Do we really need eight hours sleep a night – and what happens if we don’t get it?

We’re told that sleep is a superpower, making us smarter, healthier and happier. But how much is enough? And is insomnia as bad for us as we think?

‘Once, after I did a presentation, someone came up to me and said, ‘I don’t get eight hours of sleep a night. Am I going to die?’” says Prof Russell Foster, head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. “And I said, ‘Well, yes, you’re going to die. But, you know, we all die eventually.’”

This exchange is, hopefully, comforting, but it also shouldn’t be too surprising. Over the past decade or so, we’ve been repeatedly told that sleep is everything from a legal performance-enhancer to an actual superpower – and, conversely, that if we don’t get enough shuteye we’re risking an early start to our eternal slumber. But how bad is a lack of sleep, really? And if we seem to be coping fine on six hours a night, is there a chance we’re still setting ourselves up for problems further down the line?

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘I’d smoke Biscoff if I could’: how a little Belgian biscuit became a social media sensation

Biscoff-based recipes are breaking the internet – everything from cheesecakes and milkshakes to prawn dishes and salads. A few traditionalists are even enjoying the biscuits on their own. What’s behind this sweet success story?

Around 15 years ago, Ashley Markle was admitted into a secret world, introduced to the treasures of an exclusive supply chain. She was staying at her aunt’s house and, one morning, when her aunt made her a coffee, she placed a little plastic-wrapped biscuit on the side. “I’d never seen them before,” says Markle. She bit into it: “It was a warm flavour that I’d never really had in a cookie. I’m like, what is this?”

Her aunt had discovered the small, gently spiced Biscoff biscuits as an airline snack. She loved them so much that she contacted the maker, Belgian company Lotus, and asked them to ship a box to her in the US. At that time, says Markle, “I think she was the only person who actually had them in her home.” But, as we all know, the world changes rapidly. Last year, Biscoff was the fastest-growing biscuit brand in the US.

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:00 am

Why going to an HBCU might be better for Black students’ health

A study found correlation between the environment and long-term wellness in sample of 1,978 who attended college between 1940-80

Attending a historically Black college or university (HBCU) as a young adult may be linked with better later-life cognitive outcomes for Black Americans, according to a recent study. The authors sampled 1,978 Black American adults who attended college between 1940 and 1980 (35% attended an HBCU), and who attended a high school in a state with an HBCU. The conclusion? There may be a correlation between collegiate environment and long-term wellness.

During that time frame of attendance, two major policy implementations shaped schooling in the country: first, in 1952, Brown v Board of Education ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional; and second was the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred racial discrimination in school.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:00 pm

Robyn: Sexistential review – pop doyenne returns with emotional grenades and a new philosophy

(Young)
After 2018’s meditative Honey, the Swedish star returns to her trademark skin-tingling electro bangers – but this time she’s unpicking her trademark fixation on romantic love

The self-proclaimed Fembot has always pushed people’s buttons. Robyn might be best known for bringing raw emotion to the dancefloor, but her pop bangers about desire and despair are often spiked with commentary on social programming: “Plug me in and flip some switches,” she once quipped, posing as a sexed-up cyborg with a bloody, beating heart. So it’s not a shock to find the Swedish star in a lab coat on Dopamine, her first single in seven years. The song rushes with glittering, arpeggiated synths, but Robyn, now 46, holds it at arm’s length. “I know it’s just dopamine, but it feels so real to me / I’m tripping on our chemistry,” she muses, taking notes as her synapses tingle. “Is love more than chemicals?” she seems to be asking. Does it matter if it’s not? But this time the song is no social critique – it’s a whole new philosophy.

Sexistential, Robyn’s ninth album, unravels the fixation on romantic love that fuelled her biggest songs. Gone are the soft edges and pulsing, sensual house of her previous album Honey, and back are the sharp electronic sounds of 2010’s Body Talk through a new lens. With long-term collaborator Klas Åhlund and a few familiar faces (including Metronomy’s Joe Mount and Swedish pop royalty Max Martin), Sexistential reimagines Robyn’s discography without romance as a vehicle. The title track is a sub-three-minute case study in her new mentality. Over minimal, jerking 80s house Robyn raps about hooking up while undergoing IVF as a solo parent: “Fuck a single mom, I’m not judgmental,” she winks, cleaving sex from reproduction and nuclear family. Its counterpart is Blow My Mind, a revamp of her billowy 2002 single made psychedelic, faster, sharper – no longer a textbook love song, but a song about loving her young son.

Published: March 24, 2026, 9:00 am

The ‘self-deportee’ hounded out of the US to Mexico: ‘There are days when I feel literally insane’

Abel Ortiz lived in LA since he was a newborn. The Guardian filmed him as he left after 38 years. Now, we catch up with him in Mexico City, fired up and grieving in his new life

• Watch: Abel leaves LA is an original Guardian Documentary that follows Abel’s last week in the United States

A couple of weekends ago, as dusk was falling over the Escandón neighbourhood of Mexico City, Abel Ortiz was startled by the sound of two American women yelling at each other on the street outside his apartment.

They were nose to nose, screaming in English while bemused Mexicans looked on.

Published: March 24, 2026, 11:00 am

What to understand why Trump is still bombing Iran? Look to Nixon and Vietnam | Kenneth Roth

Richard Nixon’s strategy was about shielding his own reputation. Now Trump needs a face-saving exit of his own

Donald Trump’s struggle to justify continuing his war with Iran reminds me of Richard Nixon’s quest for “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Nixon caused years of death and suffering in pursuit of his elusive goal. How much more devastation will Trump inflict before he cuts his losses and calls off this pointless conflict?

Nixon first called for “an honorable end” to the war in his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican national convention. It became a centerpiece of his presidential campaign and his presidency. As it became clear that the South Vietnamese government could not survive US withdrawal from the war, Nixon sought to defend Washington’s credibility, cynically understood as a decent interval between America’s departure and Saigon’s collapse.

Published: March 24, 2026, 11:00 am

Middle East crisis live: US to send thousands more soldiers, reports say; Lebanon faces ‘existential crisis’, official says

Pentagon to send 3,000 more troops from 82nd Airborne Division, media reports say; Lebanese official says destruction from Israeli attacks ‘disastrous’

• Pakistan’s army chief attempts to broker Iran peace talks in call with Trump

In Australia, the number of petrol stations running out of fuel continues to climb as the Middle East war drags on, with at least 184 dry across the country’s three most populous states.

On Tuesday, 51 service stations in the state of New South Wales were out of fuel and 164 out of diesel, compared with 38 and 131 respectively the previous day, premier Chris Minns said.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:53 pm

JD Vance role touted as Pakistan attempts to broker US-Iran peace talks

Diplomatic sources say negotiations may begin in Islamabad next week, though no formal agreement is in place

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, says his country is ready to “facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks” to end the war in the Middle East amid attempts to push Islamabad as a possible venue for negotiations between the US and Iran.

Pakistani sources said the US vice-president, JD Vance, was being put forward as a probable chief negotiator from the US side if talks went ahead. Iranian sources have said they would refuse to sit down with Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, or Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who led the nuclear negotiations with Iran before the war.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:41 pm

Iran’s parliament speaker: the outsider seen by White House as possible partner

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has threatened the US, is being weighed up as potential interlocutor to help end war

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Just as in 1967 when a rank outsider won the Grand National due to a massive pile-up of other horses at one of the final fences, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and Donald Trump’s putative interlocutor, appears to have come to the front as the field around him rapidly thinned.

In the pantheon of Iran’s leaders, ruthlessly reduced by targeted assassinations, Ghalibaf stands out as a survivor, but if the US president hopes he has finally located the Delcy Rodríguez of Iran – a pragmatic leader from within the regime willing to do business with America – he may need to think again.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:31 pm

TSA workers try to survive second shutdown and ICE influx: ‘We need to be paid’

Workers are ‘in the middle of chaos from political games’ as Senate Republicans try to negotiate with Democrats to reopen DHS

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Workers with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are reeling from the White House’s deployment of immigration law enforcement into airports as TSA workers enter their sixth week without pay as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown continues.

More than 400 TSA workers have quit since the shutdown began in February, with major US airports reporting high call-out rates among workers, leading to longer security wait times. On Sunday, more than, 3,450 TSA officers called out of work, with as many as 40% of officers at some airports calling out that day, according to DHS data.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:07 pm

Top Democrat says Trump ‘is a complete fraud’ for voting by mail despite calling mail-in voting ‘cheating’ – live

Hakeem Jeffries says voters should not believe Trump’s claims on election integrity after president casts ballot in Palm Beach county election by mail

• Trump calls voting by mail ‘cheating’ just days after voting by mail

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Gregory Bovino, the customs and border protection (CBP) commander who led the agency’s aggressive anti-immigration push in Minneapolis before being sidelined by the White House, has decided to go out with a bang it would seem.

