My mother’s best advice: go in to bat for the ones you love

She wasn’t a great one for dispensing wisdom. Instead, she fought for me whenever I most needed it

Mum was a brilliant non-giver of advice. Now Dad, he had his pearls. “If you do something, do it with a good heart.” It sounded platitudinous to me, but he had a point. And then there was his favourite: “If you think something bad about someone, say it up there [pointing to his head] but not out loud.” Dad was a good man, but that infuriated me.

Mum played a bigger part in my life. She often had to fight like crazy for me – to keep me in school when I’d told the dinner lady to fuck off at the age of five (no, I don’t know where it came from); to take on the doctors who labelled me a malingerer when I had encephalitis; to allow me back into mainstream education after I’d had three years off, and finally to persuade the University of Leeds to let me in after I’d messed up my A-levels.

Published: March 14, 2026, 5:00 am

The escalation trap: how the Iran war could become more costly and complex

Iran’s is trying to create wedges between Gulf states and the US, but Trump is very comfortable on the ‘escalatory ladder’

In its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proving ground for two competing concepts of military escalation, each of which threatens to become a trap.

On one side, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have failed thus far in their ill-defined and shifting strategic aims. Despite killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the clerical regime remains and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is unsecured. Airstrikes are intensifying and hitting a greater number of targets.

Published: March 14, 2026, 5:00 am

‘I could barely think because it was so bad’: how pain changes us

After living with chronic pain, Darcey Steinke wanted to know how it affected others. Her memoir, This Is the Door, explores both isolation and freedom

Chronic pain has a way of upending a life.

In her memoir This Is the Door, writer Darcey Steinke writes that “pain, like failure, breaks into our everyday lives and upsets who we thought we were and what we thought we could do”.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:00 pm

AI-generated Iran images are widespread. How do we know what to believe? | Margaret Sullivan

Fake pictures look authentic – and authentic ones get mistaken for fake. Here are three rules for navigating the war coverage

The videos look authentic – and they are spreading like wildfire on social media. One, for example, shows Iranian missiles exploding upon the airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. Another shows US soldiers being held at gunpoint by Iranian military.

They aren’t real but – often made with the help of cutting-edge AI – they are wildly misleading. They may get debunked, but somehow that doesn’t make a dent.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:00 pm

Sinners or One Battle: what can we learn from this year’s anonymous Oscar ballots?

While Academy voters are supposed to keep their picks secret, another batch of anonymous ballots have leaked – giving us some insight on a hard-to-call race

• Oscars 2026: how to watch, nominations, what to read and predictions

It took a great deal of blood, sweat and tweets, but in 2016 the Academy finally took notice and started to embrace both diversity and modernity. The #OscarsSoWhite furore over two straight years of all-white nominees (Michael B Jordan’s Creed snub was in my opinion the cruelest) led to a dramatic shake-up and one that has continued ever since with more women, people of colour and international voters added to what had been an overwhelmingly homogenous base.

It has all led to an Oscars race that is increasingly harder to predict using old-fashioned thinking in ways that have become rather thrilling over time, the idea of an “Oscar movie” now far more slippery. Films such as Parasite, Anora, Moonlight, Anatomy of a Fall, Nomadland, Get Out and The Zone of Interest have now found their way into the major categories in past years, and this year’s crop showcases further progression – from foreign language picks to outsider narratives to pricklier characters than ever before.

Published: March 13, 2026, 3:02 pm

Trump is the weakest he’s ever been. That makes him so dangerous on Iran | Moira Donegan

Why would Trump launch a foreign war when he is so domestically weak? Precisely because he is weak

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, members of the George W Bush administration presented the case for war exhaustively, repeatedly, and in public. The then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who played a major role in green-lighting waterboarding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, wrote an editorial in the New York Times claiming that Iraq was lying about its so-called “weapons of mass destruction”.

Meanwhile, Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, went to a meeting of the United Nations security council in New York. There, before America and the world, he held up a tiny vial of substance meant to represent anthrax, a chemical weapon that had terrorized the US in a series of mail attacks just over a year before; Powell claimed that Iraq had the weapon and was willing to use it. Bush himself routinely addressed the American people, making the case for war. They were all lying, it turned out, but the lie served a purpose: it was a concession to the idea that the American people would have a say in whether or not their country went to war.

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:00 am

Middle East crisis live: Iran warns of retaliation after Trump says military targets on Kharg Island ‘obliterated’

Trump also threatens to hit island’s oil infrastructure if Tehran does not allow passage for ships via Strait of Hormuz

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Iranian media has reported there is no damage to its oil infrastructure on Kharg Island, following US attacks that Trump claimed had “obliterated” military targets on the Island.

Iran’s armed forces have threatened to destroy US-linked oil infrastructure if its own energy facilities are hit.

Published: March 14, 2026, 5:56 am

‘No clear goal’: lack of Iran war plan has unleashed chaos and could stymie US military for decades, say critics

White House contends with reality of shoddy preparations for war and unclear conditions for victory

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As US and Israeli jets descended to deliver the opening salvos of the war in Iran, Donald Trump’s back-of-the-envelope plan for regime change in Tehran was about to run into the reality of the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

That reality came quickly.

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:51 pm

Pete Hegseth attacks media for not being positive enough about US attacks on Iran

US defense head is eager to frame operation as a success – and slam journalists for not portraying it in a positive light

• Has the pro-Maga media turned on the Pentagon over Iran?

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Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield.

Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:36 pm

Anti-ICE protesters accused of being part of antifa found guilty of support for terrorism in Texas

Case was seen as major test of the first amendment and whether the US could use broad anti-terrorism statute to prosecute leftwing protesters

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A group of protesters in Texas was found guilty of providing support for terrorism and other charges on Friday in a closely watched case in which prosecutors alleged anti-ICE activists were actually part of an antifa cell.

The case was seen as a major test of the first amendment and whether the government could use a broad anti-terrorism statute to prosecute leftwing protesters. It marked the first time the government alleged individuals were part of an antifa terrorist cell in a criminal prosecution.

Published: March 13, 2026, 10:29 pm

Judge blocks justice department from subpoenaing Fed chair Jerome Powell

Trump DoJ’s investigation was purportedly about the management of the central bank’s renovation

A federal judge on Friday blocked the justice department from serving subpoenas to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell in an inquiry purported to be about the management of the central bank’s renovation.

Powell disclosed the surprise investigation on 11 January, and described the move as a threat to Fed independence and part of the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure the Fed to cut rates.

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:45 pm

Trump announces Ric Grenell departure as Kennedy Center head

President thanks Grenell for ‘outstanding work’ and says Matt Floca, vice-president of operations, will take over

Donald Trump has announced that Ric Grenell, the longtime Republican foreign policy adviser who oversaw far-reaching changes at the Kennedy Center, which prompted many artists to abandon the performing arts venue, will be replaced by Matt Floca, vice-president of operations at the center.

Trump made the announcement on social media that he has replaced Grenell, thanking him for the “outstanding work he has done”. Floca was photographed in December personally overseeing the addition of Trump’s name to the center’s facade. Grenell’s departure comes as the Kennedy Center prepares to close this summer for a two-year renovation.

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:20 pm

Meta reportedly plans sweeping layoffs as AI costs increase

Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech

Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.

No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said.

Published: March 14, 2026, 12:55 am

US airports ask for donations for unpaid TSA staff amid partial government shutdown

TSA employees have been working in US airports without pay since the partial shutdown began in February

A rising number of US airports are asking for donations to support employees affected by the partial government shutdown with airport security officials missing their first full paychecks Friday.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees have been working in airports around the US without pay since a shutdown began in February after Republicans and Democrats failed to reach a funding agreement. Democrats have since refused to support a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA’s parent agency, without first receiving guaranteed immigration enforcement reforms.

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:30 pm

Suspect in Michigan synagogue attack had lost family in Israeli strike on Lebanon

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, who was born in Lebanon and became a naturalized US citizen, lost two brothers, a niece and a nephew in the airstrike

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The armed suspect who drove a vehicle into the hallway of a large Michigan synagogue complex that includes a school had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon just last week, an official said on Friday.

A potential mass-casualty event was averted when security guards already in place at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township on the outskirts of Detroit killed the driver before any harm could come to the synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at the early childhood center there on Thursday afternoon.

Published: March 13, 2026, 6:33 pm

Kyrsten Sinema says in court filings she had a ‘romantic’ relationship with guard

Former US senator’s admission comes after Heather Ammel sued her under North Carolina’s ‘homewrecker’ law

Kyrsten Sinema, a former US senator, admitted in court filings to having a “romantic and intimate” relationship with a married man who was a member of her security detail during her final year in office – but argues that his estranged wife should not be able to sue her over it.

