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I watched Forest v Brentford on Thursday and I felt the Bees put in one of the best away performances I have seen all season. Very few teams make things look easy at the City Ground but they were ruthless in attack and barely gave Forest a sniff all game. Thomas Frank described it as 7/10 performance. United should be worried if they reach an 8/10 performance.

“Hello from the skies above Turkey, on my way to Abu Dhabi from Manchester,” emails Bob Boon from 38,000ft. “Hoping to watch Liverpool beat Chelsea while waiting for my next flight to Jeddah. A Man United loss in the meantime would keep me happy above the clouds.”

What a phoney war this proved to be. Eighty-four minutes into the Old Firm derby came its first booking, for the Rangers interim manager Barry Ferguson. Long before then, it had become apparent Rangers and Celtic would be pretty content to settle for a point each. These sides swung and comprehensively missed at each other for much of the 97 minutes played. This was no clash for the purist.

Celtic may be the happier when dust settles. They avoided three successive league defeats to their oldest foes – a feat Rangers last achieved in 1996-97 – and recovered from a goal behind. Celtic were the better team in the second period but Rangers always carried a counterattacking threat. Hamza Igamane and Nicolas Raskin should have done better when afforded late chances to win this for the hosts. Ferguson and his staff also appealed wildly but in vain for a penalty, nine minutes from time.

Debate around Joe Biden’s mental acuity and his age was a critical issue during the run up to the 2024 election

Joe Biden’s top staff debated the possibility of the embattled Democratic president taking a cognitive test last year as he geared up for re-election but eventually decided against the idea, a new book is set to reveal.

Debate around Biden’s mental acuity and his age was an acute issue during the run up to the 2024 election, which eventually saw Biden step down from his re-election campaign in favor of his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

The generations are more segregated than ever. Yet we have so much in common

I’ve always felt a bit pathetic for not having a proper peer group. In dark moments, it feels like a moral failing and an indictment of my social skills. In kinder moments I recognise it’s also partly a product of being sick and sad at university, then successively too pregnant, too preoccupied with babies and too peripatetic to make or maintain ties. In calmer times, I’ve forged slightly more of a social life, but mostly it’s not made up of my gen X peers, but rather people who are occasionally younger, usually significantly older. Now I’m wondering – am I lucky?

This thought was prompted by an Atlantic podcast discussing the demographic moment we’re living in – the usual pyramidal population structure is becoming squarer, with similar numbers of older and younger people – and asking whether we’re making the most of it. The conclusion was we probably aren’t.

At the heart of all Trump administration policies is ‘soft eugenics’ thinking – the idea that if you take away life-saving services, then only the strong will survive

English polymath Francis Galton formulated the concept of eugenics in 1883. Inspired by animal breeding, Galton encouraged people with “desirable” traits to procreate while discouraging or preventing those with “undesirable” traits from doing the same. As social and intellectual qualities were hereditarily “fixed”, he thought some groups were naturally superior. Galton constructed a racial hierarchy, with white Europeans at the top.

Eugenics has since played out in varying, always tragic ways. Attempted genocides and forced sterilization are first to mind, though the 20th century brought about the concept of soft eugenics: non-coercive methods of reducing certain conditions through individual choice and medical advice. Popularized in Nancy Stepan’s 1991 book, The Hour of Eugenics, “soft” eugenics is accomplished by indirect, environmental, and educational interventions while “hard” eugenics is marked by direct biological interventions (such as sterilization). The term has since been expanded in discussions of genetic technologies, prenatal screenings, and physical fitness.

Technology will soon be able to do everything we do – only better. How should we respond?

Right now, most big AI labs have a team figuring out ways that rogue AIs might escape supervision, or secretly collude with each other against humans. But there’s a more mundane way we could lose control of civilisation: we might simply become obsolete. This wouldn’t require any hidden plots – if AI and robotics keep improving, it’s what happens by default.

How so? Well, AI developers are firmly on track to build better replacements for humans in almost every role we play: not just economically as workers and decision-makers, but culturally as artists and creators, and even socially as friends and romantic companions. What place will humans have when AI can do everything we do, only better?

My father’s death from cancer showed me you need to look after your lungs. But apart from not smoking, what should you be doing? I headed to a laboratory, strapped on a mask and heart monitor and started pedalling …

Lungs are amazing. There they sit, inflating and deflating from dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn, sucking in air, stripping out oxygen and exchanging it for carbon dioxide. They do this 20,000 times a day, 7.5m times a year, 600m times in the average lifetime, keeping our trillions of cells ticking over and saving them from choking on their own exhaust fumes. And we ignore them until something goes wrong and we’re gasping, wheezing, panicking – or worse.