Having announced his forthcoming retirement from the CBP, the publicity-hungry Bovino – known for his florid statements – has given an interview to the New York Times that stresses defiance over contrition.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:49 pm

Gavin Newsom says he regrets using term ‘apartheid’ to describe Israel

California governor backtracks and says he meant to apply term to Israel’s future if it continues on present trajectory

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, backtracked on earlier remarks likening Israel to an “apartheid state” in a new interview with Politico published on Tuesday.

In the interview, the Democrat, who is widely expected to launch a presidential bid in 2028, said that when he used the term three weeks ago, he meant it to apply to Israel’s future should it continue on its present trajectory.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:50 pm

LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

Nasa reports show repeated warnings of close calls before crash that killed two pilots and injured 41 others

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Pilot safety concerns about New York’s LaGuardia airport were filed to aviation officials months before Sunday’s collision between an airplane and a firetruck left two pilots dead and 41 other people hospitalized.

According to the aviation safety reporting system administered by the US space agency Nasa, a pilot using the airport in the summer wrote, “Please do something,” after air traffic controllers failed to provide appropriate guidance about multiple nearby aircraft.

Published: March 24, 2026, 1:33 pm

Red volcanic mud coats homes after Hawaii’s worst floods in 20 years

Oahu residents face gruelling cleanup as floods damage hundreds of homes and losses are expected to top $1bn

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The worst flooding to hit Hawaii in two decades has swept homes off their foundations, floated cars out of driveways and left floors, walls and counters covered in thick, reddish volcanic mud.

Authorities said hundreds of homes had been damaged, along with some schools and a hospital. On Monday, new downpours set off a fresh round of flooding on Oahu’s south side while residents on the island’s North Shore cleaned up and assessed the destruction from last week’s torrents. The National Weather Service said showers and thunderstorms were expected to wane but the Big Island remained under a flash flood watch.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:57 pm

Epic river migrations of fish rapidly collapsing, UN report finds

Vast journeys, among world’s great wonders, found to be under threat as freshwater fish populations crash by 81%

“It’s very hard to imagine what’s going on beneath the water when you look at a river – but you have billions of fish making these epic migrations, some of the largest animal migrations on Earth,” said Dr Zeb Hogan, at the University of Nevada in the US.

The longest migration of any freshwater fish species is that of the dorado catfish, which makes a migration of 7,000 miles (11,000km), from spawning in the foothills of the Andes to feeding in the Amazon estuary and back again. The silver-gold fish themselves were incredible, said Hogan: “They get to about 2 metres long.”

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:00 pm

US public health groups urge firing of EPA boss Zeldin, saying he ‘brazenly betrayed’ agency

Advocates say Lee Zeldin’s EPA has rolled back protections and cut staff and funding, putting health at risk

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More than 160 environmental and public health organizations on Tuesday called for Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, to resign or be fired.

“No [EPA] administrator in history – Democratic or Republican – has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission,” the groups wrote in an open letter. “EPA’s foremost purpose is to protect human health and the environment. With Administrator Lee Zeldin at the helm, EPA has abandoned its mission, creating damage that will take decades to address.”

Published: March 24, 2026, 4:18 pm

Russia launches fresh wave of strikes on civilian areas across Ukraine

Moscow appears to step up spring offensive amid concerns international focus on Iran war leaves Kyiv more vulnerable

Russia has launched a huge wave of nearly 1,000 drones at Ukraine, killing at least seven people, as Moscow appears to be stepping up a spring offensive intended to break Ukrainian resistance along the front.

Ukrainian officials said Moscow fired nearly 400 long-range drones and 23 cruise missiles overnight, followed by another 556 drones in an unusual daytime assault on Tuesday, hitting cities across the west of the country.

Published: March 24, 2026, 1:41 pm

New York robber on the run after stealing just $605 from six banks across city

NYPD have yet to catch suspect who appears to be on losing streak after stealing limited funds from Chase banks

An allegedly well-practiced New York bank robber is on a losing streak – and still on the run – after hitting six Chase branches across Queens, Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx over five consecutive days and coming away with just $605, according to authorities.

New York police have yet to catch the suspect, identified as 33-year-old Gustavo DeJesus Torres, who began holding up the banks on Friday, 13 March and informing tellers in a written note that they might get hurt if they didn’t hand over the cash he demanded.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:41 pm

Pentagon correspondents push back on ‘unconstitutional’ press restrictions

New York Times says it ‘will be going back to court’ after defense department hastily announces new arrangement

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Journalists who cover the Pentagon are pushing back against a new press access arrangement hastily announced by the Pentagon, calling it “an end run” around a federal judge’s ruling to restore their access.

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, announced on Monday night that the department would permanently close a designated work space for journalists known as “correspondents’ corridor” and create a “new and improved press workspace” in an annex facility outside the building.

Published: March 24, 2026, 4:07 pm

Ex-border patrol chief defends his record after exit: ‘I wish I’d caught more illegal aliens’

Greg Bovino says Trump’s immigration crackdown hasn’t gone far enough in exit interview with the New York Times

As his retirement looms, Gregory Bovino, the US border patrol’s former commander-at-large, has contended that efforts to curb illegal immigration by Donald Trump’s administration have not gone far enough – showing no remorse over federal agents’ killings of two US citizens in Minneapolis in January.

“I wish I’d caught even more illegal aliens,” he told the New York Times on Tuesday in an exit interview, during which he also referred to the Republican president as “the Trumpster” and acknowledged his retirement at the end of March was not entirely voluntary.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:16 pm

Trump picks Australian-born ‘alpha male’ Nick Adams as presidential envoy

White House says Maga influencer appointed to role for tourism, exceptionalism and American values

Donald Trump’s appointment of Nick Adams, the “alpha male” Australian turned American internet provocateur as a new special presidential envoy on Tuesday, could give fuel to theories that the White House is deliberately trolling the world.

The president nominated the Sydney-born Maga influencer, who has a history of theatrically inflammatory and Islamophobic comments, as ambassador to Malaysia in July, but the Senate returned the appointment without a confirmation vote in January and Trump did not re-submit him.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:59 pm

US supreme court appears sympathetic to Trump administration in asylum case

White House is defending US authority to turn away asylum seekers when officials deem the border too overburdened

US supreme court justices indicated sympathy on Tuesday toward Donald Trump’s administration in its defense of the government’s authority to turn away asylum seekers when officials deem US-Mexico border crossings too overburdened to handle additional claims.

The legal dispute centers on a policy called “metering” that the Republican president’s administration may seek to revive after it was dropped by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden in 2021. The policy allowed US immigration officials to stop asylum seekers at the border and indefinitely decline to process their claims.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:41 pm

Arizona’s guns are feeding the bloodshed in Mexico’s cartel war

As Sinaloa’s conflict grinds on, firearms traced to recent US sales are increasingly linked to Arizona

When war broke out within the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organisations, people hoped it would last just a few months.

But more than a year and a half later it is still going, fuelled by a flow of firearms from the US – specifically from Arizona, which has surged past Texas to become the top source of guns seized in Mexico and traced to a recent US purchase.

Published: March 24, 2026, 4:00 pm

Fate of Argentina’s disappeared remains ‘open wound’ as more victims identified

Fifty years after the military seized power and disappeared 30,000 people forcibly, some families are finding closure

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Soledad Nívoli was four months old and sleeping in her mother’s arms when plainclothes officers burst into the family home in Córdoba, Argentina.

They were looking for her father, Mario Alberto Nívoli, 28, an electrician and leftwing activist.

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:00 am

Divide between Silicon Valley and ordinary people grows ever larger

Big tech believes the future is AI while everyday Americans remain wary; and the dangers of riding in a Tesla Cybertruck

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. This week in tech, we discuss a moment of divergence between Silicon Valley and everyday people; deep cuts at Meta to maximize spending on AI; writers caught using AI; and the frightening, fiery crashes of the Tesla Cybertruck.

How the FBI can conduct mass surveillance – even without AI

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

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

Published: March 24, 2026, 1:58 pm

‘It can spare people so much pain’: what is an advance directive and should you get one?

My sister and I had to make decisions that determined the course of my parents’ final hours. This important end-of-life document could have guided us

My parents died three years and two ICU rooms apart. Both were still in their 60s. Neither had a finished will, much less an advance directive – a set of care instructions someone prepares in case they become incapacitated – that could have guided my sister and me. In our early 30s, shellshocked by brutal surprise, we made decisions that determined the course of their final hours.

Today, we trust that we honored their wishes, but doubt and distress linger.

Published: March 24, 2026, 4:00 pm

‘I’m deathly afraid’: what is digital spirituality leading us toward?

Where traditional religion once gathered people together, digital spirituality is now consumed in isolation, mediated by tech gods with opaque agendas

• Sign up for AI for the People, a six-week newsletter course, here

Jim Pu’u didn’t set out to find God. His soul-searching began with a modest idea: to leave a record of his life in case something happened to him. His own father had died young, leaving behind only scraps of his memory, and he didn’t want his daughter to face the same void.

