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

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

• Oil prices drop sharply after Trump moves to reassure markets

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

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

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

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

Warsh to meet Tillis as Senate confirmation remains blocked

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has refused to advance Warsh's confirmation until a probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell is dropped.

Hegseth: Today "most intense day" of attacks on Iran, Trump to determine "end stage"

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that it would be the "most intense day" of strikes against Iran so far.

Spain to formally pardon 53 women incarcerated by Franco regime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cathay Pacific offers £20,000 Sydney to London flight amid disruption in Gulf

Hong Kong-based airline has business-class return listed at A$39,577, as travellers seek routes avoiding Middle East

• Business live – latest updates

The Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific is selling seats from Sydney to London for more than £20,000 in April, as passengers search for scarce long-haul flights without changing in the Middle East.

The tickets, listed at A$39,577 in business class for returns departing in mid-April, far outstrip the usual fares charged even in the first class cabin.

DOJ's Ed Martin faces ethics charges over threatening letter to Georgetown

The office that polices attorney misconduct in Washington, D.C., has filed ethics charges against Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin.

Crispin Odey was described as ‘sex pest’ by head of his hedge fund, court hears

Multimillionaire begins case against FCA ban over handling of investigation into sexual misconduct claims

The multimillionaire financier Crispin Odey was described by the head of his hedge fund as a “sex pest” and a sociopath and blamed an incident in which he allegedly groped a female staff member’s breasts on a sedative he had taken, a tribunal has heard.

The Brexit-backing hedge fund chief’s behaviour came under the microscope on the first day of a lawsuit he has brought against the financial services regulator over his exile from the City.

DOJ and Live Nation reached a settlement. Here's what it means for consumers.

Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster, has reached a settlement with the DOJ in a major antitrust case. The U.S. government has accused the company of having a monopoly over tickets to live events. But a legal analyst explains the settlement doesn't automatically mean cheaper tickets for consumers.

What's known about the woman accused of shooting at Rihanna's home

Police identified Ivanna Ortiz, 35, as the individual accused of opening fire on Sunday outside of Rihanna's Beverly Hills home with an AR-15-style assault rifle. The Florida woman is now facing attempted murder charges. Carter Evans reports.

Spirit Airlines to recall furloughed pilots to combat attrition as carrier eyes bankruptcy exit

Spirit Airlines is reversing course on pilot furloughs after aviators left in high numbers for rival airlines.

Iran war: Hegseth says Tuesday 'will be our most intense day of strikes'

President Donald Trump on Monday had predicted that the war against Iran would be over "very soon," and warned that country against withholding oil afterward.

Family of teacher killed during prank asks for charges to be dropped against teens

The family of a Georgia high school teacher killed in a prank gone wrong is asking authorities to drop the charges against the teens allegedly involved. Mark Strassmann explains how the tragedy unfolded.

FDA approves leucovorin as first drug for rare genetic disorder, after touting it as autism treatment

The move comes months after the Trump administration touted leucovorin as a potential therapy for a broader group of patients with autism symptoms.

Jeffrey Epstein's former Zorro Ranch searched after revelations in FBI files

Investigators are searching a New Mexico ranch where Jeffrey Epstein once entertained guests, amid allegations that it may have been used for sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

How the Iran war and rising energy prices are threatening semiconductor demand

A prolonged U.S.-Israel war against Iran could lead to shortages of key chipmaking materials and higher energy costs which could hurt semiconductor demand.

Alexander brothers found guilty in sex trafficking trial

More than a year after the Alexander brothers were first arrested on charges including sex trafficking, a jury found the trio guilty of all 10 counts against them. During the trial, the jury heard from 11 women who accused the brothers of rape or sexual assault.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iran women’s football team leave on bus after landing in Sydney as emotional supporters watch on

• Players board bus at Sydney airport after flying from Gold Coast

• Supporters shone torches through airport terminal window to players

The Iranian women’s football team have been whisked away on a bus at Sydney airport after dozens of supporters gathered at an airport gate to see them amid continued speculation about when or if they would be heading back to their home country.

