of the Epstein files, the committee said.

In a statement on Wednesday morning shared with the Guardian, a spokesperson for the House oversight committee said: “The Department of Justice has stated Pam Bondi will not appear on 14 April for a deposition since she is no longer attorney general and was subpoenaed in her capacity as attorney general.”

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:16 pm

Teens accused of bombing attempt at Mamdani home openly discussed plans to kill

Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi were arrested 7 March with alleged homemade devices at Gracie Mansion in New York

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Two teen alleged Islamic State supporters accused of trying to detonate explosive devices during a protest outside the home of New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, freely discussed how many people they might kill, with one remarking: “I want to start terror, bro,” according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

The teenagers, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, were arrested on 7 March for allegedly igniting two improvised explosive devices during an anti-Islam protest outside Gracie Mansion. Authorities claim that Balat, 18, lit one device and threw it in the direction of the protesters.

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:20 pm

LA teen loses eye after being shot by US agent at No Kings march, lawyer says

USC student Tucker Collins’s attorney accuses homeland security of ‘overt act of repression’ at Los Angeles protest

A freshman at the University of Southern California has lost an eye after he was shot last month with a “less-lethal” projectile by a Department of Homeland Security agent at a No Kings march, according to his attorney.

On 28 March, Tucker Collins, 18, took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles to photograph throngs of protesters, who held signs and chanted slogans denouncing the Trump administration’s policies, his lawyer V James DeSimone said in a statement on Wednesday.

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:21 pm

George Clooney calls Donald Trump’s ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ threat to Iran a war crime

White House says only person committing war crimes is actor ‘for his awful movies and terrible acting ability’

The long-running war of words between George Clooney and the White House has ignited again after the Oscar-winning actor criticised Donald Trump’s threat to Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight”.

On Wednesday, in a speech to 3,000 high school students in Cuneo, Italy, Clooney said the US president had committed a war crime with his threat.

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:12 am

Hundreds search for wolf that escaped from zoo in South Korea

Local school closes in Daejeon city as hundreds of emergency service and military personnel scour area around O-World theme park where the wolf escaped from

Authorities are hunting for a wolf after it escaped from a zoo in Daejeon, a South Korean city with a population of 1.5million.

More than 300 people – including firefighters, police and military personnel – are taking part in the search operation, an official from the Daejeon fire headquarters said.

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:26 am

Injured and abandoned: hundreds of Gaza amputees left stranded in Egypt

At the peak of the Israel-Gaza conflict, 10 children a day were losing one or both legs. For those who cross the border for medical help, physical recovery is only the start of their struggle

Ola Jamal, 36, was breastfeeding her two-month-old son, Zain, when the missile struck al-Nasr hospital in Gaza in November 2023. When the explosion hit the building, the shrapnel went through Jamal’s arm while she held her infant.

“I ran with my family to the hospital and stayed there to hide,” she says at a prosthetic centre in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. “We thought it would be safe because it’s a children’s hospital.”

A row of customised prosthetic limbs, labelled with the names of patients, lined up in a clinic wall

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:00 am

‘I’ve not had proper food for days’: migrant workers leave India’s cities as Iran war fuel crisis deepens

Gas shortages and rising food prices mean many who came to the capital for work cannot afford to eat. Going home is now their only option

At 9am on a Saturday, 35-year-old Raju Prasad rushes through Anand Vihar railway station in Delhi, a heavy bag slung over his shoulder. Beside him, his wife clutches their youngest daughter with one arm and a white plastic bucket with the other. Their three other children trail behind – one dragging a trolley bag, the others holding on to whatever little they can manage. With Prasad’s brother, the family of seven is leaving for Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.

They had moved to India’s capital nine months ago. The couple worked as ragpickers and were paid about 500 rupees a day (about £4), working long 10-hour shifts. But any dreams of building a more secure future in Delhi and sending their children to school have been lost, as rising food costs and the impact of the Middle East crisis on fuel availability and prices have meant the past few weeks have been a fight for basic survival. Now they are moving back to their village.

Published: April 9, 2026, 8:00 am

Ukraine war briefing: Kremlin threat to countries over Ukrainian drone transit

Warning after strikes on Russia’s Baltic oil ports – but Russia has repeatedly sent its own drones through Nato and European airspace. What we know on day 1,506

Published: April 9, 2026, 1:52 am

‘He sent someone to intimidate me’: Christopher Anderson, the photographer who shot Jeffrey Epstein

A new book collects the acclaimed photojournalist’s images of everything from conflict zones to Donald Trump’s inner circle. He describes how his pursuit of truth even led to an unsettling encounter with the disgraced financier

It didn’t come as a great shock to Christopher Anderson to find out that his name was in the Epstein files. In 2015, he was assigned by New York magazine to photograph the American financier for a planned profile interview by the American journalist Michael Wolff.

“I didn’t know who Jeffrey Epstein was at all,” says Anderson. He admits that he often didn’t research the people he was photographing, and went into the job unaware that Epstein was a child sex offender who had been convicted in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, and had served 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail in Florida. “What I knew was that this guy is a rich and powerful man connected to rich and powerful men.”

Published: April 9, 2026, 7:00 am

You be the judge: should my girlfriend stop mixing gold and silver jewellery?

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

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

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

Published: April 9, 2026, 7:00 am

Big Mistakes review – Schitt’s Creek creator Dan Levy excels in new cringe comedy

He plays a pastor on the run from a gang in this dysfunctional family sitcom. The cast is ace, with Taylor Ortega as the hilarious sister – and it has a blindsiding twist

There are, broadly speaking, two types of television shows: the ones that make stars and the ones made by stars. The former includes the ensemble productions that turn unknowns into household names – Bridgerton, Euphoria, Industry – as well as the labour-of-love projects that make their camera-ready creators scalding-hot industry property (Fleabag, I May Destroy You, Baby Reindeer). Schitt’s Creek, Dan Levy’s sitcom about a once-wealthy family forced to slum it in a dingy motel in the arse end of nowhere, belongs firmly in this category. Levy, 42, did have something of a leg-up in the entertainment world – he co-created the show with his father, American Pie’s Eugene Levy, who also played the clan’s clueless patriarch – yet for all intents and purposes Schitt’s Creek was a grassroots success story, debuting in 2015 on Canadian network CBC before gradually becoming a global hit after it was picked up by Netflix a couple of years later.

