How the US far right bought into the myth of white South Africa’s persecution

When Trump granted white South Africans refugee status, he was echoing a falsehood about Black people taking revenge for years of brutality. But no one flourishes in a repressive police state

There’s a little town in the scrub in South Africa – a full day’s drive from the country’s big cities – that has become perhaps the most scrutinised place on earth, given its size. It is 9 sq km (3.5 sq miles) of suburban-style houses harbouring about 3,000 people, with a main drag, a municipal swimming pool, one gas station and some pecan farms. Nothing of consequence ever really happens there, a fact the townspeople take as a point of pride. And yet over the past three decades, dozens of English-language news outlets have made a pilgrimage to it, often more than once. The New York Times alone has run four dedicated profiles. The essays have kept pace year after year, quoting the same people over and over, even as nothing of note occurred. There’s been no war, no disaster.

That changelessness is the point. No people of colour are allowed to live in the town, called Orania. The name is a nod to the river that runs nearby – and to the Orange Free State, the apartheid-era designation for the province in which it lies. Orania’s founders established it in 1991, the year after South Africa’s best-known Black liberation leader (and future president), Nelson Mandela, was freed following 27 years in prison.

Published: March 10, 2026, 5:00 am

‘Charismatic and extremely confident’: how to recognise – and handle – a psychopath

Psychologist Leanne ten Brinke has spent decades studying toxic personality traits. What are the red flags to look out for among workmates, politicians and potential partners?

Coming face to face with a probable psychopath was enough to make Dr Leanne ten Brinke rethink her career choices. Early in her 20s, while studying forensic psychology in Halifax, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, Ten Brinke was volunteering at a parole office, which would hold weekly group meetings for released sex offenders. “Most of the men showed contrition,” says Ten Brinke. “They really seemed to recognise the damage that they had done.” Except for one. The treatment programme seemed “like a game to him”, she says. One week, in a discussion about the impact their crimes had on victims, this rapist stared at Ten Brinke and, smiling slightly, started to say how much his victim looked like her, “and how I was ‘his type’. Clearly he was trying to scare me, and he did.”

It put her off a career working with convicted criminals, but she remained fascinated with “dark personalities” – psychopathy, mainly, but also narcissism, machiavellianism (manipulating and exploiting others) and sadism. From politics to business to the media, it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of people to study. There were selfish, callous, impulsive and manipulative people everywhere, often presenting as gregarious and charming. “It started to occur to me that these traits aren’t just confined to an underworld. These traits appear in all aspects of our lives,” she says.

Published: March 10, 2026, 5:00 am

Sex with Scorsese, beef with Sondheim … and inventing the moonwalk? The wildest moments in Liza Minnelli’s memoir

From Peter Sellers dressing like a Nazi, to having to manage her mother Judy Garland’s addiction, jaws will drop at Minnelli’s anecdotes

Tuesday marks the publication of Kids, Wait Til You Hear This!, the enormously entertaining memoir by Liza Minnelli, and that title – gossipy, confiding and with no small measure of Broadway panache – sets the tone from the off.

As well as coming across as kind and politically aware, Minnelli is quite heroically unburdened by tact, and as she sketches her life from gilded Hollywood to scrappy New York and on through addiction, ill health and multiple marriages, everyone – most of all herself – is assessed with bracing honesty.

Published: March 10, 2026, 12:30 pm

‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI

As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities - and society at large

Lea Pao, a professor of literature at Stanford University, has been experimenting with ways to get her students to learn offline. She has them memorize poems, perform at recitation events, look at art in the real world.

It’s an effort to reconnect them to the bodily experience of learning, she said, and to keep them from turning to artificial intelligence to do the work for them. “There’s no AI-proof anything,” Pao said. “Rather than policing it, I hope that their overall experiences in this class will show them that there’s a way out.”

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

Fifty years of sexing up tech: Apple’s epic hits – and misses

Remember the iPod? How about the Pippin? In the half-century since it launched its first PC, Apple has given us some amazing innovations. We round up its biggest triumphs and flops

Fifty years after Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded the company in Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, Apple has become a behemoth, and billions of us use its products every day. From the first successful home computers with colour screens, to the iPod, to the smartphone that set the template for the modern mobile era, the company has repeatedly reset consumer expectations.

As a result, the firm occupies a central position in the tech world, initiating trends and popularising products. Here are five of its most influential products from the past half-century – alongside some unusually big misses.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Sanctions on Israeli settlements are working – even without the US

As a new West Bank settlement plan gains steam, now is the time for governments to take multilateral economic action

Amid an unforgiving global news cycle – and as nations weigh their options in responding to the yet unbuilt West Bank settlement project that would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state” – a telling sanctions-related development in Israel passed largely unnoticed outside Israeli media. In Tel Aviv, the new year began with a protest by a violent extremist settler group that has faced UK sanctions since October 2024.

The trigger was a new Israeli banking directive, rushed out to placate Israel’s hardliners, that they said did too little to shield Israelis from international sanctions.

Published: March 10, 2026, 12:00 pm

Middle East crisis live: Hegseth says today will be the ‘most intense day of strikes’ in war against Iran

The US defence secretary says the military is increasing attacks on the regime

• Oil prices drop sharply after Trump moves to reassure markets

• Trump says Iran war is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises

• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Investor hopes for a swift resolution to the Middle East conflict propelled Australian shares higher today, with the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 finishing the day up 1.1% and recovering about $35bn in value after yesterday’s $90bn plunge.

Oil prices surged to a four-year high early in the week before coming back down below $US90 a barrel after Donald Trump suggested the Iran conflict would end soon, sending global stock markets higher.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:54 pm

Minab school bombing: what evidence is there that the US was responsible?

Trump has blamed Iran for the mass killing at Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school but geolocation, videos and satellite imagery indicate otherwise

The bombing of a primary school in Minab on 28 February killed scores of people, most of them seven- to 12-year-old girls. The strike is the worst mass killing of the US and Israel’s war on Iran so far – and has been described by Unesco as a “grave violation” of international law.

On Saturday, the US president, Donald Trump, declared that Iran was responsible for the school bombing. “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran … they’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

Published: March 10, 2026, 6:00 am

Trump’s ‘free flow of energy’ vow fails to restart shipping in strait of Hormuz

Only two vessels not linked to Iran or Russia have braved ‘chicken run’ since US president’s promise on Friday

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Only two vessels not linked to Iran or Russia have made the “chicken run” through the strait of Hormuz since Donald Trump said he would “ensure the free flow of energy to the world”, according to maritime records.

One of those that braved the journey since the US president’s announcement of emergency measures on Friday went “dark” by switching off its transponder and a second signalled it was Chinese owned and crewed.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:26 am

Trump’s Iran war will reinforce North Korea’s view that nuclear weapons are the only path to security

As speculation mounts that Kim Jong-un and Trump could meet this month, analysts say Pyongyang will continue to see nuclear weapons as a matter of survival

• Middle East crisis – live updates

North Korea’s launch last week of a missile from a naval destroyer elicited an uncharacteristically prosaic analysis from the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. The launch was proof, he said, that arming ships with nuclear weapons was “making satisfactory progress”.

But the test, and Kim’s mildly upbeat appraisal, were designed to reverberate well beyond the deck of the 5,000-tonne destroyer-class vessel the Choe Hyon – the biggest warship in the North Korean fleet.

Published: March 10, 2026, 2:09 am

Bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure to have major environmental fallout, experts warn

Monitors admit they are struggling to keep track of the environmental disasters arising from widening war

Israel’s bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure will have major long-term environmental repercussions, experts have warned, as monitors admitted they were struggling to keep track of the environmental disasters arising from the widening war.

Even as Iranians filled the streets to mark the appointment of a new supreme leader, the Shahran oil depot north-east of Tehran and the Shahr-e fuel depot to its south continued to burn on Monday, two days after they were bombed by Israeli warplanes.

Published: March 10, 2026, 5:00 am

RFK Jr’s pick to review Covid vaccines authored misleading research, experts say

HHS says the MIT professor is ‘more than qualified’ to serve on the agency’s vaccine advisory panel and calls ‘attacks’ on him ‘politically motivated’

The MIT professor who has been appointed by Robert F Kennedy Jr to review the safety of Covid-19 vaccines has failed to meet basic scientific standards in his own research on the topic, according to more than a dozen scientists and public health experts.

Retsef Levi, an operations management professor, is a member of the US health department’s vaccine advisory committee (ACIP) which is meeting later this month and – many experts fear – could seek to rollback recommendations on who should receive Covid-19 vaccines.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:00 am

Georgia votes for successor to Marjorie Taylor Greene after Trump spat – US politics live

Trump’s pick of former prosecutor Clay Fuller likely to face Democrat and retired general Shawn Harris in runoff for House seat

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Hegseth says the aftermath of the conflict is “going to be in America’s interests” and says it “will not live under a nuclear blackmail” from Iran.