The team – minus five players who have been formally granted protection in Australia – arrived in Sydney just after 8pm on Tuesday evening local time after leaving the Gold Coast after competing in the Women’s Asian Cup tournament.

Fears of 1970s-style stagflation arise with oil spike to $100. How big a threat is it?

High inflation and slow growth present a double threat, as measures like interest rate cuts and government spending only aggravate inflation.

Shots fired at US consulate in Canada as police investigate incident

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump reiterates threat of a 'friendly takeover' of Cuba as fuel crisis deepens

The comments come less than a week after Trump suggested that his administration would turn its sights on Havana.

Sanctions on Israeli settlements are working – even without the US

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

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

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

David Squires on … FA Cup magic for Port Vale and a close call for Mikel Arteta

Our cartoonist reflects on the FA Cup fifth round, including Ben Waine’s commitment to the bit

• Buy this cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

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

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

Los Angeles Rams

‘So much disrespect’: outrage grows over postponement of Women’s Africa Cup of Nations

Players and coaches demand more accountability from Caf after latest decision further disrupts preparation schedule

On 13 February, Patrice Motsepe, the president of the Confederation of African Football (Caf), promised that this year’s Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon), scheduled to be played in Morocco between 17 March and 4 April, would go ahead as planned. One of the reasons he had to make that statement was the 2024 tournament had been postponed for a remarkable 19 months, until July 2025.

That supposedly solemn presidential promise was broken on 5 March, 12 days before the start of the tournament, with many of the teams – including Nigeria, the defending champions, Cameroon and Ghana – playing friendlies across Africa and Asia to prepare for the showpiece, which also determines which teams get to represent the continent at next year’s World Cup.

This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts is delivered to your inboxes every Tuesday and Thursday.

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

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

• Business live – latest updates

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

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

‘It’s a big saga with big hair’: the bonkbuster remake of one of the biggest TV dramas ever

The raunchy 80s adaptation of smash hit novel A Woman of Substance drew the highest ratings Channel 4 has ever seen. As the broadcaster goes there again, the cast and creators talk feminism, revenge – and sex caves

Somewhere on the West Yorkshire moors is what the team behind A Woman of Substance nicknamed “the sex cave”. It is here that the heroine, Emma Harte, loses her virginity in the lavish new adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s bonkbuster. “It’s hidden away and beautiful,” says the showrunner, Katherine Jakeways. “The lighting in there almost looks like AI, but it’s real. Weirdly, it’s about a mile from my mother-in-law’s house. I haven’t told her yet that it’s a sex cave!”

This is just one of many unusual sites for sex scenes featured in the show. “Oh my God, I know,” laughs Jessica Reynolds, who plays the young Emma. “Not just the cave, but there’s a little love shack, too. The cave is the most stunning location, with sunlight coming through these arching rocks. I wonder if they used it in Wuthering Heights, too? If they didn’t, they should have.”

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

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

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

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

Trump gives mixed signals on Iran war. And, how Epstein built ties to scientists

President Trump provided conflicting messages about when the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran will end. And, NPR investigates how late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein leveraged ties with scientists.

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

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

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

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

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

Get ready for price shocks because of Iran? How are we supposed to do that? | Zoe Williams

From energy to food, all of life’s essentials are about to get even more expensive. But just knowing that won’t pay the bills

As soon as the attacks on Iran started, the warnings commenced: “Get ready for price shocks. Get ready for the oil price to spike. Oh, no need to get ready – it’s already hit $100 a barrel. Get ready for Russia to claw some circuitous but massive advantage from the fact that everything is on fire, get ready for energy bills to go up.” By about day five, experts were explaining how to lock in your current tariff except, whoops, given the global instability, those tariffs were no longer available. If it felt mercenary to worry about your unit price as people were dying, that’s because it was; but considerations of human decency and proportionality aren’t going to arrest the trajectory of life getting more expensive.