When I think about lungs, it’s often in the same breath as cancer, which killed my dad 39 years ago. He only realised his lungs were knackered after a heart attack, which was probably also down to smoking. Sixty Senior Service a day, cigarette number two often lit as soon as number one was stubbed out. He stopped overnight, but it was too late.

Will the cardinals follow Francis’s path or return to a more conservative doctrine? The white smoke will tell us which faction has won

• Ariel Beramendi worked at the Vatican for 18 years as an official in the Dicastery for Communication

As the cardinals ready themselves to select the next pope, one thing is certain: this will be the most unpredictable conclave in the recent history of the Catholic church. I worked in the Vatican for 18 years, and on my return to Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis last month, the tension and drama were already palpable.

Some observers and former colleagues I spoke to believe this will be a particularly difficult conclave, given its size – 133 electors, as opposed to 117 last time – and the fact that many of the cardinals don’t know one another. This is down to Francis diversifying the college, appointing cardinals from all over the world: a full 108 of the current crop were his selections. Others suggest the electors will try to reach a decision in less than a week to avoid the appearance of a divided church.

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

Writer, actor and director Lawrence Valin says that in Little Jaffna he wanted to ‘show new role models’

It has been hailed as one of the most innovative and surprising French gangster films this year: a suspense movie that tears through Paris’s Tamil neighbourhood.

The police thriller Little Jaffna, which opened in France this week, is set in the French capital’s Tamil community, which has rarely been represented on screen – and never in an action film by a French actor, writer and director of Tamil heritage giving his inside take on the legacy of Sri Lanka’s bloody ethnic conflict for younger generations living far away in Europe.

Chainsaws, lawsuits and thundering silence – but no mention of the words ‘my bad’

Note: Your answers to this quiz may be subject to subpoena by the Department of Justice.

Lawrence Douglas is a professor of law at Amherst College in Massachusetts

A respectful homage to the classic caesar, using plant-based ingredients to hit the same flavour notes

If I’ve learned anything from almost 40 days of plant-based eating, it’s that an homage doesn’t have to be indistinguishable from the original to hit the same spot; it simply needs to sing equivalent notes to much the same tune. Those notes, in this case, are a green salad, a thick, umami-spiked dressing and savoury croutons, all tossed in a pitch-perfect combination of flavours (milky lettuce, salty fish, rich fat) and textures (crisp leaves, creamy dressing, crunchy toasted bread). So, while the recipe below isn’t pretending to be an authentic classic caesar, consider it a very decent and, I hope, similarly pleasing cover version.

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1 min: Just 55 seconds into the match, Balogan rises completely unmarked from a Rangers corner and pops a bullet header onto the top of the crossbar! He should have done better, there was a key block from Raskin on Scales to create room for chance. Oooooo, that’s a big miss, and right in front of the travelling Celtic fans as well.

We are underway in the Old Firm.

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United kick off proceedings at Old Trafford!

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Williams 0-0 Xintong (0-64) Email! “Battle of the dragons: Chinese v Welsh,” begins Andrew Goudie. “I hope they’ve invited Tony Drago(n) from Malta, also famous for having a dragon on its flag.” And the quickest player ever; him and Jimmy White were quite the doubles partnership. Anyroad, Zhao flukes a red, snuggles up to the brown, and Mark misses his escape … twice … thrice … before hitting. There are 85 points left on the table.

Williams 0-0 Xintong (0-51) The last qualifier to win the worlds was Shaun Murphy in 2025, but Zhao’s started like he means it. He breaks the pack nicely … then a lax positional shot means end of break; he does well not to attempt a wild pot, fired by disappointment, and to play a decent safety.

Victims have had fingers chopped off by attackers in crimewave targeting entrepreneurs and their families

French police are investigating a series of kidnappings of investors linked to cryptocurrency after a 60-year-old man had a finger chopped off by attackers who demanded his crypto-millionaire son pay a ransom.

In the latest of several kidnappings of cryptocurrency figures in France and western Europe, the man, who owned a cryptocurrency marketing company with his son, was freed from a house south of Paris on Saturday night. He had been held for more than two days.

US president displays ‘pathological megalomania’ as cardinals gather to elect new pope after death of Francis

Donald Trump has been accused of mocking the election of a new leader of the Catholic church after posting an artificial intelligence-generated picture of himself as the pope on social media.

The image, shared on Friday night on Trump’s Truth Social site and the White House’s official X account, raised eyebrows at the Vatican, which is still in the period of nine days of official mourning after Pope Francis’s funeral on 26 April.