The admission to the multi-state affair came in response to a lawsuit filed by Heather Ammel, who accused the former Arizona senator in federal court of breaking up her marriage under North Carolina’s so-called “homewrecker” law.

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:19 pm

Andrew and Peter Mandelson pictured in bathrobes with Jeffrey Epstein

Trio captured relaxing around a wooden table in photo believed to have been taken on Martha’s Vineyard

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson have been pictured in bathrobes alongside Jeffrey Epstein, in the first known photograph of them together.

The trio were captured relaxing outside at a wooden table with mugs decorated with the American flag in the newly unearthed photograph believed to have been taken on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts that is favoured by the wealthy.

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:02 pm

Catholic priest in Louisiana charged with child sexual abuse

Korey LaVergne, 37, of the Lafayette diocese, charged with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile

A Roman Catholic priest in the south-west Louisiana diocese where the US church’s clergy abuse scandal effectively started decades ago has been formally charged with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile.

A bill of information from the district attorney for Acadia parish charges 37-year-old Korey LaVergne with three counts of felony indecent behavior with a juvenile who was 15 at the time of the alleged offenses.

Published: March 13, 2026, 9:13 pm

What does Trump’s restrictive voting bill include – and does it have a chance of becoming law?

Every voter would be affected by the Save America act, as people would face more barriers to voting: ‘It’s a recipe for disaster’

Donald Trump has vowed that he will not sign any other legislation until Republicans’ massive voting bill, the Save America act, is passed. The bill would upend voting for all Americans in the middle of a federal midterm election year and create costly, chaotic changes for elections workers.

The Senate is set to consider the legislation next week, though Senate leaders say they don’t have the votes to get over the filibuster hurdle, essentially dooming the bill for failure.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:23 pm

Trump’s ‘racist hate speech’ and migration crackdowns violate human rights, UN panel says

Watchdog ‘disturbed’ by president and US political leaders’ use of dehumanising language to target migrants

The “racist hate speech” being used by Donald Trump and other US political leaders, along with the country’s intensified crackdowns on migration, has led to “grave human rights violations,” a UN watchdog has said.

In a non-binding decision issued this week, the UN‘s committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (CERD) called on the US to uphold its obligations as a signatory to the international convention on combating racism and discrimination.

Published: March 13, 2026, 2:55 pm

Has the pro-Maga media turned on the Pentagon over Iran?

New pro-Trump press corps has surprised some skeptics with tough questions, though sycophancy fears remain

The question, asked during a 4 March press briefing with Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and Gen Dan Caine, was a good one: if the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities during an operation last June, “what was the intelligence that suggested that somehow they became a threat once again that required us to get involved with Operation Epic Fury?”

It was asked by Heather Mullins, who works for LindellTV, the television network founded by Mike Lindell, the pillow entrepreneur, Trump cheerleader and 2020 election denier.

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:00 am

Seven in 10 Americans say Trump tariffs have cost them more money

Exclusive survey finds negative economic impacts felt across party lines as White House doubles down on tariffs

Seven in 10 Americans say Donald Trump’s tariffs have led to them paying higher prices, according to an exclusive new poll for the Guardian.

The Harris Poll survey presents Republicans with a major problem in the battle for the upcoming midterm elections. The majority of all voters (72%) believe Trump’s tariffs have had a negative rather than a positive impact and 67% said tariffs aren’t the right solution for improving the economy.

64% of Republicans agreed that Trump’s tariffs had led to higher prices compared with 77% of Democrats and 67% of independents who believed the same.

60% of Republicans also said that tariffs had had more of a negative impact on consumers than a positive one, compared with 81% of Democrats and 75% of independents.

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:00 am

Fake rooms, props and a script to lure victims: inside an abandoned Cambodia scam centre

Sprawling compound, including mock-up banks and police offices, uncovered by Thai military during border clashes

It is as if you have walked into a branch of one of Vietnam’s banks. A row of customer service desks, divided by plastic screens, with landline phones, promotional leaflets and staff business cards. A seated waiting area and a private meeting room. All of it features the OCB bank’s logo, or its trademark green colour.

This is not a genuine bank branch, however. It’s one of various “mock up” rooms inside a sprawling compound on the Thai-Cambodian border, where criminal groups are accused of using elaborate and industrial-scale fraud schemes to trick victims into handing over money.

Published: March 14, 2026, 2:25 am

‘It would be an earthquake for France’: is Marseille about to vote in the far-right?

A National Rally victory in France’s second city in municipal elections that start on Sunday would be hailed by the party as a step towards taking the presidency next year

Nathalie, a market trader in her 40s, had woken early to prepare a pan of paella rice. She was spooning it into tubs at a market in southern Marseille last week when a crowd of far-right canvassers approached, promising cleaner and safer streets if she voted for them in the local elections.

“Our cash tin was stolen right here at Christmas time,” Nathalie said. “I’ve had a bag stolen too. It tends to happen at the end of the day, around 7pm. I worry for the elderly grandmas. I had a necklace ripped off me in the city centre once.”

Published: March 14, 2026, 5:00 am

Oscars 2026: who should win… and who actually will? - The Latest

After months of red carpets and awards season campaigns, it’s all eyes on Hollywood’s night of nights - the Academy Awards. It looks like it will be a fight between Ryan Coogler’s thriller Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation One Battle After Another for most of the big prizes, with Jessie Buckley’s performance in Hamnet the clear favourite for best actress. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s film editor, Catherine Shoard

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:34 pm

Please drive carefully: scientists plan to transport volatile antimatter for first time

Cern researchers are testing traps capable of moving antimatter, which explodes into energy as soon as it comes into contact with regular matter

When the truck pulls away from the building at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, all eyes will be on its precious cargo, a one-tonne device containing some of the most exotic material on Earth.

The 20-minute test run around the campus, pencilled in for later this month, will mark the world’s first attempt to transport antimatter, a substance so delicate that when it meets normal matter, both are consumed in a burst of pure energy.

Published: March 14, 2026, 5:00 am

The Madison review – Michelle Pfeiffer’s new drama is thuddingly simplistic

This yawnsome homespun six-parter from the creator of Yellowstone aims to teach the womenfolk a lesson by dropping them into untamed, plain-talkin’ Montana. It’s full of terrible jokes and cloying aphorisms

Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) is laughing at trout. “Hah-hah,” says the rugged retiree, up to his buttocks in river as a Yellowstone cutthroat sploshes obligingly into his net. “I’m keepin’ it, and you’re cookin’ it,” he barks at his younger brother, Paul, who would rather Preston release the hapless vertebrate back into the wild but nevertheless respects his sibling’s need to connect with his inner Cro-Magnon (“the love of fishin’ goes back to early man …”).

Paul is played by Matthew Fox, who was once in Lost but is now marooned in a drama that requires him to say things like: “I make a memory a day, brother … sometimes more.” Despite this, Paul, too, is laughing. “Heh,” he says, as he and Preston splash and frolic in their matching utility slacks. “Heheheh.”

Published: March 14, 2026, 5:00 am

In my 20s ‘treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen’ felt like power. In my 50s I see that dating strategy for what it is: fear

I am capable, a woman of substance. Yet I get a ‘maybe’ from a man I meet on a dating app and I regress three decades

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I was raised on the scripture of the 1990s: Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen. It was the Golden Rule. The dating equivalent of Slip, Slop, Slap. Whispered at sleepovers. Bolded in the margins of Dolly magazine. Never pick up on the first ring. Never say you’re free on a Saturday. Be the prize, not the contestant.

In my 20s, this felt like power. (It was mostly fear in better lighting but I didn’t know that yet.) I mastered breezy indifference. I timed my texts to the minute: double the time he took, plus 10 for mystery. I thought I was teaching men my value. I thought I was training them to love me.

Published: March 13, 2026, 2:00 pm

Ex-CIA analyst David McCloskey on the Mossad’s intelligence inside Iran: ‘I was surprised’

The podcast host and author of The Persian reflects on why Israel’s precision in Iran caught him off guard

As the author of a novel depicting the Mossad’s snatch-and-assassination squads inside Iran, David McCloskey was less shocked than most by the stunning killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the theocratic regime’s most powerful figure, in a strike carried out by Israel.

