You saw me standin’ alone: songs about the moon – ranked!

As the Artemis II crew prepare for the first moon mission since 1972, we select the best songs about our lunar neighbour, from Ella Fitzgerald’s romance to Gil Scott-Heron’s social commentary

This tribute to comedian Andy Kaufman came at the height of REM’s superstardom, but it’s a typically elliptical song that defies easy analysis, the chorus seeming to compare the moon landing conspiracy theories with claims Kaufman faked his own death. Its bassline recalls another lunar classic, The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen.

Published: March 26, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘Even Beyoncé is still learning’: 10 expert tips on how to become more musical

Listen to an album each morning, pick an easy instrument, don’t be afraid to write bad songs … you’ve got this!

There are many benefits to making music, whether you are one or 100. But how should you approach choosing an instrument to play? And what are the best choices for a complete novice? We asked musicians for advice on how to live a more musical life, at any age.

Published: March 26, 2026, 11:43 am

Would you use cadaver fat for a boob job or butt lift? Some people already do

Cadaver fat from organ and tissue donors is being used for cosmetic procedures – and yup, it’s legal in the US, writes advice columnist Jessica DeFino

Hi Ugly,

I recently became aware of new cosmetic injectables derived from cadaver fat – as in, made of dead people. Apparently the fat is harvested from organ and tissue donors and used for procedures like Brazilian butt lifts and boob jobs.

Why is this column called ‘Ask Ugly’?

How should I be styling my pubic hair?

How do I deal with imperfection?

My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:00 pm

Hook, line and cinema: why boxing films are still a knockout

The BFI’s new season, The Cinematic Life of Boxing, shows how this captivating genre has endured for more than a century and celebrates its ability to inspire generations

Almost as soon as film was invented, it became apparent that boxing was a prime candidate for a spectacle to be showcased by the nascent artform – and to help develop it. Small wonder: as new technologies sought to capture high-stakes emotion, physical intensity, furious spectacle, rivalry and personal turbulence, boxingseemed uniquely capable of absorbing these narratives. That it straddled the class gap further expanded its appeal in this new entertainment – one which would itself foster fresh interest in the sport.

The first sports film was an 1894 short of a six-round match between Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing. Only 23 seconds survive, yet its impact still smarts, 132 years on. Scores of directors have since been drawn to pugilistic stories: everything from prize fights to amateur spars to bare-knuckle brawls. In fact, no sport has been rendered cinematically to quite the same degree, whether through dramas, biopics or documentaries. The British Film Institute’s new season, The Cinematic Life of Boxing, studies this long, symbiotic fascination, and how film has successfully tapped into the sport’s psychological, sociological and political dimensions.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:20 pm

AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying

LLMs-gone-rogue dominated coverage, but had nothing to do with the targeting. Instead, it was choices made by human beings, over many years, that gave us this atrocity

On the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, 28 February 2026, American forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, hitting the building at least two times during the morning session. American forces killed between 175 and 180 people, most of them girls between the ages of seven and 12.

Within days, the question that organised the coverage was whether Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the school as a target. Congress wrote to the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, about the extent of AI use in the strikes. The New Yorker magazine asked whether Claude could be trusted to obey orders in combat, whether it might resort to blackmail as a self-preservation strategy, and whether the Pentagon’s chief concern should be that the chatbot had a personality. Almost none of this had any relationship to reality. The targeting for Operation Epic Fury ran on a system called Maven. Nobody was arguing about Maven.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:00 am

I am not paying American war taxes this year. Will you join me? | Clara Vondrich

War tax resistance has a venerable tradition dating back to days before the US was even born. It’s time to revive this tradition

More than $20bn. That’s roughly the cost of our military operation in Iran to date.

Tax day is a month away. If you’re like me, it makes your stomach turn to watch the US practice regime change in the Middle East – again. If you’re like me, the reckless murder of more than 150 little girls in the name of “liberating” Iranian women fills you with rage. The worst part? You and I literally paid for this.

Published: March 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Middle East crisis live: Trump claims Iran ‘begging to make a deal’ and has let some tankers through strait as a ‘present’

US president addresses conflict at cabinet meeting with fresh barbs against Nato and the UK in particular

• Analysis: Trump pitches peace plan but military buildups rarely veer to off-ramp

An Iranian envoy has said South Korean ships can pass through the strait of Hormuz only after coordinating with Tehran, the Yonhap News Agency has reported.

Such an agreement had to be reached in advance of the transit, said Saeed Khuzechi, the Iranian ambassador to South Korea, at a press conference in response to a question about guarantees for South Korean vessels to navigate the vital conduit for oil.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:38 pm

‘Tehran’s tollbooth’: a visual guide to how a trickle of ships still passes through strait of Hormuz

Many of the vessels willing to make the crossing are taking an alternative route through Iranian waters

Threats to shipping have effectively closed the strait of Hormuz since the US-Israel war on Iran began four weeks ago – upending global oil and gas supplies and sending energy prices soaring.

In normal times, tankers carry about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies through the narrow channel and on to the rest of the world, while about a third of the global fertilisers necessary for half of the world’s food production pass through in dry bulk vessels.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:11 pm

The delusion of easy victory from the air may have seduced the US into another war

Air superiority is supposed to deliver a quick triumph. But history has shown that promise to be written on the wind

• Middle East crisis – live updates

To explore the roots of Donald Trump’s Iran military strategy and the pugilistic rhetoric of his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, means looking back 105 years. In 1921, a year before Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts marched on Rome to launch the Fascist era, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, proposing a revolution in warfare.

Victory in the future, he said, would no longer come from the grinding trench combat of the Great War. Instead it meant large-scale aerial bombardments, targeting not just combatants but civilians and civilian infrastructure and logistics.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:30 pm

US passengers enraged by hours-long lines and missed flights: ‘Absolutely insane’

Some people are opting not to travel at all amid what they call ‘a manufactured crisis by the Trump administration’

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Passengers across the US have had their travel plans upended by the latest Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which has triggered widespread staffing shortages at airports as security employees go weeks without pay.

“We are returning from St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, to Boston today and it took fully three hours to get through US customs. Absolutely insane,” Boston-based passenger John Hildebrandt told the Guardian.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:49 pm

Pro-Israel Democrats decry settler violence in West Bank amid attacks on Palestinians

Aipac-backed lawmakers denounce ‘extremist’ violence in West Bank as support for Israel becomes a political liability

As Israeli settlers ramp up violent attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, often as Israeli forces stand by, denunciations are mounting in the US, even from Democratic legislators and public figures who are typically staunch defenders of Israel.

In recent days, dozens of settlers have torched homes and vehicles and attacked Palestinians in apparently coordinated attacks. Since the start of the month, Israeli settlers and police have killed at least 10 Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, including two young brothers and their parents as they returned from a Ramadan shopping trip.

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:00 pm

Savannah Guthrie fears her fame could be reason for mother’s disappearance

Today show host calls 84-year-old mother’s disappearance ‘unbearable’ in first interview since possible kidnapping

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Savannah Guthrie says she fears her own fame could have been the reason for her mother Nancy’s disappearance, which she has called “unbearable” in her first interview since the possible kidnapping.

Guthrie, a main co-anchor of the NBC News morning show Today, discussed the possible reasons for the disappearance of Nancy, who is 84 years old and was reported missing on 1 February from her home near Tucson, Arizona, in an interview with Guthrie’s colleague Hoda Kotb.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:30 pm

Lawyers for ICE gave false information to justify detaining thousands, filings reveal

Revelation was included in lawsuit challenging practice of targeting people seeking to gain legal status as they leave immigration courts

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Lawyers for ICE provided false information to justify arresting and detaining thousands of people who had attended immigration courts, according to newly filed court documents.

Federal prosecutors said that lawyers for ICE acknowledged that an agency memo from May of last year gave no authorization for the arrests, court documents show, despite previously citing it to justify the arrests.

Published: March 26, 2026, 1:50 pm

Trump’s Maha agenda stalled as top CDC and surgeon general roles sit empty

Trump has yet to nominate a permanent CDC director and the Senate confirmation of his pick for top doctor is in limbo

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The Trump administration’s “Make America healthy again” (Maha) agenda appears to be stalled as two of the government’s most influential public health positions sit empty.

The president has yet to nominate a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leaving an agency that has been plagued by turmoil for the past year without a leader. At the same time, Trump’s controversial pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, remains in limbo as her nomination stalls in the Senate.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:43 pm

Nicolás Maduro appears again in New York court on ‘narco-terrorism’ charges

Deposed Venezuelan president and his wife, who both pleaded not guilty, were captured by US military in January

The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro again appeared in a Manhattan federal court on Thursday for his “narco-terrorism” case after his capture by US military forces earlier this year.