And what about the second kind? Well, these are the ones that couldn’t exist without the first: they are the post-breakthrough, difficult-second-projects made by freshly minted stars such as Levy, who have been handsomely rewarded for the popularity of their dazzling brainchild with a very lucrative streaming contract. Historically, these deals haven’t always seemed like the wisest investment: Amazon has reportedly paid Fleabag Creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge $100m, but a similar blockbuster is yet to materialise. Netflix have had a fraction more luck with Levy, who made a film for them in 2023 called Good Grief – although you suspect a melancholic indie movie wasn’t exactly what the platform was hoping for when they signed up the maker of a rambunctious family comedy for an eight-figure sum.

Big Mistakes is on Netflix

Published: April 9, 2026, 7:01 am

AI can’t wield a paint brush, but it did help me transform my home

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

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

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

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:00 am

‘I have to betray them to save them’: how undercover film-makers exposed a sinister polygamous cult

In Netflix’s Trust Me: The False Prophet, documentarians in disguise help bring down a cult leader now serving a 50-year sentence

Film-making effects change. Director Rachel Dretzin, a former investigative journalist for Frontline, will testify to that.

“These films that I’m making,” says Dretzin, “that other documentarians are making, are often more effective than the legal system at effecting change; psychological change and also sometimes systemic and criminal change.”

Published: April 8, 2026, 2:45 pm

Everything you need to know about Artemis II so far – podcast

This week Artemis II’s four-astronaut crew broke Apollo 13’s distance record, becoming the humans to travel the farthest from Earth. Now on their way home, the team has experienced tech malfunctions, views like no other and moments of intense emotion, all in under 10 days. To find out about all the highs and lows of the mission, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample

Artemis II crew describe ‘overwhelming’ emotions after soaring past the moon

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:00 am

Ten years after Brexit, this is the UK: a divided nation frozen in time | Aditya Chakrabortty

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

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

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

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Published: April 9, 2026, 5:00 am

Ed Miliband hold firm! North sea oil and gas drilling won’t help anyone other than Nigel Farage | Zoe Williams

It’s worrying to watch Labour entertain Reform’s fantasies about fossil fuels. Only renewables will bring lower bills and higher energy security

Ed Miliband is facing a dilemma, apparently. Reform UK is suggesting new oil and gas licences in the North Sea as a way to cut fuel bills and they’re steadily gaining cheerleaders – not just in the media, but also in some trade unions.

Labour – having swept into power on a green-friendly manifesto, much of which has already been abandoned, but the kernel of which was to prioritise green over fossil energy – is in a bind. It’s plain that fresh exploration of the North Sea would run counter to the party’s every principle, and particularly those of Miliband, whose legacy will be his career-long commitment to the scrappy, dogged, surely often tedious and dispiriting legislative fight against climate breakdown. And yet, equally plainly, the pressure from Nigel Farage is only going to get more intense: he has framed the issue of North Sea oil and gas versus renewables as an elemental fight between the common man and the elites. The wokerati doesn’t care about your cost of living crisis, while the hard right does.

Published: April 9, 2026, 7:00 am

How do you convince Americans to eat fish? Disguise it as meat, of course | Arwa Mahdawi

To tackle the US’s woefully low seafood consumption, drastic measures are being taken. Enter tuna that looks like chicken nuggets and salmon masquerading as beef jerky

The seafood industry is trying to tackle a slippery problem: the US has never developed a taste for fish. Americans will eat canned cheese product and put marshmallow “fluff” on their sandwiches, but they seem to balk at eating fish. The average American consumes about 19lb (under 9kg) of the stuff a year, while the global average is 45lb. Over in Iceland, they’re really getting their omega-3s in: they lead the world with around 200lb of seafood a year.

Still, the tide may be turning: Big Fish has come up with a cunning plan to crack the US market. You know how there are sneaky ways of hiding veggies in recipes for picky toddlers? That’s basically the strategy. Except instead of hiding spinach in a chocolate pancake, the plan is to make fish look like meat. Think tuna that looks like chicken nuggets and salmon sticks that look like beef jerky. It’s not quite fake meat – it’s Fishy Meat™. Yum.

Published: April 8, 2026, 10:00 am

Israel got away with targeting healthcare in Gaza. It's no surprise it is doing it in Lebanon too | Seema Jilani

As a doctor who has worked in a conflict zone, I’ve seen spaces that were once considered sacrosanct become fair game in war. This has to end

Easter weekend marked one of the most intense moments so far of Israel’s war on Lebanon. At around 2pm on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces bombed a densely populated, residential area near the Rafik Hariri University hospital, Lebanon’s largest public hospital, killing at least five people and wounding 50 others.

When I worked at the hospital in 2020, I treated the most vulnerable people in Lebanese society: migrant workers, stateless Palestinians, Syrian refugees. What happened on Sunday is consistent with what seems to be Israel’s broader strategy in Lebanon: human rights organisations and medical workers say the IDF is crippling healthcare infrastructure, targeting hospitals and medics, sometimes when they are sitting in ambulances or in first aid centres. Israel is also forcing the displacement of civilians on a large scale, rendering parts of the country unlivable, while Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the two-week Iran ceasefire doesn’t apply to Lebanon tells us that this is far from over.

Seema Jilani is a paediatric physician based in Texas and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations

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: April 8, 2026, 5:02 pm

The Iran crisis is far from over – instead we are entering a new and uncertain phase | Sanam Vakil

The ceasefire is welcome but fragile. Friday’s talks in Islamabad must address Iran’s nuclear programme and avoid sidelining the rest of the region

The ceasefire announcement between the US and Iran has been met with understandable relief. Talks are now set to take place in Islamabad on Friday, offering a chance to step back from the immediate danger of a wider war. This moment should not be mistaken for a resolution – not least as on Wednesday afternoon, fresh news emerged that Iran has not re-opened the strait of Hormuz. It should, more accurately, be understood as a pause – an opportunity to test pathways towards a difficult but necessary political settlement.