It comes shortly after the defence secretary reiterated president Donald Trump’s threat that if Iran does anything to prevent the flow of oil in the strait of Hormuz, it will be hit “twenty times harder”.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:55 pm

Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work

About 10,000 writers including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman join copyright campaign

Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published an “empty” book to protest against AI firms using their work without permission.

About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.

Published: March 10, 2026, 6:00 am

Texas welder called ‘highway hero’ for stopping unconscious driver

Rene Villarreal-Albe averted possible crash by pulling truck up to car and halting it as driver faced medical episode

A Texas man who recently was driving on a highway reportedly pulled his truck out in front of a car with an unconscious man behind the wheel, gradually slowed it down with his back bumper and ultimately stopped it to avert what could have been a major crash.

Rene Villarreal-Albe’s good deed was captured on dramatic cell phone video recorded by his wife, Andrea Walker, and then shared online by his sister, Cortney Trinidad, as the Texas news outlet Kens 5 reported. The video and action-movie-like story behind it gained widespread attention on corners of the internet dedicated to finding positive news, generating some comments that hailed Villarreal-Albe as a “highway hero”.

Published: March 10, 2026, 9:00 am

Ex-Missouri house speaker sentenced 21 months for misusing Covid relief funds

John Diehl admitted using federal pandemic loans for country club dues, cars and other personal expenses

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A former Missouri state house speaker was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud for misusing federal Covid-19 relief funds for his personal benefit, including the payments of his country club dues and three cars.

John Diehl, the former Republican house speaker, received about $380,000 in federal loans for his law firm between 2020 and 2022 through a program intended to help cover operating expenses for businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:22 pm

Shots fired at US consulate in Canada as police investigate incident

No injuries were reported after authorities found evidence of a discharged firearm near the consulate in Toronto

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Police in Canada are investigating after shots were fired at the US consulate in Toronto. Officers said evidence was found of a discharged firearm and that no injuries were reported.

Toronto police said in a social media post they responded to the reported shots at 5.29 a.m. (0929 GMT) on Tuesday.

Published: March 10, 2026, 12:48 pm

Alexander Butterfield, Nixon aide who disclosed Watergate tapes, dies aged 99

The White House aide who revealed that Richard Nixon had secretly recorded his conversations as president has died

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Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who inadvertently hastened Richard Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal when he revealed that the president had bugged the Oval Office and Cabinet Room and routinely recorded his conversations, has died. He was 99.

His death was confirmed to the Associated Press by his wife, Kim, and John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon during the Watergate scandal and helped expose the wrongdoing.

Published: March 10, 2026, 12:17 pm

‘Lack of class’: Quentin Tarantino hits back at Rosanna Arquette over Pulp Fiction N-word criticism

Director rounds on actor, who acted in the cult film, saying he feels disrespected, and claiming cynical reasons behind her recent comments

Quentin Tarantino has responded to Rosanna Arquette’s criticism of his prolific use of the N-word in his films including Pulp Fiction, saying Arquette “show[ed] a decided lack of class”.

In a statement sent to numerous publications including Deadline, Tarantino said: “I hope the publicity you’re getting from 132 different media outlets writing your name and printing your picture was worth disrespecting me and a film I remember quite clearly you were thrilled to be a part of? … After I gave you a job, and you took the money, to trash it for what I suspect is very cynical reasons shows a decided lack of class, no less honour.”

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:21 am

US attorneys handpicked by Pam Bondi were appointed illegally, judge rules

Federal judge said prosecutors picked to replace Alina Habba repeated error of bypassing congressional approval

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Three prosecutors installed by Donald Trump’s administration to lead the New Jersey attorney general’s office after the president’s former personal lawyer was disqualified from the role in December were also illegally appointed, a federal judge has ruled.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, handpicked the three to replace Alina Habba, who resigned after a succession of district and appeals court rulings that she was serving illegally because she never received Senate confirmation.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:42 pm

Trump cheers FBI subpoena of Arizona 2020 election records

Request for records related to election audit appears latest part of Trump effort to spread false claims about voting

A federal grand jury subpoenaed Arizona’s legislature for records related the state senate’s widely criticized review of the 2020 election, the state senate president said on Monday, in what appears to be the latest part of the Trump administration’s efforts to spread false claims about the 2020 election and voting in the United States.

Warren Petersen, the president of the Arizona state senate, confirmed on X on Monday the legislature had received a subpoena related to records of its review of the election results in Maricopa county, the most populous in the state. He added that “the FBI has the records”.

Published: March 9, 2026, 7:38 pm

Golf club firm owned by Trump’s sons merges with drone manufacturer

Merger to take drone firm public is latest business move by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr as father is in White House

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A golf club company backed by the sons of Donald Trump is merging with drone manufacturer Powerus in a deal designed to take the drone technology company public.

The merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings is the latest in Eric and Donald Trump Jr’s growing investments in the drone sector, following last month’s $1.5bn tie-up between Israeli drone maker XTEND and Florida-based JFB Construction Holdings. Drones have become a major procurement priority for the Pentagon and are widely used in Ukraine, where dense air defense systems near the frontlines limit the deployment of conventional aircraft.

Published: March 9, 2026, 6:42 pm

Sheinbaum tells Trump: stop illegal arms trade from the US to Mexico

US president claimed he wanted to eradicate cartels and made comments about Mexico’s president that were deemed sexist in summit speech

• ‘Iron river’: Mexico’s cartel violence fuelled by trafficked firearms from US

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Claudia Sheinbaum has responded to Donald Trump’s description of Mexico as the “epicenter of violence,” by calling on the US government to step up efforts to combat gun trafficking.

“There is something that the US can help us a lot with: stop the trafficking of illegal weapons from the US to Mexico,” the president of Mexico said. “If they stopped the entry of illegal weapons from the United States into Mexico, then these groups wouldn’t have access to this type of high-powered weaponry to carry out their criminal activities.”

Published: March 9, 2026, 5:33 pm

‘Sounds familiar’: how the US-Israeli war in Iran parallels Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Both campaigns have been framed differently at different times, with dubious claims of defensive action and a curious reluctance to label it war

Shifting goals, unclear timelines and a flimsy pretext: at times, the US-Israel campaign against Iran carries curious parallels of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The comparison is far from exact. In 2022, Putin sent a massive army across Ukraine’s borders in an unprovoked invasion of a democratic state, a campaign that quickly resulted in heavy losses. The United States has so far largely limited its involvement to airstrikes against Iran’s authoritarian regime.

Published: March 10, 2026, 6:00 am

Immigrant truck drivers are vital to the economy. ICE crackdown is forcing them off roads

Targeting of foreign-born truckers risks ‘deepening severe labor shortages’ as thousands of drivers have been taken off roads for failing English proficiency requirements

After moving to Ohio in 2013, Ibragim Chakhalidze’s father set up a trucking company just miles from where two of the country’s major road freight arteries – the I-70 and the I-75 – meet.

Formerly farmers who had come to the US from south-east Russia through a government refugee program, he says trucking has been in his family’s and the wider Ahiska Turk community’s blood for decades.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘Extraordinary cruelty’: images show longterm ‘starvation strategy’ in Sudan

Experts argue sensor and satellite data reveal targeted attacks on farming communities by the Rapid Support Forces were intended to prevent villages producing food

There is strong evidence that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) committed a war crime by depriving the villagers of north Darfur of the means to produce food, legal experts argue in a new analysis published today calling for the Humanitarian Research Lab’s (HRL) revelations to be used in international courts.

The destruction of the villages, farming equipment and infrastructure all provide strong evidence of a “starvation strategy” against a population already struggling with food insecurity because of the war, says Tom Dannenbaum, a professor at Stanford Law School and a leading expert on the use of starvation in war.

Published: March 10, 2026, 7:00 am

Twisted Yoga: how a search for enlightenment turned into a dangerous cult

A shocking new Apple series goes behind the yoga camps where women alleged criminal behaviour from a guru wanted for sexual exploitation charges

Practicing yoga has its benefits: the meditative calm, grounded-ness and balance. The devoted pursue transformative spiritual journeys, through poses, chants and breath work. Some followers of tantra yoga take things even further, using sensuality to channel their energy and reach beyond themselves, seeking out of body liberation and enlightenment.

But it’s that very pursuit that has also left hundreds vulnerable to alleged rape and trafficking.

