In Trump’s strategy of feigning madness to get what he wants, there is no longer any border between pretense and actual irrationality. By Fintan O’Toole
An important exhibition showcases a painterly repartee that altered the trajectory of the two artists’ work and, by extension, modern art itself.
Manet and Morisot – an exhibition at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, October 11, 2025–March 1, 2026, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, March 29–July 5, 2026
The Trump administration’s efforts to validate their incoherent war on Iran with some sort of Christian moral authority have led to a few, shall we say, interesting moments recently.
After bizarrely berating Pope Leo XIV as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”, Donald Trump posted (and later deleted) a meme of himself as a Christ-like figure healing the sick. The self-styled “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth then confused what he evidently thought was a biblical passage with a bastardised version of a speech from the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction.
Perhaps most damagingly of all, the vice-president, JD Vance, took Leo’s carefully considered thoughts on the concept of the “just war” as an opportunity to lecture the pope on theology.
Spotlight | Starmer and the scandal of Mandelson’s vetting The British prime minister came under huge pressure to resign this week over what he knew about Peter Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the US, even though he had failed Foreign Office security vetting. Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot, Paul Lewis and Kiran Stacey spearhead our coverage
Science | The magic of mushrooms Fungi play a key role in ecosystems and storing carbon, so African scientists are championing the preservation of “funga” as much as flora and fauna, writes Whitney Bauck
Feature | When older relatives lurch to the far right It starts with a “back in my day” nostalgic meme – then suddenly your elders are sharing AI-generated “boomerslop” and repeating conspiracy theories … Simon Usborne speaks to families dealing with rightwing political rifts
Opinion | Our governments are woefully underprepared for the AI revolution Every wave of new tech has come with a doomsday scenario. But governments just aren’t planning a human response on the scale required, warns Larry Elliott
Culture | How the female gaze caught the attention of film, TV and fiction From passionate romantasy novels to premium television dramas, culture is bringing the agency, desires and interior lives of women to the fore. It’s proving good for business, but is this a permanent revolution, asks Deborah Linton
At the end of 2025, Patrick Wintour wrote a compelling essay for Guardian Weekly in which he described an interregnum in global history, where the rules-based order had been eroded and great powers once again jostled for control and influence.
This week’s edition sees Patrick return to a key aspect of that theme, the deteriorating global standing of the United States after a period of high-stakes brinkmanship with Iran. Donald Trump’s aborted threat that Iranian civilisation would “die … never to be brought back” unless it ceded to his demands exposed the limits of his apocalyptic foreign policy. It also pointed to the wider decline of American influence in a world where the US appears untrustworthy and strategically isolated.
Spotlight | Hungary’s new dawn After 16 years, Viktor Orbán’s populist grip on the country’s politics is over. But will his successor Péter Magyar be much different? Ashifa Kassam and Flora Garamvolgyi report amid jubilant scenes in Budapest
Science | The man who was bitten by snakes 200 times – on purpose Tim Friede put his “ass on the line” to help stop snakebite deaths – whose numbers appear to be rising amid the climate crisis. Oliver Milman met him
Feature | The brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt. Samira Shackle investigates
Opinion | Netanyahu-ism has achieved nothing for Israelis It is the voting public in Israel that will settle their PM’s fate later this year. But, argues Jonathan Freedland, all they have heard are promises of “total victory” that prove to be hollow
Culture | Jim Jarmusch, the darling of indie cinema The 73-year-old has been at the cutting edge of US independent movies since the 1980s. As Father Mother Sister Brother opens in the UK, he tells Amy Raphael about grief, greed and “doing crazy shit” with Steve Coogan
An irony of Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power in Hungary is that his Fidesz movement was originally founded by pro-democracy, change-seeking young voters, even initially requiring members to be below the age of 35.
Now, in a crossroads election on 12 April, a new generation of Hungarians may be on the cusp of removing the rightwing populist prime minister, much to the dismay of his admirers in Moscow, Washington and Europe’s populist movements.
Orbán may have once described Hungary as “a petri dish for illiberalism” – as reflected by Harry Haysom’s cover art for us this week – but polls suggest his opponent Péter Magyar, a former top member of Fidesz who favours a closer relationship with the EU, could be the new change agent.
Spotlight | Was Trump conned by Netanyahu’s promise of an easy war? Senior US officials now consider the Israel PM’s pitch to have been overblown, creating potentially far-reaching consequences for both countries, writes Peter Beaumont
Science | The 21st-century moon prospectors Helium-3 is so rare that a palm-sized amount could be worth millions. As Artemis II flies by the moon and businesses look to the skies, is mining Earth’s satellite ethical? Oliver Holmes investigates
Feature | Can the UK’s cargo theft crisis be stopped? It costs the UK economy £700m ($920m) a year, and criminal gangs are operating with near impunity. Every time a lorry gets robbed, raided or hijacked, it’s Mike Dawber who investigates. ByStuart McGurk
Opinion | Ten years after Brexit, Trump is pushing Britain back towards the EU It’s the silver lining from this terrible age of Donald Trump, argues Gaby Hinsliff: his disdain and insults are fuelling the belief that the UK should renew ties with Europe
Culture | James McAvoy, froma Glasgow council estate to Hollywood stardom In his directorial debut, the X-Men actor is challenging stereotypes about his Scottish homeland via the remarkable tale of a real-life hip-hop hoax. Libby Brooks met him
In a landmark case, a California jury last week found social media companies Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products. The ruling came the day after Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was ordered to pay $375m after a jury in a separate trial in New Mexico found it misled consumers about the safety of its platforms.
Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok are facing thousands of similar lawsuits in US courts, while governments around the world are starting to introduce measures to curb social media’s grip on children’s attention.
Guardian technology editors Dan Milmo and Robert Booth assess whether what has been called a “big tobacco” moment for the industry will lead to significant change. And in our opinion section, Jonathan Freedland argues that the court verdicts must be just the start of a global fightback.
The big story | A war of regression Weeks into a war that was going to take days and has cost billions, Donald Trump has bombed the US into a worse position with Iran, writes Patrick Wintour
Science | ‘On the shoulders of giants’ Plant specimens and teaching materials that inspired Charles Darwin have been unearthed and will be used for the first time to teach contemporary students about botany, Donna Ferguson reports
Feature | Circuit training After touring 11 Chinese companies making humanoid robots, Chang Che asks: just how close are we to a robotic future?
Opinion | Labour needs a thinker Ed Miliband’s stock is rising in a party in need of an old-style intellectual heavyweight, argues Gaby Hinsliff
Culture | Gimme shelter Catherine Slessor visits Henry Moore’s former countryside home Hoglands, now home to studios and a vast sculpture garden, to learn about a new exhibition of the drawings he made as a war artist, capturing people as they took sanctuary from the blitz
The subject of this excellent biography wished to be remembered as Jan ‘Empire’ Morris, author of the great imperial trilogy Pax Britannica, but she correctly predicted that the valedictory headlines would read ‘Sex Change Author Dies’. As James Morris, he had won early fame as the Times reporter who broke the news of the conquest of Everest on Coronation Day, 1953. And Morris’s real distinction, as Sara Wheeler affirms, was as a travel writer. It was a term she loathed. (Wheeler follows Morris’s own lead in using male pronouns for the author’s early life and female ones after 1970, when transition was nearing completion.) But as a young man James had immersed…
Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire By Antonia Senior
It may be thought that the notorious Cambridge spies – the majority of them members of the Apostles, that university’s secretive, elitist society – had been written out. But, as Stalin’s Apostles makes clear, such is not the case. Most of the books on what the KGB later called their ‘Magnificent Five’ – Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross – have dwelt …
We Know You Can Pay a Million: Inside the Dark Economy of Hacking and Ransomware By Anja Shortland
Not so long ago, stories about powerful computer viruses apparently spreading around the world and threatening to bring modern life to a halt regularly filled the news. These days, cybercrime rarely makes the headlines, and most of us have become inured to warnings that our passwords have been found in a data leak. Yet ..
Brinkmanship, the ability to take countries to the edge of conflict, was a staple of cold war diplomacy. The remnants of that finely balanced standoff, bound by a rules-based order and spheres of influence, has given way to a world in freefall; to an ever-widening war in the Gulf where the aims are as unclear as the endpoint.
It is approaching a month since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, arguing they were acting to remove the country’s nuclear threat, destroy its ballistic missile capability and free the populace of a tyrannical theocratic regime. Yet it seems it is these civilians and neighbouring Gulf countries who are bearing the brunt of the campaign while the Iranian regime’s willingness to escalate the war seems undimmed.
Spotlight | The ‘anyone but’ election Pippa Crerar looks ahead to local elections in the UK, where voters seem more concerned with who they want to keep out of political office than who they vote in
Science | Not-so silent nights Can a “vacuum cleaner turned the other way” become a popular solution to snoring disorders? Natasha May explores the rise of Cpap machines
Feature | Gamifying government Steeped in gaming and rightwing culture, Elon Musk’s Doge team set out to defeat the enemy of the United States: its people, write Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian
Opinion | Collateral damage Attacks on synagogues and Jewish shops in the UK, Europe and the US don’t hurt Benjamin Netanyahu, says Jonathan Freedland, they just hurt ordinary Jews
Culture | Rock return “Validation was an insatiable monster”: Dave Grohl talks to Ben Beaumont-Thomas about Foo Fighters, life after his infidelity and grief for bandmate Taylor Hawkins
As fighting in the Middle East entered its third week, focus has shifted to Tehran’s closure of a key maritime passage, and the potentially huge global economic impact.
For our big story this week, Jillian Ambrose explains how the war in Iran has effectively blocked the Gulf states from exporting a fifth of the world’s oil supply through the strait of Hormuz. Peter Beaumont sets out the significance of the route and the possible options to counter the blockade, while Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports on the building anger and resentment in the region over being dragged into a war they did not start and had diplomatically tried to prevent.
Peter also looks at “the escalation trap” that lies ahead for both sides in the conflict, and we have on-the-ground reports from Jason Burke in northern Israel and William Christou in southern Lebanon, as well as a stark account of day-to-day life from inside Tehran.
Spotlight | ‘Extraordinary cruelty’ Kaamil Ahmed and Alex Clark examine the evidence that starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan
Technology | Star fruit As Apple reaches its half-century, Chris Stokel-Walker rounds up its biggest triumphs and flops
Feature | Feminism’s not dead! In a stirring riposte to all those who have declared the death of the women’s movement, Rebecca Solnit outlines the advances that have been made and argues it’s no time to give up the fight
Opinion | The British right’s Maga obsession UK conservatives were once hostile to the US, but now are keen to emphasise loyalty to Trump above all else, writesKojo Koram
Culture | One win after another After 11 nominations without a single win, film-maker Paul Thomas Anderson deservedly struck gold at the Oscars with One Battle After Another, says Xan Brooks
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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