The hearing opened with the defense and prosecution arguing over whether Maduro should be allowed to use Venezuelan government funds to pay for his defense. The defense has insisted that the US is violating the deposed leader’s constitutional rights by blocking government money from being used for his legal costs.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:43 pm

Bill Maher to receive Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain prize after White House denial

Comedian who called Trump ‘gracious and measured’ will win humor award the White House dubbed ‘FAKE NEWS’

Bill Maher will win the prestigious Mark Twain prize for American humor, the Kennedy Center said Thursday, less than a week after the White House forcefully denied that the comedian, who has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Donald Trump, would win it.

“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice-president of public relations, said in a statement. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse – one politically incorrect joke at a time.”

Published: March 26, 2026, 1:30 pm

Finnish MP convicted for saying homosexuality is ‘developmental disorder’

Christian Democrat Päivi Räsänen, who was fined €1,800, was supported by conservative US group Alliance Defending Freedom

A Finnish member of parliament has been found guilty by the country’s supreme court of inciting hatred after claiming that homosexuality was a “developmental disorder”, in a conviction that prompted criticism from far-right government ministers.

Päivi Räsänen, of the Christian Democrats, made the claims in a pamphlet first published in 2004 and reproduced on the website of the Luther Foundation Finland and the Finnish Evangelical Mission Diocese in 2007.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:18 pm

Transgender women athletes banned from female events at Olympics by IOC

• DSD athletes also face exclusion from future Olympics

• IOC says move will protect ‘fairness and safety’

The International Olympic Committee has banned transgender women and DSD athletes from the female category of events at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and future Games.

Kirsty Coventry, the president of the IOC, said the landmark decision had been taken because “it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category”.

Published: March 26, 2026, 1:52 pm

Iran says Trump ‘negotiating with himself’: what next for war? - The Latest

Donald Trump insists Iran is still interested in cutting a peace deal despite Tehran rejecting the US plan. Iran has now put forward a five-point counterproposal and says the war will end on its own terms. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Julian Borger

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:17 pm

Uruguay faces dilemma from the deep: what to do with a salvaged Nazi eagle?

Sculpture was retrieved from German battleship sunk in 1939 Battle of the River Plate but its future is controversial

The enormous bronze sculpture of an eagle clutching a swastika in its talons spent nearly 70 years lying at the bottom of the River Plate, off the coast of Uruguay.

After being salvaged in 2006, it briefly went on display in the Uruguayan capital – before the government reconsidered the wisdom of granting such prominence to a Nazi emblem, and the eagle was hidden away on a military base.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:41 pm

My last fight with my Palestinian father still haunts me. Neither of us could bury the past

My eternally exiled father was dying and witnessing a siege on Gaza. Afterwards I could go home – but he couldn’t

The last fight we ever had, my father and I, occurred on a night in May 2021 on the eve of his first chemo treatment. At this point in our story, I was a new mother, and he was a year and a half from his death. To treat his stage four prostate cancer, he had been given a series of experimental hormone treatments, which had put him in a sort of male menopause and which had just begun to fail. This last fight of ours also happened to fall right in the middle of that previous siege of Gaza (before the more recent one none of us will ever forget), which itself resulted in the destruction of 40 schools and four hospitals.

That night in May, we were in the rented ranch house in Arizona, the one with the broken dishwasher and the blue pool slide that had not been functional for decades, the house with its view of the sky and faint hint of the McDowell mountains. Though my father had lived in Palestine, Syria, Kuwait and Italy, he had fled to the Sonoran Desert after going bankrupt in New York in the early 1990s and loved the dramatic landscapes of the west with a fealty he had for nowhere else. Whereas I missed New York like a lover. I felt unmoored, restless. Exiled.

Published: March 26, 2026, 11:00 am

Hair compost, sugar waxes and refillable shampoo: inside a California low-waste salon

Scisters Salon & Apothecary in the San Diego area is committed to sustainable beauty and going low-waste

The first thing you notice when you walk into Scisters Salon & Apothecary is what isn’t there. No wall of glossy plastic bottles promising “repair” or “shine”. No sharp chemical tang or aerosol haze. The only trash can is a tiny basket that mostly collects coffee cups and gum wrappers clients bring from home.

Instead, the shelves of this southern California salon are lined with large refill containers of shampoo and conditioner, houseplants dot the space, hair clippings are swept away for compost, and the air carries a trace of bergamot and vanilla.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:00 pm

Paul McCartney: Days We Left Behind review – this wistful, lovely song is as McCartney-esque as it’s possible to be

(MPL/Capitol)
This nostalgic new single suggests a convincing mature style, without the unnecessary straining for relevance that marred some recent solo releases

• Paul McCartney announces 18th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane

At 83, Paul McCartney remains one of rock’s most dependable arena-fillers, still packing out multiple nights in the biggest venues of whichever country he choses to visit. But his recent solo albums have proved a decidedly mixed bag. There are always lovely songs that only Paul McCartney could have written: Seize the Day, Hosanna and I Don’t Know all offered compelling evidence that the extraordinary melodic instincts of the Most Successful Songwriter in the History of Popular Music were entirely intact as he stared down his ninth decade.

But they coexisted alongside ungainly lurches for contemporaneity that you rather wish he had left out: thumpy post-Mumford folk on 2013’s Everybody Out There; what appeared to be a Queens of the Stone Age pastiche in the shape of 2020’s Slidin’; a dreadful collaboration with pop songwriter for hire Ryan Tedder called Fuh You that even its co-author seemed to have misgivings about. “This doesn’t amount to anything – y’know, I wrote Eleanor Rigby,” he protested, which was a fair point but raised the question of how it still made the tracklisting of 2018’s Egypt Station.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:00 pm

Seth Meyers on Donald Trump’s ‘present’ from Iran: ‘Is the president getting catfished?’

Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s hypocrisy over mail-in voting and his insistence that the US is not actually at war

Late-night hosts speculated on Donald Trump’s mystery “present” from Iran, as well as his delusions about a war he claims the US is not in.

Published: March 26, 2026, 2:27 pm

Dodging the ‘wrinkle wagon’: why a Brazilian film about ageing is inspiring older women

The Blue Trail, about a rebellious 77-year old woman who escapes forced exile for elderly people, has struck a nerve in a country where ageism is widespread

When 80-year-old Gilda Olinto was given a prize at work recently, she felt as if she was being told “nothing more is expected of you”. It reminded her of The Blue Trail (O Último Azul in Portuguese), a film set in a near-future Brazil where an authoritarian government honours elderly people with golden laurels before stripping them of their autonomy and sending them to live out their days in a remote housing colony.

After being reluctantly bestowed with the accolade, the film’s 77-year-old protagonist Tereza realises she is going to be exiled from society – but she is determined to pursue a lifelong dream first, which takes her on a journey of discovery though the Amazon.

Published: March 26, 2026, 10:00 am

The verdict against Meta and YouTube is a victory for children – and the US justice system | Austin Sarat

In a court of law, tech titans will be judged not for who they are, but what they do. We should take comfort in that

Jury verdicts are meant to speak the truth, and today’s verdict in a California courtroom spoke the truth about the pernicious effects of platforms such as Instagram and YouTube on young people in the United States and around the world. The jury found two social media giants, Meta and YouTube, responsible for injuries incurred by a 20-year-old woman over the course of her childhood.

The plaintiff, referred to in court as KGM, claimed that her social media use had begun when she was six years old. Her suit alleged that the sites she regularly used had features designed to hold her attention and keep her coming back.

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:00 pm

Netanyahu claims that victory over Iran would bring peace to Israel. He should look closer to home | Dahlia Scheindlin

As Israelis grow weary of sheltering from missile attacks, their prime minister is using the war to distract from the Palestinian issue

An opinion poll conducted in Israel two weeks into the war on Iran demonstrated what looked like euphoria: surveys by thinktanks such as the Israel Democracy Institute and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) show that nearly 80% of the public supported the war. Among Israel’s Jewish population that figure rose to 91%.

The true picture is more complicated. The INSS also found that among Arab citizens, who are predominantly Palestinian and make up about 20% of the Israeli population, about two-thirds were opposed to the war. And reality is always more complex than polling figures: from Tel Aviv, I can see that the Jewish Israelis driving the sweeping support are simultaneously exhausted after what is now more than three weeks of running from missile attacks day and night, and by the economic, social and physical damage of the war.