In December of 2024, Pu’u, who is 36 and runs a warehouse for a commercial flooring company in Las Vegas, turned to AI.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:00 pm

I lost every good acting job to Riz Ahmed – annoyingly, his James Bond comedy is a jaw-dropping hoot

Ahmed superbly tackles race and identity in his hilarious new show Bait, proving the British-Asian actor truly is the best of this country. I’m happy for him, I swear!

Conflicted feelings for me this week, watching Bait, the new comedy created by Riz Ahmed. I started a career in acting shortly after Ahmed, you see. For a decade, I lost every good job going to him. What made it worse was watching all of those projects and realising exactly how good he was. Anyway, I’m going to try to write the rest of this while suppressing Salieri levels of malcontent. Wish me luck.

Bait is the story of an Asian actor, Shah Latif, who finds himself lined up to be the next James Bond. The series covers the internet’s toxic response to the rumours, using it to dive deep into a conversation about racial palatability, Britishness, ambition and authenticity. It’s funny, surreal, provocative and boasts an incredible array of hot young British-Asian actors. Which reminds me, I must rewatch Sliding Doors.

Published: March 24, 2026, 4:48 pm

Shoplifting, sex shows and sheepdog-breeding: great artists and the side-hustles they did to get by

John Cage appeared on an Italian quizshow. Jean Genet stole rare books. Emily Carr reared bobtails. And Kathy Acker did X-rated acts with her boyfriend … we explore the unlikely sidelines of struggling artists

Before he pioneered a new genre of semi-autobiographical writing, the great French novelist and playwright Jean Genet pioneered something very different indeed: a special briefcase for stealing valuable books that he would later resell – after reading them first, of course. “I perfected a trick briefcase,” he later recalled, “and I became so handy in these thefts that I could push politeness to the point of pulling them off under the very nose of the bookseller.”

For as long as young people have dreamed of careers in the arts – as novelists, painters, poets, musicians and other species – they have had to measure their dreams against their economic circumstances. Often they have found a yawning gap between what they hope to do and what they have the means to pay for.

Published: March 24, 2026, 4:00 pm

Jon Stewart on Donald Trump’s Iran lies: ‘Our Supreme Misleader’

Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s bluffing on Iran ‘talks’ and his callous reaction to Robert Mueller’s death

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s tweet celebrating Robert Mueller’s death, his ICE intervention at chaotic airports and his bluffing on “talks” with Iran.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:29 pm

Prisoner number 804: the plot to erase Imran Khan

It’s one thing to remove a PM from office, as happened to the former cricketer in 2022. But it’s another thing to try to eradicate the most famous person in Pakistan’s history

• This article originally appeared in Equator, a new magazine of politics, culture and art

Just so we’re clear, the following is a fact. Not opinion, not a point of view, not a hot take. Fact. There is no Pakistani – male, female, dead, alive, real, imagined – as famous as Imran Khan. Every turn in a multifarious public life has abounded in fame, first as a cricket legend, then as a beloved philanthropist who built a cancer hospital for the poor, latterly as a maverick politician who swept to power promising reform, and now, as the sole occupant of a cell in Pakistan’s most notorious jail. So famous he’s been the subject of two death hoaxes – most recently in November, when he went unseen for so long that many concluded he had died.

There have been others with greater accomplishments. There may come others in the future. But in almost 79 years of Pakistan, in the pure currency of fame, of being known and recognised, of being talked about, of being the one Pakistani everyone can name, there is nobody beyond Imran. (He is almost universally known by his first name alone.) It holds even now, two years into the state’s attempts to erase him from public life. In that time, they’ve barred TV channels from saying his name on air and stopped newspapers from publishing his picture; they’ve even scrubbed him from the footage of his greatest sporting triumph.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:00 am

Trump’s sanctions against a UN human rights expert show free speech is dying |

Francesca Albanese recommended ICC arrests and investigations over Gaza. Who will be the administration’s next target?

We are North American university professors and human rights lawyers who teach, write, and speak about the human rights of people around the world, including Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. In a country that purports to value democracy and human rights, we never imagined that we could face civil penalties or imprisonment for our work. That sense of security has evaporated after the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders and memoranda that aim to stifle speech and demonize dissent – particularly when it comes to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians living in Gaza.

Let us be clear: the evidence that Israel has committed war crimes is overwhelming. Israel killed an estimated 20,000 children – including more than 1,000 babies – in two years of war. Israel used starvation and thirst as a war tactic, leading to widespread famine that indiscriminately targeted the civilian population. It kept civilians from accessing cancer treatment, neonatal and maternal care, and basic antibiotics and painkillers by blockading the delivery of medical equipment and medications. Israel destroyed Gaza’s entire healthcare system, including reproductive healthcare facilities and Gaza’s largest fertility clinic. Israel’s systematic attack on Gaza’s civilian population was accompanied by dehumanizing language by authorities at the highest levels of government comparing Palestinians to “‘human animals” and “children of darkness”.

Sandra L Babcock is a clinical professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School. Susan M Akram is clinical professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law. Asli Bali is a Professor at Yale Law School and is the past President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Thomas Becker is the Legal and Policy Director at the University Network for Human Rights and teaches human rights at Columbia Law School. James Cavallaro is the Executive Director of the University Network for Human Rights and a visiting professor at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:00 am

Argentina was the model of how to survive a dictatorship. Javier Milei is changing that | Jordana Timerman

By questioning the scale of atrocities and deriding human rights activists, Milei is dismantling the consensus over the country’s dirty war

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the military coup that ushered in Argentina’s last dictatorship in 1976. For decades, the date has marked one of the country’s most powerful civic rituals. Each year, tens of thousands of Argentinians take to the streets to commemorate the victims of state terror and reaffirm their democratic commitment to memoria, verdad y justicia – memory, truth and justice. What began as a demand from grieving families searching for an estimated 30,000 disappeared gradually became something larger: the moral language that defined Argentina’s post-dictatorship democracy.

But this anniversary arrives at a moment when that moral compass is under assault. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, relishes flouting taboos around the country’s democratic consensus, questioning the scale of the dictatorship’s atrocities, celebrating the military and deriding activists as corrupt opportunists. As president, Milei has marked each anniversary of the coup with controversial videos questioning the number of victims or equating state repression with violence by leftist guerrilla groups. This year, rumours swirl that he could pardon military officers convicted in landmark crimes against humanity trials – a move that would shatter a central pillar of Argentina’s post-dictatorship settlement. What was once treated as untouchable has become a battleground.

Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She is the managing editor of The Ideas Letter and compiles the Latin America Daily Briefing

Published: March 24, 2026, 11:00 am

Why is the US so expensive? Everything comes in a ‘premium’ version, from doctors’ appointments to movies | Arwa Mahdawi

Want a good view of the cinema screen? You’ll need to sign up to the VIP scheme. A quick chat with your doctor? An extra $50,000 will let you jump the queue

‘What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest,” Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. “You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke [and] you can drink Coke, too … The idea of America is so wonderful because the more equal something is, the more American it is.”

Fifty years later, it’s still true that the Diet Coke Donald Trump is chugging by the caseload in the Oval Office is exactly the same stuff his public can buy in a local shop. But the idea that mass consumerism is characterised by equality is about as dead as Warhol is. There are precious few products or experiences that haven’t been segmented into multiple tiers, from “embarrassing pauper” to “ultra-VIP”, in order to extract as much money from the consumer as possible.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:20 pm

As the US midterms approach, AI is going to emerge as a key issue concerning voters | Nathan E Sanders and Bruce Schneier

There is a political divide over AI but few leaders are taking a strong stand. It’s time for that to change

In December, the Trump administration signed an executive order that neutered states’ ability to regulate AI by ordering his administration to both sue and withhold funds from states that try to do so. This action pointedly supported industry lobbyists keen to avoid any constraints and consequences on their deployment of AI, while undermining the efforts of consumers, advocates, and industry associations concerned about AI’s harms who have spent years pushing for state regulation.

Trump’s actions have clarified the ideological alignments around AI within America’s electoral factions. They set down lines on a new playing field for the midterm elections, prompting members of his party, the opposition, and all of us to consider where we stand in the debate over how and where to let AI transform our lives.

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:00 pm

Ella Baron on Donald Trump’s peace negotiations with Iran – cartoon

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Published: March 24, 2026, 5:41 pm

In Gaza, the joy of Eid has gone. Visiting relatives at the end of Ramadan is a procession through loss | Ahmed Kamal Junina

Every home is missing someone, every person is carrying grief. We went not to celebrate but to sit with the bereaved

Eid al-Fitr is meant to bring release. It comes at the end of Ramadan, after a month of fasting and prayer, and in Gaza it has always carried its own kind of joy. The day begins with prayer. Men and boys gather in clean clothes, neighbours congratulate one another, friends embrace, and supplications rise with the first light. Families return home for breakfast, then begin the long round of visits to sisters, daughters, aunts, uncles and neighbours. Children wait for eidiya, the money given to younger relatives. Coffee is poured, sweets are shared and doors remain open.

