Can prolonged eye contact really make couples feel closer?

I made my husband stare into my eyes for four minutes, on the advice of a happiness researcher. Did it 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

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

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

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

‘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

I let AI guide me through London for a day. Why do I keep being sent underground?

In week three of Rhik Samadder’s diary, our resident AI skeptic let AI give him a tour of London’s best-kept secrets

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I recently met a friend for a drink who’d just visited three galleries. She was having a cultural day – curated for her by AI. Based on what it knew about her, it suggested exhibitions she’d enjoy, places to eat, even the best routes between stops. I was stunned. (Was I part of the itinerary?)

As part of my skeptic AI diary, I decide to use it to rediscover my hometown. I ask the ChatGPT to plan a full day out about town in London, packed with activities I might not normally choose. I tell the AI to ask me a few questions first, to gauge what I’ll enjoy and steer clear of neighbourhoods I already know well. I also ask it to check in after each stop, to vibe-check what comes next and offer backup options.

Published: March 19, 2026, 11:00 am

Middle East crisis live: Israeli officials push back on US claim that Trump knew nothing about gasfield attack

Three Israeli officials tell Reuters that the US actually helped coordinate Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gasfield

• A visual guide to the oil and gas site attacks in the Middle East

Turning to Australia now, a petrol tsar will manage “unprecedented” supply issues caused by the Middle East conflict as the finishing touches are put on measures to address dire shortages in many regional areas.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese convened a snap virtual meeting of the national cabinet on Thursday to discuss major price shocks and shortages driven by the US-Israel war on Iran.

My government will be announcing more measures to prepare the nation for supply chain challenges over coming days and weeks.

Our fuel supply is currently secure. However, I want us to be over-prepared.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:13 pm

The war on Iran cost the US $12.7bn by day six. Here’s how it’s been spent – in charts

Now, the total is likely to have exceeded $18bn and counting. Where are America’s war dollars going, in a war that was never declared in the first place?

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:00 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

Trump administration is deporting parents without their children in violation of its own policies, report finds

Dozens said they weren’t given chance to arrange care for their kids after being deported at short notice, study shows

The Trump administration is deporting a significant number of parents without asking them if they have children or allowing them to decide whether to bring their children with them, in apparent violation of its own policies, a major report has found.

In interviews with dozens of parents deported to Honduras, as well as physicians and psychologists, government officials and staff at reception centers for deportees, researchers found that many parents were deported quickly after they were detained, without a chance to arrange for the care of their children.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:57 pm

Senate committee advances Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead homeland security

Republican senator’s nomination will now be considered by full Senate, where the GOP appears poised to confirm him

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A key Senate committee on Thursday advanced Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on a near party line vote, a day after the Republican senator faced questions at his confirmation hearing about his approach to Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and accusations of encouraging violence.

Nearly all eight Republicans on the Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs voted to advance Mullin’s nomination, with the sole exception of the panel’s chair, Rand Paul of Kentucky, who the day prior had harshly criticized his colleague for comments he made about a neighbor who assaulted Paul in 2017, and an incident six years later in which Mullin readied himself to fight a witness at a committee hearing.

Published: March 19, 2026, 2:27 pm

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 pushes south-west US toward triple digits

California, Nevada and Arizona face record highs, with heat alerts and park trail closures as temperatures spike

States across the US south-west recorded blistering temperatures at the tail end of winter, 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, 4:49 pm

Denmark reportedly flew blood bags to Greenland in preparation for a US attack

Amid Trump threats, Copenhagen also sent over explosives intended to blow up runways, according to Danish media

Denmark reportedly readied itself for potential attack from the US in January – flying bags of blood to Greenland and explosives to blow up runways in case of a battle with its former closest ally.

During the tense days when Donald Trump threatened to take over Greenland – a largely autonomous territory that is part of the Danish commonwealth – “the hard way”, Copenhagen was so shaken that it started preparing for US invasion, according to Danish public broadcaster DR.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:00 pm

Concerns raised over role of ex-Putin interpreter monitoring Hungary vote

Daria Boyarskaya coordinating OSCE mission to monitor next month’s parliamentary vote in country

Hungarian rights groups have raised concerns over the appointment of Vladimir Putin’s former interpreter to a key role in an international election monitoring mission, amid fears of Russian interference ahead of Hungary’s crucial vote next month.

Daria Boyarskaya, who worked for many years for Russia’s foreign ministry and interpreted in numerous high-level meetings including one between Putin and Donald Trump, is now a senior adviser at the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE-PA), based in Vienna. She is coordinating the body’s mission to monitor next month’s parliamentary election in Hungary.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:05 pm

St Patrick’s Day float referencing Epstein files draws condemnation in Ireland

Charities call display, which mimicked a sexual assault, ‘an act of public grooming’ that normalises sexual violence

Rape crisis charities in Ireland have condemned a St Patrick’s Day float that mimicked a sexual assault and featured signs saying “Epstein files”.