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:00 pm

This congressman says Muslims ‘don’t belong’ in the US. How does he keep winning a district with so many? | David Daley

Andy Ogles’ election victories in Tennessee are a product of an electoral system broken by gerrymandering

Andy Ogles represents more Muslims than any other Tennessee congressman. Yet he has no interest in representing them. He doesn’t even want them in the country.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” the third-term Republican wrote on Twitter/X last week. He’s proudly doubled down on his incendiary statement, which joins a long list of Islamophobic beliefs. During last year’s New York City mayoral campaign, Ogles called Zohran Mamdani “a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology”. The US naturalization system, he said, required “any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If this is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda.”

Published: March 26, 2026, 11:00 am

Rebecca Hendin on Donald Trump’s 15-point peace plan – cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:46 pm

I’m a young woman, and people keep telling me the internet has ruined my brain. Is this helpful? | Isabel Brooks

A new ruling valuably highlights the ways social media can damage very young users. But has it really ruined my whole generation?

Recently I read Girls®, a new book seeking to explore the problems posed by digital and social media to young women’s mental health. It has been praised by reviewers as “punchy” and “a starting place for young women seeking guidance”. As a young woman always open to improving myself, I rolled my sleeves up.

Written by 26-year-old Freya India, the book encourages young women to “look past what you’re being TOLD and see what you’re being SOLD”. Big tech, India says, is preying on the insecurities of its users; the recent mental health crisis in young women should be chalked up to social media, the internet and our addiction to it. It’s a debate playing out on the world stage: in a landmark case in the US, Meta and YouTube have been found liable for deliberately designing addictive products.

Isabel Brooks is a freelance writer

Published: March 26, 2026, 9:00 am

Why Max Verstappen gave me my marching orders from a press conference | Giles Richards

Former world champion’s ultimatum blindsided me, but there are more serious issues than an F1 driver being cross with you for doing your job

In the grand scheme of things I enjoy a remarkably privileged career, paid to cover Formula One, a sport I have loved since 1976. So I am loth to complain, but was deeply disappointed when Max Verstappen chose to eject me from his press conference on Thursday at the Japanese Grand Prix over a question asked at the end of last season.

Our first face-to-face in 2026 came at Suzuka when it turned out the Dutchman had a positively elephantine recollection. When he saw me he stared, smiled and declared he would not speak until I left. In the course of a brief 30-second exchange, he told me to “get out”. I have never been asked to leave a press conference. It is an extremely rare occurrence for a journalist in F1, with barely anyone able to recall more than one or two examples.

Published: March 26, 2026, 1:23 pm

Black music has been the driving force in Britain’s music industry and culture. It’s time we treated it that way | Kanya King

We need to start seeing Black contribution to Britain as foundational rather than merely influential. And that should extend way beyond music

• Kanya King is founder of the Mobo awards

Last week, UK Music published the Black Music Means Business report, quantifying something many of us have always known instinctively. Over the past three decades, music originating from Black genres has generated £24.5bn of the UK music industry’s £30bn recorded music market.

As the Mobo (music of Black origin) organisation I founded approaches its 30th anniversary this week, I’ve found myself reflecting not just on how far we’ve come, but on how much further we still have to go.

Published: March 26, 2026, 7:00 am

The Quad God reborn: Ilia Malinin leads world championships after Olympic shock

• American on course for victory after short program

• 21-year-old had disastrous sake at Winter Olympics

Ilia Malinin bounced back from his disappointment at this year’s Winter Olympics by leading after the short program at the figure skating world championships on Thursday.

Malinin, sporting a new haircut, gave fans what they expected from the defending two-time world champion at O2 Arena in Prague.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:55 pm

The nerdy, authentic Oklahoma City Thunder are a breath of fresh air

The relatable, endearing authenticity of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the defending NBA champions is a wonder to behold

Winter is over, though perhaps most NBA fans feel as if it’s just beginning. After a midseason slump, the Oklahoma City Thunder have won 12 of their last 13 games They’re clinging to a slim but steady three-game lead over the San Antonio Spurs atop the otherwise chaotic Western Conference. (The Lakers are good now? The Nuggets can’t find their footing? The Rockets can’t even stand up?) The Thunder’s flirtation with vulnerability was fun, but the defending champions look as invincible now as they did during their 24-1 run to begin the season. So, now as then, with nothing to criticize in the Thunder’s basketball, we are compelled to discuss their character and vibes.

Reviews are usually poor. I myself celebrated the Spurs when they recorded a hat-trick of wins over the Thunder in December, simply for injecting intrigue into a season that already seemed decided. The Defector podcast Nothing But Respect recently featured a series of anti-Thunder guests; after discussing the idea that artists don’t like OKC with musician Will Anderson, a host announced, “next week, we will have a real, actual Thunder expert to defend his team’s values”. Most of the comments on that episode seemed unconvinced by Ringer staff writer Tyler Parker’s arguments.

Published: March 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Tom Brady, 48, says he explored return to NFL but league ‘don’t like that idea very much’

• Role as minority owner of Raiders causes problems

• Former QB says he is ‘very happily retired’

Tom Brady says he explored the idea of making a return to the NFL as a player but the league “don’t like that idea very much”.

Brady’s last NFL game came in a defeat to the Dallas Cowboys in January 2023. Since then he has become a part-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders as well as a television analyst for Fox. A spokesperson for the league said that Brady, who turns 49 in August, would need to divest his stake in the Raiders if he was to return to playing.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:58 pm

MLB 2026 predictions: are the Dodgers inevitable? Maybe not …

The World Series champions have somehow become even stronger. But there are a few teams who could stop them from retaining their title

A welcome introduction. Recent years have seen a tactical flattening of the game with the introduction of the universal DH, the banning of the shift and the three-batter minimum rule, but this adds an interesting wrinkle to game management. The league table of catchers’ challenge percentages will be fascinating. AE

Published: March 26, 2026, 9:00 am

Rams star Puka Nacua sued over alleged antisemitic remark and biting incident

• Lawyer says witnesses clear player of wrongdoing

• Receiver was guilty only of ‘horseplay’, says lawyer

Star Los Angeles Rams receiver Puka Nacua has been sued by a woman who says he made an antisemitic statement and bit her on the shoulder on New Year’s Eve.

The civil lawsuit was filed this week in Los Angeles, according to TMZ. The suit also cites gender violence and negligence.

Madison Atiabi and her attorney, Joseph Kar, claim Nacua said “fuck all Jews” during a New Year’s Eve dinner in Los Angeles last year. Atiabi is Jewish and says she “immediately felt uncomfortable and emotionally distressed” when the wide receiver made the comments. She says Nacua also bit her and left teeth marks on her shoulder later in the night. The lawsuit also alleges that Nacua bit Atiabi’s friend on the thumb “with such force that her companion screamed in acute pain”.

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:05 pm

Three things to watch this USMNT window: goalkeepers, progressive full-backs and midfield puzzles

Mauricio Pochettino will use friendlies against Belgium and Portugal to answer the final World Cup roster questions

When the US men’s national team booked Belgium and Portugal for the final pair of friendlies before the 2026 World Cup roster is named, it looked like a couple solid tests against European teams who will expect to reach this World Cup’s business end. They should be worthy tests of the US’s readiness for big matchups that could await if they advance from Group D. Oddly, they are also a pair of foes from the US’s 2014 World Cup campaign.

This will hardly resemble a 12-year reunion, though. Belgium arrives without Romelu Lukaku and Thibaut Courtois, two of the few remaining members from that round-of-16 clash that ended the United States’ tournament. Portugal arrives without the injured Cristiano Ronaldo, slightly dulling the demand for what might have been a hot ticket in Atlanta.

Published: March 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Bruno Fernandes is the true custodian of Manchester United in the age of Ratcliffe | Jonathan Liew

As well as being one of the team’s best performers, midfielder has become a talisman who is aware of the club’s spirit and traditions

The video of Bruno Fernandes kicking in the door is very good, if you haven’t already seen it. In a way, it explains a lot. His Sporting team are drawing 1‑1 at Boavista in 2019 and Fernandes has just been sent off for a fully deserved second yellow. As he stalks down the tunnel he takes furious aim at the two doors, the sheer force of the kick knocking him off his feet.

The doors make a magnificent shotgun sound, but do not yield. “Fuck you!” Fernandes shouts as Boavista security guards try to intervene. “I’ll pay for the fucking doors! Go fuck yourselves!”

Published: March 26, 2026, 8:00 am

Ticketmaster quietly raised other fees after US crackdown on hidden charges

Documents obtained by Guardian show company increased different fees to ‘offset revenue loss’ from FTC rule change

Following a wave of regulations banning the surprise fees that appear at the end of a transaction, Ticketmaster stopped charging the extra few dollars it added to each order at checkout. Typically shared with the venue, the order processing fee was a boon to a global platform that sells hundreds of millions of tickets a year.