Get ready for everything to feed into everything else: rising petrol prices to lead to food inflation, food inflation to lead to stuff inflation. Get ready for wages to be unequal to the cost of living, get ready not to complain about it because you’re lucky to have a wage. Get ready for stock exchanges to crash, get ready to not be entirely sure what scale of economic disaster you’re looking at.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read more of our Coffee crisis series here

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

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

The Breakdown | Itoje’s and Smith’s on-field spat sums up England’s startling identity crisis

Steve Borthwick’s captain is normally cool under pressure, but rare outburst points to a much bigger problem

Martin Johnson, England’s World-Cup winning skipper, believes there is no huge mystery to being a great captain. “If you haven’t got a good team it doesn’t matter how good a captain you are,” he said on the Rugby Legends podcast before the start of this year’s Six Nations. And if anyone is qualified to provide such a definitive judgment it is unquestionably him.

To suggest that calm, sure-footed leadership is irrelevant in top-level sport, however, is another matter. Even the greatest sides need decisive, intelligent direction, regardless of who supplies it. The other imperative is to have everyone pulling in the same direction. Shared responsibility and collective ownership are everything, particularly in rugby where the all-for-one, one-for-all ethos is fundamental.

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

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

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

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

Student who died after rush event had blood-alcohol level of 0.425%, autopsy says

Three leaders from the Delta Tau Delta fraternity were arrested on suspicion of hazing after the death of Colin Daniel Martinez.

‘A lot of late 70s bands wore grey. But we were determined to have fun’: the return of the mega-influential Swell Maps after 46 years

Championed by the BBC’s John Peel and signed to Rough Trade, the band were punk when that meant DIY, psychedelia and prog as well as screaming chords. What’s more, they loved Pink Floyd …

Swell Maps were a punk band, but only because that word meant something different when they started making records in 1977. It didn’t mean bands called Knuckleheadz or Gimp Fist; it meant unfettered freedom, curiosity rather than rage. Theirs was a music that wandered off in unexpected directions, where songs barely hung together before falling apart, punctuated by peculiar sounds made by whatever happened to be around. It was psychedelia and it was prog and it was krautrock, every bit as much as it was punk. Most of all, it was DIY.

So Swell Maps’ descendants weren’t the kind to get sleeve tattoos and don leather. They, like Swell Maps, were nerds. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore described them as “part of my upbringing”. Stephen Malkmus noted that Pavement formed, more or less, as a tribute to Swell Maps and their kindred spirits Desperate Bicycles. Now add all the bands who have tried or still try to sound like Pavement or Sonic Youth, bands who may never have heard of Swell Maps. That’s how you map the scope of their influence.

California vowed to stop hospice fraud. Our analysis found red flags across LA.

A CBS News analysis of records for every hospice operating in Los Angeles County finds indications of fraud are growing.

'Pro-worker AI,' streaming fatalities, and other fascinating new economic studies

From artificial intelligence to fatalities from music streaming to the effects of immigrants on elderly health care, the Planet Money newsletter rounds up some interesting new economic studies.

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

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

• Middle East crisis – live updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

Volkswagen flags a tough year ahead as 2025 profit halves on tariffs, China competition

Volkswagen reported a more than 50% drop in annual operating profit, citing the impact of U.S. tariffs, currency effects and a strategic shift at Porsche.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Georgia votes in high-stakes primary for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s House seat

Election will be a test of Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in the southern state

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A special election for the successor to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district in Georgia on Tuesday will be a test of Donald Trump’s sway, and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of the southern state.

Republican former prosecutor Clay Fuller is likely to come out of Tuesday’s jungle primary, in which the top two candidates go to a runoff regardless of party, alongside retired army general Shawn Harris, a Democrat. The two would face a run-off election on 7 April.

Stellantis taps Toyota, Bosch suppliers for hybrid technologies for new Jeeps

Jeep maker Stellantis is leaning on technologies from automotive suppliers for its newest hybrid vehicles, CNBC has learned.

GLP-1s have transformed weight loss and diabetes. Is addiction next?

A large study found that people taking GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic for diabetes were less likely to be diagnosed with substance use disorder.

Trump gives mixed messages about when the war with Iran will end

In a phone call with CBS News Monday, Trump said "the war is very complete." But at a separate event with Republican lawmakers, he said the U.S. still needed to achieve "ultimate victory."

