At 56, I woke to silence: the strange, sudden loss that changed everything

Since the US has no federal mandate for hearing aid coverage, I found myself in a quandary – I couldn’t communicate with the hearing or the deaf

At the end of my second American Sign Language (ASL) class, during which I had fingerspelled my name Deborah as “F-E-B-O-R-A-H”, I thought it prudent to type a question into my Notes app rather than trying to fingerspell it. “How do I sign, ‘I’m hearing impaired?’” I wrote, showing the typed sentence to my teacher, Courtney Rodriguez. Then I pointed to one of my hearing aids.

Sixty percent of ASL, Courtney had just taught us, consists of non-manual markers, meaning most of the communication in ASL comes from facial expressions. Puffed cheeks, for example, indicates something big. Pursed lips means small. From the puffed cheeks and pained look on my deaf teacher’s face, I could sense I had hit a big nerve.

Published: March 11, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘LOL THAT’S IT?’: politics aside, the UFC’s White House card isn’t worth the price of admission | Karim Zidan

Donald Trump promised that June’s event would bring us some of the greatest fights in history. The truth appears to be rather different

When Donald Trump first announced that the White House would host a UFC event to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary, the US president told supporters it would be a “big deal”. Evidence over the last week suggests that, not for the first time, Trump may be exaggerating a little.

Trump has promised a spectacle unlike anything the UFC has staged before. “They’re going to have eight or nine championship fights – the biggest fights they’ve ever had,” Trump said in December of plans for the White House event. “Every one is a championship fight, and every one is a legendary type of fight.”

Published: March 11, 2026, 9:00 am

How gen Z women are conquering country music: ‘Fans are speaking louder than gatekeepers’

This month, Ella Langley and Megan Moroney became the first pair of women in country music to top both the US albums and singles charts

Country radio still has a gender parity problem. That hasn’t stopped Ella Langley and Megan Moroney from achieving historic success. Last week, Langley and Moroney became the first two women in country music ever to top the all-genre Billboard 200 and Hot 100 charts simultaneously. Langley’s Choosin’ Texas unseated Taylor Swift’s Opalite to claim its second non-consecutive week atop the singles chart, while Moroney’s album Cloud 9 reached number one thanks to Target exclusive physical editions and strong streaming numbers.

“These aren’t flukes or one-off viral hits,” said Leslie Fram, co-founder and CEO of FEMco, a Nashville-based consulting collective. “Megan Moroney built her base through relentless touring and social buzz. Ella Langley’s incredible song has real staying power and even non-country crossover appeal.

Published: March 11, 2026, 9:04 am

‘I took two bites and had to spit it out’: candy makers are phasing out real cocoa in chocolate

Due to the volatile cocoa market, companies like Hershey are using replacement ingredients such as sugar, oil, milk and nuts

Just before Valentine’s Day, Brad Reese bought a bag of Reese’s Unwrapped Peanut Butter Creme Mini Hearts from his local convenience store in West Palm Beach, Florida. It was a brand-new product, released especially for the holiday, tagline: “We’ll never break your heart.”

Reese is a Reese’s aficionado who makes a point of trying everything the company produces. This isn’t a coincidence: he’s one of the Reeses, a grandson of HB Reese, the former Hershey dairy farmer who invented the peanut butter cup in 1928. Although he’s never worked for Reese’s or Hershey, which acquired the peanut butter cup company in 1963, Reese considers himself a custodian of HB’s legacy. He also takes an avid interest in the Hershey company and its leadership.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘Dress for who you are’: how to start finding your personal style

Experts share tips on dressing as the most authentic version of yourself and avoiding the draw of the latest microtrends

How would you define your personal style? Is it cottagecore? Tomato girl? Whimsigoth? Quiet luxury? Maybe you don’t know what these terms mean (congratulations) and maybe you do (my condolences).

Like unwelcome nose hairs, new microtrends seem to sprout from the depths of social media every other week. In some ways, their pervasiveness has made style seem more accessible than ever. They reduce aesthetics to mathematical equations that you can solve by buying up a bunch of fast fashion. By the time these cheap, mass-produced items dissolve into microplastics – which they will, quickly – other aesthetic trends will have replaced them.

Published: March 11, 2026, 4:00 pm

Bam Adebayo just scored 83 points in a game. Was it down to brilliance or stat padding?

The Miami Heat star scored the second-most points in a game in NBA history on Tuesday night. Some may question exactly how he got there

Second in points, last in ethics?

That will be the accusation against the Miami Heat and Bam Adebayo, after the big man moved into second on the NBA’s single-game scoring list with 83 points against the woeful Washington Wizards on Tuesday. Adebayo surpassed the 81 points that Kobe Bryant scored in a 2006 game and left only Wilt Chamberlain, with 100 in a game in 1962, ahead of him on the all-time list.

Published: March 11, 2026, 12:07 pm

Middle East crisis live: three ships hit in strait of Hormuz as ‘largest ever’ oil reserve release agreed by 32 countries

Thai navy responds to attack on bulk carrier; sources say Iran has deployed a dozen mines in the strait

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

Over in Senate question time, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has confirmed embassies in Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv and the consulate in Dubai all physically closed in the last week.

Wong said the government’s number one priority is to “keep Australians safe at home and abroad”.

She continued:

“The dangerous and destabilising attacks by Iran put civilian lives at risk, including Australian lives.”

More than 3,200 Australians over 23 commercial flights have returned to Australia since the US and Israel attacked Iran, setting off a regional conflict and grounding thousands of international flights.

Wong criticised Nationals senators for “winding up people and stoking fear” to panic buy fuel.

The senator said:

“Petrol companies are telling us that fuel stock continues to arrive as expected and on time but there has been a large change in the pattern of demand and that is having an effect on the supply, particularly in regional communities. We have seen jerry cans coming off the shelves at Bunnings and lines at the pump.”

One of the two members of the Iranian women’s football teams provided with a humanitarian visa to stay in Australia has changed her mind and contacted the Iranian embassy, according to the country’s home affairs minister.

In Australia, people are able to change their mind, people are able to travel. So, we respect the context in which she has made that decision.

Unfortunately, in making that decision, she had been advised by her teammates and coach to contact the Iranian embassy and get collected … As a result of that, it meant that the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was.

Published: March 11, 2026, 6:13 pm

Mojtaba Khamenei was hurt in strike that killed his father, Iran’s Cyprus ambassador confirms

Alireza Salarian says Iran’s new supreme leader was lucky to survive strike that killed six of his family members

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the 28 February attack that killed six of his family members, including his father, Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus has confirmed.

In an interview conducted at his embassy compound in Nicosia, Alireza Salarian elaborated on the circumstances in which Khamenei, 56, was injured, saying he was lucky to survive the strike, which levelled the late ayatollah’s residence.

Published: March 11, 2026, 2:19 pm

US responsible for deadly bombing of Iranian girls school, preliminary findings reportedly say – live

Strike on school in Minab, Iran, in which at least 175 people died was result of a ‘targeting mistake’, officials have told the New York Times

Donald Trump said that the US-Israel war in Iran will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target” in a phone interview with Axios.

“Any time I want it to end, it will end,” the president told the outlet. “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.”

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:57 pm

Will releasing millions of barrels of oil stockpiles really bring down fuel costs?

Despite rare act of multilateralism, there is no guarantee the IEA’s release of 400m barrels from reserves will depress prices

• IEA orders largest ever release of stockpiled oil to reduce crude price

• How the Iran conflict could affect energy prices – video explainer

When the global economy was still in the grip of the devastating 1970s oil crises, exposing the chokehold exerted by a few important oil states, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was created, in the hope of limiting future shocks.

Almost half a century on, the IEA’s 32 members have drawn up plans to hit the emergency button, for only the fifth time in its history.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:14 pm

Why Iran’s vital Kharg Island oil hub is still untouched by US-Israel bombers

While some argue for destroying the terminal through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow, others caution of a global market ‘tailspin’

Kharg Island – through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow – is arguably the country’s most sensitive economic target but the export terminal has so far remained untouched throughout the US-Israel bombing campaign.

Experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran’s daily crude exports offline.

Published: March 11, 2026, 6:00 am

US inflation stayed flat at 2.4% in February before effects of war on Iran kicked in

Effect of war on prices not reflected in data, as Trump says only ‘fools’ would think oil price shocks would be significant

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US inflation stayed flat at 2.4% in February, according to government data released Wednesday that provides a snapshot of the US economy before it was thrown into a tailspin by the US-Israel conflict with Iran.

The levelling comes after prices swung last year, reaching a four-year low in April before shooting back up in September. In late fall, inflation crept down again, reaching 2.4% in January.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:46 pm

Democrats deliver ‘stunning’ flip in New Hampshire special election, latest in series of 28 upsets

Bobbi Boudman’s win over Republican Dale Fincher could be a harbinger of blue wave during midterms

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A Democrat won a special election for a state house seat in New Hampshire on Tuesday, flipping a Republican district that Donald Trump carried and marking the latest in a string of 28 Democratic upsets that could usher in a blue wave in the midterms.

Bobbi Boudman beat Republican Dale Fincher in New Hampshire’s Carroll county district 7. It was Boudman’s third try at the seat – she lost to incumbent representative Glenn Cordelli in the last two cycles by several points. Cordelli resigned from the seat after moving, leading to the special election on 10 March.

Published: March 11, 2026, 2:45 pm

Tornadoes hit Illinois, Indiana and Texas as severe storms sweep US

Two people killed in Indiana as officials warn millions from Texas to Michigan remain at risk of severe weather

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A series of tornadoes hit parts of Texas, Illinois, and Indiana late Tuesday and overnight, as forecasters warn that the threat of severe weather, including flooding, will continue on Wednesday for tens of millions of people from Texas to Michigan.

At least four tornado touchdowns were reported in eastern Illinois, the National Weather Service (NWS) said, leaving a trail of damage stretching into Indiana, where at least two people were killed.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:21 pm

Texas to execute man who killed his girlfriend and her eight-year-old son in 2013

Supreme court recently rejected Cedric Ricks’ claim that potential jurors in his trial were eliminated based on race

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A north Texas man faces execution on Wednesday for fatally stabbing his girlfriend and her eight-year-old son nearly 13 years ago.

Cedric Ricks was sentenced to death for the May 2013 killings of 30-year-old Roxann Sanchez and her son Anthony Figueroa at their apartment in Bedford, a suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Sanchez’s 12-year-old son, Marcus Figueroa, was injured during the attack.

Published: March 11, 2026, 4:35 pm

Meta disables over 150,000 accounts in crackdown on south-east Asian scam networks

Company also launches tools to spot scammers as Thai police arrest 21 people

Meta disabled more than 150,000 accounts and Thai police arrested 21 people in a sweeping international crackdown on south-east Asian criminal scam centers that targeted people around the world, the social media company said Wednesday.

The operation was led by Thailand’s Royal Thai police anti-cyber scam center, alongside the FBI and the US justice department’s scam center strike force, with Meta investigators acting on intelligence shared in real time by law enforcement.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:14 pm

Binance sues Wall Street Journal over reporting on Iranian sanctions

Journal reported that cryptocurrency exchange shut down internal investigation into transactions with network funding terror groups

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The US government is investigating Binance over allegations that Iran used the crypto exchange to evade sanctions and illegally move funds, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Wednesday.

Binance has denied these claims and even sued the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday for defamation.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:33 pm

Nearly 4,000 US meatpacking workers to strike at plant run by top Trump donor

Workers at JBS USA to strike Monday in what will be the first labor strike in the meatpacking industry in decades

About 3,800 workers at JBS USA, the world’s largest meat producer, are set to strike on Monday in what will be the first labor strike in the industry in decades.

The walkout threatens to put further strain on US meat prices – ground beef prices soared 15% last year – and could prove a headache for the Trump administration as it struggles with poor polling on cost of living issues.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:00 pm

Iran’s sports minister says football team will not play at 2026 World Cup

• Participation ruled out after killing of Khamenei

• Trump said to have told Infantino Iran are welcome

The prospect of Iran playing at this summer’s World Cup appears remote after the country’s sports minister, Ahmad Donyamali, said on Wednesday that “under no circumstances can we participate”.

Donyamali is the first Iranian government representative to address the issue of the World Cup since the US, one of the co-hosts, began bombing the country with backing from Israel 10 days ago.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:08 pm

Thousands of pets being abandoned in Dubai as owners flee over Iran war

RSPCA say animals could become ‘hidden victims’ of conflict as charities in Gulf city report being overwhelmed

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Thousands of pets are being abandoned in Dubai as their owners flee the Middle East because of the Iran war, animal charities have said.

The RSPCA said pets of fleeing UK nationals could become “hidden victims” of the conflict as people who had relocated to the Gulf city scramble for an exit and struggle to bring their animals.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:31 pm

US vaccine panel retreats from mRNA Covid review ahead of midterms

Advisers to RFK Jr drop the plan to end federal guidance amid Republican worries about the political impact

• US politics live – latest updates

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A major federal panel that advises the government on vaccines has stepped back from efforts targeting Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, a change that comes as some Republicans reportedly caution that additional shifts in vaccine policy could hurt the party in the upcoming midterm elections.

Several vaccine advisers selected by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, had been exploring the possibility of ending federal recommendations for mRNA covid shots. That initiative is no longer going forward, according to two sources familiar with the discussions who spoke to the Washington Post.

Published: March 11, 2026, 4:25 pm

Meet the Americans withholding their federal income tax to protest against Trump

Some US taxpayers are refusing to pay the federal government amid ICE surges, the war with Iran and more

“I’m not paying my federal income taxes this year,” Rachel Cohen declared in a recent Instagram video that received more than 140,000 likes.

The 31-year-old lawyer in Chicago plans to put the $8,800 she owes the federal government in a high-yield savings account instead. She doesn’t want to fund wars in Iran and Gaza or immigration agents detaining her neighbors, she said.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:00 pm

Experts fear ‘unethical’ vaccine trial in Africa is ‘prototype’ for US studies under RFK Jr

Danish researchers whose work on effects of vaccines has been called into question are at center of US vaccine policy

New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.

At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.

Published: March 11, 2026, 11:00 am

Trump’s pick for state department role withdraws after backlash over past ‘anti-Israel’ and race remarks

Failure to appoint Jeremy Carl is a rare setback for Trump, with Republican-controlled Senate mostly approving his appointments

Donald Trump’s nominee for a top diplomatic post has been withdrawn from consideration after a growing backlash over his past remarks on race and Jewish people left him without crucial Republican support.

Jeremy Carl, who had been tapped to serve as the assistant secretary of state for international organisations – a role overseeing US policy towards bodies such as the UN – announced on Tuesday that he was stepping aside after failing to secure unanimous backing from Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:09 am

The California town that lost its mayor to gun suicide

For nearly three decades, Jim West transformed San Juan Bautista. After his shocking gun suicide, a local behavioral health agency dove in to help a community in mourning

Any other night, the small California town of San Juan Bautista is shrouded in darkness, lit only by scattered streetlights and the dim glow of a few saloons. But on the first Saturday of December, a parade lights it up. Dozens of cars wrapped in Christmas lights roll through streets that look as if they were pulled from an old western. Since its inception in the 2000s, the parade has become a tradition in this village in the foothills of the Gabilan range, just 100 miles (160km) south of San Francisco.