This year, the rituals remained. The feeling had gone.

Published: March 24, 2026, 6:00 am

Behind the rise of Clavicular and ‘looksmaxxing’ there are insecure young men who feel they don’t measure up | Jason Okundaye

What is a very private struggle – coming to terms with one’s own appearance – is being reshaped into a site of competition and ridicule

I felt something akin to devastation reading that the actor Barry Keoghan sometimes “doesn’t want to go outside” because of the scale of online abuse about his appearance. It’s not just the viciousness of the abuse, but how difficult I imagine it must have been for him to articulate, as well as what was not said – what parts of his face he’s likely now had to obsess over and scrutinise.

As a man, it is often hard to say out loud that you have been made to feel insecure in yourself, or that there are things that you do not like about your physical appearance. Keoghan’s vulnerability as a grown man is striking, but I have also been thinking about how much harder it is to articulate this as a teenager or boy. I was well versed in the language of bodily dissatisfaction from a young age, though these were thoughts I would keep to myself: that I did not like my thinning hair, how narrow my shoulders were, my large forehead, or the eczema on my right hand that often drew questions like, “Were you in a fire?” I did not like that I was not as tall as my brothers, or even that my voice did not break with a deep manly husk but retained some squeakiness.

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

Published: March 24, 2026, 7:00 am

Molly Miller, ‘pretty privilege’ and women’s basketball’s beauty trap

Arizona State’s head coach has turned around a losing program. Unsurprisingly, much of the discourse on the internet was not based on her leadership skills

In March 2025, the Arizona State women’s basketball team were looking for a coach who could end a drought that had seen them go without a NCAA Tournament appearance – or even a winning season – since 2019-20.

The choice was Molly Miller, a proven and successful head coach at Grand Canyon. Miller had led the Lopes to their first NCAA Tournament appearance and a 32–3 record in her final season with the team – a benchmark for the program and an important accomplishment within the broader scope of college basketball. She soon turned around Arizona State, leading them to a 24-11 record and a first appearance at the NCAA Tournament in six years. (Their season ended in the First Four.)

Published: March 24, 2026, 9:00 am

Antoine Griezmann to leave Atlético Madrid and join MLS’s Orlando City

• French superstar played 10 years for Atlético

• Forward will join Orlando in July on a deal through 2029

• Atlético plays Barcelona in Copa del Rey final in April

Orlando City SC completed the long-anticipated signing of Atlético Madrid superstar Antoine Griezmann on Tuesday.

The 35-year-old French attacker is signed from July 2026 through the 2027-28 season with an option for 2028-29. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:33 pm

Mikaela Shiffrin on verge of overall World Cup title after record slalom win

• Shiffrin wins slalom to move 85 points clear overall

• Aicher must win Wednesday’s giant slalom finale

• American star eyes record-tying sixth overall crown

Mikaela Shiffrin v Emma Aicher for the most prestigious title in women’s skiing will go to the season-ending final race on Wednesday.

Shiffrin won yet another slalom on Tuesday – her ninth in 10 World Cup starts this season – by a massive margin of 1.32sec ahead of Wendy Holdener.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:39 pm

Death in the strike zone: the mysterious fate of James Creighton, baseball’s first star

A new book explores the career of a player who many credit with inventing the curveball, and why he has been kept out of the Hall of Fame

The Civil War provides a host of baseball-related mysteries pertaining to pitcher James Creighton. By the time of his death at age 21 in 1862, Creighton had compiled a ledger of accomplishments, starring for one of America’s top teams at the time, the Brooklyn Excelsiors. His grave became a shrine to the player and the sport he dominated. Then the clouds came in – over the circumstances of his death, over the achievements of his career. He is not in the Hall of Fame, but baseball historian Thomas Gilbert makes a convincing case for his inclusion in a new book, Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero.

“One hundred years ago, his impact was clear,” Gilbert says. “Until the turn of the 20th century, he was remembered and talked about … When Albert Spalding wrote his book on baseball in 1911, he said: ‘Obviously Creighton was the greatest, fastest pitcher ever.’”

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:00 am

A Canadian goal threat to a versatile Spaniard: three of the best teenagers in women’s football

Kaylee Hunter, Justine Rouquet and Aiara Agirrezabala could all be earning themselves big moves in the near future

Vicky López, Lily Yohannes, Michelle Agyemang — these are all names you may have heard before. They are the best and brightest of the next generation; youngsters already logging consistent minutes at the largest clubs in the world. They are the future – but what about the rest? Where are the talents that have yet to make big moves and are still, slowly but surely, carving out their space on the global stage?

Here are three teenagers that could be earning themselves major moves in the near future.

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:00 am

US-Israel war on Iran: how football in the region is struggling to deal with the fallout

From World Cup preparations to Champions League complications, the issues facing football in the region

It has been a little over three weeks since the United States and Israel attacked Iran and plunged the Middle East into war. Football there is struggling to deal with the fallout from the conflict. Here are the issues.

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:10 pm

Seventh-tier players, a new app and togetherness: inside New Caledonia’s unlikely World Cup tilt

Despite being 150th in the world rankings, the French overseas territory can dream of a truly astounding achievement

Roussillon is a small town nestled in the Rhône valley, about 40 minutes south of Lyon by car, and a reminder that the most extraordinary stories can hide in the most ordinary of places. One player says “the town doesn’t ‘live’ for [its] club”, but as you head through the town centre and towards Salaise Rhodia’s stadium, you begin to doubt whether the town lives at all; welcome to a Sunday in rural France.

Around 30 minutes before the start of the game, the single stand begins to fill. Everyone seems to know each other in some way. Entry is free for what is a top of the table encounter in the Régional 2, the seventh tier of French football, against Craponne AS.

Published: March 24, 2026, 8:00 am

Women’s NCAA Tournament: Kymora Johnson soars as Virginia shock No 2 Iowa in double OT

• No 10 seed Cavaliers have won three games in five days

• Virginia will face TCU in Sweet Sixteen

Kymora Johnson scored 28 points as 10th-seeded Virginia shocked No 2 Iowa 83-75 in double-overtime on Monday in the women’s NCAA Tournament second round.

The Cavaliers (22-11) have won three games in five days, defeating Arizona State 57-55 in Thursday’s First Four game, following that with an 82-73 overtime win over Georgia in Saturday’s first round, and then beating the Hawkeyes (27-7), who were playing in front of a sellout home crowd of 14,332.

Published: March 23, 2026, 9:17 pm

Howe faces Newcastle crisis with chaotic campaign derailing out of control

Defeat against derby rivals Sunderland underlined failings in the team with manager needing to show he can get team back on track next season

Eddie Howe seemed oblivious to the train hurtling down the track towards him. As Newcastle’s manager urged a team by now studded with substitutes to keep attacking, Enzo Le Fée came on for Sunderland and immediately slipped Brian Brobbey a sachet of energy gel.

Eighty-five minutes had passed on Sunday afternoon, the score at St James’ Park was 1-1 and Régis Le Bris had made his first change to a severely injury-hit visiting starting XI. As the clock hit the 90-minute mark, Le Fée surged into space and checked before threading a low, angled cross through the legs of Lewis Hall and Dan Burn and on to Brobbey’s feet. Although Aaron Ramsdale blocked the former Ajax striker’s initial effort, Brobbey scored at the second attempt. Newcastle had been mugged by a double nutmeg and Howe’s season appeared thoroughly derailed.

Published: March 24, 2026, 8:00 am

Texas residents feel homes shake miles away from oil refinery explosion

Images and videos online showed large plume of smoke and flames billowing out from refinery, but no one was injured

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An oil refinery fire near the Texas coast was put out on Tuesday and a temporary shelter-in-place order was lifted, hours after a large explosion at the complex shot plumes of smoke into the air, officials said.

No one was injured in Monday’s explosion at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, about 90 miles (145km) east of Houston, said Charlotte M Moses. The Port Arthur mayor had urged residents in parts of the west side of the city to stay put.

Published: March 24, 2026, 1:38 pm

Jay-Z on refusing to settle sexual assault lawsuit: ‘I can’t do it, I would die’

The rapper discussed his 2024 sexual assault lawsuit and the Kendrick-Drake beef in a new GQ cover story

Jay-Z has spoken out about his recent sexual assault lawsuit in a new interview.

The suit alleged that Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs raped a a 13-year-old girl at a party in 2000. Combs and Jay-Z denied all allegations after the lawsuit was filed in late 2024, and the case was voluntarily dismissed in February 2025.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:01 pm

Epstein victim says Bard president helped legitimize sex offender

Leon Botstein’s communications and relationship with Epstein under review by WilmerHale law firm, while Bard president says he never witnessed anything inappropriate

A victim of Jeffrey Epstein who had previous interactions with Leon Botstein said she believed the Bard College president, whose relationship with the late sex offender is currently under review, was part of a group of influential and accomplished men whose proximity to Epstein helped to rehabilitate his reputation.