Despite claims of success from all sides, the reality is that no party was winning the war. President Donald Trump has framed the conflict as both a military victory and a step towards regime change in Iran. Yet the war was ill-conceived, built on the assumption that it would be quick and decisive. Instead it proved far more costly and damaging to US credibility. It did not produce regime change. Rather, it led to the promotion and consolidation of new, untested harder-line leadership at the head of the same political system. The structure of the Islamic Republic remains intact, demonstrating its capacity to absorb shock and consolidate its authority.

Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House

Published: April 8, 2026, 3:56 pm

The Guardian view on Trump, Iran and the ceasefire: a devastating war has only losers | Editorial

The Middle East’s best hope may be that the US president continues to rebadge strategic defeat as success

Both the US and Iran claimed victory on Wednesday morning. Both were lying. The two-week ceasefire announced by Donald Trump the night before is not the triumph that he declared. It may not be an end to the war, as welcome as the pause is, or even last the fortnight. Mr Trump said that Iran has gone through regime change. It has not. If anything, less experienced, less readable but more hardline figures are now in charge. He said that the strait of Hormuz would be open; Iran said that ships would pass through with permission, and at a price.

By Wednesday evening, Iranian state media said that the strait was closed after Israel unleashed a brutal assault on Lebanon: about 100 strikes in 10 minutes. Iran had insisted that Lebanon was part of the deal, while Mr Trump disagreed. This conflict has killed thousands in the region, including children, and left many more exhausted, terrified and traumatised, while the aggressors have openly boasted of their intent to commit war crimes.

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

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:02 pm

How Augusta National outwitted ticket resellers and kept door closed on Trump

One of the great lessons of the Masters is money only goes so far, with strict rules designed to keep out ticket touts

Jeffrey Epstein’s web of influence stretched from European palaces to Ivy League universities and Wall Street banks, but there was apparently at least one little corner of the establishment that seems to have been beyond his reach: Augusta National. In July 2019, Epstein sent an iMessage to Steve Bannon asking for his help with a particularly difficult problem. “Need to work magic to get brad Karp admitted to augusta golf club,” Epstein wrote. “The head of Paul Weiss Brad Karp?” Bannon replied. “Yes.”

Karp, the former chair of the legal firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, stepped down from his position in February because of his ties with Epstein.

Published: April 8, 2026, 8:00 pm

Michael Jordan’s second act is hitting top gear on Nascar’s fast track

After years of frustration as an NBA owner, the basketball legend’s 23XI Racing team has surged to the front of the Cup series, reshaping his legacy as an executive

Michael Jordan the basketball player is success personified, the legend against whom all others are measured. Michael Jordan the sports executive, on the other hand, has spent much of the past three decades falling short of his own impossible standard.

In 1999, Jordan joined Abe Pollin’s Washington Wizards ownership group as a history-making minority partner, but neither his star power nor a brief return from retirement translated into sustained team success. Eleven years later, he took over the Charlotte Bobcats, replacing BET co-founder Robert Johnson as the league’s only Black majority owner – but poor roster moves, questionable hires and three playoff appearances in 13 years, with nary one series victory, ultimately became his legacy as the principal steward of the retro-branded Charlotte Hornets.

Published: April 9, 2026, 8:00 am

Kvaratskhelia caps victory for dominant PSG as cautious Liverpool cling to hope

The rout anticipated at Parc des Princes did not materialise, at least not in terms of the scoreline, but the gulf in quality between Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool was laid bare all the same. Arne Slot’s side leave Paris with a scintilla of hope, having arrived with none, and will need to conjure a stunning Anfield recovery on Tuesday just to lay a glove on European champions worthy of the name.

A deflected strike from Désiré Doué plus a superb second from Khvicha Kvaratskhelia gave the holders a deserved advantage in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final. It should have been much more. Ousmane Dembélé missed a hat-trick of openings, striking the outside of a post with his final effort, Nuno Mendes and Doué squandered gilt-edged chances and Liverpool survived two penalty claims. A fine display from the visiting goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili also helped keep the margin of defeat respectful.

Published: April 8, 2026, 9:07 pm

Nike’s high-tech 2026 World Cup jerseys have a shoulder problem

The sportswear giant says it’s aware of the strange seam on some of the new shirts, and is looking into how to address it

When Nike rolled out its collection of World Cup kits in late March, fans and pundits alike largely approved. The US men’s national team got arguably their most distinctive pair of shirts in decades, while other federations – France, England, Canada and Uruguay among them – earned strong reviews.

Over the last international break, when players took the field in the kits for the first time, many fans couldn’t help but become fixated on one singular detail of the new shirts: a somewhat unsightly bulge along the shoulder seam.

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:00 am

Barcelona on the brink after red card and Alvarez stunner sparks Atlético win

When the final whistle went, the man in black disappeared out of sight and set off running up the tunnel. For the first time since he took over at Atlético Madrid 15 long, transformative years ago, Diego Simeone had just led his team to a victory at the Camp Nou, reviving the dream of taking them back to a European Cup final a decade later.

In 2014 and 2016 Atlético knocked out Barcelona en route to Lisbon and Milan and while there is much to be done at the Metropolitano in six days’ time, they have put themselves in a superb position to repeat that in 2026, maybe even to finally lift the trophy that resists them.

Published: April 8, 2026, 9:30 pm

MLB bans Jorge Soler, Reynaldo López seven games for Braves-Angels brawl

• Benches and bullpens cleared in fifth inning

• Players will appeal suspensions and fines

• The two had played together on the 2024 Braves

Los Angeles Angels designated hitter Jorge Soler and Atlanta Braves pitcher Reynaldo López each received seven-game suspensions from Major League Baseball on Wednesday, a day after they were ejected following their participation in a brawl.

