‘The more they come down on us, the more we come together’: 14 No Kings protesters on where to go from here

Saturday’s protests drew millions of people across the US and around the world. The Guardian spoke with some of them to see why they were there and what’s next

• So you went to a No Kings protest. Now what?

Saturday saw the greatest number of protests in US history, when more than 8 million people at 3,300 No Kings events took to the streets to oppose the policies of Donald Trump.

In the past few months, the Trump administration has sent more than 3,000 federal immigration agents into Minnesota’s Twin Cities, causing fear and havoc that was only furthered when agents killed two residents. Trump has also launched strikes on Venezuela and waged a war in Iran that has so far cost the US about $30bn to $40bn. That is on top of the US continuing to fund Israel’s war in Gaza; the ongoing immigration raids in other US cities, towns and rural regions; and the threats to trans rights, voting rights and more.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:55 pm

Transcription by Ben Lerner review – a stunning exploration of technology and storytelling

Ranging from quantum mechanics to eating disorders to the nature of fiction, this is a breathtaking interrogation of family, connection and memory

Transcription ends with an epilogue. It’s a letter, or at least an extract from a letter, written by Leopold Blaschka, a 19th-century Bohemia-born artist who, with his son Rudolf, crafted intricate and breathtakingly realistic models of flowers, plants and sea creatures made out of glass. So astounding was their technique, so uncanny, that sceptics assumed they must be using secret devices. “It is not so,” he insisted. “We have the touch. My son Rudolf has more than I have because he is my son and the touch increases in every generation.” Until this point, Blaschka hasn’t been referenced by name even once. But here, in coda form, is the essence of Transcription, a novel about touch, devices and familial inheritances that is itself intricate, uncanny, sometimes breathtakingly realistic.

It begins with a middle-aged American narrator travelling to Providence, Rhode Island, home to Brown University, where Ben Lerner studied poetry and political theory as an undergraduate. He is there to conduct a magazine interview with a polymathic German intellectual named Thomas. No ordinary assignment: Thomas was his mentor at college, the father of his friend Max, and now, at the age of 90, this conversation is expected to be his last will and testament. At the hotel, bathos strikes – the narrator drops his smartphone in a sink; it’s unusable and he’s too embarrassed to confess. Thomas soon gets into his conversational stride, but his rich sentences go unrecorded.

Published: March 31, 2026, 6:00 am

James McAvoy: ‘I’ve been “that Scottish person”, reduced to a noise that comes out of my mouth’

He went from a Glasgow council estate to Hollywood fame. Now, in his directorial debut, the X-Men star is challenging stereotypes about his homeland via the remarkable tale of a real-life hip-hop hoax

It’s the final night of the Glasgow film festival and James McAvoy is a wee bit out of breath. His directorial debut, California Schemin’, is playing across all three screens at the Glasgow Film Theatre in the city centre, taking the festival’s prestige closing slot.

Usually, a big name would say a few words of introduction in the main cinema then bask in the glory. Not McAvoy. Getting in among it still comes naturally 25 years after he left this city to pursue a career that has blazed from his award-winning Cyrano de Bergerac in the West End of London to playing Professor X, the founder of the X-Men, in the blockbuster Hollywood franchise.

Published: March 31, 2026, 4:00 am

MacBook Neo review: the budget Apple laptop powered by an iPhone chip

Snappy performance, high-quality screen, best-in-class keyboard and trackpad show cheaper can still be great

Apple’s brand new entry-level laptop is powered by the chip from an iPhone and offers more than just the essential MacBook experience for a great price, putting the PC industry on notice.

The MacBook Neo is the first of its kind from Apple. A 13in laptop that runs on an A18 Pro chip and brings the starting price for a brand new MacBook down to £599 (€699/$599/A$899) – £500 or the equivalent less than the MacBook Air.

Published: March 31, 2026, 6:00 am

Does going to the moon still matter? – podcast

If all goes to plan, Artemis II, Nasa’s mission to return humans to the moon, will launch this week. The mission will mark the farthest that humans have travelled from Earth, and the first return to the moon in more than 50 years. It will also pave the way for landing on the moon again as soon as 2028. But given the Apollo missions have already achieved that feat, does going back to the moon still matter today? To find out, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample, the Atlantic journalist Ross Andersen, and Jan Wörner, a former director general of the European Space Agency

Clips: ABC, Nasa

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Published: March 31, 2026, 4:00 am

Five ways to look put together during April showers, recommended by a stylist

(Plus: triangle scarves, rival hair stylers, and a deal on glass containers)

• This story was originally published in the Filter US newsletter on buying fewer, better things. Sign up here to get early access to it

Each week the Filter newsletter cuts through the noise to bring you smart, practical recommendations on how to live better – from what is worth buying to the tools, habits and ideas that actually last.

When I think of rainy day attire, I picture blinding neon ponchos and unwieldy umbrellas. My own rain gear consists of a bulky waterproof coat and old sneakers I’ve designated as my “rain shoes”, but our recent rigorous test of 14 Pfas-free rain jackets reminded me you can look fashionable even when it’s pouring.

Published: March 30, 2026, 2:15 pm

Middle East crisis live: Iran attacks tanker in Dubai; explosions in Tehran and Jerusalem amid wave of strikes

Fully loaded Kuwaiti tanker set alight as attacks continue despite Trump’s warning he would obliterate Iran’s energy facilities if the strait of Hormuz was not reopened

• Kuwaiti tanker hit by Iranian attack in Dubai port, raising oil spill fears

• Trump threatens to ‘obliterate’ Iran’s energy grid if ceasefire not reached ‘shortly’

Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry has said it has intercepted and destroyed ten drones over the past hours, and eight missiles launched towards the Riyadh area and the country’s eastern region.

Early this morning Kuwait said its air defences were responding to hostile missile and drone attacks. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait said where the drones or missiles came from.

Iran attacked and set ablaze a fully loaded crude oil tanker off Dubai. Local authorities later said response teams contained the incident with no oil leakage and that no injuries had been reported

Donald Trump warned that the US would obliterate Iran’s energy plants and oil wells if it did not open the strait of Hormuz.

The Israeli military said four soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon, where its forces are clashing with Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Two giant Chinese container ships have sailed through the strait of Hormuz on their second attempt to leave the Gulf after turning back on Friday, ship-tracking data shows. The transit signals a diplomatic breakthrough between Beijing and Tehran as Iran widens its list of approved nations for transiting the vital route, Lloyd’s List reported.

Indonesia’s foreign minister called for an emergency UN security council meeting and a thorough investigation” into a “heinous attack” after three UN peacekeepers from Indonesia were killed in southern Lebanon.

Blasts were heard in Tehran and power cuts hit some areas of the capital, Iranian media reported on Tuesday. Israel earlier carried out missile strikes on what it called military infrastructure in Tehran and infrastructure used by Hezbollah in Beirut.

Japan and Indonesia agreed to step up coordination on energy security, Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi said on Tuesday.

Two Iranian missile launches targeted central Israel, Israeli media reported, with the emergency service saying it had not received reports of any injuries.

Turkey reported a ballistic missile launched from Iran had entered Turkish airspace before being shot down by Nato air and missile defences.

An earlier summary of key developments is here.

Published: March 31, 2026, 8:39 am

US directs American embassies to wage campaign against foreign ‘hostility’ – with Musk’s help

Cable signed by Marco Rubio and seen by Guardian suggests staff work with Pentagon psychological operations unit

The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it.

The cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:52 pm

‘What’s going on?’: US judge calls aspects of new Pentagon press policy ‘weird’

Judge seems skeptical of Pentagon’s restrictive protocol but did not rule on forcing compliance with an earlier order

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Federal judge Paul Friedman seemed skeptical of the new press policy implemented by the Pentagon last week, calling aspects of it “weird” and Kafkaesque.

