When it gets going, the Netflix show is a pleasingly fraught watch about an Iranian mole, packed with risky missions and heroic acts. Breathtaking stuff

The Night Agent started life as a determined little underdog. Uncool, old-fashioned and on the wrong side of Netflix’s tendency to hype some shows while leaving others unloved, it had to fight its way into the streaming platform’s most-viewed section and critics’ best-of-2023 lists, which it did simply by being a sturdily constructed, twist-packed conspiracy thriller. Once viewers switched it on, they couldn’t switch it off.

It concerns Night Action, an awkwardly named arm of the American intelligence services that is so secret it doesn’t officially exist. When we met him, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) was its most junior employee, answering the landline phone that rang in the White House basement when an agent needed assistance. By the end of the first season, Peter’s courage, hand-to-hand combat skills and, most of all, his unswerving, country-serving, square-jawed moral code had seen him single-handedly foil a presidential assassination plot.

The photographer’s exhibition, which features images of Noel Gallagher, took place after donation to the gallery’s £40m makeover

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has been accused of nepotism after it hosted a photography exhibition by a large donor to its £40m makeover.

Zoë Law’s work is on display until 2 March in the Studio Gallery and Spotlight Space, with the organisation also acquiring her portrait of Noel Gallagher for its permanent collection.

We see untrammelled power with fawning courtiers. George Washington would have recognised the new system at the White House

Donald Trump’s triumphal return to the White House was American political theatre on steroids. This was, of course, exactly the returning president’s intention. “Shock and awe” was the en vogue phrase in the Trump camp to describe it, as the president sought to obliterate the Biden era in a blizzard of executive presidential orders and day-one Maga movement payoffs.

Trump’s second inauguration was exceptionally well worked. Where or whether it all lands in the form of delivered policy is a different issue. To some, it may feel petty to note that the last US “shock and awe” exercise – the Iraq invasion of 2003 – also generated a feast of indelible images of American power. But that one certainly did not end well.

From Trump’s Project 2025 to a huge aid cut by the Dutch, donors are turning their backs on the developing world

Foreign aid spending reached a record high of $223bn (£180bn) in 2023, new figures released this week from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) confirmed.

Yet, in 2024, eight wealthy countries announced $17.2bn in cuts to official development assistance (ODA), and three others hinted at reductions, all to take effect over the next five years.

The author of books such as Slow Horses and Down Cemetery Road receives the prestigious Diamond Dagger award for his contribution to the genre

British writer Mick Herron, best known for his Slough House series beginning with Slow Horses, has been awarded the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger award for lifetime contribution to crime writing.

“To receive this accolade from these friends and colleagues is a career highlight and a personal joy,” said Herron. “I’m touched and thrilled beyond measure, and will try to live up to the honour.”

In interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, US president also hinted that predecessor Joe Biden made an error by not pardoning himself

Donald Trump has described attacks on police officers at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 as “very minor incidents” as he sought to defend his decision to pardon the insurrectionists.

The US president hinted that those who put him through “four years of hell” via criminal prosecutions should themselves be investigated, adding ominously that his predecessor Joe Biden made a mistake by not pardoning himself.

The US president has singled out China during his complaints about the Panama Canal – so what influence does Beijing have?

Donald Trump has repeatedly complained about the Panama Canal and the fees being charged, calling the vital transport corridor a “foolish gift [to Panama] that should never have been made” and threatening to take it back.

But he has also repeatedly accused China of being in control of it. At his inauguration Trump claimed without providing evidence that “China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back.”

Violent settlers descend on Sinjil and other West Bank towns to protest release of Palestinian prisoners

Sundus al-Fukaha was watching the news at home in the occupied West Bank village of Sinjil on Saturday evening when she heard the sound of running and muffled voices outside. The next thing she knew, a molotov cocktail thrown by an Israeli settler crashed through the window, setting the sofa and curtains on fire.

In a video taken by an elderly relative, one of Sundus’ daughters, aged 12, can be seen throwing a pot of water at the blaze, while her 14-year-old sister tries to smother the flames with a cushion.

Washington looks happy for the video app to harvest users’ data – as long as China does not reap the rewards

If the Chinese-owned TikTok is deemed definitively by the US to be a national security threat, it is hard to see how the UK or other western countries could conclude differently.

But the fact that Donald Trump has walked into the White House talking of a reprieve for the video-sharing network, which restored its service in the US after going dark for a day, suggests something simpler is at work – Trumpian geopolitics.