Published: March 10, 2026, 9:03 am

Gus Van Sant: ‘My assistant wanted to erect a statue of Luigi Mangione. My generation thought: this is murder’

The Milk and Good Will Hunting director’s new film is about ‘a little guy’ taking violent revenge against the system. He talks about the parallels between Dead Man’s Wire and the homicide case currently dividing Gen Z and boomers

In February 1977, a middle-aged Indianapolis businessman named Tony Kiritsis took hostage an employee at his local mortgage brokers, who he was convinced had cheated him out of the profits of a piece of real estate. The system was weighted against the little guy, Kiritsis decided, and he was going to be the one to make it pay. He attached one end of a wire to the trigger of a shotgun, the other to the hostage’s head, and demanded $5m and an admission of guilt from the brokers’ boss. The final moments of the standoff, which lasted 63 hours, were broadcast live on TV.

It has already been the subject of a 2018 documentary (Dead Man’s Line) and a 2022 thriller podcast (American Hostage) which starred Jon Hamm as the DJ who broadcast an interview with Kiritsis live from the crime scene. Now Gus Van Sant, whose 40-year-plus career incorporates queer landmarks (My Own Private Idaho, Milk), mainstream crowdpleasers (Good Will Hunting) and arthouse award-winners (the Columbine-inspired Elephant), is dramatising the events in Dead Man’s Wire. This wry thriller cuts between the volatile captor (Bill Skarsgård) and the media circus swirling around him, which includes the DJ, played here by Colman Domingo, and a female TV journalist (Myha’la) fed up with being fobbed off. Al Pacino has a cameo as the boss of the mortgage company, sunning himself in Malibu and unconvinced he has anything much to apologise for.

Published: March 10, 2026, 5:00 am

Project Hail Mary review – Ryan Gosling’s charm carries unserious last-ditch space mission

Tale of a brilliant molecular biologist cast into outer space with only a helpful alien for company is a bit silly, but Gosling’s charisma keeps it watchable

This is a movie, adapted from Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller, about a desperate astronaut mission of the future, named by Nasa after the “Hail Mary pass” in American football, launched into space in a last-ditch attempt to save Planet Earth, dying because a string of alien microbes are snuffing out the sun.

Hunky high school science teacher Dr Ryland Grace, played with seductive, unruffled good humour by Ryan Gosling, wakes up from his induced coma on this spacecraft, with wacky long hair, straggly beard and zero memory of why he is aboard. The rest of the crew are dead, and Grace must now figure out how he got there and how to rescue humanity.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

NFL free agency winners and losers: Ravens shine and what were the Jets thinking (again)?

As the new league year gets underway, we take a look at the best and worst moves heading into the 2026 season

Los Angeles Rams

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:54 am

It’s shock and awe as Trump’s granddaughter does her bit for the war effort. All hail Kai Trump, the shopper-in-chief | Marina Hyde

Yes, many Americans are struggling, but it’s good to know the first family can still afford Earth’s most expensive provisions. Morale is everything, isn’t it?

In the absence of any clearly and consistently stated aims from the US administration, maybe each day of the Iran war just needs a moodboard description. In which case, Sunday was a tale of two nepo babies. In Iran, the high-level executive search for the new ayatollah concluded that the old ayatollah’s son was the best man for the position. It’s not for me to assess his job prospects, but you’d hope his supermarket order doesn’t contain any “ripen at home” pears.

Meanwhile, across the world, in LA, Donald Trump’s eldest granddaughter posted a YouTube video titled “I Brought My Secret Service to Erewhon”. By way of background, Erewhon is Earth’s most pretentiously extravagant hipster food shop, and, as Kai was at pains to brag, “the most expensive grocery store pretty much out there. Everything’s crazy expensive! So we’re going to get my favourite stuff.”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:52 pm

Democrats must defund Trump’s imperial war | David Sirota, Jared Jacang Maher, Laura Krantz and Ron S Doyle

Trump is wielding imperial powers created by a decades-long master plan. The only way to stop his war is to cut off the money

Donald Trump has now ordered military attacks on more countries than any prior president. These assaults do not merely betray his campaign promises. Launched without congressional authorization, Trump’s bombings and incursions also betray the constitution – an inherently anti-monarch document that exclusively vests warmaking powers in the legislative branch in order to prevent such grave decisions from being made by any one person determined to become a king.

Trump clearly perceives himself in such royal terms – he’s said as much. But as we show in the new season of our investigative podcast series Master Plan: The Kingmakers, Trump did not create the kingly authority he is now employing. He is exercising powers concentrated in the executive branch by previous presidents and courts. And if history is any guide, the only weapon that can stop a mad king is Congress’s power of the purse – a power that Democrats once effectively wielded, but today seem hesitant to brandish, even amid a wildly unpopular Iran incursion that some fear is a precursor to the second world war.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Who will stand up for the Iranian people as death rains on them from the skies? | Nasrin Parvaz

Calls for a popular uprising and empty promises of help are reckless in the extreme – and no answer to my country’s plight

• Nasrin Parvaz is a women’s rights activist and torture survivor from Iran

I have been watching the news from inside Iran, unable to hold in my sorrow. As an Iranian who was imprisoned and tortured by the regime, I have been pleading with the world’s human rights organisations and media to keep a focus on the country’s plight. But now I see US-Israeli bombs falling on Iran, and some Iranians celebrating this war while innocent people die. My heart is breaking for my country.

Let us be clear: when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu conspired to launch their war, it was not out of a desire to free the Iranian people from the tyranny of the regime. Netanyahu said on the second day of the war: “This coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years.” He has named this operation “Lion’s Roar”. Meanwhile, Iranian monarchists celebrate the carnage, waving the shah’s version of the country’s flag with its crowned lion and sun.

Nasrin Parvaz is a women’s rights activist and torture survivor from Iran. Her books include A Prison Memoir: One Woman’s Struggle in Iran, and the novel The Secret Letters from X to A

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 10, 2026, 6:00 am

Iran’s new supreme leader is a figure of mystery, but the symbolism is clear: the regime fights on | Sina Toossi

The rarely seen Mojtaba Khamenei is a surprise appointment, but his accession is above all a statement of defiance

When Mojtaba Khamenei was named Iran’s new supreme leader, many observers reacted with surprise. For decades, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been a shadowy figure in Iranian politics, rarely seen in public and almost never heard speaking.

He has never given interviews, has held no elected office and appears publicly only on rare ceremonial occasions. Even among political insiders, knowledge of his views is fragmentary. What little is known about him consists of scattered anecdotes: brief involvement in the Iran-Iraq war as a young man, occasional appearances in political circles and a long association with figures inside Iran’s security establishment.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:00 am

One simple way to heal American politics: run more union members | Dustin Guastella

Our research shows that candidates who come from the union movement are exactly what many Americans crave

American politics feels hopelessly broken. Extreme political polarization, enormous amounts of Pac money sloshing around during elections, and the increasing power of the rich make it seem like nothing, and no one, can set the country on the right track. But a new report from the Center for Working-Class Politics looks at a surprisingly simple way that ordinary people might have more influence in our political system: run more union members for office.

The forthcoming CWCP report, co-authored by Jared Abbott, Benjamin Y Fong, Fred DeVeaux, Dustin Guastella and Sam Zacher, and sponsored by Arizona State University’s Center for Work and Democracy, looked at the broad political impact of political candidates with a labor union background. We found that candidates who come out of the union movement are exactly what many people in the country desperately crave: politicians who sound like them, who advocate for working people, and who provide solutions that actually work to fix our broken system.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Revolutionary’: Ukrainian para-biathlete wins silver using ChatGPT as his coach

• Murashkovskyi benefits from artificial intelligence support

• ‘I used it as a psychologist, coach and sometimes as a doctor’

Team Ukraine have hit the ground running at the Winter Paralympics, standing second in the medal table after three days of competition. Their resolve and determination has been inspirational to many, but one athlete has revealed a secret weapon in their search for a competitive edge.

Maksym Murashkovskyi, who won ­silver in the men’s visually impaired biathlon on Sunday and did not miss a shot, has been ­working with ­OpenAI’s large language model. “For the past six months, I have been training with ChatGPT,” he said. “It was not only ­tactics. It was half of my ­training plan, ­motivation, etc. So it was a huge ­volume of all of my training. I used it as a psychologist, coach and, sometimes, as a doctor.”

Published: March 9, 2026, 6:52 pm

Russia flag raised and national anthem played after first gold at Winter Paralympics

• Varvara Voronchikhina wins women’s super-G standing

• Russian anthem has not been heard at Games since 2014

The Russian national anthem has been played at the Paralympics for the first time since 2014 as the skier Varvara Voronchikhina claimed gold in the women’s super-G standing.