What caught him more off guard were reports that the up-to-the-minute, pinpoint accurate intelligence essential for its success was provided by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Wouldn’t life be easier if I were white?’: inside a provocative race-swap body horror

In director Amy Wang’s debut movie Slanted, a mysterious procedure allows people of colour to become white, speaking to her own difficult feelings as a teen

In March 2021, six Asian women were killed in a mass shooting in Atlanta. Amy Wang, an Asian Australian writer and director, who emigrated to America in 2015, remembers that tragedy well. “It was the first time I felt genuinely unsafe here,” she says. Alongside a growing fear, childhood memories resurfaced – the internal and external racism and the exhaustion of never quite fitting in. “I moved to Australia when I was seven and didn’t speak English – it was a tough time for me,” she admits. And then there was one particular recurring thought. “There were many times when I’d wake up as a teenager and think to myself: ‘Wouldn’t life be easier if I were white?’” So, she turned that past feeling into art.

The art is Slanted, Wang’s audacious feature debut – a film whose premise is, by design, completely unhinged. An insecure Asian American high schooler undergoes a procedure at a mysterious cosmetics clinic called Ethnos (tagline: if you can’t beat them … be them) that renders people of colour visibly white, permanently. It’s taking ‘I don’t see colour’ to the ultra-extreme: equality achieved only when we all look the same, and that means whiteness. The surgery works. And then things get complicated.

Published: March 13, 2026, 9:04 am

Inside The Pitt: the stunning, smash-hit medical drama from the team behind ER

It has swept awards, been lauded for its accuracy and become a word-of-mouth triumph. Now, after a big delay, The Pitt launches in the UK. We visit the set to meet the team behind this tense, unflinching US medical drama

Like many US hospitals, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (PTMC) is a place where time melts away. Rain or shine, 1am or 1pm, everything is bathed in the same retina-frying fluorescent light. Wait times often exceed several hours; in the lobby is a barrage of all-caps warnings (“aggressive behavior will NOT be tolerated”), while several TVs play clips of a Deadliest Catch-style show in two-minute loops. Purgatory, it seems, looks a lot like an American hospital … as recreated on a soundstage in Burbank, California.

On the day I visit PTMC, the 52-bed ER on the Warner Bros lot, the hold-up is some babies. The infant actors are here to film a second season scene for The Pitt, the HBO Max medical drama that singlehandedly resuscitated the genre back from its Grey’s Anatomy flatline, swept almost every television award in the US and is now, finally, heading for the UK. (No bad blood, though: on set, I glimpse a flyer for a Pitt softball game against the crew of Seattle Grace.) Developed by the team behind 90s hospital hit ER, The Pitt follows a melange of hospital workers – the doctors, nurses, social workers, security and administrative staff of a cash-strapped emergency room in Pittsburgh – as they deal with everything from gunshot wounds to burnout, fentanyl overdoses to dreaded note-taking, with all the emotional trauma in between.

Published: March 13, 2026, 1:00 pm

Trump’s war in Iran marks the culmination of his imperial presidency | Mohamad Bazzi

The path to this reckless war was paved by the collapse of accountability in Washington

Since he reclaimed the White House, Donald Trump loves being compared with a monarch with unprecedented powers. “LONG LIVE THE KING!” Trump said on social media last year, after his administration tried to kill congestion pricing in New York. In October, the US president posted an AI-generated video of himself dumping brown sludge on protesters who participated in a daylong mass protest, known as “No Kings”, against his administration. In the video, Trump wore a crown and was flying a fighter jet labeled “KING TRUMP”.

He has also launched a relentless campaign of self-aggrandizement, plastering his name and face on government buildings, including the Kennedy Center and the US Institute of Peace. Trump demolished the White House’s East Wing and is overseeing plans to replace it with an enormous ballroom; the National Park Service designated the president’s birthday as a free-admission day at national parks; and the US treasury is poised to issue $1 coins featuring Trump’s image to commemorate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence later this year.

Published: March 13, 2026, 2:00 pm

Even taking Trump’s confused reasons for the Iran war at face value, it’s still a total disaster | Jonathan Freedland

Two weeks in, it’s increasingly clear that the US-led war has taken every problem it aimed to solve – and made it worse

It’s not easy, but let’s try to look at this war in the best, most charitable light. Let’s try to see the US-Israel conflict with Iran as its prosecutors and advocates would want us to see it.

They would say that it has two aims, both legitimate. The first is to weaken if not remove a regime that has done terrible evil to its own people. Who could mourn the supreme leader of a government that, according to one report, gunned down 30,000 of its citizens on the streets in just two days on 8 and 9 January? Listen to those Iranians who long ago reached the glum conclusion that the only way they could be rid of their tormentors was through external military action. As one exiled Iranian put it to me this week: “The Iranian people have been begging the world for help for so many years. They tried voting for change in 2009; they were killed. They tried protesting in 2019, 2022 and this year; they were massacred in the tens of thousands … They were out of all other options.”

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:18 pm

Ella Baron on Trump, Netanyahu and the victims of the war in the Middle East – cartoon

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Published: March 13, 2026, 5:56 pm

Six years after Breonna Taylor’s death, America is weakening the rules that could have saved her | Jamil Smith

Following Taylor’s death, the US limited no-knock warrants. But the Trump administration has quietly rescinded those limits

The night Breonna Taylor died began quietly.

She had spent the evening at home in Louisville. The 26-year-old was an emergency room technician, someone who worked to prevent other people’s tragedies.

Published: March 13, 2026, 10:00 am

How does Trump keep henchmen like Rubio in check? He literally makes them wear shoes that are far too big | Marina Hyde

The art of the heel: if you want a shot at the US presidency, you better be ready to sartorially debase yourself on the world stage

The secretary of state of the United States of America is openly slopping around in a pair of too-big shoes that he has to wear because the president gave them to him. Why? Possibly as a piece of exquisite and complex satire about the size of his penis; possibly because Marco Rubio exaggerated his shoe size because he rightly assumed it would be linked to presidential speculation about the size of his penis.

According to the vice-president, JD Vance, Donald Trump gives all his best boys a particular brand of shoe, either after guessing their size or making them disclose it. “The president, he kind of leans back in his chair,” explained Vance a couple of months ago, “and he says: ‘You know, you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.’” Strong words, particularly from a president with such famously tiny hands. Incidentally, Vance casually dropped it into the anecdote that he wore a 13.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:58 pm

The king’s visit to the US must go ahead despite Trump's terrible military aggression | Simon Jenkins

A state visit is a connecting of people, not governments; of cultures, not commentators – our national bonds should be honoured

Should King Charles’s state visit to the United States next month be cancelled? The case for doing so is powerful. America is waging an unprovoked war on Iran in which more than 1,000 innocent people have already been killed. The collateral damage to the global economy, including Britain’s, is becoming astronomical. All Donald Trump can do is insult Britain’s prime minister as a “loser” and “no Winston Churchill” for failing to join him. Should the monarch honour such a man by attending a Washington banquet?

The call is close. The occasion is the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States with the declaration of independence. Of course this merits celebration. But now? British public opinion is emphatically opposed to the US war on Iran. Many more Britons think the royal visit should be abandoned (46%) than think it should go ahead (36%), with 18% undecided. Just as the war is staged by Trump for personal political gain, so he can be expected to exploit a royal visit.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist and the author of A Short History of America: from Tea Party to Trump

Published: March 13, 2026, 10:00 am

The Guardian view on the Iran war and international law: it’s worse than a mistake; it’s a crime | Editorial

Double standards in Europe and elsewhere are laid bare by the muted response to US and Israeli aggression and the killing of civilians

When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the international condemnation from Europe and elsewhere was loud and clear. Leaders did not expect legal threats to shift Vladimir Putin or end war crimes by his troops. But they understood the importance of naming what had happened as an illegal act of aggression, and of seeking to hold those responsible accountable.

The same countries have been strikingly muted since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. This too was an act of aggression. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez has been lonely in his forthright condemnation, though Norway and others also pointed to the breach of international law. Meanwhile, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, offered unreserved support and Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, declared that it was “not the moment to lecture our partners and allies”.

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

Published: March 13, 2026, 6:08 pm

Great haul of China: how table-topping nation rose to be a Winter Paralympic power

Their sporting dominance is all the more striking after winning a solitary medal eight years ago but no country can match them now

With two days of competition left at the Winter Paralympics there is no doubt who will finish top of the medal table. At close of play on Friday, China had a total of 33 medals, the same as their nearest rivals the USA and Italy combined. They have won gold in four of the Games’ six sports – cross-country skiing, curling, snowboarding and biathlon – and are in line for a medal in para-ice hockey too. This sporting dominance is all the more striking because, only eight years ago, China was nowhere.