Friedman struck down key aspects of the previously implemented Pentagon media policy on 20 March, but at the latest hearing on Monday stopped short of ruling on a motion filed by the New York Times to force compliance of his decision.

Published: March 30, 2026, 5:15 pm

Two-year-old held by ICE sick and not getting adequate care, Democrat warns

Congressman Joaquin Castro calls for release of boy, Kaleth, and mother from much-criticized detention Dilley facility

A two-year-old detained in a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, is sick and not getting adequate help, said Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from San Antonio. The boy, Kaleth, has a fever and is not eating the food served at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, which Castro said detainees have complained of having mold and worms.

“When his mother asked for help, the staff said it was all ‘mental’,” Castro wrote in a post on X. “A vulnerable child at the Dilley trailer prison was suffering and ICE denied their reality and their needs. It’s shameful and must stop.”

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:15 pm

Army investigates after two helicopters hovered by Kid Rock’s pool as he saluted

Two AH-64 Apache helicopters on training run maneuvered near hillside home of Trump-supporting musician

The army has launched an administrative review after two AH-64 Apache helicopters on a training run hovered near the hillside home of Kid Rock as the outspoken supporter of Donald Trump saluted their crews.

Kid Rock posted two videos on social media on Saturday. Each shows a helicopter hovering alongside his swimming pool while the entertainer claps, salutes and raises his fist in the air. The Nashville skyline can be seen in the background.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:29 pm

TSA employees receive back pay after Trump’s executive order

Airport wait times appear to be shorter as workers received back pay for two whole paychecks

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The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued its employees back pay on Monday, after Donald Trump signed an order for them to be paid even as a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security drags on, with no end in sight.

The paychecks appear to have relieved severe congestion at airport TSA checkpoints, which resulted in hours-long lines at several major air hubs over the past two weeks but brought Congress no closer to resolving the standoff over the the DHS’s budget.

Published: March 30, 2026, 8:53 pm

New York councilmember and Hochul governor aide investigated for bribery

Prosecutors investigate whether Farah Louis and Debbie Louis accepted bribes to help migrant shelter provider

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether a New York City councilmember and her sister, an aide to governor Kathy Hochul, accepted bribes or kickbacks in connection with the appropriation of city funds to a migrant shelter provider, according to a copy of a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press.

The warrant, signed on 19 March, seeks evidence of possible criminal violations involving councilmember Farah Louis, a Brooklyn Democrat, and Debbie Louis, who serves as Hochul’s assistant secretary of New York City intergovernmental affairs.

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:40 pm

Michigan synagogue attacker was inspired by Hezbollah, FBI says

Ayman Ghazali, naturalized US citizen from Lebanon, often consumed content linked to Lebanese group online

The assailant who attacked a synagogue in Michigan earlier this month was inspired by Hezbollah, the FBI said on Monday.

Jennifer Runyan, head of the FBI’s Detroit field office, announced during a press conference that Ayman Ghazali, 41, had frequently consumed Hezbollah-related content online before the attack. In a video recorded before he drove his truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township – a north-western suburb of Detroit – on 12 March, Ghazali said he wanted to “kill as many of them as I possibly can”.

Published: March 30, 2026, 10:16 pm

China to ban storing remains of dead in ‘bone ash apartments’

Practice of using apartments to store relatives’ ashes has risen as rapid urbanisation and ageing population increases competition for cemetery plots

China is introducing a law to stop people storing the ashes of their dead relatives in empty high-rise flats rather than paying steep costs for increasingly scarce cemetery plots.

China’s new funeral management legislation will prohibit the use of “residential housing specifically for the purpose of storing cremated remains” and the burial of corpses or construction of tombs in “areas other than public cemeteries”.

Published: March 31, 2026, 4:54 am

‘Extremely rare’ Bob Dylan draft lyrics discovered inside Allen Ginsberg book

A torn page bearing Dylan’s lyrics for the 1967 song I’m Not There is set to go under the hammer in April when it could fetch £40,000

Almost 60 years after it was first typed out by Bob Dylan, a torn page of lined paper bearing a draft for the lyrics of I’m Not There has been discovered, tucked inside an Allen Ginsberg paperback.

During the summer of 1967 in New York, just outside Woodstock, Bob Dylan wrote and recorded more than 100 songs with his then-backing group The Band, including I’m Not There. A small collection of these tapes would be released eight years later by Columbia Records, while more songs, including I’m Not There, would only be released over the following decades.

Published: March 31, 2026, 3:09 am

Trump news at a glance: US promotes Elon Musk’s X to fight foreign propaganda

Cable signed by secretary of state Marco Rubio endorses Musk’s platform by name and suggests staff work with Pentagon psychological operations unit – key US politics stories from Monday 30 March at a glance

The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s Twitter/X as an “innovative” tool to help do it.

The cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.

Published: March 31, 2026, 1:00 am

Ron DeSantis signs bill renaming Palm Beach airport after Donald Trump

If approved, move is latest in series of buildings, warships, institutions, programs and currency named after president

He has buildings, institutions, government programs, warships, currency, and now Donald Trump is getting an airport that bears his name even as he looks forward to a towering Trump presidential library in Miami.

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, signed a bill on Monday saying the Palm Beach international airport was being renamed to the President Donald J Trump international airport.

Published: March 31, 2026, 1:26 am

California to impose new AI regulations in defiance of Trump call

Gavin Newsom signs order to prioritize public safety and rights as president seeks to prevent ‘cumbersome’ rules

California will impose new standards on artificial intelligence companies seeking to do business with the state, defying Donald Trump’s demands to keep the controversial industry as deregulated as possible.

Democratic governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Monday that gives the state four months to develop AI policies that prioritize public safety.

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:59 pm

JD Vance says aliens are ‘demons’ and details obsession with UFOs

Vice-president promises ‘to get to the bottom of’ reports of US government files about unidentified flying objects

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JD Vance, the vice-president of the United States, said this weekend that he considers aliens to be “demons”.

With the war in Iran continuing, petrol and grocery prices soaring, and chaos continuing at US airports as a partial government shutdown endures, Vance appeared on the conservative Benny Show podcast, released on Saturday, to promise that he would spend time looking into what he called his “obsession” with UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:29 pm

Can Europe’s public service media survive attacks by the far right?

From Italy to France, Germany to Hungary, far-right governments and politicians are targeting media with the same playbook

• Revealed: Five EU governments found to ‘consistently’ dismantle rule of law

Barely six months after Giorgia Meloni’s government was sworn in, the chief executive of Italy’s public broadcaster Rai resigned. Carlo Fuortes cited “a political conflict” as the reason for his departure in May 2023, a year before the end of his term.

The top posts quickly went to nominees with ties to Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist roots. Rai’s CEO is now Giampaolo Rossi, a former Rai board member who has in the past voiced support for Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump.

Published: March 31, 2026, 6:30 am

If OpenAI is to float on the stock market this year, it needs to start turning a profit

The poster child of the AI boom, valued at $850bn, needs to show strategic discipline after ‘casting its net too wide’

If OpenAI is going to float this year, it has to get serious about its business model. The wow factor around the US company – the poster child of an AI industry boom that has stoked fears of a stock market bubble – has been long established, but when will the profits come? The party can’t go on for ever.

The developer of ChatGPT is one of the biggest startups in the world and is now valued at $850bn (£645bn). Meanwhile, it is reportedly spending $600bn on infrastructure (the amount it invests in datacentres and chips to power its AI models) by 2030. At least this is a reduction on an initial estimate of $1.4tn.