A tearful Voronchikhina received her medal on Monday afternoon, and the Russian flag was raised, after a dominant performance on the slopes of the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre. A watching crowd of international fans responded only with polite applause, but Voronchikhina’s success has already been celebrated by Russia’s sports minister.

Published: March 9, 2026, 12:38 pm

Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics 2026: day three – in pictures

We take a look at the best images from day three of the Games, including skiing, ice hockey and curling

Published: March 9, 2026, 12:58 pm

Andreeva ‘not proud’ after Indian Wells title defence ends in smashed racket and gestures at crowd

• Russian loses to Katerina Siniakova in three sets

• Teenager throws racket on several occasions

Mirra Andreeva’s Indian Wells title defense met a bad-tempered end on Monday as Katerina Siniakova stunned the Russian teenager 4-6, 7-6, 6-3.

The 18-year-old opened her bid to retain her crown with a dominant 6-0, 6-0 demolition of Solana Sierra. But she was in trouble early and often against Siniakova, the world No 44, in a rollercoaster contest that ended with a shot from the Czech that hit the net cord and dribbled over in one last frustrating moment.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:55 pm

NBA’s bizarre ‘tanking’ problem has spewed theories but no solutions | Sean Ingle

Logical situation of losing to get a better pick has led to big fines but June’s superstar draft created a ‘perfect storm’

Imagine you are the director of football at a crisis-stricken Premier League club in a world where relegation doesn’t exist and the planet’s best teenagers become available for free in a draft every June.

In this alternate universe, you are also aware of something else: the 2026 Premier League draft is one for the ages. Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsí are in it. So are Bayern Munich’s Lennart Karl and Real Madrid’s Franco Mastantuono. Sign one of them and the glory days will suddenly beckon again.

Published: March 10, 2026, 8:00 am

Folding teams, a labor fight, and … expansion? The USL’s structure allows for it all to happen

The organization that runs most of US lower-league soccer is making a big push after the 2026 World Cup – is it a bridge too far?

It’s been years, but Dan Egner’s X profile still shows him planting a kiss on the USL Championship’s silver cup. These days, Egner is an agent with NordicSky, representing clients on both sides of the Atlantic. But in 2019, when that picture was taken, he was the technical director of Real Salt Lake at a time when MLS teams had affiliates in the USL, the umbrella organization that runs much of lower-league soccer in the United States, including the second-division USL Championship.

When Salt Lake’s affiliate Real Monarchs won the final, the glory was sweet, but it was not profitable.

Published: March 10, 2026, 12:00 pm

Relegated and then European champions? Have I got Spurs for you | Jon Harvey

It’s been a troubling season at Tottenham and while there is a slim chance it will end in glory, ignominy is looking more likely

How do you solve a problem such as Tottenham Hotspur? They’re the ninth-richest club in the world, who pride themselves on a thrilling style of play – “To dare is to do” – and have been blessed through the years with a pantheon of household names: Blanchflower, Hoddle, Ardíles, Gascoigne, Bale, Kane, Son. Last August they were seconds from beating Paris Saint-Germain to win the Uefa Super Cup, which would have made them – tenuously – the best team in Europe. Seven months later they’ve wilted into a shell-shocked laughing stock careering towards the Championship. They’re the club that launched a thousand memes.

In this most Spursy of seasons, hiring Mr Fixit Igor Tudor as interim manager looks like being the biggest misstep yet. The Croatian hard man has taken a squad who needed an arm round the shoulder and stuck them in a vice-like headlock. He has openly suggested there’s only three things wrong with them: they can’t run, they can’t score and they can’t defend. You could count the number of fans who backed his appointment on the fingers of Captain Hook’s bad hand, and if three crushing defeats are anything to go by, his shock treatment is going down like a cup of cold West Ham lasagne. Is there any way out?

Published: March 10, 2026, 8:00 am

The NBA knows how to punish spectacle. Systems are harder | Lee Escobedo

When Ja Morant brandished a gun on social media the league knew how to act. But what happens when complex questions about team ownership arise?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the job I had two decades ago, when I was a janitor at a machine shop in Fort Worth, Texas. Even as a hungover 20-year-old, my internal monologue would debate the ethics of the parts I packaged. We produced tiny components for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin. Slivers of aluminum machined to tolerances so fine you could miss their imperfections with the naked eye.

Beneath the fluorescent hum of the shipping and handling department, I’d rub a widget between my fingers and imagine the journey it would take: lifted from a Texan warehouse into the Middle Eastern theatre where our nation’s wars burned. Small enough to disappear in my palm, large enough to disappear into someone else’s rubble. Which is why I keep thinking about those widgets as the NBA tries to regulate morality.

The NBA, Memphis Grizzlies and Ubiquiti did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:00 am

NBA cancels Atlanta Hawks’ theme night with strip club Magic City after backlash

• Commissioner: League heard ‘significant concerns’

• Spurs’ Kornet had penned post against promotion

The NBA has called off the Atlanta Hawks’ plans for a night celebrating the city’s famed Magic City strip club, saying it did so because of “concerns” across the league.

The Hawks announced the plan last month, saying the team would pay tribute to an “iconic cultural institution” with food – including the club’s famous lemon pepper wings – along with a live music performance by Atlanta native TI and exclusive merchandise.

After the Hawks announced plans for the promotion, San Antonio Spurs center Luke Kornet spoke out about the idea and urged the parties involved to reconsider. And the league evidently heard the same messaging from others.

Published: March 9, 2026, 9:57 pm

Jack Draper sets up Djokovic clash after beating Cerundolo at Indian Wells

• Draper defeats Argentinian 6-1, 7-5 in third round

• Cameron Norrie sees off Alex de Minaur 6-4, 6-4

Jack Draper continued his impressive comeback from an arm injury by beating Francisco Cerundolo to set up a last-16 clash with Novak Djokovic at Indian Wells.

Draper rode his luck at the end of the second set to clinch a 6-1, 7-5 win and set up his first meeting with Djokovic since he took the first set off the defending champion on his Wimbledon debut in 2021.

Published: March 9, 2026, 11:53 pm

Verdict on the start of F1’s new era: five talking points from the Australian GP

Mercedes’ flying start lives up to promise, but new regulations receive scathing reviews

The pre-season favourites had done their level best to play down their expected advantage in the buildup to the Australian Grand Prix, but it was impossible to hide. A dominant one-two by the best part of a second for George Russell and Kimi Antonelli in qualifying was followed by a similarly assured one-two finish in the race.

Published: March 9, 2026, 3:25 pm

New Mexico authorities launch search of ranch previously owned by Epstein

The so-called Zorro Ranch was the site of numerous alleged abuses, but was not subject to intense scrutiny

New Mexico authorities launched a search of a ranch previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein, state officials announced on Monday.

The late convicted sex offender and financier’s so-called Zorro Ranch was the site of numerous alleged abuses, according to civil and criminal proceedings. But the location was not subject to the same scrutiny as other Epstein properties, and a Guardian investigation in February revealed that federal authorities apparently never searched the New Mexico ranch.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:47 pm

Uruguay’s candombe brings streets to life as the once-banned musical tradition roars back

The Afro-Uruguayan rhythms, born among enslaved Africans and once banned, now draws thousands to public squares and carnival parades

Like the blues in the US, samba in Brazil, rumba in Cuba and plena in Puerto Rico, candombe, Uruguay’s Afro-descendent music, was once reviled, marginalised and even banned – but managed to endure.

But while other such genres have for decades formed part of the cultural mainstream across the Americas, only now is candombe experiencing its peak.

A drone view of the Rueda de Candombe gathering in the streets of Ciudad Vieja in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:00 am

I’ll also be back as Conan: Arnold Schwarzenegger to make third Barbarian film 44 years after original

The 78-year-old has announced a return to the action hero role that made his name in 1982, promising ‘all kinds of madness’

Arnold Schwarzenegger is to return to the role that launched him as a movie star in a belated third instalment of the Conan the Barbarian franchise. The original film, released in 1982 and adapted from pulpy novels by Robert E Howard, saw the then bodybuilder play the chivalric sword-wielder on a quest for revenge against James Earl Jones’ cult leader Thulsa Doom.

Schwarzenegger, 78, whose acting work has slowed since he returned to the profession after his stint as the governor of California, announced at the Arnold sports festival in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend that director Christopher McQuarrie, best known for his work on the Mission: Impossible franchise, would take the reins on King Conan.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:54 pm

Spain to formally pardon 53 women incarcerated by Franco regime

Thousands of girls were locked up by Board for the Protection of Women for ‘rehabilitation’

Spain is to formally pardon a group of 53 women who are among thousands who were incarcerated by the Franco regime on the grounds that they were supposedly “fallen or in danger of falling”.