Michael Hill, MLB’s senior vice-president for on-field operations, also announced that the players received undisclosed fines. The suspensions were scheduled to begin with Wednesday’s game but will be on hold as each player is appealing.

Published: April 8, 2026, 8:47 pm

‘Every accident at high speed is a shock’: F1 rules guru on response to Bearman crash

As talks begin over fixing the controversial regulations, the FIA’s Nikolas Tombazis says changes to ‘specific aspects’ are needed, not a total overhaul

Formula One has endured a somewhat turbulent opening this season under the sport’s new regulations. Amid the sound and fury of some driver dissatisfaction with the new formula and safety concerns brought sharply into focus by a huge accident at the Japanese Grand Prix, three races in there is now an opportunity to propose changes, with the man who has been at the heart of the process since it began quietly confident that F1 can adapt successfully.

Nikolas Tombazis is the single-seater director for F1’s governing body, the FIA, and has been with the organisation since 2018. He was there when the very first discussions of the 2026 regulations took place in January 2021 and has been central to their evolution since. In his calm and articulate fashion, Tombazis says the noise around the new regulations is overstated.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:08 pm

Ohio man becomes first to be convicted under new AI statute for sexually explicit images

James Strahler II pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, producing obscene images and digital forgeries of child sexual abuse

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An Ohio man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to cybercrimes involving real and AI-generated “sexually explicit images”, becoming what the Department of Justice claims is the first person convicted under a new federal AI statute.

James Strahler II, 37, admitted to cyberstalking, producing obscene visual representations of child sexual abuse, and publication of digital forgeries. The last charge relates to the Take It Down Act, which “prohibits non-consensual online publication of intimate visual depictions and AI forgeries”.

Published: April 8, 2026, 10:13 pm

Wrongful-death lawsuit in LA police killing of 14-year-old girl to begin trial

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was shopping with her mother at a Burlington store in when she was struck by a bullet

A wrongful-death lawsuit filed against the Los Angeles police department for an officer’s fatal shooting of a 14-year-old girl in a clothing store is set to begin trial on Wednesday.

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was shopping for Christmas clothes with her mother at a Burlington store in the San Fernando valley’s North Hollywood neighborhood on 23 December 2021, when she was struck by a bullet that had gone through the dressing room wall.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:22 pm

Roughly half of New Yorkers approve of Zohran Mamdani as he approaches 100 days as mayor – poll

Marist poll shows that 48% of city residents approve of Mamdani’s performance while 55% view him favorably

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As New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, approaches his first 100 days in office, a new survey shows that roughly half of city residents approve of his performance so far.

The poll, conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion and released on Wednesday morning, found that 48% of residents say they approve of the job Mamdani, 34, is doing, while 30% disapprove and 23% remain unsure.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:24 pm

Several US airlines raise baggage fees as Iran war sends fuel costs soaring

Delta, United and JetBlue hiked rates even as Delta announced $1bn pre-tax profit in quarter ending June

• Middle East crisis – live updates

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Several major US airlines have raised their baggage fees in recent days, blaming ongoing volatility in oil markets caused by the US-Israeli war in Iran that has almost doubled jet fuel prices.

On Tuesday, Delta followed the lead of United Airlines and JetBlue, which announced last week that they were hiking baggage prices because of the ongoing war.

Published: April 8, 2026, 2:37 pm

Florida woman accused of killing her newborn baby allegedly had images of Casey Anthony on her phone

Anne Mae Demegillo, 20, was charged with murder in death of infant; Anthony was charged with murdering her child in 2008 but acquitted

A 20-year-old woman charged with killing her newborn daughter had images of Casey Anthony on her phone, suggesting “searches on the death of a child and subsequent investigation”, the Flagler county, Florida, sheriff’s office alleged this week.

Anne Mae Demegillo, who was arrested on 6 March, was indicted on Monday on charges of first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated child abuse, and failure to report death of a person with intent to conceal the death or alter the evidence or circumstances surrounding such death, in the death of her infant.

Published: April 8, 2026, 3:17 pm

‘Non-survivable’: heatwaves are already breaching human limits, with worse to come, study finds

Analysis of six extreme heatwaves found when temperature and humidity were accounted for, all were potentially deadly for older people

Extreme heat is already creating “non-survivable” conditions for humans in heatwaves that have killed thousands and likely many more, according to new research that warns people are more susceptible to rising temperatures than first thought.

Scientists re-examined six extreme heatwaves between 2003 and 2024 and found that when temperature, humidity and the body’s ability to stay cool were accounted for, all were potentially deadly for older people.

Published: April 8, 2026, 3:00 pm

Trump’s EPA chief Zeldin gives keynote speech at climate-denying group’s event

Lee Zeldin opens conference for Heartland Institute, which once compared climate advocates to the Unabomber

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Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), gave the keynote speech at a conference on Wednesday morning, one which was hosted by a prominent climate-denying thinktank that previously compared those concerned about the climate crisis to the Unabomber on billboard posters in 2012.

“No longer are we going to rely on bad, flawed assumptions instead of accurate, present-day facts, without apology or regret,” Zeldin said at the Heartland Institute’s conference on climate change in Washington DC, referring to well-established climate science.

Published: April 8, 2026, 3:58 pm

Britain breaks solar energy record twice as UK’s biggest solar farm gets approval

Record high set on Monday and raised on Tuesday, with 14.4GW of electricity generated in sunny spring weather

Britain’s sunny spring weather powered the grid to new solar energy records on two consecutive days this week.

Solar farms in England, Wales and Scotland generated 14.1GW of low-carbon electricity at lunchtime on Monday, surpassing the previous high of 14GW in July last year.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:35 pm

‘The water is no longer our friend’: how dredging is pushing Lagos Lagoon towards ecosystem collapse – photo essay

Taking sand from the Nigerian city’s lagoon to supply a building boom harms more than fish – it affects the entire food chain, erodes coastlines and is depriving fishing communities of their livelihoods

Before dawn, when the noise of Lagos’s danfo buses fills the air and generators rumble to life, the city’s lagoon is already stirring. Not from fish splashing or canoes gliding, but from the long suction pipes of the dredging machines, pulling up the lagoon bed and spitting out wet sand that will be used in the construction of high-rise blocks, housing estates and flyovers.