Published: March 31, 2026, 7:00 am

‘Women who speak out must be exterminated’: the rising tide of digital violence facing Ethiopian activists

Feminists and rights defenders say online threats have rapidly escalated, forcing some to leave the country for their safety

Yordanos Bezabih, an Ethiopian women’s rights activist, had faced online threats for years: of acid attacks, gang-rape and death. She tried her best to ignore the abuse as she continued her advocacy work. But in 2025, the threats became more menacing. In April, an anonymous Telegram group with 6,000 subscribers organised an effort to track down her location.

They shared deepfakes of her – nude images and videos. The following month, a stranger started to film her in the streets, calling her by her social media handle.

Published: March 31, 2026, 5:00 am

Dean Sameshima review – did the neighbours really not know? The extreme LA sex clubs hidden in plain sight

Soft Opening, London
Deadpan 90s photographs of seemingly ordinary buildings only hint at the queer bacchanalia within – and stand as a record of lost and beloved safe spaces

At first, they look like ordinary buildings, photographed in an ordinary manner. Each is shot formally from across the street, framed by thick black utility cables and poles, barbed wire fences, graffiti and flyposters carving horizontal and vertical planes, with glimpses of cerulean California sky and Arcadian palms beyond. It’s the city, but there are no people in sight, and the streets are clean of debris and dirt, except for a few oil stains left behind in a parking lot. The pictures are strangely silent.

None of these buildings have windows – if they do, they are boarded up, shuttered, blacked out. In only one photograph, the door is left mysteriously open – inside, I can just make out a security door, latticed iron bars, and beyond it a neon arrow sign directing the way in. These are photographs to tease your deepest voyeuristic desires. Only the titles direct you to what’s going on inside these locations – “12 stalls, 1 leather bunk bed, outdoor garden, 1 water fountain, 1 barber’s chair, glory-hole platform, Chinese decor” reads one.

Published: March 30, 2026, 12:55 pm

Don’t stop at Duolingo, set realistic goals, balance skills: how to start learning a new language

Language experts say you should learn in the right order and shift to a growth mindset

If there’s one thing guaranteed to make a pop-culture character look cool and sophisticated, it’s being multilingual. Think James Bond, Yasmin from Industry or Scrooge McDuck.

Learning a new language not only makes you look cool – it also allows you to familiarize yourself with another culture, connect with new people and enjoy a wider variety of art and media. And it’s good for your brain. Studies have shown that learning a new language is associated with improved concentration, stronger communication skills, a more powerful memory and greater creativity.

Published: March 30, 2026, 4:00 pm

‘He can say he went to the gym’: people are pumping themselves with fat from corpses to perk up their pecs, boobs and butts

‘Zombie filler’, or using cadaver tissue that’s been sterilized and branded as Alloclae, is the latest cosmetic surgery rage. Is it safe?

The residential block at 655 Park Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is so storied it has its own Wikipedia entry. It has housed luminaries from bestselling romance author Danielle Steel to esteemed yachtsmen and the 20th-century heir William Kissam Vanderbilt II. A more recent resident, on the ground floor, is Alpha Male Plastic Surgery, a clinic offering a broad menu of elective procedures catering to the needs of the modern man.

On a coffee table in the waiting room, fanned-out brochures tout facelifts, non-surgical penile implants, and Tesamorelin – an FDA-approved peptide injection targeting stubborn visceral belly fat. Flatscreen monitors mounted behind the front desk shuffle through ads for a “Full Male Model Makeover”, proprietary procedures like BodyBanking® and the 360 TorsoTuck®, and for the gym rat who habitually skips leg day, even “Amazing New Calves”.

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:00 am

Ghost Killer review – fantastic karate chopping and gunslinging in in supernatural action-comedy

Top notch choreography features heavily in tale of a student who is inhabited by an assassin’s spirit determined to wreak revenge

On her way home from a bad day at work and a disappointing drinks date with a sleazy social media influencer (Hidenobu Abera), college student and part-time waitress Fumika (Akari Takaishi) finds a bullet casing on a stairway. She unthinkingly picks it up, not realising that her own suppressed rage and need for vengeance will instantly connect her through this object to the ghost of Kudo (Masanori Mimoto), a recently murdered hired assassin with his own load of unresolved emotional issues. Luckily, supernatural happenstance in this action-comedy charmer from Japan will help both of them to grow as people, or in Kudo’s case an ex-person. It turns out that Kudo can inhabit Fumika’s body at will and effectively use her as a karate-chopping, gun-slinging martial arts meat puppet in order to right wrongs, fight bad guys and eventually help him avenge his own murder. Fun!

Star Takaishi and director Kensuke Sonomura have collaborated before on the successful franchise Baby Assassins (wherein Takaishi plays a professional contract killer who poses as a normie, basically the inverse of her character here). Sonomura was the action director for three Baby Assassins features, which might explain that this, his third gig as a main director, feels more weighted towards scenes that showcase fisticuffs and fancy fight choreography rather than character development and emotional nuance. But that’s fine because Takaishi has charisma to burn and an impressive range; she’s equally convincing as a hapless student screaming in shock at the destruction being wrought around her as she is as a dead-eyed killer when Kudo inhabits her body. Meanwhile, Mimoto, a Japanese action film stalwart, is compellingly soulful as a murderer experiencing flickers of conscience rather late in life who hopes he might be a good influence not just on Fumika but also his former protege Kagehara (Mario Kuroba).

Published: March 31, 2026, 8:00 am

‘Their teeth were actually pulled out!’ Reality TV moments so awful they should never have aired

MAFS Australia fans are appalled that a horrendous dinner party wasn’t pulled – but it’s not without precedent. From nightmarish model makeovers to a grotesque fight night, here are the worst scenes that caused outrage

After so many years and such incontrovertible proof that the experiment never works, you have to assume that Married at First Sight now attracts a very specific type of applicant. Someone happy to put short-term notoriety over long-term emotional peace, maybe, or someone who would gladly become an object of scorn and ridicule if it meant people noticed them.

On the most recent episode of Married at First Sight Australia, this nightmarish mishmash of problematic personalities finally boiled over. A contestant named Brook Crompton, who had previously left the show, returned for a surprise appearance at a dinner party, with the apparent intention of bullying everyone else as unpleasantly as possible. Crompton tore a strip through the other guests, spewing arbitrary hatred at all the other brides. The whole thing was so hard to watch that Crompton ended up grovelling on Instagram that: “This behaviour is not a reflection of who I am at my core and I hope that Australia will one day see this.”

Published: March 30, 2026, 12:52 pm

35,000 pints of stolen Guinness, 950 wheels of pilfered cheese: can the UK’s cargo theft crisis be stopped?

It costs the UK economy £700m a year, and criminal gangs are operating with near impunity. Every time a lorry gets robbed, raided or hijacked, it’s Mike Dawber who investigates

In August 2021, Mike Dawber, the UK’s leading detective in cargo crime, got a call from officers in Bradford CID. They were planning to search two warehouses that contained, in their words, an awful lot of suspicious goods. This was a job that required Dawber’s expert eye. He drove an hour from his home, in the unmarked police car that doubles as his office, and arrived to discover the description barely did it justice.

As soon as he walked in to the first warehouse, he noticed 17 pallets of golfing equipment. They had, he knew, been stolen three weeks before from a truck at Lymm motorway services, just outside Manchester. He reckoned they were worth about £1m. As Dawber continued his survey, he came across 18 pallets of Asics trainers, stolen three years before, at Warwick services. Then 14 pallets of lawnmowers: five years before, from a truck on the A1 at Colsterworth. He came across IT equipment, sportswear, high-end fashion, electrical goods, toasters, microwaves, beauty products. One pallet was simply labelled “Eyelash technology”. Dawber didn’t know what eyelash technology was, exactly, but he later learned that a pallet of it was worth more than £500,000.