Rape Crisis Ireland called the display “an act of public grooming” that normalised sexual violence, while politicians labelled it a disgrace.

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:26 pm

US rapper Afroman cleared after police sued him over use of home raid footage

Artist who topped UK charts with Because I Got High created comedic videos from footage, which officers claimed invaded their privacy

Chart-topping US rapper Afroman has been cleared of wrongdoing after Ohio police filed a lawsuit against him, alleging defamation, emotional distress and invasion of privacy after the artist used footage from a police raid on his home in a series of mocking videos.

In 2022, police searched the rapper’s home for evidence of drug possession and trafficking, and kidnapping. No evidence was found and no charges were filed.

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:14 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

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

Why gasfield attacks are a major escalation in Iran war – The Latest

Donald Trump is threatening to ‘blow up’ a major Iranian energy facility, as attacks on gasfields across the Middle East send gas and oil prices skyrocketing again. The threat comes after Israeli strikes on the South Pars gasfield prompted Iran to retaliate with attacks on energy facilities across the region, including in Qatar. It marks a serious escalation in the war, which could cause long-term disruption to energy supplies. Lucy Hough speaks to senior international reporter Peter Beaumont

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:44 pm

Inside the ICE crackdown: post your questions for US immigration reporter Maanvi Singh

The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh has been on the frontline of the Trump administration’s brutal ICE crackdown. Post your questions about what it’s been like to cover this stark moment in American history.

The unprecedented occupation of American cities by a bulked up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has led to a series of shocking scenes over the past 12 months, including the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal officials in Minneapolis. It has also led to an incredible community response as people banded together to protect their neighbours.

Guardian US immigration reporter Maanvi Singh has spent the past few months covering this story, including spending a week on the block where Alex Pretti was killed.

Published: March 19, 2026, 2:24 pm

I asked AI to explain my mother to me. It translated her worldview

A chatbot won’t fix your family drama, but it might help you hear what someone’s really trying to say

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Last autumn, I was pacing my living room with my phone on speaker, trapped inside one of those looping conversations with my mother, the kind that starts politely and ends in static.

We were talking about land and legacy – what gets passed down, and what doesn’t – that familiar terrain where ideals and inheritance collide.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:00 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

Stephen Colbert on DHS pick Markwayne Mullin: ‘Has a history of being real dumb and real angry about it’

Late-night hosts discussed the confirmation hearing for Trump’s new homeland security pick, the about-face by Republicans on Iran and the war’s sticker-shock for ordinary Americans

Late-night hosts recapped Markwayne Mullin’s risible confirmation hearing for homeland security secretary and Maga’s struggles to sell the war in Iran to sticker-shocked Americans.

Published: March 19, 2026, 2:38 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

‘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

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

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

Oil has empowered capitalism, and some of the world’s most exploitative regimes. Move away from it and we can solve some of the key issues we face

I realise this is a serious breach of etiquette. But could we perhaps abandon good manners and contextualise Donald Trump’s attack on Iran? The intense western interest in the Middle East and west and central Asia, sustained for more than a century, and the endless attempts by foreign governments to shape and control these regions, are not random political tics. They are somewhat connected to certain fuel sources situated beneath the ground.

Trump’s war aims are typically incoherent: apparently incomprehensible even to himself. But Iran would not be treated as an “enemy of the west” were it not for what happened in 1953, when Winston Churchill’s government persuaded the CIA to launch a coup against the popular democratic government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The UK did so because Mossadegh sought to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company: to stop a foreign power from stealing the nation’s wealth. The US, with UK support, tried twice to overthrow him, and succeeded on the second attempt, with the help of some opportunistic ayatollahs. It reinstated the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1954, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became British Petroleum, later BP.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Published: March 19, 2026, 6:00 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

Iran could be the US's Boer war: a hollow victory that marks the beginning of the end of empire | Larry Elliott

US leaders anticipated a walkover. Now they’re embroiled in a conflict that could hasten the end of US economic dominance

Nobody gave the Boers a prayer when the war in South Africa began in 1899. It was farmers ranged against the might of the British empire, and the expectation was that resistance would quickly crumble.

Eventually, might did prevail. Britain won the Boer war, but it was a hollow victory that took the best part of three years to achieve and came at a high cost. The blow to British prestige – coming at a time when its global hegemony was under threat from fast-growing countries such as the US – was severe. Far from highlighting the extent of Britain’s power, it exposed its limitations.