Sand dredging is regulated by the Lagos state government and the waterways authority but in a city of more than 20 million people, where sharp sand has never been in higher demand, not all dredging is being done by the book.

Dredging leaves its mark on the landscape along the shores of the Lagos Lagoon in Epe

Published: April 8, 2026, 10:00 am

California sheriff who seized ballots ordered to halt election investigation

Attorney general says court ruling against Chad Bianco ‘reins in the destabilizing actions of a rogue sheriff’

The California supreme court on Wednesday ordered a county sheriff and gubernatorial candidate who seized more than half a million 2025 election ballots to pause his investigation into election fraud allegations while the judges review the legal challenge against it.

The order came after the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, last month asked the court to step in, arguing the sheriff has no authority over election materials. A voting rights group is also challenging the ballot seizure.

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:18 pm

Anthropic keeps latest AI tool out of public’s hands for fear of enabling widespread hacking

AI company says purpose of its Claude Mythos model is to bolster defenses against hacking in common applications

Anthropic on Tuesday said its yet-to-be-released artificial intelligence model called Claude Mythos has proven keenly adept at exposing software weaknesses.

Mythos has laid bare thousands of vulnerabilities in commonly used applications for which no patch or fix exists, prompting the San Francisco-based AI startup to form an alliance with cybersecurity specialists to bolster defenses against hacking and withhold wide distribution.

Published: April 8, 2026, 10:10 pm

Family of man killed in shooting at Florida State University to sue ChatGPT and OpenAI

Lawyers for Robert Morales’s family said chatbot ‘may have advised the shooter’ on how to carry out shooting

The family of a man who was killed at Florida State University last year plans to sue ChatGPT and its parent organization, OpenAI, for allegedly telling the accused gunman how to carry out the mass shooting.

Lawyers for the family of Robert Morales wrote in a statement they had learned the shooter was in “constant communication with ChatGPT” ahead of the shooting, and that the chatbot “may have advised the shooter how to commit these heinous crimes”.

Published: April 8, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘His last gift’: father dies saving two of his children from drowning off Florida coast

Maine family was on vacation when Ryan Jennings died saving his son and daughter from rip current off Juno Beach

A Maine family is grieving after a father died recently saving his son and one of his daughters from drowning off the coast of Florida, where they were on vacation.

The selfless nature of Ryan Jennings’ actions has gained widespread attention online – and inspired his widow, Emily, to write a heartbreaking social media post which read: “His last gift to me was returning my children alive.”

Published: April 8, 2026, 10:00 am

‘It’s not AI, it’s real’: shock as RSPCA releases images of 250 dogs found at property

Dozens of dogs were found crammed into single living room space at property in undisclosed location in UK

More than 250 dogs have been found at a property in scenes so shocking that the RSPCA was forced to deny allegations that the images were faked by artificial intelligence.

The animal welfare charity said it took in 87 dogs from the property at an undisclosed location in the UK and the remainder went to the Dogs Trust, another charity.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:56 pm

Chile’s far-right government rips up plan for memorial at Pinochet torture site

New administration reverses expropriation of property founded by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer, leaving victims in limbo

With its Germanic crosses and colourful toy-town facades, the village square of the tiny Chilean settlement of Villa Baviera gives little indication of the horrors of its past.

Until 1991, this cattle town of a few hundred people was a compound known as Colonia Dignidad. Its leader, Paul Schäfer, a former Nazi and weapons smuggler, bought a swathe of land in the valley in 1961, eventually holding as many as 300 people in a fenced enclave with minimal contact with the outside world. He sexually abused and even tortured the children in the camp.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:00 pm

Genetics may help explain why results from weight-loss jabs vary, say scientists

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

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

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

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:29 pm

British computer scientist denies he is bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto

New York Times report claims London-born Adam Back is creator of the cryptocurrency after comparing writings

A British computer scientist has insisted he is not the elusive developer of bitcoin, after a report claimed to unmask him as its creator.

A story in the New York Times details a years-long effort to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious author of the bitcoin white paper which laid the theoretical foundations for modern digital currencies.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:35 pm

You, Me & Tuscany review – slick romcom offers solidly charming getaway

Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page flirt their way through expected genre tropes in a watchable, if a little unspecific, slice of formulaic fantasy

You, Me & Tuscany is a perfectly wholesome and harmless meet-cute that starts by asking: “What if the Little Mermaid had a Lady and the Tramp-style hookup with the season one heart-throb from Bridgerton, spaghetti and all?”

Halle Bailey is Anna, hopelessly navigating life after the death of her mother, torn between the worlds of adult responsibility and inner child whimsy. A freelance hustle as a house sitter helps make ends meet, but her impulse to fully inhabit her clients’ lives constantly threatens her livelihood. A gig watching over a spectacular Central Park West apartment seems out of a dream. But it quickly goes awry when the lady of the house (Nia Vardalos in a sly cameo) returns early and catches Anna cosplaying as a Park Avenue princess in her premium lingerie. Embarrassed, Anna retreats into the arms of her bestie Claire (Aziza Scott of One of Them Days), the luxury hotel clerk whose barbed sisterly advice is well worth enduring for the one-liners and the potential discount on a short-term residency.

Published: April 9, 2026, 4:00 am

The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit review – a manual for coping with change

In the midst of violent upheaval, the author and activist reminds us of the power and promise of transformation

In 2004, Rebecca Solnit released Hope in the Dark, a series of extended essays in response to the war in Iraq. Drawing on the resilience she saw after Hurricane Katrina, she offered a vision of solidarity and tenacity. The book experienced a sharp surge in popularity after the 2016 election of Donald Trump, selling out in short order. Returning to Hope in the Dark 10 years later, I remembered why it was so lauded. It is a slim, steady book full of sensible reminders about the limits of the intellect and the dangers of becoming poisoned by pessimism. “Hope is not a door, but a sense that there might be a door at some point, some way out of the problems of the present moment even before that way is found or followed,” Solnit wrote. Humility requires us to acknowledge that no matter how damningly certain the future may seem, it remains fundamentally unknowable. That’s where hope begins.