Anthony Botelho, a county supervisor, had never missed one. In 2018, exhausted from a trip from Arizona, he meant to stay home, until his longtime friend Jim West, the town’s mayor, convinced him otherwise.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘The shine has been taken off’: Dubai faces existential threat as foreigners flee conflict

Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left UAE since the US and Israel started bombing Iran two weeks ago, leaving beach bars, malls and hotels eerily empty

In the playground of the rich, nobody wanted this war. For decades, Dubai built itself up as a sanctuary of unadulterated consumerism visited by tourists the world over.

But now, the city in the United Arab Emirates faces an existential threat, as the war between the US and Israel and Iran has shaken the foundations of the “Dubai dream” that so many foreigners had bought into.

Published: March 11, 2026, 4:57 pm

Amazon is determined to use AI for everything – even when it slows down work

Corporate employees said Amazon’s race to roll out AI is leading to surveillance, slop and ‘more work for everyone’.

When Dina, a software developer based in New York, joined Amazon two years ago, her job was to write code. Now, it’s mostly fixing what artificial intelligence breaks.

The internal AI tool she’s expected to use, called Kiro, frequently hallucinates and generates flawed code, she says. Then she has to dig through and correct the sloppy code it creates, or just revert all changes and start again. She says it feels like “trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused”.

Published: March 11, 2026, 11:00 am

Peak interest: Toronto’s snow mountains that refuse to melt are a toxic hazard

Reaching up to 100ft, these massive piles contain tonnes of salt that keep roads clear – but pose environmental risks

Most mountains take tens of millions of years to form. Toronto’s newest mountain took just days.

Towering atop the crowns of evergreens, it has no skeleton of limestone or granite. There are no spires, cornices or headwalls. It is simply piles upon piles of snow, mixed with a toxic cocktail of road salt, antifreeze, oil, coffee cups and lost keys. It is the final resting place for the forces of nature that have battered the city in recent weeks – and a daunting environmental hazard.

Published: March 11, 2026, 11:00 am

Reminders of Him review – contrived Colleen Hoover romance has its charms

The third big screen adaptation of the BookTok-loved author’s novels is ludicrously plotted yet slickly made and easily consumed

Nearly two years on, it seems we’re still futilely chasing the high of summer 2024. Charli xcx’s hedonistic Brat-era mockumentary just flopped on the big screen. Espresso still plays at the grocery store but doesn’t hit the same. Kamala Harris is maybe considering a run for something. And the movie It Ends With Us, the glossy adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel that became a somewhat surprise late-summer blockbuster, refuses to die.

That film, directed by Justin Baldoni and starring Blake Lively, should have been a Hollywood success story: a deceptively sharp melodrama that proved that frankly sentimental, female-led, 90s-style studio fare could still draw audiences to cinemas, that schlocky BookTok material need not necessarily beget schlocky movies and that Lively could appeal to the Target demographic. Nevertheless, it cast a dark shadow. The legal mudslinging over Baldoni’s alleged sexual harassment on set has tainted primarily her reputation, and extinguished any box office glow. (Lively v Baldoni – her case, not his, as the latter was dismissed – will go to trial in May.) And then there’s the inevitable pipeline of follow-ups with near-guaranteed diminishing returns, the first of which, a dreadful grief / love quadrangle / YA mess called Regretting You, threatened to kill the buzz for CoHo adaptations entirely last October.

Published: March 11, 2026, 4:37 pm

A moment that changed me: I was planning to be a musician – then I had my ears syringed

Until that point, all my life’s dreams revolved around becoming a saxophonist. But with sudden and significant hearing loss, I had to face up to a new reality

The first sign that something was wrong was a static noise that emerged suddenly in my left ear. It was 2008 and a doctor had just syringed my ears, washing out the antibiotic drops she had prescribed a week earlier, and which had rendered my world temporarily muffled. I was so relieved the drops were out that I didn’t question the strange new noise. I simply thanked her and left.

As I lay on my pillow that night, trying to ignore the new whooshing sound in my ear, a puzzling crunching noise caught my attention. My brain tried to unscramble the disturbance until, confused and now wide awake, I lifted my head up, only to realise it was our grandfather clock, chiming away the hour. My left ear, I realised, was no longer hearing sounds as they really were.

Published: March 11, 2026, 6:45 am

Jimmy Kimmel on Pentagon splurging on doughnuts: ‘Is this My 600lb Defense Department?’

Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s mixed messaging on Iran, the Melania documentary and a ‘cult’ of Maga footwear

On late-night shows, hosts poked fun at the Trump administration’s inconsistent messaging on the Iran war, Pete Hegseth splurging on high-end food at the Pentagon and New York’s John F Kennedy Jr lookalike contest.

Published: March 11, 2026, 2:51 pm

Trump’s ego-trip war has collided with economic reality but he can’t undo the damage | Rafael Behr

The US president’s doctrine of lawless military adventures harms American interests and boosts Vladimir Putin

Waging war with no fixed purpose means victory can be declared at any point. Donald Trump’s motives for launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran were incoherent at the start. They are no clearer now that he has declared it “very complete, pretty much”.

US and Israeli bombs have caused death and destruction, shaking but not toppling the government in Tehran. Among the targets was the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. He has been replaced by his son – an “unacceptable” candidate in the US president’s evaluation.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, ahead of the May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss the threat to Labour from both the Green party and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:00 am

Surely if you rule the manosphere, you can be your own boss? These influencers aren’t even that | Elle Hunt

Content creators claim they’ve escaped the 9 to 5, yet as Louis Theroux’s new show reveals, they are mere serfs to algorithms and audiences

Who wouldn’t want to be an influencer? You’re famous and maybe even rich, just for doing what you’d be doing anyway: working out at the gym, hanging out with your mates and mucking about on the internet. You get paid to say what you think (or are at least sent free stuff), and no one’s telling you what to do. Surely only a sucker would do anything else.

At least that is the influencing dream, and many young men are buying into it. “Content creator” has for years been cited as the most desirable career by generation Z and now gen Alpha. The preferred platforms might have changed over time, with streaming on Twitch and Kick now supplanting posting on Instagram and YouTube, but the aspiration remains the same: to escape the drudgery of a desk job.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:00 pm

The US-Israeli strategy failed to defeat Iran quickly – now they are moving to plan B | Paul Rogers

It’s called the Dahiya doctrine – and the IDF and US air force are using it to destroy domestic support in Iran

• Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University and author of Losing Control: International Security in the 21st Century

Given the wall-to-wall coverage of the US and its war on Iran, it looks very much like Trump is the key player. He is not. The United States may have far more military power than Israel, but the key player is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Moreover, the Israeli prime minister has fallen into a trap of his own making, and is dragging Trump and the US military into that same trap. For Israel, and indirectly for the US, the war has to end in total victory. Anything less is pointless.

Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University and author of Losing Control: International Security in the 21st Century

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 11, 2026, 10:00 am

I clicked on an Instagram post about a happy dog – and opened a hellish portal | Polly Hudson

Little did I know this cheerful animal had just died. Ever since, my algorithm has been serving me up more of the same ...

I’m arriving at the social media party so late that the lights are on and the floor is being swept. As a result, I’ve only recently learned that if you look at anything for two seconds, it teaches your algorithm that this is all you want to see. A cheerful dog was the gateway drug. Now, I am accidentally on Death Instagram. It is not very LOL.

The lengthy caption on Fido’s joyful, tail-waggy photo unfortunately revealed that he’d just crossed the rainbow bridge. This information was not delivered succinctly, though, meaning I lingered long enough to inform Mark Zuckerberg that this was very much my jam.

Published: March 11, 2026, 11:00 am

If plant-based foods must be more honest, let’s do the same for meat – fancy some ‘cow muscle’? | Deirdra Barr

EU rules banning terms such as ‘bacon’ for veggie products are problematic, btw cow muscle = steak

Last week, European policymakers decided that plant-based foods should no longer be marketed with terms such as “chicken”, “bacon” or “steak”. The fear seems to be that shoppers might accidentally buy veggie bacon thinking it came from an actual pig. The change applies to the UK too, because of our trade agreement with Europe.