The women were locked up as adolescents by the Board for the Protection of Women, a collection of institutions run by religious orders. The board, which had echoes of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene laundries, was overseen by Carmen Polo, the wife of the dictator Gen Francisco Franco.

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:46 pm

‘Everyone feels like they are being scammed’: can Central America’s small coffee growers survive as global prices fall?

Family-run farms in El Salvador and Honduras face mounting losses, rising costs – and the need to adapt or be left behind

• Read more of our Coffee crisis series here

On a steep hillside in western El Salvador, Oscar Leiva watches rainfall in December, a month that once marked the start of the dry season. During this harvest cycle, flowering came early and then stalled. A heatwave followed. What remains of the crop is uneven, lower in quality and more expensive to produce than the last.

For Leiva and his family, coffee has never been just a crop. His mother, Marina Marinero, remembers when the rains arrived on schedule and the harvest could be planned months in advance. Today, the calendar no longer holds. Decisions about pruning, fertilising and hiring labour feel like educated guesses. Each mistake carries a cost the family cannot afford.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:00 am

Missouri drops murder charge against man who opened fire at Super Bowl rally

Man was among at least six people who started shooting outside Union Station in state, which has adopted stand your ground law

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A man who initially faced a murder charge for opening fire following the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2024 Super Bowl win was sentenced Monday to two years in prison in a case prosecutors said was complicated by the state’s self-defense laws.

Dominic Miller, who pleaded guilty to a weapons charge as part of a plea deal, was among at least six people to start shooting in the melee that sent players, city officials and hundreds of fans scrambling for cover, according to court records.

Published: March 10, 2026, 12:49 pm

VW to cut 50,000 jobs amid Trump tariffs and falling Chinese sales

Car group reports 54% drop in pre-tax profits as it says Iran war could affect demand for Audi and Porsche brands

• Business live – latest updates

Europe’s largest automaker, Volkswagen, is to shed 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, as it faces falling sales in China and North America and punitive US tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.

The 10-brand group, whose luxury subsidiaries Porsche and Audi are also under pressure, said the jobs would go in Germany, affecting the entire group, as part of a restructuring drive in light of the darkening global business climate.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:40 am

Testing the waters: can pumping chemicals into the ocean help stop global heating?

To some it was a reckless experiment but scientists hope the dispersal of 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine could ease the climate crisis

For four days last August, a thick slick of maroon bruised the waters of the Gulf of Maine. The scene, not unlike a toxic red tide, was the result of 65,000 litres of an alkaline chemical, tagged with a red dye, that had been deliberately pumped by scientists into the ocean.

Though it sounds perverse, the event was part of a scientific experiment that could advance a technology to combat both global heating and ocean acidification. Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), as the approach is called, acts like natural weathering, but on human – rather than geological – timescales.

Published: March 10, 2026, 6:00 am

Countries can rewild borders to deter invasions, says EU environment chief

Jessika Roswall cites Poland and Finland, which have made border areas near Russia or its allies ‘more hostile’ to cross

Countries should look to rewild their land borders as a deterrence to invasion and build up other geographical defences to attack, Europe’s environment chief has said.

Jessika Roswall, the EU’s commissioner for the environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, said nature should be used to improve national security. “Investing in nature and using nature as a natural border control is necessary, and actually increases biodiversity. It’s a win-win,” she said.

Published: March 9, 2026, 11:17 am

How the ‘Galápagos of west Africa’ is plundered by floating fish factories

A Guardian investigation with DeSmog reveals thousands of tonnes of fish are illegally turned into fishmeal and oil off the coast of Guinea-Bissau

The only ice factory on Bubaque, an island in west Africa’s Guinea-Bissau, is out of service. Local fishers, such as Pedro Luis Pereira, are forced to source ice from factories on the mainland, about 70km away – a six-hour round trip by boat.

“The machines have been broken for months,” Pereira says, as he pulls in his nets on the shore of the island inside the protected Bijagós archipelago. “We’ve alerted the ministry of fisheries, but so far, no one has come to fix them.”

Foreign industrial vessels anchored near the port of Bissau. Photograph: Davide Mancini

Published: March 9, 2026, 7:00 am

Alexander brothers, high-profile US real estate brokers, guilty of sex trafficking

Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander convicted in New York after being accused of raping dozens of women

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Three brothers, including two of the nation’s most successful luxury real estate brokers, were convicted of sex trafficking charges on Monday after a five-week trial over accusations that they used drugs and force to rape scores of women they had dazzled with their wealth and opulent lifestyle.

The verdict came after 11 women testified they were sexually assaulted by one or more of the brothers: twins Oren and Alon Alexander, 38, and Tal Alexander, 39.

Published: March 9, 2026, 9:56 pm

Trump threatens not to sign any bills until Congress approves strict voter ID act

Save Act would limit voting access in the US and centers on Trump’s unfounded claims of noncitizens stealing elections

Donald Trump renewed his push Monday for the Save America Act, a curtailment of voting access, after threatening on Sunday not to sign any bills until Congress approves the legislation.

“All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote,” Trump said during remarks on Monday at a Republican event in Miami. “No mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military or travel.”

Published: March 9, 2026, 11:03 pm

Uber launches women-only option across the US

Uber is expanding a pilot program aimed at addressing concerns about the safety of its ride-hailing platform

Uber launched a feature on Monday to allow both female riders and drivers across the US to be matched with other women for trips, expanding a pilot program aimed at addressing concerns about the safety of its ride-hailing platform.

The new feature is being rolled out nationwide despite an ongoing class action lawsuit against the policy in California, filed by Uber drivers who argue that it is discriminatory against men. Rival ride-hailing company Lyft is also facing a discrimination lawsuit over a similar offering that it introduced nationwide in 2024.

Published: March 9, 2026, 10:45 pm

At least eight people dead after spate of tornadoes across central US

Eighteen tornadoes between Thursday and Saturday resulted in deaths in towns from Michigan to Oklahoma

Communities throughout the central United States were cleaning up and trying to recover after an onslaught deadly tornadoes struck the region over the weekend.

At least eight people had been confirmed dead as of Monday, with dozens more injured.

Published: March 9, 2026, 4:53 pm

Short films made from brain activity of mice aim to show how they see world

Scientists hope results analysed after the mice watched video footage will help them understand their perceptions

Scientists have reconstructed short movies from the brain activity of mice that watched videos for a project that aspires to lift the veil on how animals perceive the world.

The brief movie clips are grainy and pixellated, but provide a glimpse of how mice processed footage that featured people taking part in various sports from gymnastics to horse riding and wrestling.

Published: March 10, 2026, 5:00 am

Fears for women’s rights in Chile as anti-abortion president set to take office

José Antonio Kast, who voted against legalising divorce in 2004, has pushed for return to total abortion ban

Women’s rights activists in Chile are bracing as the most conservative president since the Pinochet dictatorship prepares to take office on Wednesday.

José Antonio Kast, a 60-year-old ultra Catholic whose father was a member of the Nazi party, has consistently blocked progressive bids for women’s rights and equality across his three-decade career in politics.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:00 am

China-North Korea trains to restart, six years after Covid brought them to stop

Travel operators say Chinese and North Koreans can now buy tickets for services leaving this week

Passenger train services between China and North Korea are to resume this week, six years after their suspension because of the Covid-19 pandemic, travel operators have said.

Train journeys between the two countries were halted in 2020 as strict border closures were imposed to prevent the virus spreading.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:13 am

Trump ally Lindsey Graham issues threat to Saudi Arabia over Iran war

Republican senator warns of ‘consequences’ if kingdom does not join US strikes against Iranians

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Senator Lindsey Graham on Monday questioned whether the United States should honor a long-sought defense agreement with Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom’s refusal to join military operations against Iran made the partnership difficult to justify given that Americans were dying in a war Graham himself helped push the Trump administration to start.

In a post on X, Graham said the American embassy in Riyadh was being evacuated due to sustained Iranian attacks on Saudi soil, and expressed frustration that Riyadh had declined to participate militarily despite what he described as a shared interest in defeating Iran.

Published: March 9, 2026, 8:01 pm

Why One Battle After Another should win the best picture Oscar

Paul Thomas Anderson’s capering clash between a demented repressive regime and ragtag freedom fighters is both cartoonish and deadly serious – and perfectly tuned to its times

Viva la revolution and don’t forget your password, your pronouns, your plaid gown and your gun. One Battle After Another, from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, is the brawling rebel insider of this year’s Oscar race; a state-of-the-nation Hollywood spectacular that feels as disunited and unstable as the country it depicts. The film hates America and it loves it, too. It’s on the side of the angels even when it’s not quite sure who they are. It lights a candle to curse the darkness, and prays to God it hasn’t picked up a stick of dynamite by mistake.