Her timely new book picks up this thread: “You do not have to picture the destination to reach it or at least draw closer to it, you just need to choose a direction and keep on walking,” she tells us. Solnit has written more than a dozen books since 2004, but in format, design, and theme, The Beginning Comes After the End feels like the direct successor to Hope in the Dark: a novella-length essay broken into short but wide-ranging chapters that cite history, philosophy and contemporary writing, paying special note to moments of reparation and progress.

Published: April 9, 2026, 8:00 am

Charli xcx’s Brat movie marks the moment the mockumentary died | Zach Schonfeld

Spoof documentaries once skewered subjects by dialling comic ingenuity up to 11, but the genre has stagnated – replaced by showbiz puff pieces and right-wing provocations. Has their time passed?

In the satirical mockumentary The Moment, Charli xcx fears (and eventually embraces) the death of Brat summer, the cultural sensation that made her sixth album a phenomenon. But the film – which stars the singer as a fictionalised version of herself – strains to land jokes out of Charli’s identity crisis and lacks the giddily intoxicating rush of that 2024 album. Watching The Moment shortly after its lukewarm reception at Sundance, I sensed something dying, but it wasn’t Brat – it was the mockumentary style itself.

How did mockumentaries grow so … tiresome? Once a novel narrative format brilliantly deployed by directors such as Christopher Guest and the late Rob Reiner, the mockumentary now feels nearly as stale as the formulaic films it aims to lampoon. It’s a sad state of affairs. For much of the last half-century, faux-documentary film-making flourished under the perverse minds of countless comedy greats, from Monty Python’s Eric Idle, who lampooned Beatlemania with 1978’s wackily irreverent mock-doc The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, to Albert Brooks, who made his directorial debut with 1979’s proto-reality television spoof Real Life.

Published: April 8, 2026, 9:47 am

The Testaments review – brace yourself for a bloody sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

Don’t be fooled by the lighter tone of Margaret Atwood’s follow-on. June’s daughter is now grown up in Gilead, where daily horrors are still in full swing – and Aunt Lydia is back

I had to give up on the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale quite early on – the mass mock execution scene did for me – because it was too relentlessly bleak, too full of dread, too awful, too true. Margaret Atwood’s future-dystopia tale, published in 1985, drew on nothing that had not already occurred in totalitarian and tyrannical regimes around the world. Translated to the screen, the visceral terror of it all was almost too much from the very beginning.

Now, the sequel Atwood published in 2019, The Testaments, has come for us, created by The Handmaid’s Tale’s showrunner, Bruce Miller. Brace yourselves.

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:00 am

The Boys season five review – it’s the final outing for this gory splatterfest

As the extraordinary superhero satire comes to an end, a mighty showdown has terrifying parallels with modern America. What a horrifying pleasure it has been to watch

The Boys is back in town, for its fifth and final season. There’s too much to recap in full for those who have not yet had the pleasure of the satirical superhero show created by Eric Kripke from the comic books written by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Or who have not yet been horrified by the gory splatterfest (courtesy of all kinds of body fluids) of the preceding 32 episodes, which have seen orifices and appendages put to extraordinary use, and some of which have rightly entered what we will very carefully spell as the annals of TV history.

So, let’s just say that the new season finds us set for a showdown between an increasingly power-mad (“Have you seen the memes about me? Posting them should be a crime”) – or, as the voices of angels start speaking to him, possibly just mad – Homelander (Antony Starr) and the Butcher crew. The former is now overlord of the US, with the president and, apparently, Sage (Susan Heyward) at his beck and call. But the gang has just succeeded in screening – in front of a Maga … I mean, Homelander-loving … rally – the long-buried footage of him leaving the passengers on Flight 37 (as he did all the way back in season one when he was just a little baby villain) to die.

Published: April 8, 2026, 4:00 am

Cats: The Jellicle Ball review – ingenious musical revival goes full queer ball

Broadhurst Theatre, New York

After a disastrous 2019 movie, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s easily ridiculed 80s smash hit has now been transformed into something thrillingly new

One criticism lobbied at the 2019 film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats was that it tried to dress the show up in too much extra stuff. Garish CGI and inelegant sets distracted from what is meant to be the core mission of Cats: to watch talented performers sing and dance as cats. The trick is to keep the show – which is mostly just a song cycle cataloging various felines as described in whimsical poems by TS Eliot – as streamlined as possible, highlighting powerful voices a’blare and lithe bodies in motion. Realism and narrative should not be of chief concern.

But what if there was another way to present Cats that still honored the main principles of the piece while adding further context, even further meaning? That is the feat pulled off by directors Zhailon Livingston and Bill Rauch with Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a bright and winsome reimagining of Webber’s 45-year-old musical. First premiering in a downtown space, the Jellicle Ball has now transferred to Broadway, inviting a wider audience into its celebration of queer ball culture.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:00 am

‘They should use Mambo No 5 for torture’: Sarah Beeny’s honest playlist

The presenter wakes her family up by blasting out Cal Orff and gets the ick from Chris de Burgh, but which lyrically problematic rap banger is she a secret fan of?

The first song I fell in love with
When I was a teenager, I went to a charity shop in Basingstoke, just happened to buy Jolene by Dolly Parton, then played it non-stop.

The first single I bought
Save a Prayer by Duran Duran, from HMV in Reading. Simon Le Bon was gorgeous, wasn’t he? I liked Morten Harket from A-ha as well.