At the Pyeongchang Games, the Chinese won a solitary medal, gold in the mixed team curling. Three of that team are competing here at Milano Cortina and a fourth, Wang Meng, already has a gold medal around her neck after winning the inaugural mixed doubles alongside her partner Yang Jinqiao. “I’m very, very proud, very, very honoured, and also very grateful,” she said after beating the Korean pair 9-6 following a tie-break end. “I’m so grateful to so many people who have helped us along the way, and [to be] finally standing on this podium”.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:22 pm

Another Farmer hat-trick lifts USA to verge of fifth straight Paralympic sled hockey gold

• Farmer hat trick powers USA past Czechia 6-1

• Americans reach fifth straight Paralympic final

• USA move one win from fifth consecutive gold

The United States defeated Czechia 6-1 on Friday in the semi-finals of the Paralympic sled hockey tournament in Milan, advancing to the gold medal game for a fifth consecutive Games.

Declan Farmer scored three goals and assisted on the other three as the Americans pulled away after conceding the opening goal. Farmer’s hat trick – his fourth in four games at these Paralympics – set records for most goals and most points in a single Paralympic tournament. He now has 14 goals and 24 points in Milan.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:16 pm

USA’s Noah Elliott and Kate Delson win Paralympic banked slalom gold

• Elliott wins men’s SB-LL1 banked slalom title

• Delson captures women’s SB-LL2 gold for US

• Schultz earns bronze in final Paralympic race

Noah Elliott of the United States won gold in the men’s SB-LL1 banked slalom on Friday at the Milan Cortina Paralympics, while fellow American Kate Delson captured the women’s SB-LL2 title in para snowboarding.

Elliott posted the two fastest times of the competition, finishing the course in 58.96sec on his first run and improving slightly to 58.94sec on his second. In banked slalom, riders take two runs down the course and their fastest time determines the final standings.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:17 pm

Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics 2026: day seven – in pictures

We take a look at the best images from the Games, including skiing, snowboarding and ice hockey

Published: March 13, 2026, 7:16 pm

USA see off Canada to book World Baseball Classic semi-final with Dominican Republic

• Judge keys early surge as US top Canada 5-3

• Americans advance to face Dominican Republic

• Miller fans side in ninth to seal quarter-final

Aaron Judge doubled and Pete Crow-Armstrong and Brice Turang each had two hits as the United States beat Canada 5-3 on Friday night to reach the World Baseball Classic semifinals.

The US squad rebounded after an 8-6 loss to Italy in pool play left them needing help to advance to this round.

Published: March 14, 2026, 3:38 am

Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews out for season with torn MCL after hit

• Leafs lose American star for rest of NHL season

• Toronto star suffered Grade 3 tear of left MCL

• Radko Gudas could face suspension after hit

Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews has a torn medial collateral ligament in his left knee and will miss the rest of the NHL season.

The team provided an injury update Friday night, a little under 24 hours since Matthews was knocked out of a game against Anaheim on a knee-on-knee hit from Radko Gudas.

Published: March 14, 2026, 12:29 am

From Run Nation to Power Slap: what is leading the dumbing down of sports?

From violent collision contests to celebrity-backed offshoots, spin-off sports are finding captive audiences. Their spectacle masks something more sinister

A few weeks ago a clip went viral of a strange new contact sport emerging from the antipodes. Two burly men, one of them holding a football, sprint at each other on a kind of catwalk, waiting for the bloop-bloop-bloop of an electronic countdown before they launch into their runs. Neither wears any kind of padding or protective gear. Surrounded by baying spectators, the men collide in the middle of the track, making impact through shoulders, knees, hips, stomachs: in most instances, one of the runners is knocked flat on his back or face from the force of the collision, and the other stands tall in triumph. “We are literally getting dumber as a civilization,” noted one of the many comments on the clip on X.

Run Nation Championship, as this new sport is known, launched in Australia last year, and is now holding combines ahead of RNC03, its third instalment. Many of the competing athletes seem, from the early video evidence, as wide as they are tall; the risk of injury – to their limbs, to their heads, to their brains – is obvious. But this is all part of the pitch. Like all new mixed martial arts and contact sports, RNC owes an obvious debt to UFC in the way it’s named, structured, and promoted; like UFC and UFC boss Dana White’s newer sport, Power Slap, in which two opponents face each other across a table and slap the side of each other’s faces as hard as they can until one collapses, Run Nation is not so much a sport as an exploration of the frontier of sporting violence, a macabre social experiment to see how far athletes will push their bodies in the pursuit of victory and money.

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:00 am

George Russell wins first F1 sprint race of season at Chinese Grand Prix

• Mercedes driver beats Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in Shanghai Sprint

• Lewis Hamilton third after tense opening to Formula One race

George Russell won the opening sprint race of the new Formula One season at the Chinese Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver ultimately took a strong win from pole position but only after a fierce to and fro with Lewis Hamilton during the opening phase of the race.

Charles Leclerc took second for Ferrari, with Hamilton in third, with the victory for Russell further cementing his position as favourite for the world championship and confirming that Mercedes will be remarkably hard to beat this season.

Published: March 14, 2026, 4:24 am

Crunch time: how England’s battle for Champions League places is shaping up

With nine games to go, we assess the Premier League teams behind Arsenal and Manchester City who are most likely to fill the remaining berths

Reasons for optimism: Michael Carrick recently professed himself as “definitely a glass half-full” manager so the interim surely looks at the final nine games and sees a huge opportunity. Particularly positive here are the fixtures with Aston Villa (Sunday), Chelsea (18 April) and Liverpool (2 May): three chances for Manchester United to seriously damage the Champions League qualification prospects of the three teams currently directly below them and enhance their own. Carrick’s men are third but only three points above Liverpool in sixth and, with fifth probably enough for a Champions League berth, beating even one of the three would be a big boost to hopes – provided results are rosy in United’s other fixtures.

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:00 pm

Hollywood in the gantry: Welsh derby gets Wrexham-heavy makeover

On fifth anniversary of their takeover, Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac showed off their ‘happy clapper’ credentials

The daily ritual of the modern football fan is well established: check the fixtures and TV listings, then decide which match to half-follow while gawping at social media as a second screen. On most nights in March this year there has been either a Premier League or Champions League game to provide turf-coloured backlight to the doomscroll. Until Friday night.

Clearly the suits at Sky Sports thought Wrexham v Swansea City on a Friday night needed its own sideshow. A clash between two historic Welsh clubs just five points apart in the battle for the Championship playoff places may not appeal to the TikTok generation. If only there were some Hollywood actors on hand to step into the content void, relegating Daniel Mann and Andy Hinchcliffe to second-string commentary choice.

Published: March 13, 2026, 10:48 pm

Keegan Bradley ‘still heartbroken’ by Ryder Cup loss but open to returning as USA captain

• He shoots 66 to make cut at Players Championship

• Rory McIlroy squeaks into third round with strong finish

Keegan Bradley has admitted to still being “heartbroken” by his American Ryder Cup team’s loss at Bethpage last year. Bradley is also keen to retain the US captaincy at Adare Manor next September, should Tiger Woods knock back the opportunity.

Luke Donald and Europe were set for a Bethpage rout before a rousing US recovery on day three. The visitors still won the trophy for a second time in succession. Bradley, who has returned to playing duties on the PGA Tour, remains wounded by the event and, as is the case with all Ryder Cups, the losing captain has been subject to heavy criticism.

Published: March 13, 2026, 7:32 pm

‘Complete absurdity’: Usyk slams Russia’s sporting return with eye on Fury trilogy

• Usyk condemns Russia’s return to global sport

• Ukrainian champion calls Olympic shift “absurd”

• Heavyweight star still targeting Fury trilogy

The world of sport appears to be softening the hardline stance it took when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Russian athletes are back competing under their own flag at the Paralympics. Fifa president Gianni Infantino said the international ban on Russian soccer teams “has not achieved anything”. And his counterpart at the International Olympic Committee, Kirsty Coventry, insists all athletes should be allowed to “compete freely.”

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:29 pm

How Detroit’s New Bad Boys climbed from the NBA’s cellar to rule the East

From a 28-game losing streak to the top of the East, the Pistons have rebuilt themselves the old Detroit way – defense, defiance and a refusal to stay down

In Detroit, the black-eyed Susan grows along lonely highways and in vacant lots. It pushes through gravel and broken glass. It survives heat that cracks the earth and winters that freeze it solid. When the wind bends its stem, it cracks back in place.

Its petals are a grungy yellow, the shade of anxiety, orbiting a bruised center. Black-eyed, signaling it can take a punch. It’s the kind of flower Pistons legend Dennis Rodman would wear in his hair. Hard to kill. Just like the Detroit Pistons.