Survivors of abuse in county-run children’s homes say closure will not come until ‘monsters’ are held accountable

Thousands of victims of abuse in juvenile facilities and foster homes across Los Angeles are being compensated for decades of mistreatment in a historic settlement, but some say the money will never rectify a system that hurt vulnerable children and protected their abusers.

LA county officials this week unanimously approved a landmark $4bn settlement to address nearly 7,000 claims of sexual abuse at county-run facilities. Some of those claims date back to the 1950s, but most took place throughout the 1980s through the 2000s. The payout is the largest of its kind in US history.

The US’s greatest strategic advantage is its friendly neighbors. But its ties to Canada and Mexico are being undermined

The secret to American power and pre-eminence was best summed up more than a century ago.

America, observed Jean Jules Jusserand, France’s ambassador to the United States during the first world war, “is blessed among the nations”. To the north and south were friendly and militarily weak neighbors; “on the east, fish, and the west, fish”. The United States was and is both a continental power and, in strategic terms, an island – with all the security those gifts of geography provide. No world power has ever been as fortunate. This unique physical security is the real American exceptionalism.

Gil Barndollar is a non-resident fellow at the Defense Priorities Foundation. Rajan Menon is Spitzer professor emeritus of international relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and a senior research scholar at the Saltzman Institute at Columbia University.

A collective is breathing new life into inchunwa for south-eastern Indigenous people across the US

Receiving her inchunwa was not something Faithlyn Taloa Seawright did lightly, but when the moment “just felt right”, she knew it was time. Seawright, who was the 2024 Miss Indian Oklahoma and a previous Chickasaw Princess, had long studied the tradition that she inherited from her ancestors.

In Choctaw and Chickasaw languages, inchunwa means “to be marked, branded or tattooed”. So receiving inchunwa, or traditional Indigenous tattoos, is something that must be done with reverence, Seawright said. The practice was once common among the south-eastern Indigenous nations (Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee and others), but after colonization the tradition faded away for many.

High-concept fiction is having a moment. Funny, inventive and crackling with big ideas, these ambitious stories will have you instantly hooked

Florence Knapp’s first novel The Names, publishing this month, tells not one story but three. As it opens, a mother is preparing to take her newborn boy to formally register his name. Will it be Bear, as his older sister would like, her own choice of Julian, or Gordon, named after his controlling father? The universe pivots on the decision she makes. Knapp plaits together the three stories that follow to trace the three different worlds in which the boy grows to manhood. Think of it as Sliding Doors for nominative determinism.

In this universe, at least, it is going like gangbusters. Described as “the book of the fair” at Frankfurt two years ago, Knapp’s publisher secured the rights in a 13-way auction and it’s already due to appear in 20 languages. It is a prime example of a renewed interest in what might be called “high-concept fiction”.

Ignorance no barrier as president begins to put out approved version of history that ignores American failures

Donald Trump, it could be said, takes a breezy, Sam Cooke style approach to history.

Like the legendary “king of soul” in his 1960 hit Wonderful World, the US president has admitted to not knowing much about historical events or figures of the past – even when faced with authorities on the subject.

They clashed on net zero, diversity and fashion. Was the chocolate-chip ice-cream the only thing they did agree on?

Michael, 43, Isle of Man

Occupation Communications director

Uncertainty generated by tariff policy underlines US president seemingly unable to choose a path and stick to it

Ten days reporting from the US – in Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and just across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia – gave me a fascinating snapshot of what feels like the slow-motion unravelling of the world’s largest economy.

So many conversations featured uncertainty and wariness; and weariness, too, as businesses and consumers weigh up every decision, against the backdrop of the chaos emanating from the White House.

Fried pickles, or frickles, have been on US menus for decades. Now they’re having a moment in the UK, in restaurants, chippies and even Aldi. I tested the best brands for home battering

The fried pickle – or frickle – is an on-trend appetiser with a murky provenance. Allegedly, it dates back to the early 1960s, originating at a drive-in restaurant in Arkansas run by an individual who laboured under the name Bernell “Fatman” Austin. Frickles are generally deep-fried, like onion rings, and usually accompanied by a gloopy dipping sauce such as aioli, dill and caper yoghurt or ranch dressing.

Frickles aren’t exactly new to the UK – they first started appearing on restaurant menus about a decade ago – but now they’re beginning to turn up at chippies. In January, Aldi launched a frozen version.

Health secretary asks public to give government time as he calls Farage’s party a ‘serious opposition force’

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Wes Streeting has said Reform is a real threat and could replace the Conservatives as the main opposition party by the next election, as he urged the public to give Labour the “benefit of the doubt”.