Svetlana Pozhidaeva, a former Russian model who worked as a “staffer” for Epstein, told the Guardian in an interview that she saw Botstein with Epstein together “quite frequently” – including having flown with him on a trip to Epstein’s island in December 2012 – and that she believed his reputation as a “sophisticated intellectual” helped “legitimize” Epstein.

Published: March 24, 2026, 11:00 am

Kalshi and Polymarket ban insider trading as senators look to curb prediction markets

Top prediction market sites usher in new guardrails after senators introduced bill that could limit booming industry

Kalshi and Polymarket, the two biggest prediction market sites, rushed to institute new industry guardrails and add new surveillance tools on Monday after two key senators announced legislation that could severely curtail the industry’s prospects.

Kalshi said it would ban political candidates from trading on their own campaigns, and it would pre-emptively block anyone involved in college or professional sports from trading contracts related to the sports they play or are employed by.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:46 pm

Whale stranded in Baltic will die unless helped to move soon, say experts

German rescue teams have been trying to ease the humpback’s path back into deeper waters without success

A 10-metre-long humpback whale stranded on a sandbar in the Baltic Sea is in danger of dying if rescue workers do not manage to help it move into deeper waters soon, experts have said.

Believed to be a young male, the mammal was spotted by guests of a hotel in Niendorf in Lübeck Bay, northern Germany, on Monday after they heard its deep moans and alerted police.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:42 pm

‘The threat is here’: searing US heatwave bad news for wildfire season and water supply

Experts say brutal temperatures in west threaten to melt sparse snowpack – and warn hot, dry conditions here to stay

A stunning heatwave that shattered records in the US west is threatening to rapidly melt the sparse snowpack and ramp up wildfire risks in the seasons ahead.

March has already been historically hot, but the early onset of summer weather across the region may be here to stay. There is little reprieve in forecasts, which show more heat records may fall this spring.

Published: March 24, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Extraordinary event’ for mountain gorillas as new twins born in DRC

Conservationists celebrate second twin birth just two months after another set discovered in Virunga national park

A second set of mountain gorilla twins has been born in Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in what conservationists are celebrating as an “extraordinary” event for the endangered primates.

Just two months after tiny twin mountain gorillas were discovered by rangers in the Virunga massif, in eastern DRC, another rare twin birth has been found by park wardens. This time, an infant male and female have been spotted in the Baraka family, a troop of 19 mountain gorillas that roam the region’s high-altitude rainforests.

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:42 pm

US park police officer wounded in ‘ambush’ shooting in Washington DC

Park police chief says officer was ‘ambushed’ by two gunmen who fired as officer drove in unmarked vehicle

A US park police officer was seriously wounded on Monday evening in a shooting in Washington DC in what the park police chief called an ambush.

The park police chief, Scott Brecht, said in a press briefing that the unidentified officer was “ambushed” by two gunmen who fired at the officer as he drove by in an unmarked vehicle. The officer was working on a park police investigation when he was shot. The chief declined to give specifics of the investigation.

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:22 pm

US quadruple amputee cornhole champion arrested on suspicion of murder

Dayton Webber, 27, accused in shooting death of Bradrick Wells in Maryland, reportedly after argument inside car

A Maryland man who made history as the first quadruple amputee to compete in the professional, televised American Cornhole League has been arrested on suspicion of shooting and killing a passenger in his car during an argument.

Dayton Webber – who became a champion cornhole player after losing his limbs and nearly dying from a bacterial infection in his infancy – faces murder charges in connection with the death of Bradrick Wells, authorities said on Monday.

Published: March 24, 2026, 8:00 am

What are zettajoules – and what do they tell us about Earth’s energy imbalance?

When James Prescott Joule lent his name to a unit of energy, he could not have foreseen today’s alarming calculations

The primary unit of climate collapse is the zettajoule. If you have never heard of this term, you are not alone. Even scientists who work on a planetary scale struggle to relate the immensity of the change measured by this titanic unit of energy.

Published: March 24, 2026, 6:00 am

‘It smells like a rancid fish and chip shop’: at sea with the Antarctic’s krill supertrawlers

The fishery is regulated but experts say it is wrecking the food chain. Gordon Peake joined a Sea Shepherd mission to observe the giant ships compete for catch

It is bitterly cold on the deck of the Allankay and the bosun, Luca Massari, is checking that none of us are wearing contact lenses before we descend into Antarctic waters. There is a risk, he warns, that lenses will freeze solid over the eyes. Massari himself is prepared for his surroundings. He is wearing thick goggles that make him look like an Olympic ski jumper.

Massari is a burly, heavily tattooed veteran of the environmental organisation Sea Shepherd, which campaigns against exploiting the oceans. His deck team are preparing to launch the ship’s small boat, which Massari will helm. Eight of us are bundled in bright red dry suits, helmets and lifejackets; the average time to survive hypothermia in this wind-whipped water is just five minutes.

The Allankay sailed to Coronation Island from New Zealand to document the krill fishing. Photograph: Alice Bacou/Sea Shepherd

Published: March 24, 2026, 9:00 am

Tonga PM welcomes US deal to explore deep-sea minerals amid environmental concerns

Exclusive: Pacific island’s new leader Lord Fakafānua discusses ‘exciting’ US partnership as critics fear impacts of seabed exploration

The recently elected leader of Tonga has described a deal to partner with the US on deep-sea mineral exploration as an “exciting development” amid concern in the small Pacific nation over the practice of seabed mining and the potential environmental impact.

Tonga is located in the South Pacific Ocean, a region attracting growing interest over whether critical minerals buried in the seabed could be extracted to help power industries and green technologies.

Published: March 24, 2026, 1:32 am

Hawaii assesses damage left by worst flooding in more than 20 years

People evacuated on Oahu and Maui as rains lifted houses and cars, swept through stores and left streets mud-clogged

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Hawaii is assessing the extensive damage left by the worst flooding the islands have seen in more than 20 years.

Heavy rains and floodwater forced thousands on the North Shore of Oahu to evacuate over the weekend and triggered evacuation orders for parts of Maui. Floodwater from rains lifted houses and cars, inundated farms and swept through grocery stores on the islands, leaving behind a thick layer of mud.

Published: March 23, 2026, 10:04 pm

US democracy has settled into diminished state, experts find

Bright Line Watch researchers see stabilization in democratic health but at lower levels after sharp decline

The health of American democracy, as measured by those who study it most closely, has settled into a diminished state – stabilizing after a sharp decline last year, but still well below the levels recorded before the start of Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new survey released on Tuesday.

The findings, by the non-partisan democracy-tracking project Bright Line Watch, which has surveyed hundreds of US scholars at American colleges and universities since 2017, suggest that the erosion of norms detected after Trump’s return to the White House last year has hardened into a new baseline. The public also holds a dim view of American democracy, the most recent survey found, but are sharply divided along partisan lines over how well the system is functioning.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:57 pm

Senate confirms Trump loyalist Markwayne Mullin as homeland security secretary

Oklahoma senator, confirmed in 54-45 vote, replaces Kristi Noem to lead president’s immigration crackdown

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The US Senate on Monday confirmed Markwayne Mullin to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, elevating the Republican senator to a role where he will be among the public faces of Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

The Republican controlled chamber confirmed Mullin largely along party lines, with a vote of 54-45. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote against him, while Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich were the sole Democrats to vote in favor.

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:51 am

US supreme court appears poised to limit mail-in ballots ahead of midterms

Case focuses on RNC’s challenge to a Mississippi law that allows ballots to count if they arrive after election day

• US politics live – latest updates

The US supreme court appeared poised on Monday to curtail how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, which would affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year.

The justices are considering Watson v Republican National Committee, a challenge over a Mississippi state law that was brought in 2024 by the Republican party. Mississippi allows mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of election day, so long as they were postmarked by election day. Mississippi changed its laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Published: March 23, 2026, 6:29 pm

US to pay almost $1bn to French energy company to kill wind project plan

Trump administration announces deal with TotalEnergies to redirect investment in wind to oil and gas instead

As a fuel crisis triggered by the war in Iran drives up global fossil fuel prices, the Trump administration has announced it will pay French energy major TotalEnergies $1bn to kill plans to construct wind farms off the US east coast.

The deal is the latest blow to the US offshore wind industry, which has faced repeated disruptions to multi-billion-dollar projects under Donald Trump.

Published: March 23, 2026, 7:26 pm

Estée Lauder in talks on merger with Jean Paul Gaultier owner Puig

Combination of US and Spanish companies would create $40bn fashion and beauty group

• Business live – latest updates

The US cosmetics company Estée Lauder is in talks over a potential merger with the Spanish group Puig, the owner of brands including Jean Paul Gaultier and Rabanne, to create a $40bn fashion and beauty giant.