Published: March 13, 2026, 9:00 am

‘I don’t give a shit about Iran. I don’t want to pay higher gas’: Motor City motorists feel pinch as gas prices surge

Drivers in Detroit are unhappy with the spike in gas prices, even if reactions are mixed to the US-Israel war on Iran

On a rainy Detroit afternoon at a gas station off Interstate 75, Victor Rodriguez watched the pump tally tick up as he filled up his F-250 diesel pickup truck for $4.19 per gallon. It totaled $110. “Ridiculous,” he said.

The US-Israel war on Iran has crippled major portions of the oil supply chain, sending gas prices soaring as the conflict enters its third week. Rodriguez said he supports “getting rid of this thug”, referring to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by the US, but the cost is too high.

Published: March 13, 2026, 1:00 pm

Bolivia arrests alleged drug kingpin accused of putting hit on Paraguayan prosecutor

Bolivian interior ministry says Sebastián Marset is being extradited to US, where he’s wanted for money laundering

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Sebastián Marset, an alleged Uruguayan drug trafficker and one of South America’s most wanted criminals, has been arrested in Bolivia.

Marset, 34, is accused of trafficking tonnes of cocaine from South America to Europe, and also of having ordered the murder of a Paraguayan prosecutor who was shot dead as he honeymooned on a Colombian beach in 2022.

Published: March 13, 2026, 6:37 pm

Charges filed against man accused of selling gun to Old Dominion shooter

Kenya Chapman was arrested for allegedly selling firearm to Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, who killed one person on Thursday

The US Department of Justice on Friday charged a man who authorities say sold a gun to the Old Dominion University (ODU) shooter despite the gunman’s previous conviction in a terrorism case.

Kenya Chapman is facing federal charges in connection to the sale of the weapon to Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former army national guard member who yelled “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire in a classroom at the Virginia school on Thursday, according to authorities.

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:07 pm

Brazilian president says he has ‘forbidden’ Trump adviser from visiting country

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva revokes Darren Beattie’s visa in retaliation for Brazilian health minister being denied visa for US

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he has “forbidden” one of Donald Trump’s advisers from visiting the South American country in retaliation for his health minister being denied a US visa.

Darren Beattie, a far-right political strategist who was recently tapped for a senior advisory role on Brazil, had reportedly hoped to use a trip to the country to visit the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to stop Lula taking power after the 2022 election. Beattie is a longstanding critic of Brazil’s judiciary and president and once called the moderate leftwing leader a representative of “the most destructive and corrosive version” of communism.

Published: March 13, 2026, 6:01 pm

King Charles concerned about Alberta separatist movement, First Nation chief says

Joey Pete of Sunchild First Nation said king seemed ‘committed to learning’ after meeting Indigenous leaders

King Charles has expressed concern over a simmering separatist movement in western Canada, according to Indigenous leaders who met the head of state at Buckingham Palace.

Members of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations travelled to London from their territories in the province of Alberta to raise the alarm over the secessionist movement, arguing that it ignores key agreements signed between First Nations and the crown nearly 150 years ago.

Published: March 13, 2026, 2:28 pm

Trump policies set to increase rates of lung disease and death, study finds

Experts warn of ‘attack on Americans’ lungs’ from cuts to health programs, environmental rollbacks and other plans

Donald Trump’s policies are likely to drive soaring rates of lung disease and premature death, according to a wide-ranging new study by pulmonary specialists and public health experts.

The analysis, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, examines policies adopted during Trump’s second term across 10 areas, including healthcare access, environmental regulation, workplace protections and vaccine uptake.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:00 pm

Week in wildlife: a wet macaque, four little pigs and a stowaway fox

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Published: March 13, 2026, 7:00 am

Mining’s toxic timebomb: dams full of poisonous waste are dotted around the world. What happens when they burst?

While tailings dams are meant to last for ever, extreme weather events are making many unstable – with devastating consequences for nature and humans

As soon as the barrier broke, a flood of poison brought death to the river. Gushing through the fragile wall built to hold back mining waste in Zambia’s copper belt in February 2025, more than 50m cubic litres of acid and heavy metals poured into the Chambishi stream – a tributary of the Kafue River, the country’s longest waterway.

Thousands of lifeless fish rose to the surface as a plume of acid floated downriver, leaving dead crocodiles and other wildlife in its wake.

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:00 am

Do we want to keep fixing the same issue? Unlearned lessons from the first big oil crisis

As energy prices tripled in the 1970s due to Middle Eastern wars, Scandinavia, France and the Netherlands sped up green transition

When Middle Eastern wars sparked an oil crisis in the 1970s, tripling energy prices and throwing economies into chaos, some countries looked beyond short-term solutions. The French made nuclear the pillar of their power system. Scandinavians insulated buildings and funnelled waste heat into homes. The Dutch built bike lanes where others wanted motorways. The Danes developed wind turbines.

Such steps cleaned filthy air and cut imports from autocrats but took a back seat when Russia invaded Ukraine half a century later. Europe raced to buy gas from the US and Middle East. Policies to roll out renewables by cutting red tape helped reduce dependence, but calls to use less energy and reduce waste were muted. Industry lobbying and populist backlash have since sabotaged efforts to phase out petrol cars and fossil boilers.

Published: March 13, 2026, 6:00 am

With $200m to spend on the midterms, crypto hopes to repeat its 2024 success: ‘It’s the most critical time’

Candidates in both parties – but mostly Republicans – are seeing cash infusions after merely indicating support

With the first primaries of the US midterm elections now under way, the cryptocurrency industry is injecting millions of dollars into congressional races across the country, with particular emphasis on Illinois, which has attracted the bulk of the campaign financing. Arkansas, Alabama and Texas have also drawn the industry’s donations.

Crypto Pacs, firms and investors have already spent $32m supporting industry-friendly candidates and opposing its detractors, according to Federal Election Commission data, building on the industry’s expansive spending in the 2024 presidential election.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:00 pm

US Jewish communities warn increased security is needed after Michigan attack

Gretchen Whitmer says ‘community is on edge’ with fear of increased violence amid escalating US-Israeli war on Iran

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Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s governor, said Jewish Americans were “a community on edge” on Friday after security staff thwarted an attack on a Detroit-area synagogue and preschool by a man driving a truck containing explosives.

Whitmer, a Democrat, called Thursday’s assault at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield township the latest episode in the “ancient and rampant evil” of antisemitism, and urged politicians and others to lower the political temperature.

Published: March 13, 2026, 6:36 pm

Grammarly removes AI Expert Review feature mimicking writers after backlash

Feature generated editing suggestions inspired by well-known authors and academics, prompting a class-action lawsuit over the use of real names without consent

Grammarly has disabled a controversial AI feature that imitated the style of prominent writers and academics, and is facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit from those whose identities were used without consent.

The feature, called Expert Review, used generative AI to produce feedback supposedly inspired by writers including the novelist Stephen King, the astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the late scientist Carl Sagan.

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:00 pm

‘One of the last places of safety’: US tenants are striking against their landlords over steep rent hikes

Rent strikes have become more common in recent years with all-time high increases and more corporate investing

Nadia Langley had been organizing tenants in and around her south Minneapolis neighborhood since 2024, when, two months ago, the fledgling union saw a sudden explosion in interest.

The jump was prompted not by a downturn in housing conditions or a rise in rents, but by the arrival of thousands of federal agents in the city as part of the Trump administration’s recent mass immigration crackdown. Many immigrants and residents of color were afraid of agent run-ins and wouldn’t leave their homes, even to go to work. To protect their neighbors, residents organized group chats to alert their communities about immigration agent sightings and to provide food, aid and more.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:00 pm

Apple cuts China App Store commission fees after government pressure

The move, which lowers fees to 25%, is a breakthrough for Chinese developers Tencent and ByteDance

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Apple announced late on Thursday it would lower the commission fees collected in its App Store in mainland China. The move follows pressure from regulators in the tech company’s second-largest market, as well as global scrutiny of its payment requirements.

Fees for in-app purchases and paid transactions will be lowered to 25% from 30% starting on Sunday, Apple said in a statement on its blog for developers.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:37 pm

Ukraine war briefing: War in the Middle East is bad news for Ukraine, says Zelenskyy

Zelenskyy says urgent need for anti-aircraft missiles, which are used in the Gulf to counter Iranian missiles and drones. What we know on day 1,480

It is understandable the world’s attention has shifted to the Middle East, but the situation is “not good for Ukraine”, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Paris. “There is nothing good for Ukraine in the war in the Middle East. ... It’s understandable that the attention of the world [is] moving to [the] Middle East. It’s not good for us,” the Ukrainian president said during a speech to students at the Sciences Po university on Friday. Kyiv is worried the war in the Middle East is drawing international attention away from the conflict in Ukraine – particularly from its urgent need for anti-aircraft missiles, which are used in large numbers in the Gulf to counter Iranian missiles and drones.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told the son of Iran’s last shah that Iran must not cooperate with Russia, as the pair met in Paris on Friday. The Ukrainian president posted on X: “Ukraine truly wants to see a free Iran that will not cooperate with Russia or destabilize the Middle East, Europe, and the world.” Reza Pahlavi lives in exile in the United States and has offered himself as a transitional leader for Iran should the Islamic republic fall. Zelenskyy said: “I am grateful to the Crown Prince for his clear assurances of support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” adding that their teams would “remain in communication”. Zelensky said it was “crucial that the Iranian regime gains nothing” from the conflict and that the Iranian people have the right to “determine their own fate”.