The health secretary said Nigel Farage’s party was being treated as a “serious opposition force” after Reform’s success in the local elections, where it narrowly won a byelection from Labour and took 677 council seats, gaining control of 10 councils. Reform took most seats from the Conservatives, who lost 674, while Labour lost 187.

The president started his second term fast and furious with a flurry of activity – much of it legally dubious – but analysts say the honeymoon is over

“Not just courageous” but “actually fearless” said Doug Burgum. The “first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever,” said Pam Bondi. “Most” of the presidents whose portraits adorn the Oval Office – which include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan – were mere “placeholders” who were not “men of action”, mused JD Vance.

Before the TV cameras on Wednesday, top cabinet officials took turns drenching Donald Trump with praise that some critics found evocative of politics in North Korea. Yet beyond the walls of the White House, the mood was shifting. New data showed the economy is shrinking. The national security adviser was about to be ousted. Opinion polls told of a president whose unpopularity is historic.

Fans poured on to Copacabana beach from around Brazil for show that beat Madonna’s record audience size

More than 2 million people packed Copacabana beach on Saturday night for a free Lady Gaga concert, breaking a Rio de Janeiro record set last year by Madonna.

An estimated 2.1 million “Little Monsters” – as Lady Gaga’s fans are known – turned Rio’s beachside neighbourhood into “Gagacabana” for the largest show of the pop star’s career. The turnout topped Madonna’s free mega-show last year, which drew 1.6 million to the Brazilian city’s shores.

January’s blazes in California have devastated the livelihoods of performers, technicians and other music industry pros. They reveal what they lost – and how they’re rebuilding

Within the ashes of what used to be Christopher Fudurich’s home in Los Angeles, some objects from his garage music studio were still identifiable. Microphones charred and blackened, a scorched keyboard and melted cables among the toxic debris. Not just objects; a life’s work, passion and creativity burned up. “Things I’d been collecting since I was a teenager,” says the songwriter, producer and sound technician. “Just gone.”

This was the reality confronted by Fudurich, and thousands of other Angelenos, following January’s wildfires. Their homes have been damaged or levelled, their possessions destroyed. The fortunate ones fled with what they could; for Fudurich that was some treasured vintage synthesisers, a bag of clothes and his passport.

A challenging solo hike through stunning Provençal scenery is eased by lovely inns, dining by the seaside and leaving the planning to the experts

Behind Cassis beach, the castle-topped cliffs glint red-gold in the late afternoon sun. Couples stroll on the sand, kids play on the carousel, pastel-coloured buildings reflect in the still waters of the old harbour. In the main square, lined by plane trees, a group of elderly men concentrate on a game of petanque. It’s a charming slice of Provençal life, a world away from the Cote D’Azur’s more glitzy hotspots. In summer, tourists flock to the narrow streets and pretty coast, but off season the buzz is gentler, with weekenders feasting on bouillabaisse along the water’s edge.

I grab a seat at a bar overlooking the Med and check out my walking route for the next day. Cassis is in the heart of the Calanques national park – an extraordinary place of steep fjord-like limestone inlets, deep green pines and turquoise sea – perfect for exploring on foot. It’s a fitting finale to a solo self-guided hiking trip with Macs Adventure, which has taken me from the Sainte-Baume mountains down to the Riviera over six days. While my hiking legs have been put to the test with up to six hours of walking each day, I’ve not had to worry about logistics. The routes are plotted on the app and my luggage is transferred ahead, leaving me to simply enjoy the scenery.

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Quoting from Andy Hunter’s piece on Slot’s rotation plans for the rest of the season, this might be an answer…

Perhaps Chiesa could get his long-awaited opportunity in a central striking role? He made a goalscoring impact in that position when introduced against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup final. Liverpool will target a new centre-forward this summer and there is uncertainty over the futures of both Núñez and Jota. Chiesa could also decide to leave after only one season unless he is able to provide effective cover in a second forward position.

A side made up of players from the European Union would be an ambitious project but the rewards could be pleasing for a continent looking to become more united

Imagine the scene: the television is on, the screen showing images of a packed stadium. Rodri collects the ball in midfield and launches it down the wing to Lamine Yamal, who switches play to Kylian Mbappé; the Frenchman swivels past two defenders before crossing for Robert Lewandowski, who surges forward and finishes with precision past Ederson in goal. Europe are leading the Rest of the World 1-0.

Could the European Union have a football team, even if it is just for one game every other year? Why not? It is an ambitious idea that, paradoxically, could be both concrete and relevant. In an era marked by challenges to the cohesion of the union, conceiving a footballing Dream Team of the 27 countries is, in fact, one of the more plausible ways to give the continent a dimension beyond the economy or, as is highly relevant at the moment, the military.