Estée Lauder is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of skin care, makeup and fragrances with a portfolio that includes Clinique, Bobbi Brown and Tom Ford Beauty.

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:30 am

Amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online surged in 2025

Internet Watch Foundation verified 8,029 pieces of realistic AI-made content, with 65% of videos in worst category

The amount of AI-generated child sexual abuse material found online rose by 14% last year, with the majority of videos showing the most extreme type of content, according to a safety watchdog.

The Internet Watch Foundation said it identified 8,029 AI-made images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in 2025. It added that there had been a more than 260-fold increase in videos.

Published: March 24, 2026, 6:00 am

Danish polls to close shortly as Greenland PM says election is most important in territory’s history – Europe live

Incumbent Mette Frederiksen widely predicted to continue as PM but neither bloc expected to be able to form majority

• Denmark election: far right has slowed under Frederiksen – but at what cost?

in Copenhagen

The far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP) is attempting to win over voters by paying for their petrol.

“We would like to contribute to the debate about fuel prices, but we do not really have a desire to be party political.”

Published: March 24, 2026, 6:14 pm

Extra 11 minutes’ sleep each night can reduce heart attack risk, study finds

Researchers detail ‘surprisingly large’ cardiovascular health benefits of small shifts in behaviour

Sleeping for 11 minutes more each night, doing 4.5 additional minutes of brisk walking and eating an extra 50g or so of vegetables each day can significantly reduce a person’s risk of heart attack, a study has found.

Academics found these small changes could help people avoid major cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, by about 10%. Small behaviour changes were more “achievable and sustainable”, the research team said.

Published: March 24, 2026, 8:40 am

‘What a fascinating challenge for an artist’: how Monet captured Venice in his twilight years

de Young Museum, San Francisco
New exhibition brings together the artist’s many Venetian paintings, a perfect match of artist and location that almost didn’t happen

Claude Monet was 68 years old before he ever set foot in Venice, surprisingly keeping his distance from a city that for hundreds of years has attracted many of Europe’s best painters. When Monet finally did get there, he created dozens of paintings and the French impressionist’s Venetian works are now the subject of a show at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, simply titled Monet and Venice.

“It might have been insecurity, because Venice had been painted so famously and by so many major names in western history,” said Melissa Buron, who co-curated the show with Lisa Small. As she explained, given Venice’s artistic pedigree, even a master such as Monet would have reason to feel intimidated by the location.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:33 pm

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at 60: Elizabeth Taylor still crackles with feral energy

Mike Nichols’ 1966 adaptation of Edward Albee’s septic drama helped cement the play in the zeitgeist – where it has remained for the past six decades

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After a long day at work, we may not instinctively leap to films about toxic marriages and relationship breakdowns – but by God they can make good drama. Blue Valentine, The Squid and the Whale and A Separation are some of the great portraits of love turned septic. But perhaps greatest of all is Mike Nichols’ directorial debut – a sizzling adaptation of Edward Albee’s legendary Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which arrived in 1966, four years after the play, and helped cement it in the zeitgeist.

The film was nominated for every eligible Academy award and won five, including best actress for Elizabeth Taylor, who delivers a searing performance as the ferocious yet vulnerable Martha. It’s lost none of its gut-busting charge today and her brilliantly performed experience still crackles with emotional electricity.

Published: March 24, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘Was that an earthquake?’ Italy’s great psycho-geographer tackles the Vesuvius-haunted Naples tourists seldom see

His films about Rome’s ringroad and the islanders and refugees of Lampedusa have won awards. Now Gianfranco Rosi is completing his trilogy, capturing a Naples ‘that is not immediately there’

A uniform grey nimbostratus has blocked the rays of the London sun the day I speak to Gianfranco Rosi, but this consummately Italian film-maker is feeling right at home. “When Jean Cocteau visited Naples, he wrote a letter to his mother in which he said, ‘Vesuvius makes all the clouds in the world.’ And I think that’s a beautiful image.” He gives a gracious nod to the blanket of grey outside the window. “I am sure there is one cloud over London today that has come straight from southern Italy.”

Rosi, 62, has earned his reputation as one of Europe’s most important documentary-makers with highly original and poetic portraits of Italian places. His 2013 film Sacro GRA – the first documentary to win the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival – followed a motley cast of characters who live or work on the ringroad that circles Rome. Fire at Sea, which scooped the Golden Bear at the Berlinale three years later, was a study of the inhabitants of the island of Lampedusa and the people who arrived there on perilously crowded boats at the height of the refugee crisis. It elevated Rosi to an elite circle of directors to have won the top prize at two of Europe’s three main film festivals.

Published: March 24, 2026, 3:00 pm

Surrender to It review – insufferable bunch of actors reconnect for hiking weekend of pain and comedy

There are echoes here of 1992’s Peter’s Friends, and given this thriller’s preposterous script and amateurish production it is likely to generate similar levels of disdain

Writer-director Tim Bryn Smith clearly never got the memo, drafted immediately after the waves of derision that greeted luvvie-fest Peter’s Friends back in 1992, that any film revolving around a bunch of friends who are or were formerly actors having a reunion is fair game for sneering, sniping and all kinds of eye-rolling disdain. Because no one really likes watching actors playing actors, despite the recent Oscar win for Sentimental Value. But Bryn Smith and his chums apparently haven’t read the room, so here’s the damn near insufferable Surrender to It, which revolves around a motley collection of ageing would-be thespians who all met at a drama workshop back in the day reuniting for a hiking weekend.

The script, credited to Bryn Smith and Chris Wetton, feels like it rose out of a bunch of improv exercises and random suggestions fished out of a hat. One strand involves bereaved couple Dani (Daemian Greaves, the best of a very average lot in terms of performances here) and Celena (Melissa May Smith) who are mourning their dead son. While this is handled with some sensitivity, the maudlin tone doesn’t mix at all well with the supposedly comic subplots that occupy the rest of the running time. These focus on the other (highly unlikely) former best buds that include Ram (Fletcher Graham) who’s gone on to become a big-time movie star recovering from a recent scandal in the manner of Johnny Depp who has one hanger-on with him (Alexander Rose). Hugo (Bryn Smith) is meant to be the talent that never flourished who harbours deep feelings for another member of the group, but not the one you might think. There’s influencer Evie (Chantelle Lee) who has her own secret feelings for one of the cohort, and her pal Chrissy (Clare Alexandra Isabelle McGill) who is being courted by a gigolo with a ridiculous Latin accent whom we never meet. Dopey Timmy (Ben Grace) wants everyone to help him find treasure hidden by his recently deceased father.

Published: March 24, 2026, 11:00 am

‘We are a very resilient people’: in the face of Trump’s threats, Cuban cinema comes out fighting

With the island back in Washington’s sights, the Screen Cuba festival is taking UK audiences beyond the blockade

At a packed trade union meeting in Havana, one of the workers calls out management’s delays in sending a technician to repair faulty machinery. Perhaps, he suggests, the required specialist has yet to be born. Another labourer called Lina – one of the few women employed at the site – stands up to criticise the dilapidated state of the dockyard.

All the while, a bourgeois theatre director named Oscar looks on in search of characters for his next creative project. This is Hasta Cierto Punto (“Up to a Certain Point”), Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1983 film interrogating the state of gender relations in post-revolutionary Cuba.

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:20 pm

Clash of the Superpowers: America vs China review – Trump vomits all over Norma Percy’s film

The revered documentarian wades into unexplored territory with the US president and Xi Jinping’s relationship – and there is a moment so startling that it feels like pure comedy gold

It’s not normal to view documentaries about international trade negotiations as light relief, but we are where we are. Clash of the Superpowers: America vs China is a two-parter produced by film-maker Norma Percy, whose signature style – on series including The Iraq War, Putin vs the West and Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil – is to use first-hand testimonies to revisit diplomatic flashpoints from a decade or so ago: sufficiently soon after the events for everyone who was there to still be alive, but late enough for them to no longer be in the same job and now be willing to gossip.

Percy’s latest opens with the arrival of Chinese president Xi Jinping at the Davos forum in 2017. On his debut appearance at the event, Xi stimulates delegates with a speech positioning himself as a champion of free trade, offering to work with other countries for mutual economic benefit. What might historically have been an odd tack for China’s leader is not that surprising to the bankers, financiers and politicians in the room, who know Xi is pre-empting the inauguration, a few days later, of Donald Trump as US president.

Published: March 23, 2026, 10:00 pm

‘The most stunningly awful wonderful record’: how the Shaggs became rock’s most divisive band

Often completely out of tune and rarely in time, the group of sisters forced to play together by their father gained an army of fans from Frank Zappa to Kurt Cobain. A new documentary celebrates their cult status

When Austin Wiggin Jr was a boy, his mother read his palm. She foretold that Austin would have two sons she wouldn’t live to see; he’d marry a strawberry blonde; and his daughters would play in a popular band. By 1965, the first two omens had come true. Austin felt this was reason enough to pull Dorothy, Betty and Helen Wiggin from school in pursuit of musical superstardom.