Mystery, magic and mayhem reigned behind the scenes as well as on screen. Mädchen Amick, Joan Chen, Dana Ashbrook and others recall the making of the beloved TV series – and the genius of David Lynch

David Lynch’s cult TV series Twin Peaks arrived in a world largely unprepared for its mix of glossy Americana, surrealism and horror. Since it was first broadcast in 1990, it has become part of television’s DNA, and stands as one of the greatest achievements of the lauded film-maker, who died last week.

Mark Frost (co-creator): I first met David Lynch in 1985. I had seen Eraserhead in 1979 at a midnight showing in Minneapolis, and I walked out with the oddest feeling and said: “Someday I’m going to work with that guy.” Six years later, a mutual agent of ours thought the two of us would be good to collaborate on a project they were representing, and fostered an introduction. We hit it off from the very first moment. We were laughing within minutes. We loved all the same movies, we knew all the same directors. That project went away, but then another agent approached us and said: “What do you guys think about doing a television project together?” We had nothing to lose.

For the children of the Nigerian diaspora, displaced by war and split between two worlds, footballers from John Fashanu to Jay-Jay Okocha were a first glimpse of themselves in Britain’s mainstream

They arrived in 80s London with small intentions: to study, to work, to outrun what they had come from, and then maybe, one day, return back home. A people who came en masse from Nigeria, working the dark hours, balancing two jobs with part-time education, rolling in a ceaseless loop of morning shifts into lectures into night work again, until maybe a qualification came good, and they could move into some kind of steady career or profession.

Many of us grew up with these stories, parents who worked quiet jobs for decades, who cleaned offices in the glass Canary Wharf skyscrapers before first light and then, in the summer evenings, waited on tables at Soho and Knightsbridge restaurants. Aunts and uncles and elders who earned their first wages in London at local bowling alleys and bingo halls, at cinemas and hospitals and care homes, moving anonymously through a looming city.

A decade ago, up to 1,000 of the apex predators lived in one South African bay. Now they have gone, fleeing from killer whales. But the gap they have left creates problems for other species

The first carcass of a great white, a small female, washed up in South Africa on 9 February 2017. The 2.6-metre-long body had no hook or net marks, ruling out human involvement. Whatever had killed her had vanished. So too had all the other great white sharks in Gansbaai on the Western Cape, Dr Alison Towner noticed.

“We had several sharks acoustically tagged, and later realised three had moved as far as Plettenberg Bay and Algoa Bay, more than 500km [300 miles] east,” says the Rhodes University marine biologist.

Technology secretary Peter Kyle expresses fear of app being ‘propaganda vehicle’ but says it can deliver ‘exhilaration’ to users

TikTok’s power to deliver “exhilaration” and the UK’s relationship with China are shaping the UK government’s acceptance of the short video app despite “genuine concerns” about how the data of millions of Britons may be used, the technology secretary has said.

After the US courts upheld a law that could lead to the platform being banned or sold in the US, Peter Kyle told the Guardian: “I am genuinely concerned about the ownership model of TikTok. I’m genuinely concerned about their use of data, linked to the ownership model.”

Exclusive: Treasury analysis shows ticket prices expected to go up across board with no plans for frequent flyers to shoulder more of the cost

Rachel Reeves’s bid to expand Heathrow airport could add £40 to the cost of an airline ticket, according to the Treasury’s own analysis.

The chancellor’s proposal to minimise the carbon emissions of a bigger Heathrow include the use of sustainable aviation fuels, which experts say are expensive and unlikely to reach the scale needed for aviation expansion.

It’s Always Sunny’s Kaitlin Olson is incandescent as a police-department cleaner with an IQ of 160 whose crime-solving skills prove second to none. It’s such fun it should be showered with special awards

There is an episode of 30 Rock in which the star of the SNL-like show-within-the-show, Jenna Maroney, gets the lead role in a planned new police procedural: Goodlooking. She solves crimes by being really good at looking at things. Lo, and not for the first time where 30 Rock’s inventions are concerned, it has come to pass. And gloriously so. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … High Potential.

Kaitlin Olson (Hacks, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and no relation to the twins) plays Morgan, a feisty single mother of three, owner of many fantastic furry coats and a cleaner at the local police department. This includes the homicide offices, which is where she accidentally knocks a file to the ground and – as she gathers the spilled pages and photographs back together – solves the crime. She is a “good looker”, you see. I’m sorry, no. She is, we learn when the police tackle her about the untoward alterations made to their crime board by a civilian, a “high potential intellectual”. This is different from merely being clever. It means you also have great creativity, a photographic memory, obsessional tendencies and an ability to see further into brick walls than most – including grumpy police detectives.