After considerable pushback from organisations including the one I work with, the Vegetarian Society, and many food brands, words such as “burger”, “nuggets” and “sausage” – as in, vegan sausage rolls – are still permitted, provided the packaging makes clear they are plant-based. But even those allowances could yet be revisited.

Deirdra Barr is director of marketing and communications at the Vegetarian Society

Published: March 11, 2026, 6:00 am

The AI assistant was offering me any help I needed. All I wanted was a living, breathing human | Adrian Chiles

When I heard ‘Rachel’ answer the helpline number in her metallic voice, my soul felt as empty as the batteries of my malfunctioning car

Something went wrong. The car charger wouldn’t work. Terrible, enervating, life-shortening faff ensued. It was to do with the wifi to which the car was linked having to be changed. I find this stuff so boring that I have been known to simply slump to the floor and fall into a deep sleep.

But this wasn’t an option, as I had to drive miles to work and my car’s batteries were as empty as my soul. I’d already been on the road for five hours listening to Antony Beevor’s history of the second world war. Man’s inhumanity to man is so very disappointing, even more disappointing than a malfunctioning EV charger on a wet and windy day. I resolved to dig deep. The human spirit would prevail. If only I could find another human to help me out.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:27 pm

Ukraine accuses IPC of ‘systemic pressure’ and pro-Russian bias at Winter Paralympics

• Ukrainian team claim athletes have been mistreated

• Allege they had to remove flag from Paralympic village

Team Ukraine have launched a stinging attack on the International Paralympic Committee and Winter Paralympics organisers, claiming they have been under “systemic pressure” to reduce their presence at the Milano Cortina Games.

The Ukraine National Paralympic Committee has made four specific allegations against the IPC and the Milano Cortina organisers, alleging mistreatment of its athletes and a “systematic” attempt to remove flags from the team base and spectators.

Published: March 11, 2026, 2:13 pm

Oksana Masters roars to Paralympic redemption at Milano Cortina with 11th gold medal

• Masters powers past Kim for sprint gold redemption

• American claims 11th Paralympic gold medal at age 36

• Chernobyl-born star extends remarkable medal haul

Oksana Masters’ 11th Paralympic gold medal was “redemption” for the most decorated American Winter Paralympian.

And it was clear just how much it meant to her. Masters screamed loudly several times in delight after winning the women’s sprint sitting discipline in Para cross-country skiing on Tuesday at Milan Cortina.

Published: March 10, 2026, 5:10 pm

Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics 2026: day five – in pictures

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

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:27 pm

Bayer Leverkusen v Arsenal: Champions League last 16, first leg – live

⚽️ Champions League news from the 5.45pm GMT kick-off
⚽️ Live scores | Today’s Football Daily | Follow on Bluesky

1 min Peep peep. Arsenal kick off from right to left as we watch.

Read today’s Football Daily

Published: March 11, 2026, 6:16 pm

USA in jeopardy at World Baseball Classic after stunning loss to Italy

• Italy stun USA 8-6 to shake up WBC quarter-final race

• Crow-Armstrong hits two HRs but rally falls short

• Japan finish group unbeaten as Murakami hits slam

Kyle Teel, Sam Antonacci and Jac Caglianone homered as Italy built a big lead and held on to stun the United States 8-6 Tuesday night in the World Baseball Classic.

The US are done with pool play at Houston’s Daikin Park and need the Italians to beat Mexico on Wednesday night to be guaranteed a spot in the quarter-finals. If Mexico beat Italy, the three teams will be knotted at 3-1 and the winners will be determined by a tiebreaker, with the team that allowed the most runs eliminated. The US allowed 17 runs in their four group games, while Italy have given up 10 and Mexico seven with the latter two still to face each other.

Published: March 11, 2026, 4:54 am

Ravens reportedly agree $112m deal with Hendrickson after backing out of Crosby trade

• Ravens to sign four-time Pro Bowl edge rusher

• Raiders were to receive first-round picks in Crosby deal

Four-time Pro Bowl edge rusher Trey Hendrickson has reportedly agreed on a four-year, $112m contract with the Baltimore Ravens.

The contract is not yet formalized as it can’t be signed off until the start of the new league year at 4pm ET on Wednesday.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:38 pm

Three years and 89 games unbeaten: how NYU became basketball’s unlikeliest dynasty

On a basement court in Greenwich Village, the New York University women’s basketball team have quietly become the sport’s most improbable juggernaut

When you think of New York City basketball, certain names and places immediately come to mind. Walt Frazier, Bernard King and Patrick Ewing patrolling the Madison Square Garden cedar. Latter-day torchbearers like Stephon Marbury, Jalen Brunson, Chamique Holdsclaw and Breanna Stewart. The rich lore beyond the storied college haunts of Rose Hill Gym and Carnesecca Arena that stretches from Harlem’s Rucker Park to the Cage on West 4th Street to Dyckman Oval in Washington Heights, the blacktop domains of playground legends like Earl “The Goat” Manigault, Pee Wee Kirkland and Rafer “Skip To My Lou” Alston.

What you don’t normally think about is New York University, the downtown school better known for its academic clout, interwoven Greenwich Village campus, celebrity alumni and $5.9bn endowment than for any of its sports teams. Yet it’s here, inside a 2,000-seat basement gym tucked two floors beneath Bleecker Street, where the Violets have quietly built one of the most dominant programs in college basketball today.

Published: March 11, 2026, 10:00 am

Teenager Noahkai Banks’ position and passing have him on the US’s World Cup radar

The German-American dual-national brings a skillset the US could use this summer, but his international future is up in the air

Last fall, Mauricio Pochettino seemed to be set. After numerous introductions, adjustments, elevations and demotions, his 26-man USMNT squad for this summer’s World Cup had taken shape, and a late surprise inclusion seemed totally out of the realm of possibility.

Not so fast. At that same time, Noahkai Banks became a starter along FC Augsburg’s backline and he hasn’t ceded that spot over the ensuing five months. Today, it seems that if any as-yet-uncapped field player is going to crack the US squad this summer, it’s almost certain to be Banks, 19 years old and suddenly among the most promising young defenders in Europe.

Published: March 11, 2026, 11:00 am

Igor Tudor says he was protecting Kinsky with Spurs substitution at Atlético

• Goalkeeper replaced in 17th minute of defeat by Atlético

• ‘It was necessary to preserve the guy, preserve the team’

Igor Tudor insisted that giving the 22-year-old Antonin Kinsky just his second start of the season and then taking him off again in the 17th minute of Tottenham’s humiliating 5-2 defeat at Atlético Madrid was the right decision, with the interim head coach saying he did so to protect the goalkeeper.

Kinsky, playing in place of Guglielmo Vicario, was withdrawn after two dreadful errors handed Atlético the first and third goals, with his teammates Connor Gallagher, Dominic Solanke and João Palhinha following up the tunnel to offer their support.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:57 pm

José Antonio Kast, the Pinochet fan about to swerve Chile to the far right

The new president won office by promising to clean up crime, but his background is red rag to a bull for many

Just south of Santiago, the tiny rural town of Paine is a quiet grid of painted adobe facades, shaded squares and shuttered shop fronts as the summer holidays draw to a close.

But the white-knuckle fear of crime that propelled its most famous son, José Antonio Kast, to a resounding victory in December’s presidential election is as present in sleepy Paine as it is the length of Chile.

Published: March 11, 2026, 8:00 am

Foreign hacker reportedly breached FBI servers holding Epstein files in 2023

Cybercriminal reportedly accessed a server at the FBI’s New York field office, according to a source and DoJ documents

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A foreign hacker compromised files relating to the FBI’s investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a break-in at the bureau’s New York field office three years ago, according to ​a source familiar with the matter and recently published justice department documents reviewed by Reuters.

The details of who accessed a server at the FBI’s New York field office, ‌including the allegation that a foreign hacker was involved, are being reported here for the first time.