The US had sought a postponement of the latest round of three-sided talks on a settlement to Ukraine’s four-year-old conflict with Russia, Zelenskyy was quoted as saying on Friday. The comments, quoted by various Ukrainian media outlets at the end of the France visit,claimed the US side said its negotiators were not permitted to leave the US in view of circumstances in the Middle East. He said Russia had not wanted to hold the talks in the US and had proposed alternative sites in Switzerland or Turkey.

The US is temporarily easing some of its sanctions on Russian oil, reflecting global worries about sharply higher oil prices due to supply shortages stemming from the Iran war. The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said on X the country would lift sanctions on Russian oil that is already aboard tankers for 30 days. That means customers in other countries can buy it without worrying about sanctions punishment. The move, intended to soothe jittery markets over the disruption of Middle Eastern oil and gas supplies, underlines how the Iran war has boosted Moscow’s ability to profit from its energy exports, a pillar of the Kremlin’s budget as it presses its invasion of Ukraine. The Trump administration earlier had granted a 30-day reprieve to refineries in India.

Russian shelling killed one person and wounded six in southeastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, the regional governor said on Friday. Oleksander Ganzha, the head of the region’s military administration, said on Telegram that Russian forces attacked two sites in the region. Further southeast, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov, said that four people were injured in a Russian attack near the region’s main town, also called Zaporizhzhia. Just over the Russian border in the Belgorod region, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said one resident died in a Ukrainian strike on a village just inside the border.

Russia has named the US-based great-granddaughter of a Soviet leader a “foreign agent”, a term with connotations of spying that Moscow applies to people it views as engaged in anti-Russian activity. Nina Khrushcheva, 62, is a professor at The New School university in New York and has continued to make research trips to Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Her ancestor, Nikita Khrushchev, led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, when he was ousted by fellow members of the ruling politburo. Contacted by Reuters, Khrushcheva said she was not surprised to be added to Russia’s “foreign agent” list, which, as of Friday, contains 1,164 names, including politicians, journalists, artists, NGOs and media organisations. “It would have been sloppy on their part not to do this sooner or later,” she said, adding that it was too early to say what the practical impact would be.

Published: March 14, 2026, 3:54 am

France returns sacred talking drum looted from Côte d’Ivoire over 100 years ago

Djidji Ayôkwé was handed to Ivorian officials in Paris earlier this month

A sacred artefact looted by French colonial authorities more than a century ago has been returned to Côte d’Ivoire in one of the most significant cultural restitutions to a former French colony in years.

The Djidji Ayôkwé, a talking drum confiscated in 1916 by French administrators, landed at 8.45am on Friday at the airport in Port Bouët on the outskirts of the economic capital, Abidjan. It was handed over to Ivorian officials in Paris earlier this month after being removed from the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum.

Published: March 13, 2026, 1:06 pm

Israeli-backed Palestinian militias step up operations against Hamas in Gaza

Armed groups appear to have increased their firepower as they carry out raids deep in Hamas-controlled territory

Pro-Israel Palestinian militia have launched repeated raids, clandestine assassination and abduction operations deep inside parts of Gaza controlled by Hamas in recent months, with new operations launched recently despite the outbreak of conflict with Iran.

The militia, which are all based in eastern parts of Gaza that are under Israeli control after a ceasefire came into effect in October, have received significant logistic support from Israel since last year but appear to have increased their firepower, allowing new and more aggressive attacks in recent weeks.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:51 pm

Why Marty Supreme should win the best picture Oscar

Despite being set in the 50s, the film masterfully reflects modern-day anxieties, disconnection and obsession with nostalgia, all while reigniting interest in an unsung sport

First things first: the best picture Oscar should go to Marty Supreme for the incredible job it has done in bringing new eyes to ping pong. A declining sport that has to be propped up by subsidy, this movie has single-handedly kept wiff waff alive even though no one cares about it any more. Kudos.

Next, a confession. I watched this film the day it came out and haven’t seen it since*. That day also happened to be my birthday, a big birthday, and I wasn’t entirely steady when I entered the cinema that evening. I have sketchy recollections of the middle section – the bit between the bath collapsing and the plane to Japan. I also didn’t really like it much; I found it inconsequential and a bit amoral and I instantly resolved to forget the words to 4 Raws Remix (sample lyric: “my life is an opera”) as a result.

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:00 am

From Björk’s swan dress to Céline’s back-to-front tux: the most iconic Oscar red carpet looks

Ridiculed, ‘memed’ and consigned to worst-dressed lists, seven standout Oscar outfits from over the years

At the 2001 Oscars, Gladiator won best picture with Russell Crowe picking up best actor. But, if those facts might have faded to fodder for a pub quiz, the red carpet produced a moment of fashion legend – Björk wearing what is now known as “the swan dress”.

Made by the Macedonian designer Marjan Pejoski, the tutu skirt with the swan draped around the musician’s neck – and egg accessories – was panned. “It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen,” said the TV fashion critic Steven Cojocaru.

Published: March 13, 2026, 1:04 pm

Twisted Yoga review – a wild exposé of a tantric sex cult

This three-part documentary about women who were exploited and duped into sex work is filled with astonishing detail – while being sensitive to its interviewees

You are invited to an exclusive yoga retreat at “the villa”. When you arrive, it’s a grim building in Romania in which women cavort in micro-bikinis and drink each other’s urine after a mass orgy. You are summoned to meet a spiritual guru in Paris. When you arrive, a woman wraps your sim card in tin foil and drives you to the suburbs. Later you are taken to a dingy flat where you are expected to have hours-long sex with an elderly man whom you must “transfigure” into a less undesirable entity.

If this were a dream, you’d probably wake up disturbed by the weirdness of your subconscious. But for a number of women, this surreally terrifying chain of events was no nightmare. While the finer details of Twisted Yoga’s tale may be intriguingly wild, the broader picture is infuriating and sad.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:32 pm

Dynasty: The Murdochs review – who cares which billionaire will control even more billions?

This Netflix’s documentary about Rupert’s warring children blurs the lines with HBO drama Succession. But, ultimately, it’s a depressing catalogue of nepotism that it’s hard to be enthused about

‘To explain the Murdochs, you have to understand the television show Succession.” So quips New York Times writer Jim Rutenberg a few minutes into this four-part documentary about Rupert Murdoch’s empire – and, specifically, his children’s battle for control of it when he dies.

It’s a canny opener. Jesse Armstrong’s series about media mogul Logan Roy and his warring children, thought to be based on the Murdochs, was a gripping smash hit, and this documentary is soon excitedly matching the eldest Murdoch siblings – independent Prudence from Rupert’s first marriage, dutiful favourite Lachlan, “problem child” James and brilliant but overlooked (pesky X chromosomes!) Elisabeth – to their Succession counterparts. (Rupert’s two younger daughters from his third marriage aren’t in the running.) But don’t be fooled: despite the suspenseful strings and off-key piano motifs, this is no Emmy-award-winning drama. Rather, it is an exhausting if exhaustive rundown of all things Murdoch, with the siblings’ manoeuvrings often the least interesting part. In the documentary, as in life, they are overshadowed by their dad.

Dynasty: The Murdochs is on Netflix now

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:01 am

Snoop Dogg, pigsty fights and the wrong kind of snow: Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan on making the Peaky Blinders movie

The actors and creator Steven Knight discuss the Shelbys’ big-screen swan song, how fans propelled the show to success, and that undercut

In June 2023, Barry Keoghan texted Cillian Murphy to wish him a happy Father’s Day. The pair had shared the screen six years before, in the film Dunkirk. “Cillian and Colin [Farrell] are people I admire greatly, and always keep in touch with,” says Keoghan. A reply from Murphy pinged back soon after: “Thank you. Would you like to play my son in Peaky Blinders the movie?”

Murphy remembers it a bit differently: that he was the one initiating contact (which is how Tim Roth and Rebecca Ferguson came on board). But he’s happy to let Keoghan’s version be recorded as fact.