But documents obtained by the Guardian show that while Ticketmaster eliminated this fee to comply with the rules, the company simply raised the cost of different fees in a number of its venues to ensure it didn’t lose money.

Published: March 26, 2026, 11:00 am

Lawmakers call for Air Canada chief to resign after English-only message to plane crash victims

Quebec’s legislature passes vote calling on Michael Rousseau to step down, citing ‘lack of respect for the French language’ and families in mourning

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The chief executive of Air Canada has apologized for his inability to express himself in French after politicians called for his resignation for his English-only message of condolence after Sunday’s deadly crash in New York.

But lawmakers in Canada’s lone Francophone province rejected the mea culpa as “too little too late” and overwhelmingly passed a motion calling for the head of Canada’s flagship carrier to step down.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:30 pm

MEPs back plans for ‘return hubs’, raising fears of ‘human rights black holes’

European parliament votes in favour of sending refused asylum seekers to offshore hubs, in ‘historic setback for refugee rights’

People with no right to stay in the EU could be detained for up to two years or sent to offshore centres described by experts as possible “human rights black holes” under plans voted for by the European parliament on Thursday.

An alliance of mostly centre-right and far-right lawmakers voted for a proposal to increase returns of undocumented migrants to their home countries, in a further sign of strain on the grand coalition of centrist political forces that has traditionally driven EU lawmaking.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:23 pm

Sperm get lost in space, Australian research into microgravity impacts suggests

Study into how fertilisation could work in space finds sperm may get disorientated when trying to find an egg

Sperm in space are likely to get disoriented and lost while struggling to find their way to an egg, a new study has found.

When exposed to microgravity in experiments, sperm tumble around like an untethered astronaut, according to Adelaide University researchers.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:00 pm

Idaho bill would criminalize trans people using bathrooms in private businesses

Lawmakers consider latest bill that targets trans people for using the bathroom that matches their gender identity

Idaho lawmakers are considering a bill that would make it a crime for transgender people to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity – even inside privately owned businesses.

At least 19 states, including Idaho, already have laws barring transgender people from using bathrooms and changing rooms that align with their gender in schools and, in some cases, other public places. The LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Movement Advancement Project’s tracking of the laws shows that three other states – Florida, Kansas and Utah – have made it a criminal offense in some circumstances to violate the bathroom laws.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:24 pm

Trucking schools struggle as Trump administration strips immigrant licenses and demands English

New rules force trucking schools to cut staff and classes, and 7,000 training providers lose accreditation

Vasyl Kushnir and Gene Moik jovially greeted some of the young men studying the parts of the hulking 18-wheel trucks parked at their driving school – but behind their smiles were the growing worries that their business is at risk of closing down nearly a decade after it opened.

Every morning, Kushnir and Moik have been running numbers, projecting that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay afloat when they’ve suffered a significant drop in student enrollments at their business, Start CDL, since the second Trump administration announced new restrictions for immigrant drivers.

Published: March 26, 2026, 2:00 pm

Arizona gun dealer accused of selling firearms to two Mexican cartels

Laurence Gray was charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorist organizations

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An Arizona licensed gun dealer was charged this month with attempting to provide material support to terrorist organizations after federal agents caught him allegedly selling a series of rifles and guns to two Mexican cartels.

The federal charges against the American firearms dealer come amid years of pressure by the Mexican government to stop the flow of weapons into the country. Mexico’s violent and bloody internal conflict, between drug cartels and the Mexican government, has been largely fueled by American weapons smuggled into the country.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:49 pm

Spanish woman wins legal battle to end her life under euthanasia law

Noelia Castillo, 25, has struggled with psychiatric illness since she was young and tried to kill herself in October 2022

A Spanish woman who spent months fighting her father for the right to euthanasia after being sexually assaulted and becoming paraplegic is expected to end to her life on Thursday.

Noelia Castillo, 25, has struggled with psychiatric illness since she was a teenager and tried to kill herself in October 2022 after being sexually assaulted. The attempt left her in constant pain and using a wheelchair. Eighteen months later, she used Spain’s euthanasia law, which was introduced in 2021, to secure permission to end her life.

In Spain, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 900 525 100. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:15 pm

Paul McCartney announces 18th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, promising introspection and revelation

The new album draws from the musician’s early childhood memories of growing up in Liverpool and his relationship with Lennon, with musical styles that span his entire career

• Alexis Petridis on single Days We Left Behind: ‘As McCartney-esque as possible’

Paul McCartney has announced his 18th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – its title a reference to the route from Liverpool to the Speke shoreline, the area where the former Beatle spent his young childhood.

A press release described the 14-track record as McCartney’s most introspective album yet, a “collection of rare and revealing glimpses into memories never-before shared, along with some newly inspired love songs”, presumably about McCartney’s third wife, Nancy Shevell, whom he married in 2011. The musical styles are said to span his entire career, including “Wings-style rock, Beatles-style harmonies, McCartney-style grooves, understated intimacy, melody-driven storytelling, character songs”.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:00 pm

Fossil fuel companies finally accept the climate crisis – just not their role in it

The era of corporate climate denial is over but in courts around the world the big names have shifted strategy

While the US government continues to call climate change a hoax and attack the science, in courtrooms from The Hague to Honolulu, fossil fuel companies are taking a different approach. Shell, Chevron, RWE and TotalEnergies all accept that climate change is real, human-caused and serious. The era of corporate climate denial, at least in legal proceedings, is largely over.

What has replaced it is a more nuanced position: accepting the science of climate change while contesting their responsibility for it.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:00 pm

Rise of the shrubs: what happened when scientists heated a Rocky Mountain wildlife meadow by 2C?

A long-running experiment in Colorado provides an ‘alarming’ view of how rapidly unchecked global heating could transform fragile ecosystems

Every summer, people descend on the wildflower capital of Colorado to see grasslands flush with corn lilies, aspen sunflowers and sub-alpine larkspur. In January 1991, scientists set up a unique experiment in these Rocky Mountain meadows. It was one of the first (and longest running) to work out how the changing climate would affect an ecosystem.

At the time, it was believed a temperature increase could lead to longer, lusher grasses. But instead of flourishing, the grasses and wildflowers started to disappear, replaced by sage brush. The experimental meadows morphed into a desert-like scrubland. Even the fungi in the soils were transformed by heat.

Published: March 25, 2026, 3:00 pm

Fears net zero is ‘next Brexit’ as oil crisis fuels political climate divide

Rising energy bills give Reform and Tories opening to attack net zero while government hesitant to make case for clean energy

Could net zero become “the next Brexit”? That is the fear stalking climate advocates as the oil crisis caused by the war on Iran starts to bite.

A powerful coalition of the well-funded Reform party, led by Nigel Farage, the Conservative party, some business interests, and the UK’s right-wing media, are engaged in an onslaught against the longstanding target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Published: March 26, 2026, 8:00 am

US has caused $10tn worth of climate damage since 1990, research finds

US, top carbon emitter in history, has ‘a lot of responsibility’ for causing ‘substantial’ harm globally, scientist says

The US has caused an eye-watering $10tn in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself, new research has found.

By being the largest carbon emitter in history, the US has caused greater harm to worldwide economic growth than any other country, ahead of China, now the world’s largest emitter that is responsible for $9tn in GDP damage since 1990, according to the findings of the paper.

Published: March 25, 2026, 4:00 pm

Dash Crofts of Summer Breeze rock duo Seals and Crofts dies aged 85

Crofts helped define the sound of yacht rock with 1970s hits such as Summer Breeze and Diamond Girl

Dash Crofts, the yacht rock musician who helped craft 70s hits such as Summer Breeze and Diamond Girl as part of the duo Seals and Crofts, has died aged 85.

The news was announced on social media by the duo’s producer, Louie Shelton. He wrote: “Sad to hear our dear brother and partner in music has passed away today. Sending love and prayers to all his family and many fans. R.I.P. my brother.....Dash Crofts.” A family member confirmed that Crofts died due to complications following heart surgery.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:11 pm

Appeals court rules US can continue to detain immigrants without bond

Ruling hands victory to Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration after lower courts argued practice is illegal

The US can continue to detain immigrants without bond, an appeals court ruled on Wednesday, handing a victory to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

The opinion from a panel of the eighth circuit court of appeals in St Louis overturned a lower court ruling that required that a native of Mexico arrested for lacking legal documents be given a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:04 pm

Epstein survivor who voted for Trump says she now fears ‘we’re not going to get justice’

Jena Lisa Jones says she backed Trump in 2024 election because of his campaign promises to release Epstein files

After casting her vote for Donald Trump in 2024 in hopes that he would bring transparency around the Jeffrey Epstein case, Epstein survivor Jena Lisa Jones said in an interview this week that she now fears “we’re not going to get justice in all of this”.