Published: March 19, 2026, 2:00 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

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

Disgraced Juan Carlos wants to return from exile a hero. But Spain’s murky history still dogs him | Giles Tremlett

The ex-king has been stranded in Abu Dhabi after a series of scandals. Now newly released files support his claim to have saved Spanish democracy

When Spain’s King Juan Carlos fell over and broke his hip while on an elephant hunt with a former girlfriend in Botswana in 2012, he probably thought that Spaniards would accept this as a minor gaffe after a lifetime of public service. The monarch had, after all, weathered numerous scandals, including a string of extramarital affairs and investigations into his family’s financial affairs, during the previous 37 years of his reign. Money was hardly a problem in his life.

This time, however, Spaniards had had enough. It was the height of the eurozone crisis and there was outrage that Juan Carlos was on what was reported to be a free hunting trip while people endured the poverty, mass unemployment and terror of an economy in freefall. Within two years, the king had abdicated and was passing the crown to his son, Felipe VI.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:00 am

Detroit Pistons star Cade Cunningham to miss extended time with collapsed lung

• Cunningham to miss time with playoffs near

• Detroit star may now fall shy of awards cutoff

• Pistons lead East but face uncertain timeline

All-Star guard Cade Cunningham of the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons has a collapsed lung and is expected to miss at least two weeks and possibly more, a person with knowledge of the situation told the Associated Press on Thursday.

The exact timeline for a return to play is still unknown, the person said.

Published: March 19, 2026, 3:25 pm

March Madness 2026 women’s predictions: can anyone thwart a UConn repeat?

Can anyone derail the Connecticut juggernaut? Our contributors pick the winners, sleepers and upsets for this year’s women’s NCAA Tournament

There have been just four women’s Final Fours featuring all No 1 seeds. This year feels like it could give us the fifth. UConn v South Carolina would be a tantalizing rematch of last year’s national championship game – made even more interesting by the fact they didn’t meet in the regular season for the first time since 2013-14. Texas held off a late UCLA comeback when they played in November, but the Bruins have rolled off 25 straight wins since. EB

Published: March 19, 2026, 9:00 am

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

Champions League review: more trauma for the Premier League as Europe’s big beasts stir

Only two of the Premier League’s last-16 teams made it to the quarter-finals while European giants are coming into form when it matters

Another traumatic week for the self-worth of the Premier League, one in which Europe’s big beasts got into their stride. The defending champions, Paris Saint-Germain, put on a devastating display at Chelsea. Bradley Barcola’s goal, their second, was the highlight of a 3-0 win. Barcelona ran out 7-2 winners over Newcastle, having been level at half-time at 2-2, 3-3 on aggregate. Real Madrid continue to be Pep Guardiola’s great tormentors, with Vinícius Júnior getting both goals at Manchester City. His crybaby celebration was aimed at those City supporters who mocked him after Rodri pipped the Brazilian to the Ballon d’Or in 2024. Bayern Munich continue to look irresistible. Harry Kane scored twice, and Lennart Karl’s strike continued his trajectory as German football’s next big thing in a 4-1 win over Atalanta, a mighty 10-2 on aggregate.

Published: March 19, 2026, 1:26 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

Miami (Ohio) rout SMU in First Four as Prairie View make NCAA Tournament history

• Miami bury 16 threes for statement March Madness win

• RedHawks quiet doubters after unbeaten regular season

• Prairie View A&M claim first ever NCAA Tournament win

Eian Elmer scored 22 points and Miami (Ohio) beat SMU 89-79 on Wednesday night in the First Four for their first NCAA Tournament victory in 27 years.

Elmer went 6 of 9 from three-point range as the 11th-seeded RedHawks (32-1), undefeated during the regular season, advanced in the Midwest Region to play No 6 seed Tennessee.

Published: March 19, 2026, 6:53 am

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

Iran will boycott the US but not the World Cup, country’s football head says

• Video released of federation president Mehdi Taj

• Fifa has no plans to move Iran games to Mexico

Iran will “boycott the United States” but “not the World Cup”, the Iranian football federation president, Mehdi Taj, said in a video released by the Iranian press agency Fars.

Iran are scheduled to play their group matches in the US in this summer’s tournament. “We will be preparing for the World Cup,” Taj said. “We will boycott the United States but not the World Cup.”

Published: March 19, 2026, 9:33 am

‘The only thing left for me was death’: meet the meth-addict long jumper who has been to hell and back

Three years ago Luvo Manyonga knew he must change his life or die. In Poland this week, the former world champion makes an extraordinary return to athletics’ top table

Sprawled prone in the dirt, the cold metal of a baseball bat cracking against his skull, spine and down to the legs that had once propelled him to glory, Luvo Manyonga experienced an epiphany. This existence could not continue; he must change his life or die.

Manyonga had been a drug addict for as long as he could remember, seeking recreational highs that provided the opposite of the performance-enhancing shortcuts that some of his deceitful athletics rivals might have pursued.