We need a society that supports parents and makes good food choices achievable – not more lecturing of exhausted mums

Like many modern mothers, I have on occasion piped cold bolognese directly from a pouch into my small child’s open mouth and, radical though it may seem, I refuse to feel guilty about it. There is a lot of panic about ultra-processed foods (UPFs), and baby food pouches, with their high sugar content and dubious nutritional value, are the latest targets. Researchers at the University of Leeds School of Food Science and Nutrition found that 41% of main meals marketed for children had sugar levels that were too high and that 21% of ready-to-eat fruit products, cereals and meals were too watery and not providing adequate nutrition.

It’s not great. But is it news? No parent picks up something called “Heinz fruity banana custard” believing it a fantastic alternative to actual mashed banana, yet this is being treated as the Watergate of the under-4s sandpit crowd. I’m starting to wonder if people have lost their collective minds over processed food. I even saw one comment calling for the death penalty for baby food producers. Baby pouch hysteria is the perfect new addition to the maternal guilt industrial complex.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist. The Republic of Parenthood book will be published this summer

How to beat the scam, from setting up new passwords and telling your bank exactly what you are doing

“Hi mum,” the first message starts, “I’ve lost my phone.” It carries on with a tale of woe: for some reason the sender has also been locked out of his or her bank account.

Luckily a friend is often on hand to help – it’s their phone that the message comes from, apparently – and if you could just transfer some money to their account that would be great. Alternatively, you might be asked to pay the rent, direct to a landlord, or foot some other urgent bill that has arrived at this time of crisis.

Christian Doyle’s series Quietly Getting On focuses on women in their late 80s and 90s, their memories of a wartime childhood and how they live now

As a way of maintaining contact with my elderly neighbours during the Covid restrictions of 2020, we set up a project where each person held up a card showing the age they felt inside. From their life stories, a new idea formed in my mind.

This is a generation of women who had experienced first-hand the impact of war on the domestic front, who had been evacuated to strangers across the country, not seeing their parents for months on end. Maybe these experiences created a different mindset; a resilience and stoicism, where the self is less important than being part of a community.

Anthony Albanese gets back to work after celebratory brunch in Sydney – saying, ‘We’ve got a big job to do’

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Anthony Albanese says his job is to “represent Australia’s national interest” after his thumping election win, shrugging off questions about when he might visit the United States to speak to Donald Trump about tariffs and trade.

The re-elected prime minister said he had spoken to the leaders of Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, France and the UK, and looked forward to calls with the presidents of Indonesia and Ukraine.

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Companies deploy highly-paid lawyers and appear to mislead councillors – but local authorities are fighting back

It is almost 2am in Peterborough and a handful of punters are wordlessly feeding their money into the machines at Merkur Slots.

A fragment of a song, the lyric “nothing to lose”, drifts through the shop as their funds rapidly evaporate. Closing time is fast approaching, but that does not mean the end of the gambling.

We can no longer rely on the rest of the world to provide the lead – the future is ours to make

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Thank you, Donald Trump.

Australians are much better at defining who they are by identifying what they are not, rather than by making lofty statements. And they have now said unequivocally that they are not angry little Americans, cultural warriors or self-interested libertarians.

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• US swim star Ledecky smashes record set at Rio Games
• Gretchen Walsh sets world record in 100m butterfly

Katie Ledecky broke new ground once again on Saturday, shattering her own world record in the 800m freestyle with a time of 8min 4.12sec at the Tyr Pro Swim Series in Fort Lauderdale.

The 28-year-old American improved on the 8:04.79 mark she set at the 2016 Rio Olympics, notching her first long-course world record since 2018 and reaffirming her dominance in the distance freestyle events.

• Saints beat Irish province to make Champions Cup final
• Phil Dowson says his players enhanced Lions prospects

Northampton hope their extraordinary semi-final win over Leinster will be a springboard to further personal and collective success in the coming weeks. The Saints director of rugby, Phil Dowson, also believes several of his players have “undoubtably” enhanced their British & Irish Lions selection chances before Thursday’s tour squad announcement.

Henry Pollock and Fin Smith, along with hat-trick try-scorer Tommy Freeman, could not have made a better impression on a high-pressure stage and Dowson believes Pollock’s exuberance is beneficial to any team. “It’s infectious and spreads throughout the team,” said Dowson. “Leinster are one of the best sides in Europe and the world. For our players to perform on that stage and execute under that pressure speaks volumes for them.”