“I wanted my day in court,” said Jones, who has said she was abused by Epstein when she was 14, in an interview on the Shadow Sessions podcast that aired on Thursday morning. “I didn’t get that, and we were so close to it, it really got ripped from us, and then after [Epstein] passed, everything just went into a circus show.”

Published: March 26, 2026, 9:00 am

US Postal Service to introduce 8% fuel surcharge on packages

Surcharge, spurred by oil price spikes due to the Iran war, is set to take effect on 26 April and run until January 2027

The US Postal Service (USPS) plans to introduce its first-ever fuel surcharge on packages to offset rising energy costs, according to a statement.

The surcharge, set at 8%, is expected to take effect on 26 April and remain in place until 17 January 2027, under the current plan.

Published: March 25, 2026, 10:04 pm

Google warns quantum computers could hack encrypted systems by 2029

Banks, governments and tech providers urged to upgrade security because current systems will soon be obsolete

Banks, governments and technology providers need to be prepared for quantum computer hackers capable of breaking most existing encryption systems by 2029, Google has warned.

The tech company said in a blogpost that quantum computers would pose a “significant threat to current cryptographic standards” before the end of the decade and urged other companies to follow its lead.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:22 pm

Creator of AI actor Tilly Norwood says she received death threats over project

Eline van der Velden says she developed her ‘digital twin’ to provoke discussion but backlash from some has been worse than expected

The creator of the AI actor Tilly Norwood has said she received death threats after a global backlash against the project, and said she developed it to “provoke thoughts and discussion” about the impact of AI in the entertainment world.

Eline van der Velden caused anger and panic in Hollywood and beyond last year after she said talent agents had been interested in signing her creation. Prominent actors and acting unions immediately condemned the idea.

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:00 pm

Nigeria takes its place on world stage in quest to become regional superpower

Nigeria and UK look to strengthen trade and economic ties amid growing calls from Africa and Caribbean for reparative justice

“There are chapters in our shared history that I know have left some painful marks,” King Charles said during a state banquet to welcome the Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, to the UK, in a year in which the monarch is expected to come under renewed pressure to make a formal apology for transatlantic slavery and colonialism.

But while demands grow from African and Caribbean nations for the UK to further reparative justice, Nigeria and the UK are looking to the future of global trade.

Published: March 26, 2026, 2:45 pm

Brussels opens investigation into Snapchat amid concern over children’s safety

European Commission says social messaging app is exposing children to grooming and sexual exploitation

Brussels has opened an investigation into Snapchat over concerns the social messaging app is exposing children to grooming, sexual exploitation and other criminality.

In a separate decision on Thursday, the European Commission also said four pornographic websites were failing to prevent minors seeing adult content, harming young people’s mental health and fuelling negative gender attitudes.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:08 pm

Will Stephen Colbert’s Lord of the Rings film be Tom Bombadil’s time to shine?

The US talkshow host’s script will focus on chapters three to eight of Tolkien’s first volume – a section Hollywood originally thought disposable but is now circling back to monetise

As I write this, there are at least five days to April Fools’ Day. Yet the news that Stephen Colbert, the American late night host, is about to write a new Lord of the Rings movie based at least in part on some (more) bits of the JRR Tolkien tome that didn’t make it into Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy certainly feels like a prank.

We already knew we are about to get an entire film, directed by and starring Andy Serkis, titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, and based on a sequence that was told in brief flashback during 2001’s The Fellowship of the Ring. It’s due out next year. And there were rumours that more movies would be coming. The Scouring of the Shire, perhaps, based on the bit at the end of The Lord of the Rings when the hobbits go home and discover Saruman has set himself up as King of the Hobbits? Something centred on long forgotten segments of The Silmarillion or The Book of Lost Tales that have somehow not been covered by Amazon’s megabudget Rings of Power TV show? Perhaps an action adventure based on Farmer Giles of Ham?

Published: March 26, 2026, 2:23 pm

Protect ya neck! Wu-Tang Clan as they’ve never been seen before – in pictures

Eddie Otchere spent 10 years photographing the New York hip-hop stars and other musicians. Here are the highlights of his thrilling new photozine

Published: March 26, 2026, 7:00 am

Halle Bailey: ‘It’s a vulnerable place to be – a young woman cast as a Disney princess’

The singer and Little Mermaid star answers your questions on ‘cool auntie’ Beyoncé, Bridgerton – and being confused for Halle Berry

After your experience in two major romance projects – The Little Mermaid and You, Me & Tuscany – how do you know if you’ve found the right Prince Charming? EmmaTseng
I think each character has a different version of their Prince Charming. For Ariel, I love that she wasn’t all about looking for a prince and that she only went above water because she was curious for life and her future. Anna, my character in You, Me & Tuscany, is also going after her own heart with her impulsive decisions, because you only live once. Both characters are bold and headstrong, and when they stumble upon their Prince Charmings – who are reassuring and affirming and bring out the best in them – it’s just the cherry on top.

Your You, Me & Tuscany co-star Regé-Jean Page plays the Duke of Hastings in Bridgerton. Did his English charm rub off on you? And if you could be any character in Bridgerton, who would it be? MrSOBaldrick
Regé is so funny. He’s such a warm, kind-hearted guy. I feel his English accent really comes out now that we’re here in London. When we’re in my home – LA – it goes in and out. I hope some of his English charm rubbed off on me. I love Bridgerton, yes. I would want to be the queen, because she is amazing, gets to choose the diamond of the season, matchmake and watch people fall in love.

Published: March 26, 2026, 2:00 pm

William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet review – Baz Luhrmann’s joyful tragedy is still extravagantly full of life

The 1990s love tragedy starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes is a tonic and a delight

Thirty years ago, Baz Luhrmann reinvented Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a gangbanger love tragedy of the present day, with Mexico City standing in for an imaginary urban place called Verona Beach. The result was a terrific success, more of a success, I suspect, than Luhrmann ever had again; it was irreverent and questioning in just the right way, a sunburst of energy, but instinctively respectful to the story, with Luhrmann cutting the original text with co-screenwriter Craig Pearce but not changing or modernising it. It is full of life, extravagantly joyful, then passionately sad, and its lurid 90s crime-chic design doesn’t look dated. And in this Romeo and Juliet, Luhrmann never suspended the forward momentum to indulge campy musical setpieces, perhaps because Shakespeare’s language is the music and the dance; the text keeps the interpretation grounded.

The 21-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio, yet to have his massive breakthrough in Titanic (another story of starcrossed lovers), plays young Romeo Montague, whose family is locked into an unexplained Sicilian-style blood feud with the Capulet family. Romeo is a young idler and would-be poet, scribbling lines of verse into a notebook, and at this stage dreamily moping over a young woman called Rosaline, whose silent offstage existence is the play’s minor incidental mystery. (Brian Dennehy and Christina Pickles play his parents and they have much less of a role than the elder Capulets.)

Published: March 26, 2026, 11:00 am

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen review – so scary it will send you hysterical

Abandoned babies, pink Barbie shoes and throat-slitting serial killers? This wedding horror from the makers of Stranger Things is so hellish I may never sleep again

Personally, I have always broken off my engagements no more than halfway through a portent-filled night drive to meet my fiance’s parents for the first time in their sprawling, dark-corridor-laced ‘cabin’ in the woods. I might get through the true-crime podcast about a local blood-letting serial killer. I might survive finding a maggoty dead fox in the smashed toilet of a rest stop on the way. But at the first sign of a mysteriously abandoned baby in a parking lot and long before I find myself standing in front of a shrineful of taxidermied family pets in the cabin’s entrance hall, I’m outta there. I’m gone.

I commend you all to have such boundaries, but none more so than twenty-something semi-orphaned Oregonian Rachel (Camila Morrone), who finds herself doing precisely that in the eight-part horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.

Published: March 26, 2026, 7:01 am

They Will Kill You review – satanic beat-’em-up offers gore, bad jokes and deja vu

A housekeeping role turns into a fight for survival in a derivative cocktail of action, comedy and horror that doesn’t go down all that well

Come find your new home at the Virgil, one of New York’s oldest and most exclusive and certainly most satanic co-op residences. Never mind the clerestory window embossed with an inverted pentagram that glows red day and night. (You can’t see it from street level anyhow, which is by design.) You’ll be too busy enjoying such fabulous amenities as a full live-in maid staff with peculiarly high turnover, an entire floor dedicated to an unending all-hours orgy, and for those willing to pledge their dark fealty to the head of the building’s board, eternal life. The Virgil: if you lived here, you’d be in hell by now.