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:00 am

Nigel Farage stops accepting Cameo requests after revelations about his use of platform

Reform leader ‘unavailable’ on service after Guardian investigation unearths clips of him repeating extremist slogans

• Farage videos reveal support for rioter, neo-Nazi event and far-right slogans

Nigel Farage has stopped using the personalised video platform Cameo after revelations that the Reform UK leader has filmed a string of highly questionable paid-for clips.

On Thursday morning, Farage’s page on the website said he was “unavailable”, and a source said he had paused his use of the platform over security concerns.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:27 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

Dolores Huerta says she was abused by César Chávez: ‘My silence ends here’

UFW co-founder published her statement after sharing her story publicly for the first time with the New York Times

Labor rights activist Dolores Huerta said in a statement released on Wednesday that she was sexually abused by César Chávez, expanding on a New York Times investigation alleging the late labor leader groomed and abused young girls and women during his time as president of the United Farm Workers (UFW).

Huerta, co-founder of the UFW, published her statement on Medium after she shared her story publicly for the first time with the New York Times.

Published: March 18, 2026, 9:49 pm

PwC partners who fail to embrace AI have no future at firm, US CEO warns

Paul Griggs says senior staff at consulting firm who are not ‘paranoid about being AI-first’ are likely to be replaced

• Business live – latest updates

The US boss of PricewaterhouseCoopers has warned that partners who do not get to grips with AI have no future at the consulting firm.

Paul Griggs said senior staff who were not “paranoid about being AI-first” would probably be replaced by others who were ready to embrace the technology. “I don’t think anyone gets a free pass here. Anyone,” Griggs told the Financial Times.

Published: March 19, 2026, 12:04 pm

Efforts to shut down pro-Palestinian speech face series of setbacks in court

Rulings in cases alleging antisemitism on US campuses say common pro-Palestinian speech is constitutionally protected

Few debates from the last few years have been more contentious than whether criticism of Israel and Zionism is antisemitic, threatens Jewish people or violates their civil rights. Allegations of antisemitism have cost people jobs, provided pretexts for censorship and fueled an unprecedented crackdown on protest over Israel and shows of support for Palestinian rights, especially at universities.

Pro-Israel groups have filed hundreds of lawsuits or legal actions in an effort to silence some of this speech, with the vast majority filed since 2023 in response to the protest movement surrounding Israel’s recent war in Gaza. The most important rulings to have come out of these cases, experts say, have found that speech and slogans at the heart of the controversies are protected by the first amendment.

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:00 am

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

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

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

King opens world’s longest managed coastal walk – but much of it is still closed off

Landowner disputes, coastal erosion and disused ferry hindering completion of King Charles III England coast path

The longest managed coastal walking route in the world has been opened by the king at the Seven Sisters cliff walk.

However, large parts of the King Charles III England coast path are still closed to the public after objections from landowners, fears about coastal erosion and a disused ferry.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:09 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

Damaged Russian tanker carrying natural gas floats into Libyan waters

Fears of ecological disaster as vessel continues to drift after being struck by suspected drone attack

A severely damaged Russian tanker carrying liquified natural gas that has been adrift in the Mediterranean for two weeks, raising concerns of an ecological disaster, has floated into Libyan waters, Italy’s civil protection agency said on Wednesday.

The Arctic Metagaz was part of a Russian “shadow fleet” used to circumvent sanctions imposed on the country’s oil and gas after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It was struck in a suspected drone attack close to Maltese waters earlier this month, causing a huge hole. The crew is believed to have been rescued between Malta and Libya.

Published: March 18, 2026, 6:51 pm

Rolls-Royce scraps goal to go all-electric by 2030

Company says it will continue to sell cars with V12 internal combustion engines as there is demand from clients

Rolls-Royce has abandoned its goal to sell only electric cars by the end of the decade.

The luxury car company launched its all-electric Spectre model in 2022, saying at the time that it would end production of its vehicles with V12 internal combustion engines by the end of 2030.

Published: March 18, 2026, 5:46 pm

‘They called me a water terrorist’: exiled Iranian scientist wins global prize

Prof Kaveh Madani, winner of the Stockholm water prize, was accused of sabotage with his environmental work

Eight years before he got the call telling him he had won the Stockholm water prize, Prof Kaveh Madani was being interrogated by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, accused of being a spy for the CIA, MI6 or the Mossad.

Today he is in exile and on Wednesday won the world’s most prestigious water prize for combining “groundbreaking research on water management with policy, diplomacy and global outreach, often under personal risk and political complexity”.

Published: March 18, 2026, 4:15 pm

FBI investigating US counter-terrorism chief who resigned over Iran war, reports say

Reported inquiry predates Joe Kent’s departure from his post as director of the national counter-terrorism center

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The resignation of Joe Kent, a senior counter-terrorism official who spoke out against the US war in Iran, took a dramatic turn on Wednesday with a report that he is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over an alleged leak of classified information.

The inquiry predates Kent’s departure on Tuesday from his post as director of the national counterterrorism center, where he had overseen the analysis of terrorist threats, according to Semafor and CBS News. The FBI declined to comment on the existence of any such investigation.