“We have to stay out of politics,” Wim Wenders advised his fellow directors at last month’s Berlin film festival, and yet One Battle After Another is political to its fingertips, hard-wired to the here and now and perfectly anticipating the tenor of Donald Trump’s second term. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, the one-time firebrand turned burnt-out stoner, who belatedly hauls himself off the couch when his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) is captured. Freely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, the film updates the book’s jaundiced post-60s hangover for the ICE-age 2020s as the plot careens from the migrant detention camp to the sanctuary city to uncover a Christian Nationalist cell within the US federal government. The self-styled “Christmas Adventurers” are on a heaven-sent mission to make America great again. They say, “If you want to save the planet, you always start with immigration.”

Published: March 10, 2026, 8:00 am

Learning You review – faith-stuffed autism road trip drama sets off to find father-son connection

This sappy and ill-conceived tale about an architect, his autistic son and a lifesize toy bear suffers from sanctimonious religious messaging and dreadful dialogue

Anyone with autism or close to someone with the condition might feel inclined to be forbearing of this family drama about a father and his autistic son, given its plea for acceptance and love. But yikes – it is so sappy, ill-conceived and bloated with sanctimonious religious messaging, it is a slog to get through. If, however, you feel that watching it is almost an act of charity in itself (apparently some of the proceeds will go toward supporting carers), admire this at least for being one of the few feature films that tries to depict more challenged autistic people who need support (also known by the now-contested label of “low functioning”). Also to its credit, the film opens with a disclaimer that acknowledges that “the autism spectrum is wide and varied” and that “this film reflects the individual experiences of two characters and is not intended to represent every autistic story”.

The main character here is Elijah (played as a child by Reece Turley and then as an adult by Caleb Milby), a young man first met just after a violent meltdown that has ravaged the family’s Christmas decorations. Elijah’s father Ty (John Wells) attempts to comfort the distraught teen, with help from Elijah’s favourite stuffed toy, polar bear Nook. Flashforward seven years, and Elijah is now in some kind of secure hospital, barely distinguishable from a jail, partly because his mother Pam (Layla Cushman), divorced from Ty, just wants to offload him on the state and wash her hands of him while Ty struggles to maintain his career as an architect.

Published: March 10, 2026, 7:00 am

Rooster review – Steve Carell and a naked college president add wisdom to this cringe comedy drama

The master of the everyman gifts us some hard-won parenting insights in this blissfully awkward show about a father and daughter relationship

Humankind, as TS Eliot’s bird said in Burnt Norton, cannot bear too much reality. That feels especially salient now, when we have more reality arriving in a day than we used to have to process in a year.

At the same time, unless you go the whole high-fantasy hog and offer 100% escapism via immersion in a completely alternative world, it is becoming trickier for your audiences to believe in you at all. Programmes set in the real world have to acknowledge the new way of it. Pure, frothy comedy just became that much harder to pull off – and it was never easy. But walking the line between too much reality and not enough is almost as difficult.

Published: March 9, 2026, 10:40 pm

John Oliver on the demise of USAID: ‘What this administration has done is beyond cruel’

Last Week Tonight host examined the devastating impact of the demise of USAID, the primary federal agency for foreign aid

On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver examined the Trump administration’s gutting of USAID, the international aid agency once described as “the world’s single largest humanitarian donor”. Donald Trump, naturally, called it “a scam” where there was “very little being put to good use”.

“Set aside the irony of Donald Trump, of Trump University, accusing anything of being a fraud,” said Oliver. “You can’t just call something a scam because you don’t like it. I want to call low-rise jeans a scam. I feel like Peppa Pig is a fraud. I believe that radical lunatics run Jamba Juice. But even I acknowledge that my feelings don’t make any of those thoughts true.”

Published: March 9, 2026, 3:51 pm

Effi o Blaenau review – Greek myth retelling Iphigenia in Splott becomes blistering Welsh-language film

Leisa Gwenllian is a force of nature as working-class heroine Effi in this big screen version of Gary Owen’s one-woman play

The visceral one-woman play Iphigenia in Splott by Welsh dramatist Gary Owen has overwhelmed audiences and critics since it premiered in 2015, reimagining the sacrificial heroine Iphigenia from Greek tragedy as a young working-class woman in Cardiff who likes a drink and a laugh, defiant in the face of pity, condescension and curtain-twitching. Now it has been recreated as a blistering Welsh-language movie by director Marc Evans, who has co-written the screenplay with Owen, with a live-wire performance from Leisa Gwenllian as Effi, a child of austerity and the Covid lockdown, reclaiming her rights to immediate pleasure and happiness in the face of long-term deprivation.

At times it plays a little broad with the occasional touch of Holby City; and on a factual point, if Effi’s solicitor wanted to dissuade her from abandoning her lucrative negligence case against a hospital, he would emphasise that her payout would come from the hospital’s insurance (though, yes, the resulting increased premiums would punish future patients). Still, Effi o Blaenau is part of a British social realist tradition that extends from Ken Loach’s Poor Cow to Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, and it turns on that kitchen-sink staple no longer often found in modern drama and movies: the unplanned pregnancy. It also has what social realism often doesn’t have: an absorbing, propulsive story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. And it’s a film that doesn’t flinch from the burden of tragedy.

Published: March 9, 2026, 4:02 pm

‘Cathartic violence’: why Kill Bill: Volume 1 is my feelgood movie

The next in our ongoing series of writers picking their favourite comfort films is an argument that Tarantino’s bloody revenge saga is a feelgood winner

Having older siblings had its upsides. The main one being I had early access to the very best age-inappropriate titles – my brother and sister loved films and our towering DVD collection was a sight to behold. While I can’t remember my exact age when I first watched Kill Bill: Volume 1, I was young, probably too young, and it was awesome.

Unlike most other films I’m fond of that tend to be endlessly quotable, there’s only one line from Kill Bill, emanating from a particularly repugnant character, that I’ve always recalled with clarity (“my name is Buck and I’m here to …” hazard a guess). What is unforgettable is its banging soundtrack and striking imagery – that bright yellow tracksuit splashed in ketchup-red blood – and the dizzying, stylised action that whisks me away from whatever mundane obstacle I’m facing and into a fantastical tale of revenge.

Published: March 9, 2026, 9:00 am

A loving homage to pop culture’s also-rans: best podcasts of the week

Maisie Adam and Scott Bryan talk comically and sensitively to people who found sudden tabloid and early internet fame in the 00s. Plus, Norse myths and history with Iain Glen from Game of Thrones

It’s all too easy to sneer at pop culture’s also-rans. This series from comic Maisie Adam and journalist Scott Bryan does the opposite, embracing people who found sudden fame – mostly in the 90s and 00s – and telling their stories with humour and care. Guests include Liberty X’s Kelli Young, who thinks she and her bandmates were seen as “too R&B” to win ITV’s Popstars – and is surprisingly grateful to the funk band who sued them. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

Published: March 9, 2026, 7:00 am

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! by Liza Minnelli review – a heady brew of gossip, glamour and defiance

Lady Gaga and David Gest are among those who get ferocious dressings-down in this brutally candid memoir

Liza Minnelli’s father, the film director Vincente Minnelli, used to joke that his daughter’s career in show business was preordained. She was certainly familiar with the dark side of the industry from a young age through her mother Judy Garland, who was on the MGM payroll aged 13, before shooting to fame as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Garland was famously depressive and addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol. When her daughter was six, she shut herself in the bathroom and made the first of many suicide attempts. Minnelli soon learned to monitor her mother and hide her pill bottles when she saw darkness descending. By 13, she was “my mother’s caretaker – a nurse, a doctor, pharmacologist and psychiatrist rolled into one … Just as the MGM studio system robbed Mama of her childhood, she robbed me of mine.”

In her memoir, Minnelli – who turns 80 this month – recounts how she broke free from her dysfunctional family at 16 and moved to New York to make it as a singer and actor. Little surprise, given her parentage, that her ascent was swift. “I was the original nepo baby,” she observes, gleefully. But if show business was in her DNA, so was addiction. In her 20s she became hooked on Valium, diet pills, cocaine and alcohol. Later, as her career faltered and her private life imploded, her sister Lorna staged an intervention and got her into the first of many rehab programmes.