Published: March 31, 2026, 4:00 am

Viktor Orbán has the support of both Russia and the US. Here’s why that doesn’t seem to be doing him any good | Péter Krekó

In Hungary, the Iran war is exposing tensions. On April 12, voters may decide that home is the priority and Orban’s foreign contortions a liability

On 3 March, Viktor Orbán held a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin. According to official Hungarian reporting, the discussion focused on “energy issues” and other routine matters. What followed was anything but routine. Within days, the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had flown to Moscow, and returned with two freed prisoners of war, dual citizens of Ukraine and Hungary.

Hungary is not part of the military conflict in Ukraine, but the message was unmistakable. With his PoW diplomacy, Putin was not only signalling goodwill towards Hungary, he was effectively endorsing Orbán’s re-election on 12 April.

Péter Krekó is a political scientist, behavioural scientist, economist and director of the independent thinktank the Political Capital Institute in Budapest

Published: March 31, 2026, 4:00 am

‘If my boyfriend did what my pastor did, I believe police could investigate’. The campaign to close a serious gap in UK law | Barbara Speed

England and Wales pioneered the criminalisation of coercive control, but it doesn’t apply outside of intimate or family relationships. Why stop there?

When Rachael Reign finally left her relationship and called the police, she came with a litany of allegations.

She felt parts of her life had been controlled, she told the call handler. She said she had been given instructions about what to wear, which included a ban on certain shades of nail varnish. She felt pressured to give up a portion of her income. She had been told that bad things would happen if she left.

Published: March 31, 2026, 5:00 am

Expat influencers sold Dubai to the world and were paid to look the other way. Now the dream is crumbling | Brigid Delaney

The Maseratis are borrowed, the helicopters rented by the hour. But deep down Dubai is a lonely place, built by oppressed people

For people living in close proximity to a war zone, the lack of sympathy for Australian and British expats and influencers in Dubai has been, on the face of it, curious.

Since their adopted home was bombed in the initial days of the war, they have faced mostly ridicule and contempt in their home countries.

Published: March 30, 2026, 2:00 pm

Trump is fighting a ‘boomer war’ in Iran: a relic unpopular with anyone under 60 | Stephen Wertheim

To see this war as archaic, the last squawk of the Middle East hawks, is at once maddening and hopeful

From the moment the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the news seemed incongruous with the year 2026. A war to kill the Ayatollah and overthrow the government – this was the fantasy of neoconservatives after September 11, before today’s college students were born. Hadn’t every president since, Donald Trump most boisterously of all, repudiated regime-change wars in the Middle East?

When he announced the strikes in an overnight video, decked out in a USA ball cap, Trump evoked an even more distant era. The president barely bothered to claim that Tehran posed some kind of imminent threat. Instead, he recited the litany of misdeeds perpetrated by the Islamic Republic since it took power in 1979.

Published: March 30, 2026, 12:00 pm

Trump’s Iran war is holding him hostage | Sidney Blumenthal

If there is any consistency to Trump’s policy, it is a series of frantic attempts to justify his original blunder and extricate himself from its dire consequences

Donald Trump has lost his Iran war. He is the Iranian hostage. Unlike the US embassy personnel captured as hostages for 444 days, Trump threw himself into Iranian hands. Less than a month into his “short-term excursion”, his stated objectives have been scattered to the winds. There is no regime change, no uprising and no access to oil wealth along the Venezuelan model. The decapitation gambit – assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian leadership – has failed to destroy the regime. Despite the massacre, it is Trump who stands exposed to slings and arrows for the rashest military adventure since Custer at the Little Bighorn.

Iran maintains a chokehold on the strait of Hormuz and, through its narrowest passage of 21 miles, on the global economy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecasts a spike of inflation to 4.2% in the US, a 40% increase since Trump returned to office. The stock market has dived into correction territory. Iran has also demonstrated its capacity to wreak existential destruction on the Gulf states whose rulers’ delusion of their invulnerability and US protection has been shattered. “I’m the opposite of desperate,” Trump declared on 26 March. “I don’t care.”

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:00 am

For Democrats, fighting Trump isn’t enough anymore | Bhaskar Sunkara

A New York congressional primary is exposing the gap between Democrats who want to fight Trump and Democrats who want to fight for something

The Democratic party seems more united than it has been in years, thanks to one man: Donald Trump. Opposition to his presidency has papered over what would otherwise be serious disagreements about economic policy, civil liberties, foreign affairs and the role of corporate money in politics.

As long as Democrats can point to Trump as the common enemy, their coalition holds, and the ideological conflicts that once defined the party during the 2016 primary or the battles over the Gaza genocide during the Joe Biden years now feel like a thing of the past. But those divisions haven’t disappeared – and in New York’s 10th congressional district, they’re beginning to surface again.

Published: March 30, 2026, 10:00 am

The Guardian view on Trump’s Iran war: escalation without end | Editorial

Without diplomacy or restraint, the economic shock will deepen and US soldiers may become embroiled in a quagmire

The fifth week of Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran has confirmed the absence of any overarching strategy. The US continues to hit Iranian targets while building up forces in the region. Iran continues to launch missile and drone attacks on Israel and neighbouring Gulf states. Tehran’s proxies in the region have entered the fray. Its closure of the strait of Hormuz has seen oil prices shoot up and had knock-on effects already visible across fuel, fertiliser and supply chains. No amount of contradictory social media posts from Mr Trump can negate the shortages felt across the world, from Asian factories to European diesel markets. The pain is likely to get worse. There is no sign of imminent US victory or Iranian collapse.

This instead looks like a war of attrition. Each side can point to successes and their opponents can highlight failures. That is what sustains the conflict. The stakes extend far beyond the battlefield. The war is embedding itself in the global economy, shaping what is produced, moved and ultimately affordable. Even European ministers now admit they are losing sleep over what comes next – not just the war but its economic consequences.

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Published: March 30, 2026, 6:01 pm

UConn’s thrilling win over Duke proved that blue-blood clashes are alive and well

College basketball has transformed almost beyond recognition over the last decade. But Sunday’s game provided welcome nostalgia

UConn’s shock win over No 1 seed Duke on Sunday night to advance to the Final Four connected two disparate eras of college basketball. Not only did the game produce one of the greatest endings in NCAA Tournament history, it was also a reminder of college basketball’s enduring appeal despite the huge changes that have transformed the sport over the past decade.

Freshman Braylon Mullins’s three-point heave from well beyond the arc – after he had moments earlier stolen the ball from Duke guard Cayden Boozer – sealed the 73-72 victory. It was a shot that will forever torment Duke fans: the Blue Devils had led by 19 points in the first-half, and No 1 seeds had been 134-0 when leading by 15 or more points in NCAA Tournament history. That mark now stands at 134-1.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:40 pm

LA 2028 Olympic organizers say 1m tickets will be available for $28

• Aaround 5% of tickets will cost more than $1,000

• Tickets for general public to go on sale on 9 April

Tickets for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games will go on sale to the general public on 9 April, organizers said on Monday, as LA28 also moved to reassure fans over ticket security by naming a group of verified resale platforms.