Published: April 9, 2026, 8:00 am

British novelist Gwendoline Riley wins a $175k Windham-Campbell prize

Awarded to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, other recipients include S Shakthidharan, Adam Ehrlich Sachs and Kei Miller

British novelist Gwendoline Riley is among eight writers set to receive $175,000 (£130,000) each in recognition of their life’s work.

Australian playwright S Shakthidharan, known as Shakthi, is also among those selected for this year’s Windham-Campbell prizes, which award $1.4m annually to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, with the aim of enabling them to focus on their work free from financial pressures.

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:15 pm

The Writer and the Traitor by Robert Verkaik review – the strange case of Graham Greene and Kim Philby

Sex, booze and subterfuge in the story of an extraordinary friendship at the heart of MI6

At the Café Royal in Regent Street in 1944 three intelligence officers bent over their plates while Europe held its breath. Outside, London braced for D-day. Inside, Graham Greene announced that he was resigning from MI6.

Kim Philby, his chief in Section V, MI6’s counterespionage arm, blinked. Educated at Westminster, converted to communism at Cambridge and by then securely installed as Moscow’s man at the heart of the British establishment, he had helped orchestrate the deception on which Operation Overlord depended, persuading Hitler that the allies would land at Calais rather than Normandy. Greene had played his part in tending the illusion. Yet here he was, strolling off-stage before the curtain rose.

Published: April 8, 2026, 12:48 pm

Modern heroes and a ravaged Earth: reboot of 1950s space comic Dan Dare has liftoff

Beloved characters reinvented in graphic novel coming later this year – just as interest rockets in all things space

Sufferin’ satellites! The quintessential British space hero Dan Dare is back, 76 years after he first appeared in iconic comic magazine the Eagle.

With all eyes on Nasa’s Artemis II moon mission, and with the big-screen adaptation of Andy Weir’s science fiction novel Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, going stratospheric at the box office, our love affair with space has been reignited.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:00 am

The Black Death by Thomas Asbridge review – a medieval horror story

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos

In Venice, authorities tried to enforce social distancing by closing all the bars, and banning the sale of wine by merchant boats plying the canals. In Gloucester, the powers that be attempted to lock down the city by banning anyone travelling to and from Bristol, 40 miles south. But fights broke out among thirsty Italians, and Gloucester’s quarantine was broken – whether it was by people simply going on a trip to check their eyesight has, alas, gone unrecorded. In London, there was a dramatic rise in the sale of personal protective equipment, in the form of gloves.

The story of the Black Death, as historian Thomas Asbridge shows in this magisterial survey, contains many such echoes of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it also shows just how relatively lucky we were a few years ago. The plague was far more lethal, and in the areas it spread between 1346 and 1353 it killed half the population. About 100m died: it was, Asbridge remarks, “the most lethal natural disaster in human history”. If a pathogen with a similar case fatality rate were to erupt worldwide today, billions might die.

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:00 am

How games capture the awe and terror of cosmic isolation

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

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

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

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:40 am

Hit New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords reunion gigs sell out in minutes

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement announce four shows at Wellington venue Meow Nui from next week – their first gigs since 2018

New Zealand’s self-described “fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo-a cappella-rap-funk-comedy-folk duo” Flight of the Conchords sold out their first shows in eight years in minutes this week, sparking a frenzy among fans.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement formed the musical comedy act in 1998, soaring to worldwide fame off the back of their HBO comedy series of the same name with tunes including Business Time and Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros.

Published: April 9, 2026, 2:29 am

‘We wanted to put a mark on the world’: the sweaty, singular indie music scene of early-00s Brighton

From Bat for Lashes to Brakes and the Pipettes, misfits on the south coast made fearless music amid cheap rents and salty air. Could this ever happen again?

It’s any given night in 2002. We’re at the Free Butt in Brighton, a small pub with a stage and an anything-goes spirit that serves as an extended living room and rite-of-passage workplace for aspiring musicians. Natasha Khan – not yet Bat for Lashes, still a Brighton University art student – is dancing on top of the bar while Yeah Yeah Yeahs are tearing through their first UK tour. Guy McKnight, the lead singer of the brutally underrated Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, has just finished pulling pints, his day job when he’s not the city’s greatest frontman. Steve Ansell of Cat on Form, soon to form Blood Red Shoes, is the in-house sound engineer. Joe Mount from Metronomy is watching this week’s buzziest local support band. The atmosphere is charged with the feeling that anyone in the room might be about to become someone known beyond our city’s limits. Often, they did.

In the early 2000s, music scenes tended to have stories that bands and media could rally around: a shared silhouette, a signature sound, a shaped mythology. New York City gave us the Strokes and Interpol with their tight black denim and wiry riffs; Libertines-era London had its own sticky churn of style, press and parties. Yet Brighton was rarely described as a scene, despite being home to Nick Cave and Paul McCartney and hothousing a surge of remarkable young talent that’s still thriving more than 20 years later. In this seaside enclave, rock bands sounded and looked so unlike each other, they never needed to jostle for a single narrow lane.

Published: April 8, 2026, 10:18 am

Carnival celebrations at a Hungarian retirement home: János Bődey’s best photograph

‘I asked them the secret to a happy life. “Good genes,” replied Magdolna, who was 87. “Avoid borrowing money,” added Irén, 86’

When I saw these two elderly ladies dressed as bride and groom in a retirement home in Páty, near Budapest, my first thought was to wonder why they had chosen those particular costumes. I took their picture in the home’s lounge and afterwards we had a long conversation. I asked them about their lives, what they believed was the secret to a long life, and how to preserve a love of life in old age. They both emphasised a long and happy marriage. Magdolna, 87, on the left, lived with her husband for more than 50 years, and 86-year-old Irén for 62, until their spouses died.

In Hungary, the average pension is the equivalent of about £500 a month. It takes the talents of a magician for a pensioner to stretch that beyond basic needs and make any room for leisure, culture or travel. The health of Hungarian pensioners also falls short of what is typical in the west. And it’s really hard to get into a retirement home in Hungary. You have to wait for years for a good place.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:26 pm

‘We’d all be in the destruction zone!’ Can anything stop today’s nuclear free-for-all?