Published: March 10, 2026, 12:05 am

‘We all want to know what he was doing in the bedroom’: Kerouac’s unseen archive goes on show in New York

As the original On the Road scroll heads to auction, a new exhibition uncovers the private life of the Beat legend

Among great literary myths, the one of Jack Kerouac is often reduced to a vibe. The open road, a cigarette, a postwar rebel leaning on a beat-up car – a masculine archetype of rebellion and hedonism. Kerouac’s 1957 book On the Road was the bible of the beat generation and chronicles, in startlingly unfiltered prose, his travels across the US with fellow writers Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs, and his lifelong muse, the dashing Neal Cassady. The book shifted the course of US literature and captured the imagination of a rapidly changing world. Kerouac was crowned king of the beats, a moniker he later despised.

This, at least, is what many students of US literature know. But a new exhibition Running Through Heaven: Visions of Jack Kerouac at New York’s Grolier Club aims to rehumanize the myth, with letters from Kerouac that have never been publicly viewed before.

Published: March 9, 2026, 12:11 pm

Love Magic Power Danger Bliss by Paul Morley review – Yoko Ono before the Beatles

A vivid celebration of the artist covers her childhood and breakthrough in New York – while sidelining ‘that other business’

John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as “the world’s most famous unknown artist. Everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does.” Others were more vicious, portraying her as a family wrecker (the family being the Beatles), a cultural vandal, an Asian virus, a shrieking harridan. As ventriloquised by Paul Morley in his appallingly titled Love Magic Power Danger Bliss, they saw her as someone whose “sole reason to be on the planet was to drive them up the wall with her lack of talent and decency”. Or, only slightly more generously, a “disorganised diva channelling the assumed genius of male creators”.

Morley’s book focuses on Ono’s life and art before she ran into Lennon at London’s Indica Gallery in 1966. The Beatles he refers to as “that other business”. His Ono is headstrong, questing. Born in 1933, into a wealthy banking family (her schoolmates included the sons of Emperor Hirohito), she survived the firebombing of Tokyo and took refuge in the country where she and her mother, now virtual beggars, were mocked by locals. Later, she would become the first woman to be accepted into the prestigious Gakushuin University philosophy department. She left early, just as she would also leave Sarah Lawrence College in upstate New York after two terms.

Published: March 9, 2026, 9:00 am

Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester review – a battle between millennials and boomers

There are sharply observed pleasures to be found in this black comedy of infidelity, revenge and intergenerational tension – but the plot is both implausible and predictable

John Lanchester has distinguished between his nonfiction and his novels as the line between “things happening in the world” and “the things that won’t leave you alone”. Over the last decade and a half that gap appears to have narrowed. His 2012 bestseller, Capital, used the global economic crisis (explained with characteristic verve and lucidity in the nonfiction Whoops!) to lend a sharply moral edge to a sprawling Dickensian story about the London property bubble, told through the class cross-section of a newly affluent south London street. His 2019 follow-up, The Wall, was a dystopian near-future tale in which rising sea levels have exacted a catastrophic toll: a heavily guarded sea wall encircles a Britain determined to fortify its vanishing coastline and keep out the refugees desperately seeking asylum. In 2019, global sea levels reached a record high.

Lanchester’s satirical chops are on full display in his latest, Look What You Made Me Do, but this time his focus is more personal than political. Set in a recognisably professional – for which read excruciatingly smug – north London peopled by architects and agents, Lanchester’s sixth novel is billed by its publishers as a black comedy.

Published: March 9, 2026, 7:00 am

Scott Pilgrim EX review – is it time to grow up?

PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5; Tribute Games Inc
A treat for nostalgia fans and completists, but there’s little new in this rehashing of a classic that feels like an add-on rather than a fully fledged adventure

It’s 20XX, and unrepentant slacker Scott Pilgrim and his friends are revelling in the throes of young adulthood. They’re skint, but in a cool way that’s unrecognisable today (not least because nobody can afford to live near downtown Toronto). For many readers, the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels were a cultural touchpoint, a story about emotional immaturity, growing as a person and ultimately defeating youthful arrogance. Having cemented itself as a cult classic with an Edgar Wright movie, a 2010 tie-in game and a Netflix miniseries, it’s now back in the form of a raucous action-adventure game, Scott Pilgrim EX.

This is a homecoming of sorts for developer Tribute Games, which was formed by ex-Ubisoft employees who worked on the 2010 Scott Pilgrim game. Having established themselves as beat ’em up revivalists with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion, the team has stepped up for another crack at this essential coming-of-age tale. Scott Pilgrim EX feels like a passion project, so they have the Powers of Love and Understanding on their side.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:55 am

Et tutu, Timothée? Backlash mounts over Chalamet snipes at opera and ballet

Jamie Lee Curtis is among a number of prominent figures to take exception to the Oscar nominee for disparaging artforms ‘no one cares about any more’

The Oscar-winning actor Jamie Lee Curtis has added her disapproval to the chorus protesting against Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet’s comments about the relevance of opera and ballet.

The star of Marty Supreme has attracted considerable backlash for his remarks during a CNN/Variety video conversation with Matthew McConaughey, which was recorded on 24 February.

Published: March 9, 2026, 2:58 pm

Pixar chief says LGBTQ+ plot elements cut from Elio as company is ‘not making therapy’

Pete Docter says Pixar will concentrate on more commercially appealing films after staff dissent over deleted scenes that implied lead character was gay

Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter said that the reason why LGBTQ+ plot elements were removed from the company’s 2025 film Elio was that Pixar is “not [making] therapy”.

Docter was speaking to the Wall Street Journal in the wake of the successful release of Pixar’s latest film Hoppers, which opened at No 1 at the North American box office this weekend.

Published: March 9, 2026, 11:41 am

‘The smell wasn’t healthy’: the artist who wore 24 nappies to highlight sewage pollution – and fell ill

zack mennell made a costume out of nappies and waded into filthy waterways saying: ‘I’m going to be the parasite.’ The performance artist’s project became more literal than originally intended

On the Deptford foreshore, a ghoulish figure is sinking into the Thames. Performance artist zack mennell (who writes their name in lower case) wades to their belly button as a crowd watches on. As they dip down further, their mutant costume – sewn together from 24 adult nappies – swells with water … and waste.

mennell’s work smears the personal and political across their body. The Thames performance is the finale of a project called (para)site, made in response to revelations of sewage discharge in our waterways and a reaction to the way benefit claimants are labelled as a drain on society. “OK,” mennell thought, “I’m going to be the parasite.” Their taking on of pollution was more literal than they intended; they contracted Weil’s disease from rat urine in the water.

Published: March 9, 2026, 5:00 am

Rosanna Arquette says Quentin Tarantino’s use of N-word in Pulp Fiction is ‘racist and creepy’

Arquette says 1994 film is ‘great on many levels’ but she ‘cannot stand that [the director] has been given a hall pass’

Pulp Fiction and Desperately Seeking Susan star Rosanna Arquette has said she found Quentin Tarantino’s use of the N-word in Pulp Fiction to be “racist and creepy”.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Arquette said of the film, in which she plays the tattooed and pierced wife to Eric Stoltz’s syringe-wielding drug dealer: “It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally I am over the use of the N-word – I hate it. I cannot stand that [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass.”

Published: March 9, 2026, 2:44 pm

What’s the secret to crisp-skinned fish? | Kitchen aide

High heat and low moisture are key to avoiding a soggy or stuck-to-the-pan mess

When I fry fish, the skin never goes crisp, and instead either sticks, rips or goes limp. What am I doing wrong?
Emily, by email
“The secret to perfectly crisp fish skin is heat,” says Mitch Tonks, founder of Rockfish in south-west England. Well, heat plus a little bit of prep. Fish are, of course, moist things, and moisture is the enemy in the quest for that golden-brown crust, so the first thing Emily is going to need to do is dry that skin out. “If the fish has any moisture on it, it will create steam while it’s being cooked, which, in turn, will make the skin go soggy and inedible, rather than crisp and delicious,” says British fish guru Nathan Outlaw, whose latest book, On Fish: A Seafood Handbook, is published next month. And the best way to do that, Outlaw says, is to wipe and dab the skin with some kitchen paper or a clean tea towel.

Rick Toogood, head chef and co-founder of Prawn on the Lawn in London and Padstow, Cornwall, and Jack Stein, chef director of Rick Stein Restaurants, are simpatico, but Outlaw then goes that one step farther: “Take a second piece of kitchen paper [or another clean tea towel], wrap up the fish in it and leave for a couple of minutes,” he says. “This allows any remaining moisture to be absorbed.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: March 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

Thomasina Miers’ recipe for stuffed cabbage in white wine and escabeche, with buttered dill and pea rice | Sunday best

I can’t get enough of cabbage right now, and it’s the perfect wrap for this warmly spiced picadillo filling

I love stuffed vegetables. When I was young, I came across a recipe for stuffed aubergines in an old book of my mother’s and must have cooked it a score of times. Later, in the early 1990s and to the echoes of nouvelle cuisine, Delia Smith showed us how we could work similar magic with peppers and tomatoes. Then the technique went deeply out of fashion, but I stayed loyal, and continued quietly stuffing tomatoes, pumpkins and courgettes, all no doubt influenced by my travels in Mexico. Thoday’s stuffed cabbage is inspired by the most delicious tongue in a tantalisingly light escabeche that I once had at Nicos in Mexico City, and also because I can’t get enough of cabbage at the moment.