A presale for residents in qualifying areas of Los Angeles and Oklahoma City, which will host softball and canoe slalom events, will begin on 2 April.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:02 pm

Drink in the jeopardy of the World Cup playoffs, it’s the last we’ll get for a while | Jonathan Wilson

The expansion of this summer’s 48-team tournament mean Tuesday’s games will be the best we see until the round of 16

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There is always a slightly odd rhythm to the World Cup. The final round of qualifying games is almost invariably more exciting than the early games at the tournament itself, and now with 32 teams making it through the group stage and into the knockout rounds, that is likely to be even more true for the 2026 edition. Those final qualifiers in November were thrilling and meaningful – Troy Parrott’s hat-trick! Scotland scoring two absurdly good goals in the same game! DR Congo beating Nigeria on penalties as bottles rained down from the stands! Honduras failing to score against Costa Rica! – and Tuesday will be too as 12 teams battle for the six remaining slots.

But for those not involved in World Cup playoffs, there is an unsatisfying phoniness to the friendlies they must play instead, with experimental line-ups and weary players going through glorified training exercises. While it’s never good to be letting in five goals, neither the USA nor Ghana should be too concerned about the defeats to Belgium or Austria.

Published: March 30, 2026, 3:00 pm

F1 must find answers to safety crisis after Bearman’s escape but there are no easy fixes | Giles Richards

F1 has five weeks before the next race in Miami and they will need every minute to fix a hugely complicated problem

Oliver Bearman emerging unhurt from a huge accident at the Japanese Grand Prix was considered a lucky escape. Formula One must think it is catching a break given there is a full month to work out how best to reduce the chance of such an incident happening again. F1 is going to need every minute of that time given the complexity of the problem.

Bearman’s Haas car was travelling at 307kph (191mph) when he was forced to veer off‑track as he came up behind the relatively slow moving Alpine of Franco Colapinto. The closing speed between the two cars was 50kph, a frightening pace. The scenario was one many had been warning about before the season had even begun. With the deployment of electrical energy, and its subsequent recovery now an integral part of F1, Bearman was using his boost mode while Colapinto was recovering energy, hence the big difference in speed.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘Worst case I get to ride a lot’: Lael Wilcox on her quest to become the fastest human to cycle round the world

After setting the women’s around-the-world record two years ago, the Alaskan is aiming for a new mark with her next 18,000 mile journey

On 11 September 2024, Lael Wilcox returned to Chicago after 108 days in the saddle, smashing the women’s around-the-world cycling record by more than two weeks. The extraordinary feat had taken her 18,000 miles over remote mountains and across 22 countries. But it left Wilcox with a lingering question: could she break Mark Beaumont’s outright record of 78 days and 14 hours?

Shaving 30 days off her time would require a major pivot in philosophy from adventure riding to pure racing, with an emphasis on efficiency, aerodynamics, and rigorous planning. Motivated to prove that women can compete with men in ultra-cycling, Wilcox will start her second attempt on 7 June in Chicago.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:00 am

Mauricio Pochettino distances himself from Spurs return but backs club to avoid relegation

• Coach says no contact with Tottenham or Real Madrid

• Pochettino committed to US for 2026 World Cup

Mauricio Pochettino once again distanced himself from links to a return to Tottenham Hotspur on Monday, while expressing his confidence that his former club will avoid relegation despite a challenging season.

Pochettino, who led Spurs to some of their greatest successes in the modern era during a tenure from 2014-2019, has often been linked with a return to the club. However, his position as head coach of the US men’s national team has prevented him from taking over this season as Tottenham have floundered. Pochettino will not be available for his next job until after this summer’s World Cup, as his US Soccer contract expires in August.

Published: March 30, 2026, 8:08 pm

Mohamed Salah warned by Egypt team director that MLS move would diminish spotlight

• ‘You won’t remember Salah more than I remember Messi’

• Forward urged to consider Saudi Arabia or Europe

Egypt’s national team director, Ibrahim Hassan, has cautioned Mohamed Salah against moving to Major League Soccer when he leaves Liverpool at the end of the season. Salah has yet to announce his next move after he ends a hugely successful nine-year spell at Liverpool, where he won two Premier League titles and the Champions League.

The MLS commissioner, Don Garber, has said he would love to see Salah in the league, though it is unclear whether any teams will attempt to sign the 33-year-old.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:01 am

Gary Woodland wins Houston Open after brain surgery and PTSD struggles: ‘Today was a good day’

• 41-year-old seals first PGA Tour win since 2019 US Open

• Brain lesion derailed American’s career

Gary Woodland won the Houston Open on Sunday, a moment that seemed improbable 30 months ago when he had brain surgery, and even two weeks ago when he opened up about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Woodland looked close to his best at Memorial Park, coasting home to a trophy that felt as important as his US Open title at Pebble Beach in 2019.

He closed with a three-under 67 to win by five shots over Nicolai Hojgaard. The gallery chanted Woodland’s name before falling silent so he could roll in the winning putt.

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:59 am

‘I don’t need a crutch’: Roy Hodgson relishes Bristol City return at age of 78

• Veteran returns to club 44 years after being sacked

• ‘It boils down to two words: energy and enthusiasm’

Roy Hodgson insisted he does not require “a crutch” after making a shock return to Bristol City at 78 years old and believes he is healthier than when last coaching two years ago, when he was taken ill at Crystal Palace. The former England manager, who took training at the Championship club for the first time on Monday, has taken interim charge for the final seven games of the season.

Hodgson left Palace in February 2024, four days after collapsing at training, but he was tempted out of retirement by Richard Scudamore, the former Premier League chief executive who joined City’s board last October. Hodgson was at home in Richmond, west London, when he received a message out of the blue from Scudamore, a lifelong City fan, asking if he could pick his brains.

Published: March 30, 2026, 7:30 pm

The ‘Third Front’: China resurrects Mao’s military capabilities

As ties with Washington sour, China is reviving a cold war strategy to defend against a US attack

Dotted across the mountainous roads of Sichuan and just a few hours’ drive from some of China’s most bustling cities, the crumbling ruins of an abandoned military experiment are eerily quiet.

Top secret factories that once housed thousands of workers are now overgrown with vegetation; nearby villages, empty of young people who were once shipped in from across the country to build China’s future, are plastered with advertisements for hearing aids and, in one case, a bundle deal on coffins.

Millions of workers were deployed to these remote mountain locations as part of a huge defence program that stayed secret for over a decade.

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:00 pm

EU ministers arrive in Ukraine to mark Bucha massacre anniversary – Europe live

Delegation marks four years since liberation of town as EU focus returns to Ukraine amid Iran war fallout

Several EU ministers are expected in Bucha, Ukraine, today to mark the fourth anniversary of the town’s liberation and the massacre that became one of the early symbols of the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The anniversary marks a rare moment in recent weeks when the EU’s attention focuses back on Ukraine amid growing concerns about fallout from the Iran war. The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, leads the delegation.

“The scale of Russian atrocities in the course of its aggression is unseen on European soil since WWII. The crime of aggression is the root cause of them all. There must be accountability and there will be no amnesty for Russian criminals, including the highest political and military leadership of the Russian Federation.”

Published: March 31, 2026, 8:01 am

Israel passes law to give death penalty to Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks

Knesset approves measure that has been criticised by European countries and rights groups

Israel’s parliament has passed a law imposing the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of fatal attacks, a measure sharply criticised as discriminatory by European countries and rights groups.

The legislation makes the death penalty the default punishment for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank found guilty of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks deemed acts of terrorism by a military court.

Published: March 30, 2026, 7:29 pm

TV star’s AI porn allegations spark national debate in Germany

Collien Fernandes accuses ex-husband Christian Ulmen of sharing sexually explicit deepfake images of her online

A high-profile German TV star’s allegations that her ex-husband spread AI-generated pornographic images of her have triggered a national debate and put pressure on the government to tighten laws around digital violence against women.