For the Virgil’s newly hired help, Asia (Zazie Beetz), the job comes with room and board and a whole lot of strings attached, which quickly tighten around her throat. Even though she misses the bathroom-mirror warning that gives Kirill Sokolov’s first English-language feature its title, the unrelenting They Will Kill You wastes no time in establishing its stakes: Asia is here less to make beds and more to serve as a human sacrifice to their unholy anti-God. What the Virgil’s wealth-curdled lifers don’t know is they’ve trifled with the wrong proletarian. In isolating the thesis of 1943’s The Seventh Victim, the first film to correctly link Manhattan real estate holders with the devil, its producer Val Lewton famously posited that “death is good”; Sokolov’s rambunctious, only-sometimes-winningly sophomoric beat-‘em-up amends this axiom to “death is also epically effin’ bad-ass”.

Published: March 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Anne-Sophie Mutter: East Meets West album review – diverse, bold and brand new

Mutter/Zhou/LSO/Adès
(Alpha)
A varied and engaging collection of four works written for the star violinist features music by Jörg Widmann, Unsuk Chin, Thomas Adès and Aftab Darvishi

Anne-Sophie Mutter’s enduring commitment to contemporary music is showcased in her bold new series on Alpha Classics. All four works were specifically written for her, with the composers’ diverse heritages lending the album its title.

The programme opens with a six-minute solo by Iranian-Dutch composer Aftab Darvishi. Likoo – the title refers to a folk poetry genre rooted in the desert life of Iran – is a sinuous lament, written before the recent outbreak of war but now unbearably poignant. It’s followed by a nine-minute rollercoaster duo, Gran Cadenza, by Unsuk Chin, a South Korean composer living in Berlin. Mutter is partnered by the excellent Chinese-American violinist Nancy Zhou in a prickly, high-wire duel to the death.

Published: March 26, 2026, 3:10 pm

Country star Ty Herndon: ‘The drugs could be forgiven. Being gay definitely could not’

In an honest new memoir, the musician opens up about being closeted in country, sexual assault, and finding love in his 60s

On 14 June 1995, the Nashville singer Ty Herndon was riding high with a No 1 single on the country charts and an album hurtling towards gold status when he was arrested on charges that could have killed his career in an instant. At 10am, he pulled into a gas station in Texas, right across the street from a park well-known for gay cruising and hookups. Amped by a hit of meth amphetamine, Herndon strolled into a glade where he soon met a guy he later described as “movie-star handsome”. The stranger began stroking his own crotch, then reached for Herndon’s. But when the singer unzipped his fly, the man, an undercover cop, said, “This ain’t your day, cowboy,” leading to the star’s arrest on charges from drug possession to indecent exposure.

While news of the incident traveled fast – aided in no small part by the police alerting the media – Herndon’s record company swung into parallel action. They cooked up a massive PR strategy that painted the singer as victim of drug use while feeding the media a series of lies to explain away the sex. “The drugs could be forgiven,” Herndon says during a Zoom interview the other day from his Nashville home. “Being gay definitely could not.”

Published: March 26, 2026, 9:00 am

Can Bluey save classical music? Cartoon puppy’s all-encompassing soundtrack plays Bach and Beethoven to billions

In the hugely popular pre-school animation, composer Joff Bush references and rearranges classical tunes in all the right places – and never plays it for cheap laughs. Plus, the Wigmore Hall sees the writing on the wall

Classical music’s continued battle for relevance and impact continues to find new nadirs, from tired experiments with formats to bathetic look-at-me clickbait. But what if there was an answer – a joyous, creative and positive one – staring at us with irresistibly big eyes?

There really might be, in the shape of a blue heeler puppy. I’m talking, of course, about Bluey, the Australian cartoon for children of all ages. The numbers are huge: it was the most streamed show in the US last year, with more than 45bn minutes watched, and a billion streams and counting across the world for Bluey’s albums and soundtracks, all written by Joff Bush, the Australian musician who has led the composition of the music for each of the 154 episodes so far.

Published: March 25, 2026, 2:57 pm

Permanence by Sophie Mackintosh review – high-concept adultery fable

Unfaithful lovers escape to an uncanny alternate world, in this compelling allegory for infidelity and desire

Sophie Mackintosh has established a reputation for speculative literary fiction about young women’s desires and suffering at the hands of men. Her new novel, Permanence, is less plainly political than earlier work, concerned more with allegories of desire than oppression.

The novel begins in an uncanny hotel, where Clara wakes beside her lover, Francis. Clara works desultorily in an art gallery and shares a flat with a friend. Francis is an academic, an art historian married to a lawyer, the father of a toddler, but on this day he and Clara find themselves in a parallel world in which adulterous couples live in what seems at first to be a permanent holiday. The realised fantasy is bourgeois, north European: a cobbled old city where the sun always shines and there are many restaurants with clean tablecloths and good wine. There are parks full of perpetually blooming flowers, old stone fountains; markets offering ripe tomatoes, olive oil and bread; scented soap in clean bathrooms, and nothing for Clara and Francis to do but make love, bathe, eat, drink and stroll the charming streets. Clara finds pretty dresses, girlish pale blue silk and yellow cotton, awaiting her in the wardrobe, her favourite books beside the bed.

Published: March 26, 2026, 7:00 am

Muskism by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff review – how Elon Musk is reshaping the world

Henry Ford changed the face of industry forever – what kind of economic model do Musk’s methods presage?

Genius industrialist or clownish conman, humanity’s saviour from a rapidly crumbling planet or rabid social media troll – the verdicts on the world’s richest person vary in flavour, but most share something in common: they focus on Musk as an individual. In their study, Quinn Slobodian, a historian at Boston University, and Ben Tarnoff, a tech writer, wish to reframe the conversation. The most important question, they argue, is not “who is Musk?” but “what is Musk a symptom of?”

As the title suggests, their answer is “Muskism”, the coinage a deliberate nod to Fordism, the shorthand for 20th-century capitalism built on the pairing of mass production with mass consumption. If Fordism was the last century’s operating system, Slobodian and Tarnoff contend that Muskism is this century’s.

Published: March 26, 2026, 9:00 am

‘A new world is being born’: author Rebecca Solnit on the ‘slow revolution’ the far right cannot tolerate

It’s easy to focus on authoritarians and their petty victories. But zoom out and the picture is more encouraging, says the woman who popularised the term ‘mansplaining’, whether it’s in feminism, or the environment, or civil rights

When I speak to Rebecca Solnit, she is beaming, and I can’t immediately figure out why. Her new book, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, blasts in with a pragmatic positivity, it’s true. She writes with a “pull yourself together, don’t even think about despair” tone. But that’s not why she’s smiling – it’s because Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor just got arrested. “Why is the UK doing these things the US should be doing? Why now? Wow!”

This “feminist chortling” (as she calls it) about the disgraced royal is right in the bailiwick of the writer who virtually invented the term mansplaining. A truly hilarious story about a man explaining her own book to her at a party became the pandemically viral essay Men Explain Things to Me in 2008, then a fierce, controlled critique of the patriarchy in a book of the same name in 2014.

Published: March 25, 2026, 10:00 am

Black Bag by Luke Kennard review – a campus comedy for our end times

Drawing on a real-life 1960s experiment, this story of an out-of-work actor paid to cover himself in a black leather bag fizzes with wit and invention

The unnamed narrator of Black Bag, an out-of-work actor living in London, has finally landed himself a role, and it’s a doozy. Advertised on the “admirably candid” website strange-acting-jobs.org, the role demands that he sit silent and unmoving at the back of a university lecture theatre for one whole term, dressed in nothing but a black leather bag. He will be paid in cash. He cannot believe his luck. “This is my big chance to do absolutely nothing, as thoroughly as possible.”

Black Bag is the hilarious new novel from Luke Kennard, a poet whose second collection made him the youngest ever nominee for the Forward prize in 2007, and whose debut novel was the similarly surreal and equally enjoyable The Transition. Both works operate as Black Mirror-style satires of late-capitalist, technocratic societies, where discontented thirtysomethings find themselves embroiled in bizarre social experiments.