Published: March 11, 2026, 12:46 pm

Swiss bus fire that killed six caused by ‘disturbed’ man setting himself alight, prosecutor says

Man in his 60s from Berne area had been reported missing before incident, say authorities in Fribourg canton

Police investigating a bus fire that killed at least six people in western Switzerland have said they believe it was started by a “marginalised and disturbed” Swiss man onboard who set himself ablaze.

The vehicle, operated by a service that transports passengers and mail, went up in flames on Tuesday evening in Kerzers, a town of about 5,000 people about 12 miles (20km) west of Berne in the canton of Fribourg.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:29 pm

El Salvador’s mass arrest policy may have led to crimes against humanity, study shows

Experts documented murder, torture and disappearances under president Nayib Bukele’s policy targeting gangs

The draconian mass incarceration policy of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, may have led to crimes against humanity, according to a new study by legal experts.

By locking up 1.4% of the population without due process, Bukele turned El Salvador from one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its least violent – but at the cost of human rights and the rule of law.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:00 pm

Argentina grants asylum to Brasília rioter in move that may sway Brazil vote

Decision to shield pro-Bolsonaro truck driver sentenced for 8 January 2023 attack could inflame Brazil election politics

Argentina has granted asylum to a Brazilian fugitive convicted for his role in 2023 pro-Bolsonaro riots – a decision that analysts say could reverberate in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election.

A week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, took office, hundreds of people ransacked Brazil’s congress building, presidential palace and supreme court on 8 January 2023, in an attempt to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat. Investigators later concluded the attacks were the culmination of a broader plot aimed at staging a coup.

Published: March 11, 2026, 2:11 pm

‘The moon is safe’: asteroid is not on collision course, scientists confirm

ESA’s Planetary Defence team allays fears 100-metre-wide object could hit Earth’s moon and disrupt satellites

Fears that a 100-metre-wide asteroid could be on course to collide with the moon appear to have been misplaced, according to new observations.

Discovered in December 2024, asteroid 2024 YR4 was briefly considered the “most dangerous asteroid” in decades after scientists initially estimated it had a 3.1% chance of colliding with the Earth in 2032. Closer observations quickly ruled out a “city killer” scenario, but instead astronomers calculated there was a 4.3% chance that the moon lay in the path of impact.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:30 pm

‘Happy (and safe) shooting!’: chatbots helped researchers plot deadly attacks

Users posing as would-be school shooters find AI tools offer detailed advice on how to perpetrate violence

Popular AI chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks including bombing synagogues and assassinating politicians, with one telling a user posing as a would-be school shooter: “Happy (and safe) shooting!”

Tests of 10 chatbots carried out in the US and Ireland found that, on average, they enabled violence three-quarters of the time, and discouraged it in just 12% of cases. Some chatbots, however, including Anthropic’s Claude and Snapchat’s My AI, persistently refused to help would-be attackers.

Published: March 11, 2026, 11:05 am

‘My lovely distraction’: live stream of kākāpō – world’s fattest parrot – and her chicks captivates New Zealand

More than 100,000 people have tuned in to watch ‘kākāpō cam’, which captures a rare flightless bird sleeping, tidying her nest and fighting off intruders

On an island in New Zealand’s remote southern fjords, one of the world’s strangest and rarest parrots – the kākāpō – is caring for her tiny chick as fans from across the globe watch on.

Through the black and white lens of a hidden camera, a fluffy orb with a kazoo-like squeak jostles for food from its mother’s beak. The mother, Rakiura, is attentive – scooping her chick under her large green wings, fending off an intruding bird, and periodically tidying her nest.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:03 am

This is the story of Weda Bay – and how nature is being sacrificed for mining

Analysis has found more than 3,000 mining operations within the most naturally precious areas of the planet, a much bigger footprint than previously thought

Weda Bay is just one example of a global trend that could see the mining industry expand into some of Earth’s last areas of wilderness in search of minerals and materials to feed the global economy.

Analysis produced for the Guardian by a group of academic researchers found more than 3,267 mining operations within key biodiversity areas (KBAs), accounting for nearly 5% of the mining sector’s global footprint. China, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico top the rankings for total surface mining area within key biodiversity areas, the most naturally precious areas of the planet.

Published: March 11, 2026, 7:00 am

Hawaii braces for powerful kona storm bringing heavy rain and strong winds

State’s governor declared emergency as islands face extreme weather and Big Island volcano Kilauea erupts

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Hawaii is preparing for a powerful storm this week that is expected to cause intense winds, thunderstorms and possibly significant flooding across multiple islands.

Josh Green, the governor, said on Monday he had issued an emergency proclamation in response to the weather expected to hit his state in the coming days, in order to bring additional resources into affected areas.

Published: March 11, 2026, 12:13 am

Death Valley bursts into superbloom for first time in a decade

Travelers are flocking to the famously arid desert covered in a blanket of pink, purple and yellow wildflowers

After a winter of record rainfall, a superbloom has erupted in Death Valley, covering the famously arid desert in a blanket of vibrant pink, purple and yellow flowers. As travelers from around the world make their way to the desert, they can expect to be greeted by fragrant air and a quilt of delicate hues.

While there is no official definition for a superbloom, the National Park Service uses the term to “describe conditions when so many flowers are present that they appear as swaths of color across the landscape, rather than isolated plants, especially striking at low elevations where the ground is typically sand, gravel and rock”.

Published: March 10, 2026, 3:40 pm

Shia LaBeouf cleared to travel to Rome for father’s baptism days after court denial

A different New Orleans judge approved the trip while the actor remains out on bond in Mardi Gras battery case

Shia LaBeouf ultimately did get permission to travel to his father’s baptism in Rome, days after the New Orleans courthouse handling the actor’s recent battery arrest initially denied his request to make the trip.

LaBeouf, 39, first sought authorization to travel to the Italian capital while out on bond at a court hearing on 26 February, during which state judge Simone Levine ordered him to enroll in substance abuse treatment. A court filing associated with the request said the trip would last from 1 to 8 March and was planned “for religious purposes, including his father’s baptism”.

Published: March 11, 2026, 9:00 am

Woman charged with attempted murder in shooting at home of Rihanna

Ivanna Lisette Ortiz of Florida, 35, allegedly fired 10 shots with a semiautomatic firearm into Beverly Hills home

A 35-year-old Florida woman has been charged with attempted murder after she allegedly fired shots into the Beverly Hills home of Rihanna on Sunday.

Ivanna Lisette Ortiz was charged on Tuesday with one count of attempted murder, 10 counts of assault on a person with a semiautomatic firearm and three counts of shooting at an inhabited dwelling, all felonies, court records show. Officials have said no one was injured during the shooting.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:30 pm

Wegovy users have five times greater risk of sudden sight loss than Ozempic users, study finds

‘Eye strokes’ that reduce blood flow to optic nerve likely to be side-effect of active ingredient semaglutide, says author

Patients taking Wegovy have nearly five times the risk of sudden sight loss of those on Ozempic, a large-scale study has found.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) medicines such as semaglutide (sold as Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus) and tirzepetide (sold as Mounjaro) help reduce blood sugar levels, slow digestion and reduce appetite, and have been linked to reduced risks of heart attack, fewer drug overdoses and other health benefits.

Published: March 10, 2026, 10:30 pm

Mike Johnson refuses to condemn anti-Muslim comments by Republican lawmakers

Andy Ogles said Muslims do not belong in the US and Randy Fine made a comparison of Muslims to dogs

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Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, on Tuesday declined to condemn Republican lawmakers who recently made Islamophobic comments, saying only that he had spoken to them about their “tone”.

Democrats and groups advocating religious tolerance have decried the statements from congressmen Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Randy Fine of Florida, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling on Johnson to discipline the latter.