In an interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel last week, Collien Fernandes accused her former husband Christian Ulmen, a prominent TV presenter and producer, of impersonating her online for years and sharing sexually explicit deepfake images.

Published: March 30, 2026, 4:12 pm

News outlets falsely report Somaliland called for extradition of Ilhan Omar

Reports, based on X post from unofficial account, follow JD Vance’s accusations and threats of finding ‘legal remedies’

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Several news outlets have falsely reported that Somaliland’s government called for the extradition of Ilhan Omar, basing their stories on a post from an X account that does not represent the state despite its claims to the contrary.

Fox News, the New York Post, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s the National News Desk and the Independent ran stories on the US representative. The reports centred on a post by @RepOfSomaliland in reaction to claims by JD Vance that Omar had committed immigration fraud, which echoed prior allegations against the Somali-born Minnesota Democrat that she has vehemently denied.

Published: March 30, 2026, 4:38 pm

Demand for hydropower surges as Trump clamps down on clean energy

Home to one of the world’s largest deposits of freshwater, the Great Lakes region will soon host next-generation generators – just as prices are being hiked across the US

Submersible hydroelectric technology deployed across the Great Lakes could become a key cog in clean energy efforts, supporters say, amid surging electricity demand and costs.

Home to one of the largest deposits of freshwater on the planet, the Great Lakes region has on its shores some of the largest cities in North America in Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and Detroit, where electricity demand is growing. While none of the five Great Lakes have significant tides or currents to fuel hydropower, several of the waterways that link the lakes do.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:00 pm

Vanuatu Indigenous leaders raise concerns over plans to build resort for cruise tourists

Exclusive: Environmental impact assessments are ‘incomplete’, say leaders, and private beach club could harm fragile ecosystems

Indigenous community leaders in Vanuatu have raised concerns over plans by the cruise operator Royal Caribbean to build a private beach club on the island of Lelepa, arguing environmental impact assessments by the company are “incomplete” and “misleading”.

The community leaders outlined the issues in a letter sent to Royal Caribbean on 26 February, which has been seen by the Guardian. The leaders also said the development could harm fragile ecosystems and a nearby Unesco world heritage site.

Published: March 31, 2026, 12:40 am

Trump to revoke protections for endangered species in Gulf of Mexico

President is convening so-called ‘God squad’ to override provisions of Endangered Species Act for ‘national security’

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Donald Trump is dispatching a so-called “God squad” of top officials to revoke protections for endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, purportedly to protect national security by expanding oil and gas industry operations.

If successful, the administration may kill off dozens of protected species – from Rice’s whales and whooping cranes to sea turtles.

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:00 am

Florida space coast cities abuzz before Nasa’s Artemis launch: ‘At the doorstep of the future’

Cape Canaveral and Titusville, long ghost towns after 1969 moon landing, have witnessed space industry ‘renaissance’

Almost six decades have passed since the space coast of Florida experienced an atmosphere quite like this. On its beaches and in cities, there is an air of anticipation, excitement and anxiety to match the final days of Nasa’s storied Apollo moon program.

At 6.24pm ET on Wednesday at Cape Canaveral, subject to adverse weather and last-minute technical hitches, four Artemis II astronauts – three Americans and one Canadian – will become the first humans to blast off on a journey to the moon since 1972.

Published: March 30, 2026, 12:00 pm

Recent $167m lottery winner arrested for allegedly stealing $12,000 in Kentucky

Burglary arrest was James Farthing’s latest run-in with the law after winning the Powerball jackpot last year

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A man who recently won a $167m Powerball lottery jackpot stands accused of stealing the relatively paltry sum of $12,000 after breaking into a house in his home state of Kentucky on Saturday, according to authorities who arrested him.

James Farthing’s arrest on Saturday on counts of burglary and illicit marijuana possession reportedly was at least his third since winning Kentucky’s most lucrative lottery prize ever.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:32 pm

College Republicans director made racist and sexist remarks on live streams

Review of Kai Schwemmer’s broadcasts undermines claim ‘process of growth’ had led him to abandon bigoted views

Kai Schwemmer, the newly appointed College Republicans of America political director, has made racist, antisemitic, homophobic and sexist statements while espousing extremist rightwing views on abortion, a Guardian review of livestream recordings can reveal.

Schwemmer said he would accept a world in which slavery was legal if abortion was criminalised, describes himself as “very much an anti-universal suffrage guy” and accepts a supporter’s description of him as “our Mormon Nick Fuentes” – referring to the white nationalist influencer whose platform he streamed on for years.

Published: March 30, 2026, 10:00 am

Trump administration sues Minnesota for allowing trans athletes in girls’ sports

Justice department claims state is violating Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination

The US Department of Justice sued Minnesota’s education department and the state’s school athletics body on Monday for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports.

In a lawsuit, the justice department claims that by making female student athletes compete against transgender girls, as well as share locker rooms and bathrooms with them, Minnesota is violating Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination for any programs that receive federal funding.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:37 pm

US-based dissident artist put on trial in China over satirical Mao sculptures, says rights group

New York-based Gao Zhen was detained in 2024 during a family visit to China and then tried for ‘defaming national heroes’

The Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen, known for making satirical sculptures of China’s former leader Mao Zedong, has been tried over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs”, his wife and a rights group have said.

Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit to China from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, his wife, Zhao Yaliang, and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese human rights defenders group, said.

Published: March 31, 2026, 4:07 am

Ukraine war briefing: allies asked Kyiv about reducing attacks on Russian energy sector, Zelenskyy says

President says he is open to scaling back strikes on oil and wider energy industry if Moscow reciprocates. What we know on day 1,496

Published: March 31, 2026, 1:32 am

Sad faces all round as Bolivia’s clowns protest over decree threatening their livelihoods

Clowns in Bolivia are upset by mandate that stops schools hosting events from which they earn a living

Dozens of clowns have marched through the streets of Bolivia’s capital to protest against a government decree that limits extracurricular activities in schools, threatening their livelihoods.

Wearing full face paint and their signature red noses, the clowns gathered on Monday in front of the ministry of education in La Paz to oppose a decree published in February. The new mandate says schools must comply with 200 days of lessons each year – in effect banning them from hosting the special events where the entertainers are frequently employed.

Published: March 31, 2026, 12:56 am

At least 70 people killed and 30 injured in Haiti gang attack

Nearly 6,000 people forced to flee, human rights group says, as it criticises ‘abandonment’ from authorities

At least 70 people have been killed and 30 injured during an attack in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, significantly more than official estimates, a human rights group has said.

Police initially reported 16 dead and 10 injured, while a preliminary report from civil protection authorities suggested 17 had died and 19 were wounded.

Published: March 30, 2026, 8:46 pm

AI lectures, Old West folk heroes and Mark Twain: what is Bob Dylan up to joining Patreon?

By far the biggest musician to have joined the membership-based platform, Dylan’s posts have so far been puzzling – and therefore entirely in character

A couple of years back, the august music writer David Hepworth came up with a great line about Bob Dylan. Dylan, he averred, “is like China: we can see what he’s doing, but never quite work out why he’s doing it”. That’s certainly true about the unexpected launch of the 84-year-old singer-songwriter’s Patreon. Everything about it is confusing.