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:00 am

Every Brilliant Thing review – Daniel Radcliffe sells tricky Broadway transfer

Hudson Theatre, New York

The hit one-man show about depression suffers from plain and often corny writing yet is saved by an exuberant turn from the Tony-winning Harry Potter star

Every Brilliant Thing presents a theatrical gauntlet for Daniel Radcliffe, the erstwhile Harry Potter, acclaimed Broadway stage regular and only star of this 13-week limited engagement.

It’s not that the show requires nonstop physical exertion – though it does require some, as in a scene of manic exuberance where Radcliffe’s character attempts to high-five the entire audience – so much as a quick-on-his-feet reactive (and interactive!) warmth. While Radcliffe is the only professional actor in the show, its framework involves pulling audience members, including but not limited to those in a semi-circle of on-stage seats, into the action, all while making sure the sorta-monologue (call it a monologue-plus) runs smoothly. This hybrid of acting, interacting and stage-directing must be exhausting. But apart from a few quick water breaks and one built-in collapse after sprinting around the aisles and doing those high-fives, Radcliffe doesn’t much show it. He appears to genuinely love the job, which requires either superhumanly high spirits or terrific acting. Maybe both.

Published: March 13, 2026, 3:00 am

Elisabeth Leonskaja review – piano legend’s unerring sense of architecture reveals connections and kinships

Wigmore Hall, London
In her recital programme of Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern and Schubert, the Austrian pianist brought new insights and expressive playing

Eighty-year-old piano legend Elisabeth Leonskaja throws herself on to the piano stool and into the two tumultuous descending chromatic scales that open Beethoven’s Op 77 Fantasia in G minor in a single gesture. We have a long way to go in a recital programme that reads like an Mittel-European lucky dip – Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern, Schubert – and Leonskaja isn’t messing around.

Of course, there was nothing chance about the programming. The Austrian pianist’s expressive, emotional playing may grab the headlines, but it’s the unerring sense of underlying architecture that’s the thread through her long career. We heard that here, not just within each of the works, but in the shared foundations, and sometimes secret connecting passages, she revealed between them.

Published: March 13, 2026, 1:09 pm

Add to playlist: the dadaist cubist racket of Angine de Poitrine and the week’s best new tracks

This hyped anonymous duo match the oddness of their costumes with shredding metal, microtonal flourishes and Dalek-style vocals

From Saguenay, Quebec
Recommended if you like Holy Fuck, Prescott, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Up next New LP Angine de Poitrine Volume II released 3 April. Touring the UK in May

In 2023, two young men – their earthly identities a jealously guarded secret – began “a joke that spilled into reality” intended to simulate something like its namesake heart condition. Weary of the solemn aura that attaches to guitar rock, they began playing what their website describes as “mantra-rock dada pythago-cubiste” as Angine de Poitrine. It is a joke delivered with mesmerising finesse.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:00 pm

James Blake: Trying Times review – platitudes about politics and Kanye can’t detract from an excellent album

(Good Boy)
Amid the stylistic shifts of Blake’s seventh record come samples of Dusty Springfield and Dizzee Rascal: gripping distractions from some preachy sentiments

Of all the things you might expect from a James Blake album – exquisite minimalism, plaintive vocal distortion, appearances from hip-hop’s great and good – chin-stroking socio0political commentary probably isn’t one of them. But as the title suggests, our current predicament is precisely what the 37-year-old aims to address on his seventh solo record. Unfortunately, preachy, banal sentiments (“Everyone’s getting different information / So how can we get on the same side?”) sit awkwardly amid the ethereal melancholia he long ago perfected as the poster boy for London’s 2010s indie-electronica scene.

Subsequently, however, Blake became better known for collaborating with huge US rappers, including Kanye West: the pair recorded a succession of still-unreleased tracks in 2022. Through the High Wire – seemingly a repurposing of one of those songs – scans as a bold defence of his disgraced former colleague. “People love a story,” croons Blake, explaining that “whispers change” until “we all fall from glory”.

Published: March 13, 2026, 8:40 am

The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan; The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan; Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison; Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman; Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan (Head of Zeus, £20)
Better known as a film-maker, Jordan has never stopped writing novels. His latest opens in 2084 in rural Ireland, where Christian Cartwright works for the Huxley Institute in the titular library, secretly misusing its memory storage technology to talk with his dead lover Isolde, restoring her to a semblance of digital life. The story moves between Christian’s experiences and similar events two centuries earlier in the life of his ancestor, Montagu Cartwright, the architect responsible for the Huxley Mansion and local church, who owned an ancient obsidian mirror, believed to have been the famous scrying glass of John Dee. Lyrically written, brimming with ideas, sometimes sinister and often humorous, it’s an enchanting read.

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (Tor, £22)
This debut novel is based on the historic Beast of Gévaudan, a wolf-like creature that terrorised a region of France between 1764 and 1767. But it is much more than another werewolf fantasy. The narrator, Sebastian Grave, seems immortal, writing a memoir in the 21st century about his adventures in the 1700s. Even then he was old, and shared his mind and body with a demon called Sarmodel, whose occult powers helped him to destroy a terrible beast. Twenty years later, the same area is once again ravaged by a bloodthirsty creature: since Sebastian is sent for by the man who had been his boon companion on the first hunt, and his lover, he hopes this means an end to their long estrangement. A wonderfully original, engrossing novel, combining history and fantasy, with a unique narrative voice and fascinating characters.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:00 pm

Hooked by Asako Yuzuki review – follow-up to global hit Butter

A Tokyo high-flyer tries to befriend her favourite blogger in a novel that wears its aura of black comedy lightly, and its political statements more heavily

Asako Yuzuki’s international bestseller Butter was a taste sensation based on the true story of a Japanese female serial killer and gourmet chef who scammed and poisoned male victims with her culinary offerings. Attempting to get a scoop, a journalist bonds with the convicted prisoner by asking her for recipe tips, and gradually reassesses her own life and values as a result of this peculiar relationship. One review described the book as “the Martha Stewart Show meets The Silence of the Lambs”, but as well as the crime thriller/foodie mashup, a critique of capitalist society and deep-seated misogyny also emerged from the narrative. Yuzuki’s prose style, a mix of the banal and the profound, proved to be catnip for sales.

Hooked is the follow-up for English-language readers, though it was written earlier, in 2015, and like the previous novel is translated with crackling verve by Polly Barton. While a more introspective work, its high-wire plot and uneven trajectory make for a relentlessly dizzying experience. Fans of Butter might even view it as a trial run.

Published: March 13, 2026, 7:00 am

Daisy Johnson: ‘I wasn’t a fan of David Szalay, but Flesh is a masterpiece’

The Booker-shortlisted author on a momentous teenage encounter with The Bone People, getting a buzz from Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla, and trying to avoid The Lorax

My earliest reading memory
Memories from my childhood are opening up as I read to my own young children at the moment. Something in the pictures of Helen Cooper’s The Bear Under the Stairs or Lane Smith’s The Big Pets takes me back to being four years old and being read to.

My favourite book growing up
I love the Sabriel series by Garth Nix and first read it alongside my father and, later, my younger brother. It was truly a shared joy to be immersed in that world, for a book to give us a new connection to one another.

Published: March 13, 2026, 10:00 am

Light and Thread by Han Kang review – a tantalising book of reflections

These essays from the Nobel literature winner open up her novels and offer beautiful imagery

When Korean novelist Han Kang won the Nobel prize in literature in 2024, the committee praised her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. In other words, Han’s work looks both out at the world – towards the 1980 Gwangju massacre fictionalised in her novel Human Acts –  and inward to the human experience, as with The Vegetarian’s portrait of one woman’s claustrophobic struggle.

Much of the appeal of Han’s work is in its mystery, the gaps she leaves for the reader to close. So it is tantalising to have this collection of prose, “a book of reflections” that might illuminate the darker corners of her work.

Published: March 13, 2026, 9:00 am

Less respawning, more re-rolling: six of the best board games based on video games

From war zones and socially virtuous farming to ever-changing boards and role-playing with 167 dice, here’s our pick of the most absorbing table-based entertainment

Video games have long been heavily inspired by physical games, from chess and Scrabble to Dungeons & Dragons. The deck-building collectible card game, for example, has become immensely popular in digital form, thanks to hits such as Slay the Spire, Marvel Snap and Balatro. Now, an increasing number of games are going in the opposite direction, trading pixels for pieces and screens for spinners. Here are six of our favourites.