Published: March 19, 2026, 3:45 am

New York high school student released after 10 months in ICE facility

The detention of Dylan Lopez Contreras, 20, of Venezuela, a freshman in the Bronx, sparked national outrage

A New York high school student who was detained at an immigration courthouse in May last year, sparking national outrage, was released on Wednesday.

Dylan Lopez Contreras, 21, of Venezuela was a freshman at Ellis Prep academy, a Bronx public school dedicated exclusively to students who have recently arrived in the US. It was the first widely known instance of a public school student being arrested by federal immigration agents.

Published: March 19, 2026, 1:32 am

Democrats walk out in protest over ‘outrageous fake’ Epstein briefing from Pam Bondi

Lawmakers leave closed-door meeting after AG refuses to commit to honoring subpoena to testify under oath

Democrats on the House oversight committee walked out of a closed-door briefing from attorney general Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein files on Wednesday, leaving what California congressman Robert Garcia called “an outrageous fake hearing” after Bondi refused to commit to honoring a subpoena to testify under oath.

The committee voted to subpoena Bondi earlier this month, with five Republicans joining Democrats to demand that the attorney general answer questions about the justice department’s failure to properly release files from the federal investigations into Epstein.

Published: March 19, 2026, 1:07 am

Kash Patel admits under oath FBI is buying location data on Americans

Admission came during questioning at Senate intelligence committee worldwide threats hearing

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has started buying location data on Americans, Kash Patel, FBI director, said under oath at the Senate intelligence committee worldwide threats hearing on Wednesday.

Patel’s admission came in response to a question from the senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who is a longtime opponent of the warrantless surveillance of Americans. Wyden told Patel that his predecessor, Christopher Wray, testified in 2023 that the FBI did not at that time purchase location data derived from internet advertising, although he acknowledged that it had done so in the past.

Published: March 18, 2026, 11:26 pm

Europe’s biggest airlines say fuel price spike caused by Iran war will drive up fares

Carriers warn they cannot hold off passing on costs for long, while some airlines plan to increase flights via Asia

• Business live – latest updates

Europe’s biggest airlines have said the rise in fuel prices caused by the war in the Middle East will drive up fares and are advising passengers to book early.

While carriers have partly hedged the price of jet fuel, bosses said they could not avoid passing on additional costs to passengers for long.

Published: March 19, 2026, 1:04 pm

Molecule in python blood could pave way for new obesity drugs, scientists say

Researchers find snake metabolite that suppresses appetite of obese mice ‘without some of side-effects’ of GLP-1 drugs

Pythons follow the ultimate crash diet, swallowing an antelope in a single sitting and then going for months without eating. Now scientists have identified a molecule that appears to be crucial for this metabolic feat, and which they say could pave the way for a new class of obesity drugs.

When the python metabolite, which spikes in their blood after eating, was given to obese mice, they shunned food and rapidly lost weight. The scientists said the molecule could have a similar effect to drugs such as Wegovy.

Published: March 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Viktor Orbán refuses to agree to €90bn loan for Ukraine as EU leaders accuse him of betrayal

Hungarian PM is continuing to block the funding, which the EU says is urgently needed for military aid and support for Ukraine

EU leaders have failed to convince Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, to drop his opposition to a vital €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine. They have accused him of betrayal and acting in bad faith but have not persuaded him to budge.

In an unusual sign of public anger on Thursday, several leaders made plain their irritation with Orbán, who refused to sign off on the loan agreed last year because of a dispute with Kyiv over a damaged oil pipeline.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:05 pm

Possum found nestled in with plush toys at airport gift shop in Tasmania

A brushtail possum was found peering out among the toy kangaroos and dingoes in a retail store in Hobart’s airport, delighting staff and customers

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A passenger browsing in a gift shop in Hobart airport has stumbled across a remarkable discovery in the plush toy section.

A real living and breathing brushtail possum had decided to join its fluffy friends in the shelves of Lagardère AWPL gift shop on Wednesday morning.

Published: March 19, 2026, 4:22 am

‘Absolutely transformative’: Willem de Kooning exhibition uncovers raw intensity of early work

A Princeton University Art Museum show captures the urgent power of the iconic abstract expressionist’s 1945-50 breakthrough years

Artist Willem de Kooning held his first solo exhibition at Charles Egan Gallery in spring 1948, just shy of his 44th birthday. A smash success, the exhibition made his reputation, repositioning the artist and catapulting him to international renown by the early 1950s. By the decade’s end, many would consider him the world’s pre-eminent painter.

Princeton University Art Museum now offers a kind of revisiting of de Kooning’s transformative star-making show with Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, covering 1945-50. Featuring 18 paintings that reveal an artist feeling his way between figuration and abstraction, it shows de Kooning finding his own unique relationship with both styles. Although The Breakthrough Years does not feature the exact lineup of paintings from the Egan show, it does take audiences intimately into the artist’s creative life from that period.