For one, there’s the choice of platform. Plenty of major music stars have flocked to the newsletter provider Substack in recent years to share their thoughts or show their workings and, perhaps, earn a little cash on the side: everyone from Patti Smith and Dolly Parton to Charli xcx and Rosalía. But Patreon, where fans pay monthly subscriptions for exclusive content from all sorts of creators – podcasters, visual artists – has never really taken off with big rock and pop musicians: the biggest name it could boast, until now, was Ben Folds.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:34 pm

‘Nostalgic glint of adventure’: why The Beach is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their comfort films is a journey back to 2000 when Danny Boyle transported us to paradise

I can’t listen to Porcelain by Moby without picturing a secluded beach and reminiscing about roads less traveled. Somewhere halfway through Danny Boyle’s sun-drenched film The Beach, there’s one scene that captures a sense of awe at life’s extraordinary moments, something I think we need to feel more of. In a world where holidays (or even life itself) are often neatly packaged in all-inclusive, predictable deals, The Beach stands out for showing the opposite. It’s not about tourism – it’s about living, wildly.

Led by a dapper young Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from the success of Titanic and accompanied by a truly stellar soundtrack I still listen to on long bus journeys, The Beach starts as an adventure into the unfamiliar. A restless Richard (DiCaprio) ditches the daily grind in search of something more, and drifts through Thailand on a relentless quest for a feeling he can’t quite name.

Published: March 30, 2026, 9:00 am

John Oliver on Maga’s love for Viktor Orbán: ‘For them, Orbán is a blueprint’

The Last Week Tonight host examined the rightwing Hungarian leader’s slow domestic coup as a model for Republican leaders

On the latest episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looked into the reign of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, ahead of the country’s election on 12 April. The rightwing leader is the longest-serving head of state in the European Union, having been elected in 2010 with an absolute majority in government for almost 16 years.

A staunch religious conservative, he is also beloved by some Republicans in the US, and has been officially endorsed in the upcoming election by Donald Trump. But “the lovefest between Orbán and American conservatives is a two-way street,” Oliver explained. Just last week, Orbán praised the US president at a Republican party Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) offshoot in Hungary. “Since President Trump’s win, the western world has become a better place,” Orbán said. “Gender propaganda and woke ideology have been pushed back. People can proudly embrace Christianity as the foundation and sustaining force of our civilization. What’s happening now is the largest political realignment in western civilization in 100 years. The epicenter of this change is the United States, and its European forward base is Hungary.”

Published: March 30, 2026, 3:42 pm

Night Stage review – public sex enthusiasm the key to extravagant and subversive erotic thriller

In this fantasy drama from Brazil, a gay actor and a closeted politician discover a mutual passion for the same fetish

Here is an erotic thriller from Brazil that finally suspends realism and plausibility to keep its eroticism in play right up to the startling final moments; there is an unexpected strain of the bizarre and soap-operatic.

Matias (Gabriel Faryas) is a handsome young actor in a stage company specialising in dance and physical theatre. Jealous of his friend and fellow cast member, Fabio (Henrique Barreira), who has landed a role in a big new TV show, Matias sneakily tries to get an audition as well.

Published: March 30, 2026, 8:00 am

The nightmarish sounds of Squid Game composer Jung Jae-il: ‘Having no identity very much defines my identity’

Korean composer behind Netflix’s most-watched series on the calculated imperfection in his scores

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If you were among the 265 million viewers who made Squid Game Netflix’s most-watched series so far, you were likely left mentally and aurally scarred by first season’s end, traumatised by the discordant whistle of a child’s recorder; the sheer banality of a primary school music room reimagined as a herald of human carnage.

That sound was the work of composer Jung Jae-il, whose career has been defined by this sort of strange and unsettling contradiction; he is a master in the art of subverting all that is musically familiar – recasting the naive, the genteel and the elegant into the chilling harbingers of horror.

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Published: March 30, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘African people are surreal’: songwriter and blues poet Aja Monet on Black resistance and love as spiritual warfare

Radicalised by the inventiveness of groups such as the Harlem Renaissance, the LA-based musician is determined to reclaim the radical possibilities of culture in an age of institutional and algorithmic exploitation

‘For many years, I’ve called myself a surrealist blues poet,” says Aja Monet in her warm, deep voice. Sitting in a London cafe, the Los Angeles-based artist looks striking, with her blue braids woven up in an intricate style. She was up late uploading the final master recordings for her new album, The Color of Rain, which she says was heavily influenced by her reading around how “surrealism was a real intentional device that artists used in response to the rise of fascism throughout history”.

High-minded and yet invested in the cut-and-thrust of our lives today, it’s a typical comment from Monet. With themes around love, resistance and the absurdity of our current times, her performance, poetry and music offers a balm for the suffering and abuse meted out by establishment power. Already in 2026, her second poetry book Florida Water was nominated for an award by the foundational US civil rights organisation the NAACP, and she performed alongside Stevie Wonder at Time magazine’s event celebrating Martin Luther King Day.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘I’m an old bastard looking back’: the bizarre renaissance of piano-jammer Bruce Hornsby

The AOR jazzer behind smash hit The Way It Is veered off into the avant garde. But he’s having sudden mainstream acclaim. ‘Well,’ he says as he releases yet another album, ‘it’s nicer than being ignored’

When people tell you they remember exactly where they were when JFK was shot, they don’t often add that the room erupted in cheers and shouts of: “Hooray! Nixon can take over!” Speaking via Zoom from his home in Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the oldest towns in the US, Bruce Hornsby shrugs and says: “Well, that was my experience!” It was the day before his ninth birthday and the whoops of delight came from his classmates, all of which is recalled on an impressionistic track from his new album Indigo Park: “I was really alarmed and confused / Watching the children parroting parents’ views.”

Until now, Hornsby has rarely written autobiographical lyrics, so people don’t know all that much about him. His biggest song, The Way It Is, was a piece of social commentary, the product of a liberal upbringing in the segregated south. Hornsby’s aunt was a prominent voice in support of integration in the 1960s, when most local white communities were still battling against it.

Published: March 30, 2026, 4:00 am

A Rebel and a Traitor by Rory Carroll review – the extraordinary story of Roger Casement

A journalist tells the improbable tale of a British diplomat who worked to free Ireland – and paid the ultimate price

Roger Casement had a life that defies categorisation: an imperial administrator who exposed imperial atrocities; a one-time diplomat for the United Kingdom who enlisted German help in Ireland’s fight for freedom; a closeted gay man who left detailed records of his sexual adventures; a knight of the realm convicted of conspiring against the crown.

TE Lawrence (“of Arabia”), himself no stranger to the hypocrisy of British imperialism and the difficulties of illegal sexuality, called Casement a “broken archangel”. Rory Carroll, the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, retains some of that poetry in this deeply researched and fascinating account of Casement’s role in the creation of the Irish state.

Published: March 31, 2026, 8:00 am

Monsters in the Archives by Caroline Bicks review – the writing secrets of Stephen King

A deep dive into the horror novelist’s archives reveals pedantry, penny-pinching, and a total redraft of Carrie

When Caroline Bicks first met Stephen King she was worried. As a teenager she had scared herself silly with his books – Carrie and The Shining were the two that crept under her skin and refused to budge – but now she found herself in the odd position of being Stephen E King professor at the University of Maine. King had endowed the chair at his alma mater in 2016 for the study of literature, and Dr Bicks was a Harvard-trained Shakespeare specialist. What, beyond a name, would they really have in common?

At the time of her appointment, Bicks’s employers had told her not to initiate contact with the famous author in any way. But four years into the job she got a phone call from “Steve” who turned out to be a teddy bear: “I couldn’t believe it. The man responsible for terrifying generations of readers – including me – was so … nice.” Not quite a meet-cute, but promising.