Published: March 10, 2026, 9:49 pm

Hasty redeployment of US missiles from South Korea to Middle East leaves Seoul rattled

South Korea’s president has sought to reassure the public that the country is able to deter threats from the North

It has been almost a decade since the sleepy South Korean village of Seongju was transformed overnight into a key location in the country’s ability to counter an attack from North Korea.

Early on a spring morning, camouflaged trucks carrying the US-made terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) missile-defence system rolled into Seongju, as the country’s government ignored protests from locals who said the deployment would make them a target for Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:27 am

‘Stunned, sidelined and disunited’: how war in the Middle East paralysed the EU

Amid fears the conflict will strengthen Russia, Ursula von der Leyen’s embrace of US-backed regime change already looks like a doomed strategy

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The message from Ursula von der Leyen was blunt. “Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old-world order” and needs a “more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy”. In a major foreign policy speech this week, the European Commission president said the EU would always “defend and uphold the rules-based system” but in a precarious and chaotic world, that could no longer be relied upon. On the day she spoke, missiles were raining down on Tehran and southern Iran as the war entered its 10th day, proving her point.

Reverberating around Europe, the Middle East conflict has triggered a range of responses. France is sending a dozen naval vessels to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. EU officials convened an ad-hoc summit with Middle Eastern leaders in a show of solidarity with the region. EU humanitarian aid for Lebanon is being dispatched to help 130,000 people, after at least half a million were displaced by Israeli bombs and evacuation orders.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:22 pm

At least 65 Nigerian soldiers killed in jihadist raids in country’s north-east

Gunmen from Islamic State West Africa Province overran four military bases and abducted 300 civilians, say reports

At least 65 Nigerian soldiers have been killed in jihadist raids across the country’s north-east in the last two weeks, as the west African state battles to contain one of the world’s deadliest terror groups.

On 5 and 6 March, gunmen from Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) overran four military bases in Borno state, the epicentre of the insurgency. Nigerian daily the Punch reported that about 40 soldiers were killed in total in these attacks.

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:18 pm

Expert witness in Lucy Letby trial did not reveal hospital investigation into his medical work

Cheshire police and CPS say they were not told about inquiry into Prof Peter Hindmarsh before he gave evidence at nurse’s trial

The police force behind the prosecution of the former nurse Lucy Letby has said it was not informed by a key expert witness before he gave evidence at her trial that he was under investigation over serious concerns in his medical work.

The Crown Prosecution Service also told the Guardian it was not aware that Prof Peter Hindmarsh was subject to the formal investigation by the hospital that employed him, before his first appearance as a witness on 25 November 2022.

Published: March 11, 2026, 7:00 am

Why Black women playing villains on screen still feels controversial

In the wake of discourse surrounding Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia in One Battle After Another, a familiar debate has resurfaced about what happens when Black women play morally ambiguous characters on screen

In one scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Teyana Taylor’s character, Perfidia Beverly Hills, is more focused on seducing Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson (then still known as “Ghetto Pat”) than on the bomb exploding just feet away from them. In another scene, she holds Sean Penn’s Steven J Lockjaw at gunpoint while simultaneously provoking an erection. These are some of the perceived brazen, morally slippery choices Perfidia makes that have unsettled some viewers since the movie’s premiere.

“I absolutely hate what this means for the representation of Black women in Hollywood,” YouTuber and cultural commentator Jouelzy said in a video posted a day after Taylor won the Golden Globe award for best supporting actress. “So often the institutional powers that be only reward us for portrayals that are stereotypical characters of Black women. One Battle After Another was such an offensive film.”

Published: March 11, 2026, 11:29 am

‘My family was threatened multiple times’: Arab-American rockers Prostitute on confronting an Islamophobic US

The Michigan band satirically adopt Muslim stereotypes in their songs, pushing back against post-9/11 hate. As their incendiary debut is reissued, they explain their ‘evil’ music

‘I’m the motherfucker who took down the towers,” screams Prostitute’s Moe Kazra on All Hail, opening their nightmarish, theatrical debut album Attempted Martyr. Over crushing fusions of industrial punk with elements of Middle Eastern, African and east Asian music, the band explores the vilification of Arabs in a post-9/11 US by inhabiting vicious characterisations – ones levelled at their Arab-majority community in Dearborn, Michigan. “A lot of Arabs in the area are coming to us and being like ‘that was very potent’, or ‘that was beautiful’. I didn’t really expect that,” says Kazra, who is Lebanese American. “The music is evil.”

The album’s lyric sheet, written by Kazra and drummer Andrew Kaster who join me on a call, is a flurry of violent fantasies, paranoid ramblings and literary references ranging from The Arabian Nights to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Written when they formed in 2020 but only self-released in late 2024, it became a sleeper hit with punk fans. Now signed to Mute, which will reissue the record this week, they are among the most exciting, unorthodox breakthroughs in recent American rock.

Published: March 11, 2026, 10:49 am

Why F1 the Movie should win the best picture Oscar

It may not be in pole position, but Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski’s sleek, technically inventive ode to motor racing definitely qualifies for the Academy podium

Could, should, would F1 the Movie win the best picture Oscar? Well, we have to be realistic here: F1 is currently a massive outsider, at 200-1 along with The Secret Agent, which has no chance either but for very different reasons. It’s not hard to see why: this is a swaggeringly mainstream film, where tech and branding dwarf the human input, with the film itself acting as a front-end battering ram for a sports organisation desperate to break into the promised land of the US auto racing circuit. (I mean it’s right there in the title.) So even the most reactionary, conservative Academy voter is going to find it hard to mark F1 with their tick. So no, I don’t think it could win.

That’s not to say F1 doesn’t have quite a bit going for it. The Oscars, as we know, have historically had a problem with so-called “popular” films; Oppenheimer, in 2024, was the first best picture winner in two decades to finish in the Top 10 box office of the year. Whether or not that is a reflection of Hollywood itself, which since the mid-00s has concentrated its money and marketing into increasingly elaborate FX films to the detriment of drama and performance, is a question expanded on endlessly elsewhere. Suffice to say, F1 is definitely in that league, though not actually Top 10 (14th in the North American list for 2025); its ownership by Apple TV+ may have complicated things, denting its impact as a movie theatre spectacle.

Published: March 11, 2026, 8:00 am

Scarpetta review – this Nicole Kidman show is a dire mess … with an AI chatbot as a main character

Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis – who exec produced this adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s novels – have terrific chemistry. But this trashy drama is just weird

Scarpetta has been a rather long time in the making. Demi Moore was attached to the role of Patricia Cornwell’s crack forensic pathologist in the 90s, as was Angelina Jolie in the 00s. In a recent interview, the author said she had even approached Jodie Foster and Helen Mirren along the way. Now it has finally come to our screens, thanks in part to Jamie Lee Curtis, who is both an executive producer and one of its stars, with Nicole Kidman in the title role, continuing her run as TV’s hardest-working A-lister. What a shame, then, after such a long wait, that it is so dire: a boilerplate mess that insists on stripping the original work for parts and putting a cynical techy spin on proceedings to boot.

There are – for no good reason, really – two timelines in the series. In the present, Kidman plays Virginia’s chief medical officer Kay Scarpetta – a little icy, professional but prone to overstepping, haunted by secrets from the past. She is called to a crime scene where a woman’s naked body – sans hands – has been bound together with rope. We flash back to the 90s, where young Scarpetta (Rosy McEwen) is on the trail of a similar killer, who leaves a strange, glittery residue on his victims. Initially, at least, it seems as though this could be an interesting proposition, despite all the to-ing and fro-ing between past and present, which wasn’t part of Cornwell’s original novel. The idea that Scarpetta and her colleague and brother-in-law Pete Marino (played by Bobby Cannavale) may have got the wrong man in the 90s – when DNA evidence was still in its infancy – could have been the basis for a smart whodunnit. Instead, we get a sluggish procedural that barely bothers to build tension. Moments of gore come out of left field; major revelations in the case come to Scarpetta as sudden, deus ex machina revelations; and the dead women are mere plot fodder in a way that feels positively retro and grubby. The tone is strange – sometimes it’s The Silence of the Lambs, sometimes Diagnosis: Murder.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:00 am

Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere review – why doesn’t he focus more on the impact on women?