Morning news brief

Trump hails Iran successes but offers no end date, Lebanon wants talks with Israel, and two teens are charged in NYC attack attempt.

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

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

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

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

One year later: Mahmoud Khalil remains in limbo but ready to fight

The case of Khalil, who was detained last March, sits at the vanguard of a battle of immigrants' due process and civil rights, and the Trump administration's mass detention and deportation policies.

Out of work and with 2 teens, this mom may lose food stamps under Trump's changes

Policy experts say new SNAP changes don't address the challenges faced by single parents. They also argue that losing food assistance will only create more barriers for struggling families.

Why One Battle After Another should win the best picture Oscar

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

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

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

Sudanese students say UK visa ban has dashed hopes of studying at top universities

More than 200 applicants fear they will lose places after home secretary suspends study visas from four countries

Sudanese scientists who have been promised research posts at leading UK universities have spoken of their “shock” and “sadness” that their hopes have been dashed after Shabana Mahmood’s decision to end study visas for people from their country.

More than 200 Sudanese postgraduates and undergraduates fear they will no longer be permitted to take up places at 46 universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, with some claiming that their lives have been torn apart by the home secretary’s “blunt” intervention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tourist photography subverted: Luigi Ghirri was a master of composition

An exhibition of rare photographs by the Italian photographer highlights the abstraction and poetry of his lesser-known works

Ryanair insists we failed to board a phantom flight

Airline has refused refund after our flight was diverted because of bad weather and we were left on the plane for six hours

I was on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Dublin that took off during Storm Amy in October last year. It was unable to land at Dublin after two abortive attempts and was diverted to Manchester, where we sat on the plane for six hours, with no complimentary refreshments, before being unceremoniously ejected at nearly midnight.

We were told Ryanair staff would organise taxis and hotels, but no crew disembarked with us, and the terminal was deserted.

Seven of the best music festivals to visit by train from the UK

From jazz in Rotterdam and hip-hop in Paris to brass bands on the beach in Blackpool, the Guardian’s music editor chooses the best European festivals that can be reached by rail

Paris has some great festivals, such as Cercle (22-24 May), with dance music stars against the backdrop of planes and rockets in an outdoor aerospace museum, but the most accessible and democratic is Fête de la musique, which began in Paris in 1982 but is now popular across the country. It is a loose event encompassing dozens of free, semi-impromptu outdoor performances all over each host city, including plenty in Lille, which is even cheaper and quicker to get to than Paris on the Eurostar from London.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oil tankers transiting Strait of Hormuz 'must be very careful,' Iran Foreign Ministry warns

The price of crude oil has sharply spiked as the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed as the United States and Israel wage war on Iran.

3/2: Face the Nation

This week on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," as fallout continues from the unprecedented Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Margaret Brennan speaks to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, GOP Reps. Mike Turner and John James and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

New Zealand Covid response among world’s best but ‘scars’ remain, inquiry finds

Royal commission says response led by Jacinda Ardern was broadly ‘appropriate’, in a wide-ranging report featuring recommendations for future pandemics

A royal commission into New Zealand’s Covid response has found it was one of the best in the world but acknowledged the period had left “scars”.

The second of two inquiry reports on the pandemic was released on Tuesday and focused on the period between February 2021 to October 2022, when the government changed from an elimination strategy to one of suppression and minimisation of the virus. It also examined vaccine safety and the government’s immunisation programme, lockdowns and tracing and testing technology.

Vague and contradictory Trump says Iran war ‘won’, but not ‘won enough’

After oil prices surged on Monday the US president sought – and failed – to offer a clear vision for when the largest US intervention in the Middle East in years will end

• Middle East crisis – live updates

At one of the most consequential moments of his two terms in office, wartime president Donald Trump on Monday delivered a vague and contradictory forecast for how long the United States will continue to fight in Iran and what the ultimate goal of the US military campaign there will be.

With oil hovering above $100 a barrel for much of Monday and Middle Eastern allies fearing a further tumble into regional conflict, Trump appeared in Doral, Florida with the mission of calming global markets and reassuring skittish allies that he has a clear vision for how to end the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the Iraq war.

Prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure would cause oil prices to surge, experts warn

The Iran war is renewing concerns about the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. A prolonged closure could sharply drive up oil prices, experts said.

Alexander brothers found guilty on all charges in sex trafficking trial

Jurors in Manhattan federal court reached a verdict Monday after weeks of testimony in the sex trafficking trial of brothers Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander.

FBI launches terrorism probe into IED attack outside Mamdani's residence

Two men from Pennsylvania are facing federal charges for the incident. Video captured someone yelling "Allahu Akbar" just as a protester threw an "ignited device" during an anti-Islam demonstration in New York City.

Elon Musk's xAI wants to build a power plant in Mississippi. Regulators plan a key meeting on Election Day

The NAACP has accused Mississippi regulators of rushing a meeting to approve xAI plans for a massive, methane-burning power plant in Southaven.

Georgia teacher dies after student prank gone wrong

A Georgia teacher has died after authorities say he was struck by a vehicle during a late-night prank outside his home, prompting vehicular homicide charges against an 18-year-old. Mark Strassmann has more

Trump says Iran war will end 'very soon,' predicts lower oil prices

U.S. stock market indexes rose earlier in the day after an initial report that President Donald Trump said he believed the Iran war was largely finished.

Long security lines at U.S. airports as DHS funding affects TSA staffing

Wait times to get through security hit two hours in New Orleans and over three hours in Houston as TSA staffing took a hit amid the partial government shutdown.

Woman arrested in shooting at Rihanna's home in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Police Department has identified a woman arrested for allegedly firing several shots at the Beverly Hills home of pop star Rihanna. Carter Evans has details.

Frustration mounts at airports amid TSA staffing shortages spurred by DHS shutdown

Airline passengers in some of the United States' largest airports are seeing long security lines amid the ongoing partial government shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security. As Kris Van Cleave reports, more TSA employees are calling out sick as they work without pay.

Here's how much Americans are paying for gas as oil prices spike

The U.S. average gas price has jumped 48 cents since last week, with experts predicting that higher fuel costs could persist for months.

Trump says Iran war will end "very soon" at Florida news conference

At a Miami-area news conference Monday, President Trump said he expects the war in Iran to end "very soon," but also called it "the beginning of building a new country."

Americans react to rising gas prices: "Very frustrating"

The reality of the war in Iran is showing up at gas stations nationwide. Jo Ling Kent spoke to consumers at the pump.

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

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

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

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

Democrats threaten more Iran war powers votes, call for Hegseth, Rubio to testify

Democrats are vowing to interrupt normal order in the Senate unless Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio testify publicly.

Ig Nobels to move awards to Europe due to concern over US travel visas

Scientific awards – which honor research that makes people laugh and then think – to move away from ‘unsafe’ US

The annual Ig Nobels, a satirical award for scientific achievement, are shifting for the first time from the US to Europe due to concerns about attendees getting visas, organizers announced on Monday.

Organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think, the 36th annual ceremony will be held in Zurich. It’s usually held in the US in September, a few weeks before the actual Nobel prizes are announced.

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

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

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

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

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

Top permitting-reform Republican, Democratic senators meeting as talks thaw: API chief

Speeding up the federal permitting process is a top priority for the energy and tech industries.

What we know about U.S. service members killed in Iran war

Seven American service members have been killed since the war with Iran started in February.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch live: Trump holds press conference as Iran war fallout roils oil market

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

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

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

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

Seventh U.S. service member killed in Iran war identified as Sgt. Benjamin Pennington

Pennington, 26, from Glendale, Kentucky, was wounded on March 1 during an Iranian strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. He died on Sunday.

NTSB member fired by White House over workplace allegations that he denies

National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman called the allegations against him false and a "political hit job."

OpenAI to buy cybersecurity startup Promptfoo to better safeguard AI agents

Promptfoo's team will join Sam Altman-led OpenAI, and its technology will be integrated into the Frontier platform for AI agents.

Apple turns 50, in a world it helped create

David Pogue, author of "Apple: The First 50 Years," talks with Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak, CEO Tim Cook, and others about the vision of Steve Jobs, and how the company's products and services have reshaped life, technology and culture in the 21st century.