Published: March 25, 2026, 9:00 am

My ​quest to ​preserve VHS-​era ​gaming ​culture​, one eBay bid at a time

As physical media makes an unlikely comebac​k​ among younger gamers, the humble VHS emerges as an unexpected archive of gaming’s messy, magical evolution​ that I saw first time around

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As I am nostalgic and of a certain age, I recently bought a VHS video recorder, just for the retrospective thrill of it; then I won a 32-inch CRT television at an auction in Shepton Mallet. Partly, this was to play a few old videos I had found in my loft, including one of me appearing in a 1990s youth TV show talking about sexism and Tomb Raider. (I was against the sexism, to be clear). But it was also because I wanted a new way of spending my money on fragile video-game nostalgia.

The rise of the games industry in the 1980s and 90s coincided with the explosion of the home-video business, and the two crossed paths in lots of interesting ways. There are the obvious treasures I want to get hold of: VHS copies of Street Fighter: The Movie and the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, naturally, as well as early games-inspired hits such as The Last Starfighter, The Wizard and WarGames. I rented most of these from my local video shop in the 80s – which, like many others, also sold computer games by the budget publisher Mastertronic, another interesting (at least to me) crossover between these two entertainment formats.

Published: March 25, 2026, 12:40 pm

The creator of Fortnite has laid off more than 1,000 staff – despite billions in revenue

Huge cuts announced this week show that truly no developer working in games is safe from corporate whims

The video game industry is currently experiencing a seemingly endless bout of ruinous deja vu. Every month, another publisher posts an all too familiar statement about job losses in its development studios. There will be airy expressions of regret and platitudes praising the skill and contribution of the imminently jobless; it is all filtered through layers of corporate doublespeak intended to disguise the human cost of downsizing.

On Tuesday, it was the turn of Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, one of the most successful titles on the planet. In a note posted online, CEO Tim Sweeney announced that more than 1,000 jobs would be lost – this followed the cutting of 830 staff in September 2023.

Published: March 25, 2026, 12:30 pm

Alexander Kluge, author and key film-maker in the New German Cinema movement, dies aged 94

A winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, Kluge was a committed pacifist and one of the last living torchbearers of the Frankfurt school of neo-Marxist cultural criticism

Alexander Kluge, a German film-maker and author who elevated cinematic collages into an art form and won the top prize at the Venice film festival in 1968, has died aged 94, his publisher has announced.

A former assistant of expressionist master Fritz Lang, Kluge was an accomplished director of intellectually rewarding, if at times oblique filmic essays, and an ever-productive writer of short fiction.

Published: March 26, 2026, 4:10 pm

Daunting, inspiring, comforting, terrifying: the writers who can make silence as eloquent as words

From the hush of medieval lullabies to striking poems about Grenfell, great authors know how to deploy the power of silence

On a snowy Sunday morning in February 1808, the poet William Wordsworth was walking along Fleet Street in London. He’d just been to visit his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his lodgings on the Strand. Coleridge was at a low ebb: stuck in an unhappy marriage, weighed down by perennial financial difficulties, mentally blocked from writing, in poor health and addicted to opium. The visit had a lowering effect on Wordsworth’s own spirits. Walking along Fleet Street, eyes downcast, “ear sleeping”, feet moving automatically, he was absorbed in sombre thoughts.

But then something made him look up. A vision lay before him: Fleet Street blanketed with snow, “silent, empty, pure white”, and, at the end of it, the “huge and majestic form” of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. It was a spellbinding moment: the great thoroughfare temporarily devoid of carts and carriages, the cathedral looming blurrily out of the still-falling snowflakes – a real-life snow globe. “I cannot say how much I was affected at this unthought-of sight,” Wordsworth told his friend and patron, Sir George Beaumont, in a letter he wrote a few days later. “What a blessing I feel there is in habits of exalted imagination.” The great London silence was another piece in his accumulating pile of evidence that intuiting something beyond yourself is the route to becoming morally magnificent.

Published: March 26, 2026, 2:25 pm

‘Black music is not a subculture – it is the engine’: Why the Mobo awards matter more than ever, 30 years on

Three decades after launching the awards, founder Kanya King reflects on being ahead of the crowd and why Mobo has always been more than music

For the audience watching performances by twentysomethings Olivia Dean, Myles Smith and Aitch on Thursday night in the Co-op Live arena in Manchester it will seem like a lifetime away from 1996, when the Mobo awards began.

What has become known as a joyful celebration of music of Black origin came from “a very real sense of frustration”, said Kanya King, Mobo’s founder and chief executive. “I could see the impact that Black music and culture was having on British culture – I mean it was shaping everything – but it wasn’t being properly recognised or respected by the mainstream industry.”

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:00 pm

Duffy to tell story of her kidnapping and rape ordeal in new Disney+ documentary

Promising ‘unprecedented access’, the programme will recount the singer’s story, including full details of the harrowing attacks that drove her into hiding for a decade

It was a great music industry mystery: after becoming one of the biggest pop stars of the 2000s with her debut album, 2008’s Rockferry, the Welsh pop star Duffy vanished from the public eye. In 2020, she revealed what had happened to her: in 2010, she said, she had been drugged, kidnapped and taken to another country where she was subject to violent abuse and raped.

Duffy, real name Aimée Anne Duffy, 41, will tell that story in depth for the first time in a new documentary, produced by Disney+ and Hulu Original, with production set to begin soon. A press release promises “new, unprecedented access” to the Mercy singer, who will tell her entire life story, as well as interviews with friends, family and music industry associates.

Published: March 25, 2026, 4:32 pm

I asked AI about God. It asked me about myself instead

In week four of Rhik Samadder’s diary, our resident AI skeptic turned to HolyGPT to ask the ultimate question of why we are here

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I remember my very first online search, back in 2001: “What is the meaning of life?”

I remember clicking through to a mysterious minimal website that told me all points of consciousness were facets of the divine wishing to perceive itself.

Published: March 26, 2026, 11:00 am

Marriage over, €100,000 down the drain: the AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

One minute, Dennis Biesma was playing with a chatbot; the next, he was convinced his sentient friend would make him a fortune. He’s just one of many people who lost control after an AI encounter

Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.”

Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself.

Published: March 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Plastic-free cutting boards and $17 bike lights: 11 things you loved in March

As winter habits thawed, you leaned into brighter bike rides, kitchen upgrades and deeper sleep

• Field Company’s new No 5 chef skillet fixes everything I hated about cast iron

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In March, we’ve been easing out of our winter hibernation, trading hotpot nights for prepping fresh produce and at-home workouts for cycling and pickleball.

To help you slowly defrost, we’ve dutifully tried dozens of items, including 11 bike lights, 10 cutting boards and a newly released cast-iron skillet.

A non-toxic cooking pan and a $7 hand cream: 11 things you loved in February

The ‘Goldilocks’ of sleep masks and $8 winter gloves: 12 things you loved in January

Sleep masks, mug warmers and mini projectors: things you loved in 2025

Published: March 25, 2026, 8:30 pm

What to know about ‘boy kibble’, the viral meal slop trend

Some gen Z men are using the term to describe an easy meal consisting of ground beef, rice, and a vegetable or fat

Recently, after a long day of sending emails, I assembled a bowl of food I had prepared over the weekend: brown rice, ground turkey and half an avocado, all drizzled in hot sauce. As I snarfed my meal on the couch, my husband peeked into my bowl and said: “Having some boy kibble?”

It turns out he was not just making a rude comment about my slop. On social media, health-conscious gen Z men have started using the term to describe a quick and easy meal: ground beef, rice, and sometimes a vegetable or fat. The brown, lumpy concoction is praised by gym bros as an easy, relatively cheap way to get the carbs and protein necessary to maximize their workout gains.

Salmon with rice and vegetables

Greek yogurt with fruit and granola

Eggs with whole grain toast and avocado

Stir-fry with tofu, vegetables, buckwheat noodles, and crushed nuts and sesame seeds

A whole grain wrap filled with black beans, guacamole, veggies, cheese and salsa

Whole grain pasta with turkey meatballs, zucchini spirals, olives, parmesan cheese and tomato sauce

Published: March 25, 2026, 4:00 pm

You be the judge: should my partner keep his ashtrays outside?

Rita wants Martin’s novelty ashtrays to stay in the garden. He likes to give them pride of place on the shelf. Whose argument is a smokescreen? You decide

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Martin says his novelty ashtrays are decor and will spoil in the rain, but ash in our home is gross

I’ve already compromised and cut down on smoking – plus they’re more like collector’s items

Published: March 26, 2026, 8:00 am

A moment that changed me: I thought my Parkinson’s was the end of my life, but dancing changed everything

The moment I stepped into English National Ballet’s studio, I stopped being just a patient. Among fellow spirits, I have rediscovered my sense of joy and agency

Fourteen years ago, a neurologist told me: “You have Parkinson’s.” I remember his face before I remember his words: calm, certain, kind. Parkinson’s: a progressive neurological disease. No cure. In my mind, it was an old person’s disease. Something that happened to other people, later in life. Not to a single man in his early 50s who believed there was still time for romance, adventure, reinvention.