Published: March 10, 2026, 6:00 am

A perfect pillow, a ‘bargain’ Ikea mattress and more: the best sleep products on sale right now

From a bestselling Coop pillow to the Hatch sunrise alarm clock, these editor-tested picks are discounted for sleep awareness week

• ‘The most rejuvenating sleep of my life’: 12 products our writers rely on for rest each night

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

From mouth taping to the quirky potato bed trend, people seem willing to try anything to improve their sleep.

And at the Filter US, we’re on a mission to help our readers not only get more sleep, but better sleep. Over the past few months, we’ve tried 24 sleep masks, recommended the very best pillows and even asked sleep psychologists for their holy grail products.

Best mattress deal:
Helix Dusk Mattress

Best budget mattress deal:
Ikea Valevåg Pocket Spring Mattress

Published: March 9, 2026, 5:15 pm

I cooked with 10 induction cookware sets for a month – these are the standouts

From Caraway to Our Place and Staub, here are our top-rated picks for the best induction-ready cookware

• Seven best non-toxic cooking pans, tested in a food lab

• Five reasons you need a fish spatula, even if you hate fish

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

Induction cooking might feel like a shiny new kitchen flex, but the technology itself has been around since the early 20th century. What is new is how widely it’s catching on. For more and more home cooks, induction cooktops sit at the top of their kitchen upgrade wish lists.

“To be able to control temperature precisely, to be able to boil water rapidly, it’s awesome,” says Joseph DeCasperis of southern California–based home design firm the High End. He estimates that induction stovetops take up a little over a third of his firm’s installations.

Best overall:
Caraway 12-Piece Ceramic Cookware Set With Complimentary Storage

Best budget:
Calphalon Classic Stainless Steel Cookware Set

Published: March 9, 2026, 3:31 pm

Is it true that … if you pluck a grey hair, two will grow in its place?

If plucking made more hairs grow, it would be the solution to thinning, but sadly it can have the opposite effect

‘I wish that by plucking a single hair you would get more to grow back,” says Desmond Tobin, professor of dermatological science at University College Dublin. “It would be a great solution for people who are thinning and unhappy about it.”

Unfortunately, it’s a myth. Our scalp is covered in follicles – essentially tiny hair factories – and each one produces just a single hair shaft. Plucking a hair won’t cause multiple hairs to grow from the same follicle.

Published: March 9, 2026, 8:00 am

McQueen meets difficult moment with fatalistic glamour at Paris show

Seán McGirr inspired by modern identity and ‘London girls’ in one of strongest collections to date, as brand cuts jobs and struggles for momentum

Beneath the Paris fashion week hoopla – Chappell Roan resplendent in the front row, champagne flowing backstage – there were dark undercurrents at Alexander McQueen’s Paris fashion week show. The brand has seen a 60% decline in turnover over the past three years. Workforce cuts were made in the London headquarters last year, and a third of the brand’s 180 employees in Italy are thought to be at risk of losing their jobs. Fifteen years after the death of Lee McQueen, the brand is struggling to maintain momentum.

The founder is a hallowed name in the fashion industry, and one of the few modern designers to whose character and story the wider public feel a connection. But the generation who wore McQueen’s original bumsters have aged out of shock-value fashion, and the name has less power over younger consumers.

Published: March 9, 2026, 11:16 am

Now we have proof: dealing with difficult people really does age you

Researchers have found evidence of what many of us always suspected: ‘hasslers’ shorten your lifespan. And they know by exactly how long

Name: Hasslers.

Age: More like ageing.

Published: March 9, 2026, 5:49 pm

Meal-breakers: can any relationship survive food incompatibility?

It’s not the heart, but the stomach that will sometimes define whether a budding romance proves food for the soul, or reaches boiling point …

For Anna Jones, it’s lemons. For Ben Benton, it’s rice. For Gurdeep Loyal, it’s anchovies on pizza and, for me, it’s Yorkshire Tea in the morning. I could – did – date someone who “didn’t drink hot drinks”, but I would never have married a man I couldn’t make tea for when I woke up, or who couldn’t make me tea in turn.

These are what I’ve come to call “meal-breakers” – mouthfuls whose joys we feel our loved one must share, if we’re to share our lives with them. They are foods and drinks we cleave to as much for what they say about us and our values as we do for their smell, texture and taste. For most, it’s not so much the meal as the principle it conveys; not the anchovies on pizza so much as being with “someone who appreciates food as an act of collective joy – that embraces an ethos of all plates being communal,” says Loyal, author of the cookbook Flavour Heroes. The meticulous divvying-up of brown, salty silvers to ensure an even distribution on each pizza slice: that’s the sharing ethos he looks for in a potential soulmate.

Published: March 9, 2026, 10:00 am

‘Peas are criminally overlooked!’ Seven fabulous forgotten superfoods

Yes, we all know blueberries and kale are good for us. But what about some of the other less well-marketed food heroes that have fallen out of favour?

Think of a superfood. What comes to mind? Avocado? Turmeric? Quinoa? Many of us will have a grasp of the most mainstream so-called superfoods. The ones that have become dietary superheroes thanks to savvy marketing. Larger-than-life in the public imagination, they walk among us with a sheen: blueberries with their polyphenols; kale and its vitamin K; goji berries and all their antioxidants.

But what is and isn’t a superfood is actually down to trends – take the current resurgence of a previously shunned, tragically uncool food: cottage cheese. Beloved by Richard Nixon with pineapple (the Watergate tapes weren’t just illuminating in the ways Woodward and Bernstein hoped for) and a diet-culture favourite in the 60s and 70s, the creamy, tangy cheese curd concoction is back. And there are other supposed superfoods that are just as nutrient-rich, but that marketing hasn’t (yet) brought to our attention. Once a regular part of the UK diet, they have fallen, perhaps unfairly, out of favour. So which foods with serious nutritional chops have we forgotten? Which should we reintegrate?

Published: March 9, 2026, 10:00 am

She was arrested for holding a protest sign in small-town California: ‘This is a testing ground’

Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was put under house arrest, and her husband, Benjamin, lost his job after they protested at board of supervisors meetings

Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was ready to go to jail.

She had been prepared to spend six months in the custody of the Shasta county sheriff’s office. One of the top prosecutors in this part of far northern California had presented the evidence against her in a weeklong trial, and a jury had delivered a guilty verdict. A judge offered probation, but O’Connell-Nowain did not agree to the terms.

Published: March 9, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘The cover-up is brazen’: one journalist’s tenacious, traumatic fight to expose Ghislaine Maxwell

Lucia Osborne-Crowley has endured threats and sexual harassment to report on Jeffrey Epstein’s chief enabler. Maxwell’s conviction was only the start of the quest for justice, she says

On 9 September 2022, Lucia Osborne-Crowley flew from London to Miami and caught a Greyhound bus north to West Palm Beach. The writer and journalist had arranged to meet Carolyn Andriano, who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from the age of 14 until she was 17, starting in 2001. Andriano had been a crucial witness in the trial against Maxwell in 2021.

When the two women met, Andriano said she had just been visited by a private investigator – a man in his 60s, who had heard she was talking to someone about a book. In a restaurant that afternoon, Osborne-Crowley was approached by a man in his 60s. What was she writing, he wanted to know. He offered her drugs, cash and a meeting with one of Epstein’s pilots, then put his hands under her skirt. When the manager asked him to leave, he waited in the car park; Osborne-Crowley had to escape through a staff exit.

Published: March 9, 2026, 5:00 am

‘We want to give them their names back’: the team identifying Europe’s forgotten female murder victims

Interpol’s DNA unit is helping bring closure to families of murder victims, whose names may be unknown for decades

In the shadow of Antwerp’s main arena, close to the city’s docklands, runs the Groot Schijn River. It was here that the body of Rita Roberts was discovered in June 1992, floating against the grate of a water treatment plant.

She appeared to have been murdered, but Belgian police were unable to identify her. A tattoo of a black rose with green leaves and initials on her left arm was their only clue.

Published: March 9, 2026, 11:00 am

A giant cat and a Back to the Future reunion: photos of the day - Monday

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

• Warning: Gallery contains sensitive images

Published: March 9, 2026, 12:54 pm