Published: March 18, 2026, 9:17 pm

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

Deadloch season two review – every bit as wonky, devilish and potty-mouthed as the first

The Emmy-nominated crime comedy swaps chilly Tasmania for the sticky Top End – and all its croc-related misadventures

There’s no doubt which principal character reflects the heart, soul and warped humour of Deadloch, the darkly comedic and wigged-out police procedural created and written by Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan. It’s certainly not Kate Box’s senior sergeant Dulcie Collins: a generally calm and considered detective who doesn’t rush to judgment. It’s her partner Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami), a thunderously loud, incongruous, decorum-breaking force of nature who doesn’t so much speak as screech, howl and bluster, as if trying to strangle the air itself, particle by particle.

As do several characters in this show: a well-paced, rambunctious, occasionally laugh-out-loud production that, like the first season, both meets and subverts genre expectations – sometimes in sly, wink-wink ways, sometimes with the grace of an elephant cannonballing into a kiddie pool. Directors Beck Cole and Gracie Otto bring verve, irreverence and a veneer of grotesquerie, echoed in Deadloch’s damp and queasy colour grading, which looks slightly off, as though the show itself is sprouting mould.

Published: March 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

Imperfect Women review – lots of fun … if you lower your expectations enough

This glossy murder mystery, starring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington and Kate Mara, should be better than this. But if you brace yourself for a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment, you’ll have a good time

You can’t say Imperfect Women doesn’t warn you. It is clear from the very first shots – three women dancing, drunkenly but happily, laughing but not scream-laughing, as the camera whirls round their beautifully lit selves – and the first line – an earnest voiceover about “a kinship from deep in our souls” – what we’re in for. That is, an overwritten, far-fetched, glossy but derivative murder mystery – a descendant of Big Little Lies, intermarried with touches of everything else Nicole Kidman has done in the last 10 years.

Adjust your expectations accordingly and you’ll have a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment. Dwell on the fact that you could well have expected better of an Apple TV production and a main cast that includes Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara and you’ll have less of a good time. So don’t do that.

Published: March 18, 2026, 5:00 am

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

‘I woke up and couldn’t move’: Scottish rockers the Twilight Sad on births, death and breakdown

In the seven years since their last album, the Scots have faced down dementia and cancer. Now they’re returning with a visceral new sound – and eager to get back to globetrotting with the Cure

To say that James Graham has been through it in the seven years since the last Twilight Sad album would be an understatement. He lost his mother to dementia, became a father, and his own mental health struggles led to the band cancelling a tour with the Cure. The day we talk about the Scottish band’s sixth album, It’s the Long Goodbye, turns out to be the anniversary of his mum’s death. “It’s all right,” says Graham. “It seems like a good day to talk about it.”

Speaking from his home in north-east Scotland on a dark, murky evening, Graham is unflinchingly open about his experiences, often moved to tears as he recounts the last few years. “I was so ill at some points while I was writing these songs that it’s all quite hazy,” he says. “But the moments are coming back to me – of why I wrote a certain song. When I listen to one, I can feel it, ‘Fuck, you were really in it.’”

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:01 am

‘There’s no flag for people like us’: electro-punk duo Chalk on spanning divides in post-Troubles Belfast

Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard’s music is as hybrid as they are, with their Protestant-Catholic and English-Irish heritages. They explain why they still need to counter hate

In Belfast’s Kelly’s Cellars, a bar that has been bringing the city’s people together since 1720, trad music bleeds from somewhere deep within as Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard arrive mizzle-damp from the street. They settle into a corner alcove and reach for two pints of stout.

Together they form the duo Chalk. As Kneecap have exploded out of Belfast, Chalk’s longer fuse has been quietly burning alongside them. Formed when the pair met studying film at university, they have spent five years building a live show that can compete with the best in the UK and Ireland: imagine Underworld’s rave beatitude and the coiled menace of Nine Inch Nails but rooted in Belfast music, from the punk of Stiff Little Fingers and Rudi through to the beats of David Holmes and the Sugar Sweet-era rave scene. “We wanted to make as much noise as we could with just two people,” says Goddard. “But we never wanted to be limited by that.”

Published: March 18, 2026, 3:51 pm

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

When the Forest Breathes by Suzanne Simard review – the Indiana Jones of trees returns

The author of Finding the Mother Tree is back with an inspiring call to the next generation of ecologists

It’s 2021, and Suzanne Simard is in a police vehicle, being escorted off a protest site in Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island, where activists are locked in a standoff with the Teal-Jones Group, an industrial logging company. She decides to give the apprehending officer a piece of her mind – in the way only an earnest Canadian forestry ecologist can. “It takes decades for clearcut forests to stop emitting more carbon than they sequester, and centuries more to recover the sink strength of the original stands,” she tells him. “We don’t have decades for these forests to recover from clearcutting. In the hundreds of years it takes for a forest to mature, our planet could warm upwards of five degrees celsius.”