What terrified me most wasn’t the tremors or the stiffness. It was the imagined future. I pictured a partner signing up not for love, but for care. I thought: who would choose that? Who would choose me, knowing this?

Published: March 25, 2026, 6:45 am

‘You go in bald and walk out with the best hair you’ve ever had’: the remarkable return of the toupee

Hair transplants have never been more widespread or more affordable. So why do so many balding men prefer glued-on hairpieces? And are the best really undetectable?

When you hear the word toupee, certain images spring to mind. Older men with suspiciously thick hair, say; or a poorly colour-matched partial wig covering a bald patch, perhaps flying off in the wind. These are the toupees of old.

Toupees are distinct from wigs in that they cover only part of the scalp, but both have a long history. While humans were wearing hairpieces as far back as ancient Egypt, toupees originated in the 18th century, the name developing from the French toupet, meaning “tuft of hair”. They became particularly prominent in the mid-20th century, with Time magazine estimating that more than 2.5 million men across the US were wearing toupees by 1970. But concerns about how obvious the pieces were, hammered home by ridicule in popular culture (see Monty Python’s Toupee Department sketch) combined with the gradual acceptance of shaved heads in fashion, led to their decline.

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:00 am

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: there may be 50 shades, but there’s only one Correct Grey

The true quality of a fabric is revealed by a neutral tone – one that beautifully offsets the brighter tones of 2026. Just don’t mention John Major

Sometimes a colour name is a whole mood. Rouge Noir: the stamp of cult 1990s glamour. Millennial pink: the colour of overthinking and oversharing. Elephant’s Breath by Farrow & Ball: the imperial age of the gastro pub.

I have a new favourite. Pairs is a lovely little Scottish brand which makes great quality socks at good prices. There are many cute names – Frosting Pink, Milky Tea Beige – but the one I just had to click on was Correct Grey, “a warm grey with nods to a classic British school sock”, according to the website.

Published: March 25, 2026, 2:00 pm

From basil to pistachio and peas – in praise of pesto, whichever way you make it

Whether on pasta or pizza, in soup or even in a tart, this classic Italian sauce is one of your most versatile ingredients

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It was not without satisfaction that I found my 14-year-old son making pesto the other week – for the first 13 years of his life he referred to it as either “pesto-the-bogey-man”, or “gross”. To avoid interfering and sabotaging the moment, I didn’t look too closely, so I didn’t clock the shallow bowl and immersion blender combination. I did hear the noise – a blunt churn – as the blade hit the leaves and nuts. Acting more like a leaf blower than cutter, it sent green and white oily fragments up the cupboards and over pretty much every pot, utensil and tool nearby. Impressively unfazed, he managed to scrape a good proportion of the elements into the food processor and make an extremely tasty pesto, which was mixed with linguine, green beans and potatoes. Less effective was his clearing up (mine too, for that matter), and I am still finding dried green flecks stuck to slotted spoons.

Like mash and crumble, the word pesto comes from an action, in this case pestare, which means to pound or bash repeatedly with a pestle. In much the same way, though, that mash was wedded to potato, and crumble set up home and had kids with apples, pesto came to be associated with basil, pine nuts, pecorino, garlic and olive oil. This happy combination of ingredients occurred in Genoa, in the region of Liguria, hence the name pesto alla Genovese. Such was its popularity, that the pounded sauce joined Cher, Prince and Sade in becoming a one-name celebrity. It is so beloved that some fans have suggested that other pestos are impostors.

Published: March 26, 2026, 12:45 pm

‘It’s like having a friend everywhere you travel’: after 12 home exchanges, I’ll never book a hotel again

The Which? travel editor on the unexpected joys and considerable savings of house swapping. Plus top tips on how to do it

Imagine cutting the cost of accommodation on your next holiday to about £5 a day. You can have a whole house, rather than just a bedroom. And you can go almost anywhere in the world and stay as long as you like, within reason. Welcome to house swapping.

You’re sceptical, I know. I was, too. Our terrace house was too small. Too overflowing with stuff. The 1980s kitchen was too old (and battered). We aren’t in a nice enough neighbourhood. Who would want to stay here? Lots of people, it turned out.

Published: March 26, 2026, 7:00 am

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for potato, aubergine and herb tortino alla fiorentina

A substantial, velvety dish to carry you through into the summer months

The sky is the same shade as old Tupperware, our tortoise appears to have gone back into hibernation, the flat upstairs has builders in, but the kitchen smells gorgeous, thanks to this week’s recipe. It is one of the variations suggested by Anna Gosetti Della Salda for her aubergine and egg tortino alla fiorentina in the Tuscany chapter of Le Ricette Regionali Italiane, an indispensable book that I would save from a fire. The addition of potato to the aubergine makes it an even more substantial, velvet-like and better-tasting dish, I think: a layered vegetable bake crossed with a frittata that fancies itself as having a touch of baked eggs (although don’t expect any puffing up).

Instead of the aubergine, you could use artichoke hearts (trimmed and cut into slim wedges), courgettes or cardoon, and, if you fancy, you could also add a crumbled sausage or a handful of diced pancetta. Whatever you use, however, a fundamental stage in terms of both flavour and texture is the initial cooking of the vegetables: frying the potatoes, then covering the pan so they fry-steam into tenderness; the aubergine by simply frying. Important, too, is sprinkling the just-cooked slices with a little salt, so the end dish is seasoned through. (The egg and milk mixture is seasoned with cheese – use whatever you have – but check for salt, too.)

Published: March 26, 2026, 6:00 am

Sauces, spreads, sprinkles – and cocktail in a can: whose fridge is this?

There’s a distinctly sour edge to the jars and goodies that chef and author Helen Graham keeps handy

Amba sauce
“I’m very jar orientated; a lot of my cooking is about combining big flavours. I’m also a sucker for a sour ingredient, and this Iraqi pickled mango condiment is really sour – more so than tamarind. If I’m garnishing a dish with tahini, then I’ll use amba to cut through the richness, otherwise I’ll use it in lieu of citrus.”

Stem ginger in syrup
“My grandpa always gave me this when I was a kid, and I thought it was disgusting. However, now it’s essential; I often make a (chopped) stem ginger and spring onion salsa – it’s sweet and spicy. Stem ginger is such a nostalgic ingredient for me.”

Published: March 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Gulf states’ scepticism over alleged US-Iran talks signals a distrust of Trump

Reluctance to cheerlead alleged US ceasefire efforts reflects suspicion talk of peace could be another foil for escalation

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Not long after Donald Trump said the US was engaged in “strong talks” to bring the war with Iran to an end this week, Qatar took the unusual step of distancing itself from the alleged diplomatic negotiations.

Qatar was not involved in any mediation efforts, said government spokesperson Majed al-Ansari at a briefing on Tuesday night, before adding as a telling aside: “If they exist.”

Published: March 26, 2026, 5:00 am

Heroism, horror and the ‘pits of hell’: inside the last days of El Fasher

Over two days in October 2025, up to 10,000 people are believed to have been massacred; a further 40,000 civilians from the Sudanese city are still unaccounted for. This is the story of what happened

In the pistachio green Toyota Land Cruiser rattling over the desert plain, Aboud Khater pressed his foot to the floor. Behind, the sun rose above El Fasher. Smoke belched from the stricken city. Khater was driving the last vehicle of the final evacuation convoy from El Fasher.

It was 5:45am on 27 October 2025. He couldn’t have waited any longer. The historic capital of Sudan’s sprawling region of Darfur would capitulate in the next two hours.

Published: March 25, 2026, 1:01 pm

US traveller recounts brutal detention in Venezuela’s feared prisons: ‘They beat me, chained me up’

James Luckey’s ordeal sheds light on the mistreatment political prisoners faced under Nicolás Maduro

There were few countries James Luckey didn’t see during three years backpacking across the Americas, from Haiti and Honduras to Bolivia and Uruguay. Early last December, he set off from a budget hotel in the Brazilian Amazon hoping to fill in one of the final gaps.

Luckey’s intended destination was the two-billion-year-old tabletop mountain Mount Roraima, one of the most spectacular corners of South America’s most troubled nation, Venezuela. But within hours of crossing into the border town of Santa Elena de Uairén, that plan went up in smoke.

Published: March 25, 2026, 12:01 pm

Buddhist monks protest and cherry blossoms bloom: pictures of the day – Thursday

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

Published: March 26, 2026, 1:24 pm