Published: March 30, 2026, 6:00 am

Lázár by Nelio Biedermann review – a Hungarian epic from a 22-year-old author

The fortunes of a single family are entwined with the turmoil of the 20th century in this ambitious, gothic-inflected debut

This gothic-inflected saga has received much attention in Europe for its quirky and confident take on 20th-century Hungarian history. It is sobering to reflect that its author not only has no personal memory of the end of communist rule in eastern Europe, but that he wasn’t even alive when the twin towers fell. Born in 2003, Nelio Biedermann is among the first wave of gen Z writers of fiction and Lázár is his debut novel.

The opening pages introduce us to a world straight out of gothic fable. In an isolated manor house by a forbiddingly dark forest, a strange-looking baby is born. This unearthly child, Lajos, is fated to carry forward the family name of the Lázárs, a noble dynasty with an alarming tendency to go mad, die violently, or both. Meanwhile, in another wing of the house lurks the baron’s older brother, Imre, who is barred from the baronetcy by reason of insanity.

Published: March 30, 2026, 8:00 am

Dua Lipa to curate London literature festival at Southbank Centre

The British pop star will lead the 2026 London literature festival in collaboration with her Service95 book club, as part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary celebrations

Brit award-winning pop star Dua Lipa is to curate this year’s London literature festival at the Southbank Centre, organisers have announced.

The festival, now in its 19th year, will run from 21 October to 1 November, with Lipa shaping a programme of events across the opening weekend and beyond in collaboration with her Service95 book club. The news comes as part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary programme and during the UK’s National Year of Reading.

Published: March 30, 2026, 4:10 pm

Corey Feldman speaks out about Rob Reiner Oscars tribute snub: ‘Like a family reunion I wasn’t invited to’

Stand By Me co-stars Wil Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell joined Billy Crystal and a dozen other stars on stage at the Academy Awards to pay tribute to the film’s director

Stand By Me star Corey Feldman has said he was sorry to be omitted from the tribute to Rob Reiner at the Oscars earlier this month.

At the start of the Academy Awards’ in memoriam section, Billy Crystal took to the stage to pay extended tribute to the writer and director and his wife, photographer Michele, who were killed in December.

Published: March 30, 2026, 2:41 pm

‘After one gig, someone stole my car with my dole money in it’: Morcheeba on how they made The Sea

‘The string section we got in thought I was the tea boy. When I asked for a psychedelic improvisation like A Day in the Life, they went: “Why is this guy telling us what to play?”’

We’d made our first album and were waiting for it to come out. But we wanted to carry on writing more stuff while we were in the mood. I even cut Christmas dinner short at my uncle’s in Brixton, London, so we could get back to the studio. We would work until we passed out, then I’d sleep underneath the mixing desk with my head in the bass drum, as that’s where the pillow was.

Published: March 30, 2026, 2:34 pm

‘Every child wants to find joy’: the scheme designing playground equipment for disaster zones

As one in six children worldwide is affected by war, a UK charity is providing children in refugee communities from Ukraine to Ethiopia with flatpack timber climbing frames

Like many new parents, photographer Alexander Meininger found his world changed after he had kids. “You end up spending a lot of time observing them in playgrounds – whether you want to or not,” he says.

Meininger, who grew up in Germany but now lives in London, likes making things. So when he saw how much his young sons enjoyed the jungle gym and play forts at the local park, he made an indoor treehouse for them. That was as far as it went – until the Ukraine war. Watching the destruction of infrastructure on television, Meininger wondered what he could do to help Ukrainian children, and alighted on the idea of playgrounds. This was his first step towards creating Playrise, a charity he launched this week in London that makes flatpack play equipment and furniture for displaced families living in disaster relief zones.

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:27 pm

I took off my headphones – and noticed a stranger in peril

Slumped on the pavement, she wasn’t breathing – and I wouldn’t have realised if I’d been listening to music as usual. Time to stop blotting out the world …

For years I walked the streets of London wearing noise-cancelling headphones, absorbed in playlists, politics podcasts or long voice notes from friends, and a million miles away from wherever I was. One damp January evening last year, I was walking home from my parents’ house, headphones dead in my bag, when I noticed a small figure slumped on the pavement with her eyes closed. I might not have noticed her had I been in my own world, fixated on what was playing in my ears.

I asked for her name. “Can you hear me?” I tried several times, my voice tightening. She didn’t respond, and worse, she didn’t seem to be breathing. My mind raced back to the one first aid class I took in school, but drawing a blank and worried that I might get it wrong, I dialled 999 and frantically tried to figure out if I could feel her pulse.

Published: March 30, 2026, 10:00 am

Is it true that … you can never eat too much fibre?

Fibremaxxing is everywhere, and most of us should eat more roughage, but your gut won’t thank you for overloading

Fibre has replaced protein as TikTok health influencers’ macronutrient du jour, with “fibremaxxers” urging followers to pack as much roughage into their diets as possible. But is the sky really the limit?

“In theory,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London and the author of Fibre Power (out in May): our ancestors may have eaten up to 100g of fibre a day, but that’s far beyond what most modern guts can tolerate.

Published: March 30, 2026, 7:00 am

The pet I’ll never forget: Merlin the therapy sheep

When Merlin came to live with me, his only job was to clear the weeds from my fields. But his calm, affectionate nature has made him a vital part of my therapy practice

Merlin the sheep came to me by chance four years ago. A friend of mine had a lamb she was bottle-feeding, but she couldn’t look after it any more so she asked me if I could take care of it. I live in Moortown, Leeds, and rent about three hectares (seven acres) of land in Eccup, a small village nearby, where I’ve kept horses for about 13 years. I needed some help clearing the weeds that the horses wouldn’t eat and sheep seemed like the best solution because they’ll eat anything – so I said yes.

The lamb was called Bambi and when I came to collect her, my friend offered me another lamb, Merlin. Shortly after, Bambi died and it was just Merlin left. It wasn’t long until he started to show his special powers.

Published: March 30, 2026, 6:00 am

Zoning in on Marolles, Brussels: ‘A friendly, cosmopolitan village where everyone is welcome’

Beyond the Belgian capital’s more obvious sights lies a thriving district known for its classic Belgian cuisine, alternative art scene and gigantic flea market

The Brusseleir dialect that’s still spoken in much of the Marolles dates back to the middle ages, a symbol of the independence of this proudly working-class neighbourhood in central Brussels. Located between the Palace of Justice and Halle Gate, it’s always been an inclusive refuge for immigrants from Europe and north Africa. The must-see Brussels tourist attractions of the Grand-Place central square and Mannekin-Pis statue are within walking distance, but the Marolles offers a very different experience: fashion, antiques and bric-a-brac shopping; alternative creative centres and provocative graffiti; characteristic estaminets (hybrid pub, cafe, bistros) specialising in hearty local dishes; and artisan breweries.

Published: March 30, 2026, 6:00 am

Do you live in a World Cup host city? We’d love to hear your stories

If you live in one of the 16 cities in Mexico, Canada and the US that will host games this summer, we would be delighted to hear from you

It’s not long now. In just two months’ time the planet will turn its attention to the Estadio Azteca – the only stadium that has hosted two World Cup finals – for the first match of the 2026 edition. The game between Mexico and South Africa on 11 June will kick off the biggest World Cup in history: 48 teams playing 104 matches over 39 days in 16 host cities. If you live in one of those cities, we want to hear from you.

This will be a diverse tournament, with a different feel and vibe across the various countries and venues. The atmosphere in Vancouver will not be the same as in Miami or Guadalajara. Kansas City will offer something different from Toronto and Mexico City. With that in mind, we want to know what the mood is like in your home city before the tournament begins.

Published: March 30, 2026, 11:00 am

Parades, art installations and ruined rooms filled with rubble: photos of the day – Monday

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

Published: March 30, 2026, 1:20 pm