The officer is unmoved. But if you were responsible for one of the nearly 6m views tallied on Simard’s 2016 TED talk, you’ll know it was worth a try: few people can speak about trees with quite as much conviction as Simard. One part Indiana Jones, one part Mister Rogers, she is a Canadian national treasure and global environmental icon. When she’s not getting taken away from protests by the authorities, she’s dodging the flames of forest fires in the Cariboo Mountains of British Columbia, exploring the Haida Gwaii archipelago (“Canada’s Galapagos”), or off learning Indigenous practices in the Amazon. In her TED talk, she describes once sprinting through the forest with a syringe filled with radioactive isotopes in each hand as she is chased by a grizzly bear.

Published: March 18, 2026, 7:00 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

Why an up-and-coming indie developer is returning Microsoft’s money

In this week’s newsletter: the creators of All Will Rise on standing up to the tech giant – and joining the No Games for Genocide movement

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Video games are in a funding crisis. Investor money flowed freely during the pandemic gaming boom, but now the well has run dry. It is increasingly difficult, for indie developers especially, to get the capital to make games. It is extremely unusual, then, to hear of a developer returning an investor’s money. Yet that is what Speculative Agency, developers of All Will Rise, have just done.

Last year, All Will Rise, a deck-building game about a team of activists fighting for the future of their oligarch-run city, received money from Microsoft as part of a developer acceleration programme. In late-2025, however, the team became aware of No Games for Genocide, a collective of developers, journalists, union organisers and others that came together as a result of Israeli assault on Gaza to protest against “material and commercial ties between the games industry and enabling genocide, war crimes, and the military industrial complex”.

Published: March 18, 2026, 3:00 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

‘The world was hard – this movie was meant to be a hug’: Ugo Bienvenu on his heartwarming eco-fable Arco

The polymath French film-maker might be a pessimist, but his Oscar-nominated animated film is one of light and hope – even if he did have to fund it himself

There are grey clouds over Los Angeles, and the sky is spitting. “It never rains in LA,” says Ugo Bienvenu. “But every time I come here, it rains.” For the past eight months, the French animator has been on the campaign trail, in LA and elsewhere, with Arco, which was nominated for best animated feature at the Oscars on Sunday. It’s a gorgeous family animation, combining ET’s big heart with the artistry of Studio Ghibli. But travelling has meant being absent for long stretches from his home in Paris, where he lives with his wife and two small children.

This trip, Bienvenu’s family has flown out to LA with him for the first time, which explains why he’s speaking to me over a video call from a drizzly garden. “I’m outside, so they can make noise,” he says, lighting a cigarette. As he paces, I catch a glimpse through the patio doors of his four-year-old daughter kneeling at the coffee table, colouring.

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:00 am

Homework till midnight and ‘one breakdown a week’: the mysterious art school keeping a forgotten style alive

Since 1892, a workshop in Brussels has taught aspiring painters the technique of trompe l’oeil. It’s brutal work, the artists say – so why do people travel from all around the world to master it?

One morning last February, in a chilly studio in Brussels, 28 people in white coats gathered to watch Sylvie Van der Kelen paint the sky. “The first touch of the brush is generally the best,” said Van der Kelen as light, pink-tinged clouds began to appear. “It is preferable not to make revisions.”

For a few days this winter I was allowed to sit in on classes at the École Van der Kelen-Logelain, a mythologised painting school in Brussels that is unlike any other arts education institution in the world. Run by the same family since it was founded in 1892, the Van der Kelen course takes place every winter underneath its glass and wrought iron roof, extending out of the back of a gothic brick townhouse.

Published: March 19, 2026, 8:00 am

Manure dryers and devil dancers: the British empire’s attempt to use photography to control India

In a new exhibition, the featured images reflect Britain’s attempts to classify and curb the subcontinent’s population, but they also demonstrate the nobility of their subjects – and the futility of the task

At first, and without the context, someone looking at this collection of 150-year-old photographs of Indian men and women might think they were looking at compelling portraits. The faces are of individuals with piercing eyes and a striking presence.

But context changes everything. The images were taken by British colonialists as part of a great project of photographic ethnography, intended to classify and categorise their subjects.

Untitled (Indian family in Singapore), late-19th century, GR Lambert & Co

Published: March 19, 2026, 7:00 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

Zendaya and Tom Holland: are the gen Z power couple married? Nine things you need to know

They like to keep things private, but the Hollywood stars keep dropping clues. Did they recently tie the knot – or is this all just promo?

Congratulations to Zendaya and Tom Holland, the widely liked gen Z power couple who recently got married after nearly a decade together. Or did they?