It’s refreshing to see him dial down the ignorant-ingenue approach and go harder than usual. But there is too little examination of how online misogyny affects those who didn’t choose to be part of it

He’s a bit late to the party, is the first thought that crosses your mind when faced with the prospect of 90 minutes of Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere. I’ve lost count of the number of documentaries there have been on either specific leading lights in the lucrative online misogyny business, such as Andrew Tate, or the general phenomenon (the latter most recently by James Blake with Men of the Manosphere).

Still, can a subject really be said to have been “done” until we have seen what Louis T makes of it? Evidently not, so here he is, repeating his shtick as he covers ground that other less high-profile documentarians have done before him. To be fair, he approaches his interviewees with a slightly harder, less ignorant-ingenue vibe than usual. This is pleasing on many levels. I find the latter quite an effortful pose and increasingly hard to endure, and he rightly intuits that the full version wouldn’t fly here. It’s also simply getting old. We know he is an intelligent man who lives in this world – the silent supposed bafflement and dependence on giving people enough rope to hang themselves, which are such a large part of his arsenal, look like increasingly feeble weapons when the matters are of such increasing importance in all of our lives.

Published: March 11, 2026, 12:01 am

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

A shocking new Apple TV 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

Do Not Go Gentle by Kathleen Stock review – the case against euthanasia

The philosopher offers a measured and reasonable argument against assisted dying

In this admirably clear and cogent book, the philosopher Kathleen Stock sets out the case against state-sanctioned assisted dying. Her immediate objection is to the end of life bill currently before the House of Lords, but her opposition extends to the principle in general. This is a polemic, but a polite one. Stock says she hopes that by the end of it we will share her objection to the ‘‘institutionalisation of death”.

It is not a popular place to start. Polls over the past few years consistently show that around three-quarters of Britons are in favour of assisted dying for terminally ill people. But Stock has never been afraid of swimming upstream. In 2021, she resigned from the University of Sussex following protests by some staff and students over her views, set out in the book Material Girls, that sex is binary and immutable and that this, rather than gender identity, should be the basis of laws to protect women.

Published: March 11, 2026, 9:00 am

Ron Howard, Emma Rice, Neil Tennant and more on Liza Minnelli: ‘She holidayed in my Cornish bungalow’

The showbiz legend has spent her whole life in the spotlight. As she turns 80, her friends and collaborators share their stories from Hollywood singalongs to acid house raves

I first met Liza in 1963 when I was playing Eddie in a movie called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. I was seven years old and I got this choice role, which was directed by the great Vincent Minnelli. There were no other kids on this movie, so I had a welfare worker who was also the studio teacher, and I was alone in my little second-grade classroom. But one day, Vincent introduced me to his daughter, who he said was just going to hang around.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:00 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

With its fluorescent characters and ASCII text, Marathon is a masterclass in 90s nostalgia

The revival of this 90s favourite is a retro-futuristic fever dream that is first incomprehensible, then thrillingly evocative. Plus, Donald Glover’s Yoshi debut

Back in the mid-1990s, when I was a staff writer for Edge magazine, Marathon was our multiplayer shooter of choice. We all worked on Apple Macs, not PCs, so Bungie’s sci-fi opus was one of the only networked shooters we could all play together. At the end of every day, staff from magazines around the company loaded it up and played for hours (usually with Chemical Brothers or Orbital blasting from the stereo). This was the era in which video games discovered club culture – Sony employed the legendary Sheffield studio the Designers Republic to create its box art and licensed the latest dance tunes for its marketing and game soundtracks. Western developers swooned over cyberpunk anime, newly available thanks to video distributors such as Viz Media and Manga Entertainment, and the internet was emerging as a weird, wild global meeting place. It felt, for a while, as if we were living in a William Gibson novel.

I’m reminded of these things while playing the new version of Marathon, released this week by Bungie and heavily inspired by 1990s futurism. It’s now an online sci-fi extraction shooter in which players beam down to the planet Tau Ceti IV to scavenge for loot, carry out missions and potentially blast each other in the process. Its closest rival is Arc Raiders, which makes a similar use of stylised retro-futurism. In a recent Twitter exchange, Bungie’s global franchise director, Philip Asher, namechecked Sony’s Wipeout game, its Mental Wealth ads for PlayStation and its translucent Dual Shock controllers as inspirations.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:00 pm

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

Kneecap rapper will not face terrorism trial after high court rejects CPS appeal

Judges uphold decision to dismiss case against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh for allegedly displaying Hezbollah flag at gig

The Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh will not face a terrorism charge over allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a gig after the high court in London upheld a decision to throw out the case.

Ó hAnnaidh, 28, who performs under the name Mo Chara, had been charged with the offence for allegedly displaying the flag of the proscribed group during a performance at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, north London, in November 2024.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:10 pm

Becky the dog steals the show: John Dean’s best photograph

‘In 1976, Nottingham’s Victorian buildings were being torn down to make way for newer council housing. I’d go to the park and regularly bump into this man. To me, this picture seems very English’

This was taken 50 years ago by my 20-year-old self. I was away from Baltimore for the first time, where I had been at art school while still living at home. My tutor at Maryland Institute College of Art, and his friend, a tutor at Nottingham Trent University, had decided to set up an exchange programme. So I spent one spring semester in Nottingham with no classes to attend: it was strictly photography and strictly on my own, which was kind of new.

I stayed with a young family – I lived on the third floor in their Victorian house. They had a baby boy who turned one when I was there. I have pictures of the birthday. I was really embedded, as they’d say today, with this family. We had dinner together. I remember we made marmalade, using the pips to get the pectin.

Published: March 11, 2026, 2:44 pm

Your Oscars questions answered: ‘The best film of the year hasn’t actually won best picture since 12 Years a Slave’

Who should win? Who’s been snubbed? Guardian film editor Catherine Shoard answers your Oscars questions

Guardian writers have been making their pitches for best picture winner at the 98th Academy Awards in our Oscars hustings series.

Has Chase Infiniti been snubbed? Should Train Dreams win for best cinematography? Who’s the bigger monster, Frankenstein’s or Marty Mauser? Guardian film editor Catherine Shoard answers your 2026 Oscars questions.

Thanks very much for all these really well-informed and thoughtful questions! I’ll try to get through as many as possible

1. Vicious circle of looming industry collapse fueling industry timidity.

2. Talent exodus to TV and streaming.

Parasite (2020) and Moonlight (2016) were good – but not the year’s best films. So perhaps 12 Years a Slave (2014).

The Oscar campaign trail is today a very precise, well-monitored and potentially lucrative business – which is why slip-ups such as the failure to police the social media of Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón are so surprising/glaring/dramatic.

Red carpet is important for this, but not the most critical part of the campaign by any means, unless something really unusual happens on the carpet. Interviews are far more important – note the Chalamet ballet slip, which occurred in the softest of spaces – as well as general glad-handing.

Published: March 11, 2026, 8:00 am

Michelangelo or bust? Researcher divides experts with attribution of sculpture

Author claims archive documents show Christ the Saviour bust was one of the artist’s secret works

Fabio Orazzo should have been on his way home to Naples for the weekend. Instead, curiosity kept him in Rome, where he teaches art and history, long enough to jump on a bus to visit a little-known church in the north-east of the Italian capital.

He came to Sant’Agnese fuori le mura (St Agnes Outside the Walls), built above fourth-century catacombs, to see a marble bust depicting Christ the Saviour. A fixture in the church since 1590, it has been thrust into the spotlight by the bold claim that it could have been sculpted by Michelangelo.