Austin’s domineering daily regime began immediately: mail-order homework, calisthenics, and constant band practice under his watch. Whether they liked it or not, the sisters were now the Shaggs – and barred from being anything else. They were rarely permitted to leave their home, save for church, shopping, and a gig every Saturday at the town hall in Fremont, New Hampshire, where for five years they played to peers they never got to know.

Published: March 23, 2026, 2:58 pm

Jane Fonda’s life goes under the microscope: best podcasts of the week

Pop culture icons and music legends are explored in a new show that has access to the BBC’s vast archive. Plus, the Guardian delivers a propulsive crime story that asks big questions of the US criminal justice system

Emmanuel Dzotsi had an all-too-brief run on internet culture podcast Reply All, so it’s great to hear him back on a smart and chatty show. He co-hosts this series alongside Kai Wright of WNYC’s Notes from America, with the pair drawing on the BBC’s vast archive to tell the stories of major pop culture figures. First up is actor and activist Jane Fonda, followed by a thoughtful profile of George Michael. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly from Monday 23 March

Published: March 23, 2026, 7:00 am

Raye: This Music May Contain Hope review – a wildly ambitious epic of unbridled self-expression

(Human Re Sources)
Almost overstuffed with musical ideas, the singer’s second studio album can be self-indulgent and messy, but it’s a heartfelt and exuberant grand statement from an artist determined to go her own way

Last autumn, Raye was the subject of a lengthy profile in a major fashion magazine. In it, the singer told an anecdote that placed her in precisely the position you would expect following her successful debut album: ensconced in the studio with a very big name producer, the better to capitalise on its success. But the recording session was, she suggested, “fuckshit”: the producer simply turned up with a beat and expected her to sing over it. Raye declined to, as she put it, “do that dance … I was just thinking: ‘Get me out of here.’”

This story seems telling in light of This Music May Contain Hope, an album that very much suggests an artist determined to go her own way. It’s about an emotional breakdown occasioned by romantic woe, online criticism, a troubling call from her grandmother and, she notes, “seven negronis”. And, like Lily Allen’s West End Girl, it flies in the face of perceived wisdom about how people consume music in the streaming age, being a 17-track, 73-minute concept album divided into four sections and evidently intended to be listened to from start to finish.

Published: March 23, 2026, 8:00 am

Enough Said by Alan Bennett review – a man for all seasons

Nostalgia, shame and gossip from Alan Bennett in the fourth instalment of his diaries

In the introduction to this new instalment of Alan Bennett’s diaries, which run from 2016 to 2024, the author worries about what to write: “I have said everything before. At 90 it’s impossible to avoid repetition.” And, indeed, I was halfway through the entries for 2020 before they started to seem familiar. It turns out that I had already reviewed Bennett’s pandemic diaries when they were released as a slim standalone volume in 2022.

Here they are again, then, this time embedded in a much longer stretch of journal-keeping, characterised by Bennett’s customary looping between past and present. The repetition turns out not to matter because the prose is sufficiently layered to take on new meanings as the context shifts. Bennett’s pandemic years read differently now that Covid is in the rearview mirror. The first time round, I got the impression that, devoted to the NHS though he is, the banging of pans on a Thursday evening struck him as a bit daft. Reading the section again, I’m convinced he detested the whole performative palaver.

Published: March 24, 2026, 9:00 am

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor review – portrait of a working-class artist in New York

This novel is stacked with ideas about Black art and aesthetics – but its language is too clumsy and academic to bring them to life

Brandon Taylor’s third novel, following the Booker-shortlisted Real Life and 2023’s The Late Americans, is full of hands. It’s set in the years after a pandemic that made many people desperate “to touch and be touched”. Long before then, no one had ever held the hand of its chief character, a young painter called Wyeth – not even his mother. In the doldrums, he recalls a conversation with a printmaker who extolled lithography because the images it produces reveal the strength and dexterity of an artist’s fingers: human marks. Poring through a company’s digital files, he has a near-seizure when he comes across a handwritten ledger: “There was something almost romantic about the curves of the numbers, elegant and swooping.”

Wyeth was born in Virginia, a state where, within living memory, Black farmhands developed cancer because they weren’t given gloves to pick the tobacco that would later poison their blood. He grew up in a trailer park with his white mother, a nursing assistant. To be working class, fatherless and from the south: this was, for him, a kind of isolation chamber. It led him to imagine that “the future and history belonged to another species of human that did not include him and his family and their distant relations”.

Published: March 23, 2026, 9:00 am

We Know You Can Pay a Million by Anja Shortland review – the terrifying new world of ransomware

Criminals extorting money online have created huge businesses, complete with branding and HR

The birth of ransomware was a stunt that got out of hand. In 1989, an evolutionary biologist called Joseph L Popp Jr was working part time for the World Health Organisation on the Aids epidemic. He was a difficult man. When he was denied a permanent job, he decided to punish his peers while shocking them into acknowledging another kind of infection: the computer virus.

Popp wrote a questionnaire promising to help minimise the risk of contracting HIV, duplicated it on to 20,000 floppy discs, and sent them to researchers in 90 countries. Each disc contained a Trojan virus. Once it was inserted, a malware timebomb eventually made the computer unusable until the user paid a “licence fee” of $189 to a PO box in Panama. Popp’s primitive “Aids Trojan” was quickly identified and he was arrested for blackmail. Intending to make a point rather than a profit, he was mortified to learn that some of his targets had overreacted by wiping their hard drives: one Italian Aids organisation lost a decade’s worth of vital data. Popp experienced a psychological collapse and was deemed unfit to stand trial. The criminals who developed his crude innovation into a global business would not be so scrupulous.

Published: March 23, 2026, 7:00 am

Colourful cathedral and breaking waves – readers’ best photographs

Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

Published: March 24, 2026, 4:00 pm

Dario Fo at 100: a deliriously funny playwright with a deadly serious purpose

The great Italian entertainer’s plays, such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist, have not lost their power to make audiences roar with laughter while confronting injustice

In Britain we tend to separate political and popular theatre. The genius of Dario Fo, who was born 100 years ago on Tuesday, is that he brought them together in his multiple roles as dramatist, actor, director and designer. Along with his wife, Franca Rame, he took satire to the people and in plays such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! he achieved a global reach that justly earned him the Nobel prize for literature in 1997.

You could say that protest and performance were in his genes. His father was a stationmaster and part-time actor whom he joined in wartime resistance to the Nazis in northern Italy, helping to smuggle Allied soldiers across the border to Switzerland. He became famous, however, in 1962 when he and his wife fronted a weekly TV variety show that attracted huge audiences: an engagement that was abruptly ended when they refused to accept censors’ cuts.

Published: March 24, 2026, 5:00 am

‘A very basic human desire to want some control’: US exhibition explores the power of magic

Objects that were believed to have some form of magic effect are part of an exhibition exploring how ancient cultures tried to change the world around them

Whether it’s an ancient amulet to protect a newborn baby, a love spell to lock down a romantic relationship, a potion that someone might pick up today from their neighborhood apothecary, or even a spray of Chanel perfume to make yourself irresistIble, humans have used – and continue to use – magic to get what they want. These spells and their use in the ancient world are the focus of Cursed! an entrancing exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art that offers a deep dive into the use of magic in ancient cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

“Magic is in all societies, it’s a very basic human desire, to want to have some control over your world,” said show curator Dr Jeffrey Spier, a former senior curator with the J Paul Getty Museum. “There’s always been a desire to use some hidden power to get what you need.”

Published: March 23, 2026, 4:07 pm

Kinks guitarist Dave Davies hits back at Moby for calling 1970 single Lola ‘gross and transphobic’

The band’s co-founder responded to the US musician’s comments, defending the song and saying they are ‘not transphobic’

The Kinks co-founder and guitarist Dave Davies hit back at Moby after the US electronic musician said that he could no longer listen to the band’s 1970 hit Lola on the grounds that he found it “gross and transphobic”.

Moby told the Guardian Saturday magazine’s Honest Playlist feature that he was repulsed by the song after it came up on a Spotify playlist. “I like their early music, but I was really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are,” he said.

Published: March 23, 2026, 5:20 pm

My friend died in a diving accident. Then I was arrested for his murder

Dan Frolec faced 40 years in a Croatian prison after a fellow diver perished while exploring an underwater cave – followed by the coastguard who was sent to recover the body

Ten metres underwater, surrounded by darkness, all Dan Frolec could hear was the engine noise of the boat above him. It had been well over half an hour since his friend Tom had descended into a mysterious underwater hole to look for their other friend, Michael. Frolec began to fear the worst – maybe it had swallowed both of them up for good.