Weeks after Zendaya’s stylist, Law Roach, seemed to spill the news on the red carpet, rumours are still swirling, with neither (alleged) bride nor (purported) groom rushing to put them to rest.

Published: March 19, 2026, 5:00 am

Tell us your experiences of being in a throuple

We’d like to hear from people who are in a throuple or who used to be in one, and what their relationship was like

The Guardian’s Saturday magazine is looking for throuples to talk honestly about the experience of love and commitment.

We’re particularly interested in talking to throuples living together under one roof, as well as throuples who are raising children as a unit of three parents. Is it easier to manage the chore rota and childcare when there are more adults in the room? Or more difficult?

Published: March 18, 2026, 1:51 pm

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: primary colours are back, but styling them isn’t child’s play

Bold shades are all over the catwalks, but they can be tricky to wear. These tricks will make them work in the real world

You would think primary shades would be the easiest colours to wear. Red, yellow, blue: we can name these before we can tie our shoelaces. They are not sophisticated colours, such as Armani greige or Pantone favourite Mocha Mousse. They are not challenging-to-wear colours, like chartreuse or mustard. They are Mr Men colours. So wearing them must be child’s play, surely.

And yet they are weirdly tricky to wear. They can feel shouty and basic: the getting dressed equivalent of speaking loudly without saying anything particularly interesting, which is – to paint it in primary colours – not what any of us are aiming for.

Published: March 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘The way the world is, something daft is appealing’ – why everything from pizzas to podcasts has a cartoon character on it

So-called rubber hose style is putting a smile on everyday products, even as some designers plead that it’s time to ‘stop putting arms and legs on everything’. What’s behind the ubiquity of this wholesome branding?

A bagel embodied as a human, with unexpected little arms and a sweet face. A sandwich giving the peace sign. A leather jacket-wearing fish brandishing a spatula. A chess board on the march. A rugby ball making a dash for it. A smiling pizza, tongue dangling, clambering from a box.

Perhaps you have seen such a character. Chiefly in the branding – and merch – of an independent pizza place or sandwich shop, in a natural wine bar or brew pub. Though its loose limbs now stretch far and wide; to podcasts, internet talk shows and even global fashion labels.

Published: March 18, 2026, 8:00 am

A moment that changed me: I applied mucous-tinted mascara – and loved the reaction

I was 12 and it was the first makeup I had ever worn. While people’s responses ranged right up to genuine repulsion, they couldn’t quell my happiness

I wore makeup for the first time just after I turned 12: a tube of green mascara from a pound shop in my home town in south Wales. This was not a chic emerald or a flattering forest green. It was a frosted, mucous-tinted green – a colour that looked like the aftermath of a minor chemical incident involving Shrek. There was a reason it cost only a pound.

I slicked it on with no real understanding of beauty, but a clear instinct that I loved how it altered my face. The outside world was less enthused. People hated it. Teachers told me to take it off; I’d then reapply it in the toilets. Girls in my year looked at me with genuine repulsion. It wasn’t pretty, or cute – so nobody understood why I would want to look like that.

Published: March 18, 2026, 6:45 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

French Sundays: should you dedicate a day each week to sex and a stroll?

A relaxed, Gallic approach to the last day of le weekend could be just what we all need to feel healthier and happier

Name: French Sunday.

Age: As a viral happiness trend, quite new. As an idea, quite old. Old Testament, even …

Published: March 18, 2026, 4:12 pm

‘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

Inside the fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck

Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones. Victims’ families blame what they say is the faulty design of a truck Elon Musk calls ‘apocalypse-proof’

When sheriff deputies arrived at the scene of a late-night crash off a desolate Texas road in August 2024, they could see a giant pyre through heavy smoke.

According to police reports detailing the events of that night, the officers tried to approach the vehicle, but the fire burned too intensely. They saw it was a Tesla Cybertruck and couldn’t see anyone inside. So they combed the surrounding area for the driver.

Published: March 18, 2026, 1:00 pm

Off Duty: The Crime

On the evening of 29 December 2011, Officer Clifton Lewis was moonlighting as a security guard at a Chicago minimart when two men walked in. They shot Lewis several times, then took off with his gun and police star. A week later, police had their suspects: four men affiliated with a gang called the Spanish Cobras. For hours, under intense police questioning, they all said they didn’t do it. But that didn’t seem to matter.

This is episode one of Off Duty, an investigation by the Guardian’s Melissa Segura

Published: March 18, 2026, 10:30 am

Tell us: what has someone done that made you feel less lonely?

We would like to hear about the ways people have helped each other feel less isolated

Was someone there for you when you were feeling lonely? As part of the Guardian’s Well Actually series, we would like to hear about the ways people have helped each other feel less isolated. You can tell us your story below.

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Published: March 18, 2026, 10:32 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