Company of Heroes 2nd Edition (Bad Crow Games, £119.70)

Published: March 13, 2026, 10:00 am

‘I’m wearing the tree fibre undies right now!’ An audience with the organisers of the Oscar goodie bags

Diamond watches, customisable pre-nups and five brands of marijuana are amongst the rich pickings for the starfluencers in line for acting honours. Our film critic gets a preview

It is now 20 years since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences discontinued their official Oscars goodie bag. Modest by today’s standards, this bundle of presents was subject to a distinctly non-glamorous IRS crackdown regarding the taxation of its contents, which it viewed as non-cash compensation.

But no sooner had that been taken away than a flurry of beneficent gifting moguls swooped in to take their place. Hollywood this week has been gripped by a discreet yet intense gifting frenzy, as rooms in luxury hotels and spas are requisitioned as gifting suites for the A-listers upon whom hugely expensive items will be pressed in the hope that these starfluencers will mention them on their Instagram feed.

Published: March 13, 2026, 4:53 pm

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump being gifted an Olympic medal: ‘Yet another award he didn’t win’

Late-night hosts addressed Melania Trump’s women’s history month speech, Maga’s Iran messaging and the ongoing oil crisis

On Thursday night, late-night hosts discussed an odd White House women’s history month event, the fallout of the war on Iran and why Melania Trump is starting to sound an awful lot like her husband.

Published: March 13, 2026, 3:36 pm

Oscars 2026: how to watch, nominations, what to read and predictions

Get ready for drama and glamour. Hollywood’s annual end-of-season party is on Sunday – here is your guide on where to watch and what to expect

The end is in sight: after months of campaigning, roundtables, red carpets and hot takes, it’s time for the big show. The Academy Awards are Hollywood’s end of season party, its senior prom and sports day all rolled into one, as the film world’s great and good stuff themselves into their tuxedos and/or fanciest frocks for a night of (we hope) entertaining mutual backslapping.

It’s fair to say that, so far, this awards season has been somewhat eventful, from the N-word fiasco at the UK’s normally sedate Baftas to the Timothée Chalamet Balletgate. Now the dust has settled, it looks like a straight fight between Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Thomas Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another for most of the big prizes. Anderson’s chunky auteur project looked for a while as though it might have the edge, but since nomination day, when Sinners got more nods than any other previous film, momentum has appeared to move decisively in its direction. We shall see.

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:19 pm

South African photographer Zanele Muholi: ‘My mother worked for a white family. I remember the pools I wasn’t allowed to swim in’

The artist has spent three decades changing the face of African art, and has just won the prestigious Hasselblad award. But they say the win isn’t about them – it’s for under-represented people still living with the echoes of Apartheid

Zanele Muholi has been named the winner of the 2026 Hasselblad award. The South African artist, who identifies as non-binary, now takes their place within the pantheon of the world’s greatest art photographers, from Carrie Mae Weems, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Wolfgang Tillmans and Sophie Calle all the way back to the forebears of the art form, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams.

It’s the kind of accolade that codifies the breathless reception with which Muholi’s work has been heralded to date. When their 2020 survey show at London’s Tate Modern was stymied by pandemic visitor restrictions, the gallery brought it back four years later. One critic likened their arresting self-portraits to Rembrandt’s.

Published: March 13, 2026, 1:00 pm

Experience: I suffered terrible burns as a child – then became a firefighter

I was sick and tired of the world treating me like a victim, so I decided to flip the narrative. At 25, I tried out for my local volunteer fire academy

When I was six years old, my entire body went up in flames. It was 1992, in my home town of Hawthorne, Nevada. My older brothers were out playing and I went to call them for dinner. I followed their voices, just a few houses down from ours, to find them playing with a bowl of kerosene they’d found and a lighter. When they flicked the lighter, the bowl caught fire. My brother freaked out and kicked it over in a bid to contain the flames. They weren’t aware I was just inches away.

Soon I was submerged in flames. The pain was excruciating. I was tackled to the ground by a neighbour I’d never met, who covered me in a sleeping bag, extinguishing the flames. It haunts me to this day to think of what he would have seen: a six-year-old boy on fire outside his house.

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:00 am

My mother’s best advice: the secret to good pastry is cold wrists

When I was growing up, she rarely dispensed advice. Instead, I watched her closely, holding on to her quiet wisdom

I often picture my mother that wild, hot summer we moved to the house of my childhood. She is 5ft 3in in the long grass, wearing a vest and a pair of small cut-off shorts. She is digging borders and battling the sticky bobs. She is telling me about the patch of tiger lilies and the cooking-apple tree; about the light speckling through the unkempt branches. “Glory be to God for dappled things,” she says.

My mother has always been a rare combination of poetry and practicality – I know few others given to quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins while simultaneously hacking down nettles, or tiling walls while listening to John Betjeman records. She has a remarkable gift for transforming the ordinary: a bedroom skirting board would be decorated with a mouse and a mouse hole; a packed lunch’s sandwiches cut at unexpected angles; the most mundane shopping trip often accommodated a detour to the art shop to admire the bottles of Winsor & Newton inks.

Published: March 13, 2026, 5:00 am

‘Beauty is always changing’: Alessandro Michele’s Roman tribute to Valentino

The first proper show since Valentino’s death is about the late designer, about beauty – and about Michele’s mother

Valentino Garavani wanted to make beautiful clothes for the women who could afford them. The perpetually tanned designer, whose vision of jet set glamour was matched only by his own yacht-and-pug lifestyle, died in January. So there was an obvious logic in taking the first proper catwalk show since his death off the fashion week schedule and back to Rome, where he lived, worked, and died. Milan and Paris may be the capitals of European style, but Rome looks better.

Garavani left his own brand almost 20 years ago. But his singular approach to beauty has not been without its obstacles for his most recent successor, Alessandro Michele, who took over the fashion house in 2024. “It’s a complicated DNA because beauty is always changing,” he said after the show, which took place in the 17th-century Palazzo Barberini. “This collection is about Valentino. It’s about beauty. But it’s [also] about the tension between me and the brand, a beauty I’m trying to translate.”

Published: March 13, 2026, 12:17 pm

Plant a blossom tree in your garden and feel its magic for years to come

The sight of blossom against a bright blue sky is one of the joys of spring, and the right tree will keep on giving year after year

Just shy of three years ago, I planted a cherry tree in my garden. It was the result of a deeply postpartum, vaguely chaotic research mission: to find a tree that was small yet substantial enough for my compact London garden. I wanted a pollution-hardy tree with flowers the right shade of pale pink that would bloom around the time of my newborn son’s vernal equinox birthday. Celebrating a baby’s new arrival with a tree or a shrub is one of the most romantic, and hopefully enduring, gifts one can give.

I chose a Prunus ‘Accolade’ (pictured above). It feels funny to associate that tree with the boisterous little boy I live with. But the blossom was undeniably magic. There was a window on our stairway that framed it perfectly. Every time we popped up or down we got a hit of candyfloss pink. Six months later, when we marked his half-years with the autumn equinox, the tree’s leaves would begin to turn golden.

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:00 am

Anthropic-Pentagon battle shows how big tech has reversed course on AI and war

Less than a decade ago, Google employees scuttled any military use of its AI. Now Anthropic is fighting Trump officials not over if, but how

The standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon has forced the tech industry to once again grapple with the question of how its products are used for war – and what lines it will not cross. Amid Silicon Valley’s rightward shift under Donald Trump and the signing of lucrative defense contracts, big tech’s answer is looking very different than it did even less than a decade ago.

Anthropic’s feud with the Trump administration escalated three days ago as the AI firm sued the Department of Defense, claiming that the government’s decision to blacklist it from government work violated its first amendment rights. The company and the Pentagon have been locked in a months-long standoff, with Anthropic attempting to prohibit its AI model from being used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.

Published: March 13, 2026, 11:00 am

The kill line v Chinamaxxing: a window into how China and the US see each other

In China, one social media trend hangs on the idea that a life in the US is always one step from disaster, while another in the US has gen Z revelling in Chinese lifestyle hacks

Across two online worlds that are normally splintered, over the last few months there has been a mirroring of sorts. On TikTok and Instagram, young people are diving into the joys of Chinese culture – from drinking hot water to playing mahjong – all under the banner of “Chinamaxxing”. On the Chinese internet, however, the US is losing its decades-long grip on soft power, and is instead being replaced by a darker trend: the kill line.

The kill line is a dangerous place to be. In gaming, the term refers to the point at which a player’s strength is so depleted that one more blow could lead to total wipeout. In China, the term refers to the risks that come with daily life in the US.

Published: March 13, 2026, 2:42 am

The week around the world in 20 pictures

Crisis in the Middle East, Ramadan in Gaza, the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics and Paris fashion week – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Published: March 13, 2026, 7:00 pm