He had almost given up hope when bubbles of air hit his mask. Somebody was coming out. A dim light shone out of the cave and Tom emerged alone. He shook his head, signalling to Frolec that Michael was still lost and, by now, probably dead. Little did Frolec know that things were about to get a lot worse.

Published: March 24, 2026, 12:00 pm

Move over, pistachio – it’s pecan time! The food trends hotlist

What’s cooking and what’s past its best-before date, from air fryers to hot honey, and doner kebabs to CBD

Intercultural cuisines
From Indo-Chinese and Taiwanese-Tex Mex, to Viet-Cajun and Cape-Malay, brace your tastebuds for culinary cultures colliding in the most delicious ways.

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:00 am

The pet I’ll never forget: Harriet, the hedgehog in my airing cupboard

Her job was to tackle slugs in the garden, but she soon found a way into my home – and my heart

Harriet came into my life when I asked my vet if I could get a hedgehog to come and live in my garden and deal with the slugs. She found me Harriet in Tiggywinkles, a Buckinghamshire-based wildlife hospital. Harriet was rather shy. I brought her home in a cardboard box and put it on the ground, on its side. She poked her nose out and, as soon as she saw me, scuttled off to hide in a corner of the garden.

Harriet settled in well and did her job efficiently, eating all the slugs. She slept in an old compost bag in the garden, to which I added some dried leaves to make a bed for her. One day, sitting on the sofa with my legs stretched out, I felt something touching my bare toes. It was Harriet, examining them. She had come in through the cat flap.

Published: March 23, 2026, 11:00 am

A new start after 60: I went on 75 first dates – and wrote a book of Kama Sutra-inspired poetry

Zack Rogow thought he was ready for love after the end of a long relationship – but not everyone agreed. How did he get over the rejections?

When Zack Rogow’s relationship ended, he joined an online dating site. Aged 66, Rogow prepared for his first date with a mixture of grief at the loss of a love he’d thought would last a lifetime, and euphoria. “I was gaga – ‘Oh, I’m single again. I can meet people!’” In the event, one match led to another and he notched up 75 first dates over 18 months.

Some dates were outdoorsy walks. Others took place in wine bars, in cafes or at the movies. He kept notes, jotting down each woman’s career and family situation so he wouldn’t put his foot in it on a second date. It must have started to feel like a job.

Published: March 23, 2026, 6:45 am

Is it true that … you need to work out if you want to lose weight?

To shift the pounds you need to create a calorie deficit, which means changes to your diet, exercise, or a combination of the two

In order to lose weight, most people need to maintain a calorie deficit over a sustained period, says Bethan Crouse, a performance nutritionist at Loughborough University. “This can be done by increasing exercise to boost your calorie expenditure and therefore create a deficit,” she says. “In that case, exercise might be the key to losing weight. But you could approach it the other way: by choosing less calorie-dense foods and reducing your energy intake, you can create a deficit without changing how much you exercise.”

Relying on workouts alone for weight loss can be challenging. “If you’re aiming to burn an extra 300 to 500 calories a day, that’s an awful lot of exercise. You’re likely to need some kind of nutritional intervention as well to create that gap between energy intake and output.”

Published: March 23, 2026, 8:00 am

Houseplant hacks: are repotting mats a waste of money?

I think they are worth the spend – they make plant care a more relaxing experience

The problem
Repotting indoors is always so much messier than we imagine. Weeks later, you’ll find compost on the floor and grit in the skirting boards, and one rogue perlite bead will impale itself in your bare foot. Newspapers slip, bin bags tear, and if you rent or have carpet, the fear of a spilt bag of soil is real. Meet the humble repotting mat. It looks simple, but is it effective?

The hack
A repotting mat is a foldable sheet of waterproof fabric with poppers at the corners. Snap them together, and you get a plant care station.

Published: March 24, 2026, 10:00 am

Joe Woodhouse’s recipes for orecchiette with chickpeas, and polenta chips with saucy chickpeas

A speedy sauce for pasta lovers and a wholesome plateful of pulses served with a crunchy alternative to home fries and a vibrant green sauce

I love pasta sauces that come together while the pasta is cooking. This one is lovely and wholesome, great for when the weather starts to warm up a little, and one of those that you can make pretty much year-round. The polenta chips, meanwhile, came about when I wanted to bulk up a plate of beans without the mess (and the pan of hot oil) that comes with making chips. The polenta can be made and set ahead, either during the day or the night before, or it will sit happily in the fridge for a couple of days.

Published: March 24, 2026, 6:00 am

Georgina Hayden’s quick and easy recipe for spiced roast noodle traybake | Quick and easy

Supermarket Thai herb and spice kits make this simple to shop for. Then add fragrant coconut milk and vegetables for a delicious family dinner

Call me well and truly influenced. I am jumping on the social media trend of roasting noodles in a fragrant sauce for an easy one-tray family dinner. If I was being authentic to my socials, then I would throw a few frozen gyozas in there too (and why not, if you have them feel free to chuck them in), but what I will say is that this is delicious as it is. You can get a fresh Thai herb and spice kit from most large supermarkets these days, which includes the key ingredients you need here – lemongrass, bird’s eye chillies, lime leaves, etc; it also saves you from having to buy them all separately. Use this base as your hero, and think of it as a plant-based core recipe – perfect, but also happy to be finished with some shredded chicken or pork, a soft-boiled egg or even some of those failsafe frozen dumplings on top.

Published: March 23, 2026, 1:00 pm

iPhone 17e review: Apple upgrades its cheapest new smartphone

Mid-range handset gets chip, storage and MagSafe upgrades to offer more essential iOS features for less

The cheapest new iPhone has been upgraded for this year with a faster chip, double the storage, automatic portraits and MagSafe, providing even more of the core Apple smartphone experience for less.

The iPhone 17e is an upgraded version of the mid-range “e” line launched last year with the first iPhone 16e and is the latest member of the iPhone 17 family. It starts at £599 (€699/$599/A$999), undercutting the iPhone 17 and iPhone 16 by £200 and £100 respectively to be the cheapest new iPhone sold by Apple.

Screen: 6.1in Super Retina XDR (OLED) (460ppi)

Processor: Apple A19 (4-core GPU)

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 256 or 512GB

Operating system: iOS 26

Camera: 48MP rear; 12MP front-facing

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C, Satellite and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.8mm

Weight: 170g

Published: March 23, 2026, 7:00 am

Abel leaves LA: self-deportation from Trump's America - documentary

Abel Ortiz was brought from Mexico to LA when he was just two months old and has been​ living undocumented​ ever since. Now 38, he has a full life​ cutting hair, building a community, loving​ a city that has never fully loved him back.​ ​In a time of escalating ICE raids and the ache of uncertainty, Abel has made a radical decision: he’s leaving – not because he has to, but to escape perpetual limbo and be free to see the world

Published: March 24, 2026, 11:02 am

Airbnb in firing line as Cape Town’s housing crisis catches up with middle class

Social media full of complaints about digital nomads, while waiting list for social housing gets longer

Earlier this month, graffiti appeared on the promenade in Sea Point, on Cape Town’s wealthy Atlantic Seaboard: “Digital nomads go home! Now!”

Social media is full of complaints about the abundance of American and German accents, foreign property buyers, and properties being listed on Airbnb, all of which are being blamed for soaring housing costs.

Published: March 24, 2026, 9:21 am

‘In 20 years most of the world could be racist dictatorships’: Ibram X Kendi on book bans and far-right fear-mongering

How have the rich and powerful convinced so many voters that the reason they are struggling is the poor and powerless? The American historian talks about the weaponising of divisiveness

‘I think I’ve had at least seven books that have been banned in the United States,” says Ibram X Kendi, in a tone that carries no bitterness but stops just short of pride. It’s proof, he says, that his works on racism, which extend from deep, scholarly histories to a biography of Malcolm X for children, are getting through to the right people – and annoying the right people. According to the writers’ advocacy group PEN America, his books have been banned at least 50 times by multiple US school districts during the tumultuous “anti-woke” backlash of the past five years. He’s not happy about that, but nor was he discouraged. “I understood that the major reason why people were singling me out and demonising me was because they did not want people reading my books,” he says. “And when the character assassinations did not work to the scale that they wanted them to, then they started banning my books, and the books of many others.”

Kendi’s work is divisive almost by design. He has a way of framing his ideas in radically stark terms. In his 2016 breakthrough book Stamped from the Beginning, a history of racist ideas in the US, he argued that racist policies lead to racist ideas, not the other way round. His bestselling follow-up, 2019’s How to Be an Antiracist, introduced an equally contentious proposition: there was no such thing as “not racist”; you were either racist or anti-racist. There was no in-between: inaction or neutrality about racist issues was effectively complicity. By extension, he argued that all racial disparities in outcome for Black people were the result of racist policies – not just some, all.

Published: March 23, 2026, 5:00 am

Airstrikes, rockets and fields of mustard: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: March 24, 2026, 1:45 pm