Published: March 11, 2026, 5:00 am

Promotion burnout: why women are quitting the race to be boss

In a survey of 1,000 professional women, more than half said they felt less motivated to progress in their jobs than they did two years ago

Name: Promotion burnout.

Appearance: Disturbingly feminine.

Published: March 11, 2026, 3:49 pm

My stay in Switzerland’s oldest mountain inn – where winter sports aren’t allowed

Perched high above a frozen lake, Grimsel Hospiz in the Bernese Oberland offers an unusual winter escape, with gourmet food, a hot tub, star-filled skies and no distractions

Near the top of the Grimsel Pass in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, a small crowd had gathered to take photographs. We were surrounded by bulky mountains and rippling glaciers, but all eyes were focused on a silvery granite chalet with apple-red shutters, its foundations deep in snow.

It was early February and, one after another, we posed in front of it as if standing beside a celebrity. Which in a way we were, because the proud building was the Grimsel Hospiz, the country’s oldest recorded mountain inn and a place that predates Westminster Abbey.

Published: March 11, 2026, 7:00 am

My mother’s best advice: learn to raise one eyebrow at the world

It took almost a year of practice and then I was too embarrassed to show off my talent. But finally, during a stage performance, I elevated a solitary brow and the crowd went wild

When I was about 10, my mother mentioned something to me about the advantage of being able to raise one eyebrow. I can’t remember quite how she put it – I think she described it as an actor’s trick, a useful skill for conveying inner thoughts.

We both spent a couple of minutes trying to lift one eyebrow without the other following it. Neither of us could manage it. It was harder than Mr Spock made it look, and possibly not so much an acting skill as a genetic predisposition, like being able to roll your tongue.

Published: March 11, 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

Jess Cartner Morley on fashion: rugby shirts are key to athleisure’s preppy new makeover

No longer under the tyranny of compression fit leggings, today’s athleisure is something looser, with a wink of nostalgia

Athleisure is not to be confused with serious fitness wear. No one is running a marathon or playing a game of football in the shoes pictured above. Notice how, in a made-up noun that is a compound of athletics and leisure, the first has been shrunk to three letters. The only personal best that concerns you here is having an optimal Saturday morning.

Athleisure is fashion, not kit, so it moves with the times just as much as it moves with you. And it looks very different now than a few years ago, when every outfit was anchored by snazzy leggings. Tight legging sets with dazzling graphics were the parade uniform of the imperial age of Lycra. Under the cheerful tyranny of compression fit, starburst-pattern leggings with matching sports bras ruled the roost. These were outfits designed to be watched in a mirror with a rousing soundtrack: perky and sculpting, lingerie-like in their obsession with matching two-piece sets and with bottoms.

Published: March 11, 2026, 2:00 pm

Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel show celebrates and plays with brand’s history

New designer’s kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm is evident in confident colours and loosened silhouettes

A building site, but make it chic: that was the set for Chanel’s Paris fashion week show. Cranes in Meccano-bright colours towered over the catwalk, their reflection shimmering sequin-bright on an opalescent floor that was inspired by Monet, according to the designer Matthieu Blazy. Monet has been a backstage buzzword at Dior and Chanel this week, as the two giants battle for bragging rights over French culture.

Fashion week loves a visual metaphor. Blazy, who arrived at Chanel last year, is rebuilding the designer, and having fun with it. The invitation for the show was a tiny stainless steel tape measure on a pendant. He has immersed himself in house history – Cocology? – and after the show, greeted reporters clutching a folded printout of an interview Coco Chanel gave to Le Figaro in 1955. Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and a grandee of the brand since 1990, remarked that he had never come across this interview before Blazy brought it to him. Blazy’s kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm is infectious, and the city’s Chanel boutiques have been packed all week. A simple cotton shirt embroidered with the Chanel name is sold out, at a price of €3,900. New season bags are limited to one per customer – a policy designed, the company says, to limit resale at even higher prices.

Published: March 10, 2026, 2:29 pm

‘Imagine, if everyone had a sex auntie’: Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah on tradition as a basis for pleasure

The author tells how chronicling the sex lives of African women led her to many examples of openness around the body grounded in love and care

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I first met Nana five years ago. The Ghanaian writer had just published The Sex Lives of African Women, a book I still think about often for how surprising and eye-opening its accounts of contemporary, quietly radical sexual practices in parts of the continent are.

She is back with Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals and Sankofa in the Bedroom. When I spoke to her, I found a writer in transition who is still as surprising.

Published: March 11, 2026, 12:58 pm

My mother’s best advice: wear bold, bright colours

I used to hide away in all-black sport-core until I allowed myself to wear space-age silver dresses or a large-collared, lemony faux-fur coat

Maybe adolescence wasn’t the ideal time to receive my mother’s advice to wear an array of colours. What better way to express how you feel on any given day, and convey that mood to the world, she would say. It was important to the eye, to the soul.

It really isn’t the best advice to give any teenager, especially a sulky one who’s hoping to disappear in baggy, all-black sport-core. I’d cringe when she would try to push big, loud colours on me on shopping trips, talking in what I thought was mumbo jumbo about mood-lifting lilacs, energising reds and skin-warming oranges.

Published: March 11, 2026, 12:00 pm

Apple iPad Air M4 review: still the premium tablet to beat

Faster laptop-level power, rapid wifi and 5G, plus much-improved multitasking make the middle iPad highly capable beyond just watching TV

The latest iPad Air is faster in almost all facets, packing not just a processor upgrade but improvements to most of the internal bits that make the tablet work, providing laptop-grade power in a skinny, adaptable touchscreen device.

The new iPad Air M4 costs from the same £599 (€649/$599/A$999) as the outgoing M3 model from last year and again comes in two sizes. One with an 11in screen, which is the best size for most people and a more expensive 13in screen version, which is ideal if you want a second TV or a laptop replacement.

Screen: 11in or 13in Liquid Retina display (264ppi)

Processor: Apple M4 (8-core CPU/9-core GPU)

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iPadOS 26.3

Camera: 12MP rear, 12MP centre stage

Connectivity: Wifi 7, 5G (eSim-only), Bluetooth 6, USB-C (USB3), Touch ID, Smart Connecter

Dimensions: 247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1mm or 280.6 x 214.9 x 6.1mm

Weight: 464g or 616g

Published: March 11, 2026, 7:00 am

I’ve taught thousands of people how to use AI – here’s what I’ve learned

Most people fail with AI because they don’t understand what it actually is – if you treat it as a skill, not a shortcut, you’ll get the best results

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

Training teams to use AI at work has given me a front-row seat to a new kind of professional divide.

Some people hand everything over to the machine and stop thinking. Others won’t touch it at all.

Published: March 10, 2026, 11:00 am

‘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

Academy wars: how did this season’s Oscars discourse get so toxic?

Fury over Timothée Chalamet’s comments about ballet or Jessie Buckley not liking cats has reached a bizarre fever pitch as the industry wills this Sunday to arrive faster

Around day five of debate over what Timothée Chalamet said and/or meant about opera and ballet, it started to feel like maybe the 2025-2026 Oscar season had actually lasted for the past 17 years.

Voting for the 98th annual Academy Awards concluded on 5 March, but that didn’t stop the internet from throwing a bunch of attempted buzzer-beaters; an interview where Chalamet casually referred to ballet and opera as potentially endangered (and perhaps not especially relevant) art forms was actually held some weeks ago in a conversation with Matthew McConaughey, a fellow actor. But it was that same vote-closing on Thursday when the clip started to circulate virally online and rebuttals poured in. This was swiftly followed by counter-charges that most likely the majority of people excoriating Chalamet, campaigning for best actor in Marty Supreme, had themselves not been to the ballet or opera especially recently.

Published: March 10, 2026, 2:49 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

An earthquake anniversary and a Renaissance exhibition: photos of the day – Wednesday

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

Published: March 11, 2026, 1:58 pm