The Lib Dems’ Sue Miller has spent most of her life trying to reduce the risk of nuclear war. And it’s not going well. Why are so few people talking about non-proliferation, let alone disarmament?

Almost the mildest remark that Sue Miller makes about nuclear weapons is also the scariest: “The last people to take a big interest in any of this were Gordon Brown and Margaret Beckett.” Those people seem such a long way away – Brown, of course, still campaigns valiantly against poverty, and Beckett is a working baroness, but as voices against the global buildup of nuclear arms, theirs are so historical as to be almost nostalgic.

Yet the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ symbolic representation of how near the world is to destroying itself, has never been closer to midnight than it is now: 85 seconds (and this was prior to the current war in Iran). Russia has been making thinly veiled threats of “tactical” use since its invasion of Ukraine, while its drone incursions into Nato nations have “heightened European threat perceptions” (as the bulletin puts it), without those perceptions driving anyone’s thoughts towards nuclear de-escalation, let alone disarmament. Meanwhile, non-nuclear European nations are talking about developing “nuclear latency” – building the ability to develop nuclear capacity at speed.

Published: April 8, 2026, 9:00 am

‘This is about people’s livelihoods’: how surging tool thefts are leaving tradespeople penniless and afraid

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

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

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

Published: April 8, 2026, 4:00 am

These $50 sweatpant jeans ‘tricked nearly everyone’ – and were as comfy as the luxury pair

Can you can feel snug and still look put-together? I tested sweatpant jeans that are comfy, yet have a tailored look from Rag & Bone, Gap and Halara

For the days you can’t be bothered to slip into restrictive “real pants” but want to look put-together, sweatpant jeans are here to save the day. Not quite sweatpants and not quite jeans, sweatpant jeans are a happy medium, offering a printed-on denim aesthetic in that same plush sweatpant feel many of us know and love.

Their current popularity seems linked to gen Z’s insistence that leggings and straight-leg jeans are no longer cool, and to celebrity sightings and endorsements from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lawrence and Margot Robbie. But trust me on this, too: I’ve spent the last three years living in them.

The pair to beat:
Rag & Bone Miramar Sofie Ankle-Length Pants

A cosy and cheaper alternative:
Gap Heavyweight Easy Baggy Sweatpant Jeans

Published: April 8, 2026, 10:30 pm

Sali Hughes on beauty: delicious designer scents without the exorbitant price tag

At last … creative perfumes at half the cost of most niche fragrances, with a wide range of beautifully balanced options

The business of modern perfumery can stink. While I accept that the cost of everything is now troubling, large sections of the niche fragrance sector seemingly pluck their prices from the sky. It’s not unusual for a bottle costing £300-odd to launch without any accompanying explanation as to why. An unknown name, a needlessly quirky bottle, an egregious price tag – all serve to underline the assertion that this is a “niche” fragrance for people who take their scents seriously, who should be too in the know to question its calibre.

And so when I see a brand doing things honestly, authentically and with great care, I must give due credit. Essential Parfums is new to John Lewis (and available directly from the brand online) and its aim is to democratise creative perfumery. What this means in practice is an open brief to perfumers, who include such big hitters as Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo; their total creative freedom; sustainable and mostly natural ingredient sourcing, development and manufacturing processes (using biotech, simple refillable bottles and cardboard packaging containing no glue or plastic); and a fair price – around £86 for a whopping 100ml, which, millilitre for millilitre, is less than half the cost of a pretty average designer fragrance enjoying little of the same treatment, and about a quarter of some of the nonsense I’m pitched regularly.

Published: April 8, 2026, 9:00 am

‘The vast wooded wilderness doesn’t look like England’: exploring Northumberland’s Kielder Forest

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

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

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

Published: April 8, 2026, 6:00 am

Birdwatch: Climbing to 4,400 metres to spot a rare rufous-bellied seedsnipe

Our writer travels to the eastern Andes in search of one of Ecuador’s most elusive birds

I’m out of breath – and not just because I’m desperate to see one of Ecuador’s most elusive birds, the rufous-bellied seedsnipe. To have any chance of success, I’ve come to Cayambe Coca national park in the eastern Andes. At 4,400 metres (14,400 feet), this is the highest altitude I have ever experienced.

Fortunately the skies are clear, the sun is shining, and my guide, Juan Carlos, is optimistic. I don’t tell him I have a track record of missing nailed-on certainties.

Published: April 8, 2026, 5:00 am

What’s behind the worrying rise in anti-LGBTQ+ laws across Africa?

Rooted in colonialism, legislation backed by governments eager for popularity is obstructing real progress for queer minorities

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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. It’s Morgan here, covering for Nesrine this week. There has been a recent rise in anti-LGBTQ legislation across a number of African countries that already have strict sexuality laws.

I spoke with LGBTQ+ people and activists fighting against the narrative that their identities are an imported “western” creation to better understand the impact of these new laws, why they are happening, and how foreign lobbying groups are pushing for more draconian laws.

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:38 am

He was sentenced to death despite not pulling the trigger. An unlikely coalition saved his life

In an act transcending politics, tens of thousands successfully banded together to make the case against executing Charles ‘Sonny’ Burton in Alabama

With all of his appeals exhausted, Charles “Sonny” Burton had already chosen the last meal he would have before being put to death by nitrogen gas at Alabama’s Holman correctional facility: barbecue chicken, banana cake with ice cream, and sweet tea – all things he hadn’t been able to enjoy in years with his diabetes.

The writing seemed to be on the wall. His fate was in the hands of Kay Ivey, Alabama’s governor and a staunch supporter of capital punishment who has presided over more than 25 executions – more than any other Alabama governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Her office had been repeating the same line for weeks: “Governor Ivey has no plans to grant clemency.” But on the morning of 10 March, just two days before Sonny was to be put to death, Ivey commuted his sentence to life without parole.

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:00 am

Tehran rallies and a Dutch digital detox: photos of the day – Wednesday

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

Published: April 8, 2026, 11:40 am