In Girl from the North Country, Bob Dylan’s songs fuelled a tale of 1930s America. Todd Almond, who starred in the play on Broadway, revisits one of its most electrifying numbers in this extract from his oral history of the show

Todd Almond (actor in Broadway transfer): The song Like a Rolling Stone arrives at the end of Act One of Girl from the North Country, and although different from the majority of the show’s songs in that it was a recognisable Dylan hit, it stands as a great example of how the music functions in the show overall.

Shirley Henderson (sang the song in the original London production): I knew some of the songs but I had never listened to them the way I finally listened to them. That sweetness that was brought out. The melodies are so beautiful but you don’t always hear it because of the style of the singing. To have been able to work with this material and discover the beauty of the songs and the stories they tell, I have such huge respect for it. I have come to it a bit late in life and I came with no preconceptions but I have been moved by the brilliance of Bob Dylan.

The government has announced a public inquiry into why authorities failed to stop Axel Rudakubana before he killed three girls in Southport. But is it enough to stop another such attack? John Harris asks the counter-terrorism practitioner Rashad Ali. Plus, the Guardian political correspondent Kiran Stacey explores how Keir Starmer will deal with Donald Trump’s return

Ian Sample speaks to Keon West, a professor of social psychology at the University of London, whose new book, The Science of Racism, explores what science can reveal about racism, the inventive methods scientists have used to study it and the scientifically proven ways of tackling racism and discrimination

Order The Science of Racism by Keon West from the Guardian bookshop

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Devon and Cornwall police mount large operation and close off West Hoe Road after one person taken to hospital with serious injuries

Police said they were searching for a suspect after a serious assault in Plymouth left the victim in hospital.

Devon and Cornwall police said officers were called to the West Hoe area at 8.55pm on Wednesday after a person was found seriously injured in the street.

Keir Starmer plans to rapidly increase the amount of artificial intelligence used in the public sector. But what is the environmental cost? Helena Horton reports

Last week, Keir Starmer announced his plans to use artificial intelligence to drive “incredible change in our country”. Part of the strategy is to create “AI growth zones”, including one in Culham, Oxfordshire.

The decision caught the attention of the Guardian’s environment reporter Helena Horton.

Houthis in Yemen said 25-member crew of Galaxy Leader had been freed ‘in support’ of the Gaza ceasefire agreement

• See all our Middle East crisis coverage

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have released the crew of the Galaxy Leader more than a year after they seized the Bahamas-flagged vessel off the Yemeni Red Sea coast, Houthi-owned Al Masirah TV has reported.

It said on Wednesday the crew were handed to Oman “in coordination” with the three-day-old ceasefire in Gaza’s war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Theatre Royal Bath
While this 1960 play has been overtaken by faster-moving tales of Tudor chicanery, Martin Shaw is compelling as Thomas More

Among the abounding villains and backstabbers of the Tudor age stands Thomas More, a good man who dared to take a silent stand against King Henry VIII. But Robert Bolt’s play shows that being good could be just as dangerous for one’s head.

This 1960 drama, which takes us through More’s last years, was immensely successful in its time, transferring to Broadway and adapted for film with Paul Scofield. Jonathan Church’s new touring production is smart and handsome but feels like an old-fashioned history play, creaky in parts though still an ultimately moving portrait of quiet heroism.

Hospital wards struggle to cope with rising cases of self-harm and eating disorders, the study warns

The number of children admitted to acute hospital wards in England due to serious concerns over their mental health has increased by 65% in a decade, with a particularly alarming surge in girls who have self-harmed, research reveals.

Doctors are treating almost 40,000 children with acute mental ill health in general wards every year, up from about 24,000 10 years ago. The increase is six times higher than the rise in admissions of children for all conditions (10.1%) over the same period.

Letter from Academy leadership also says show will ‘move away’ from live performances to celebrate songwriters

The Oscars will go on as planned in March, though with special accommodations to acknowledge to devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, according to a new update from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A letter from the CEO, Bill Kramer, and president Janet Yang, sent to all members on Wednesday, confirmed that the ceremony will “celebrate the work that unites us as a global film community and acknowledge those who fought so bravely against the wildfires”.