Given what gen Z have been through, it’s no wonder they’re not impressed by democracy. But giving them a real stake in it could change everything

For God’s sake don’t give them the vote! Many people said that after a shocking poll published this week appeared to show young people rejecting democracy. But that’s utterly wrong. On the contrary, this should prompt Labour to accelerate its manifesto pledge to give 16- and 17-year-olds the vote. They need more democracy, not less, and soon.

The Channel 4 poll found that 52% of 13- to 27-year-olds think “the UK would be a better place if a strong leader” were in change “who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”, and 33% thought the country would be better run “if the army was in charge”, among other dark impulses.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

• World Athletics president ‘has no idea’ about his chances
• Lord Coe thought to be neck-and-neck with Samaranch Jr

No sooner had the crucial presentations for the biggest job in sport ended than the guessing games began. Sebastian Coe mixed flattery with oratory over the course of his 15-minute pitch for the job of International Olympic Committee president, before promising the IOC’s 110 members he would lead them into a glorious new era. But then came the caveat.

It came when Coe was asked how he believed he stood in a contest that some observers increasingly believe is a direct battle between him and the Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.

The president wants to detain thousands of people at a site that is notorious for its secrecy and history of abuse

It has been denounced as “America’s gulag”: a secretive, abuse-ridden Caribbean prison camp for terror suspects that Donald Rumsfeld once said contained “the worst of the worst”.

“All of us have scars in our souls, deformities, from living at Guantánamo,” a former Yemeni inmate recalled of his time at the notorious military detention facility in south-east Cuba.

Cross-party group on tax calls for HMRC to act after Guardian investigation finds former Chelsea owner may owe up to £1bn

• Roman Abramovich may owe HMRC £1bn, analysis shows
• Revealed: how Abramovich dodged taxes on his fleet of superyachts

The government and HM Revenue and Customs should urgently examine whether Roman Abramovich owes British tax authorities up to £1bn, more than 40 MPs and peers have said, after an investigation by the Guardian and media partners found that his companies may have failed to pay tax on profits from an elaborate offshore investment scheme.

The intervention, from both Conservative and Labour MPs, comes after leaked papers and court filings shed new light on how the income from a $6bn (£4.8bn) cash pile amassed by the former Chelsea FC owner was managed.

Merkel made the rare public statement criticising the CDU leader, Friedrich Merz, for breaking a ‘firewall’ in the Bundestag vote

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has criticised Friedrich Merz, her successor as leader of the country’s conservatives, for pushing through proposals on migration and asylum with the backing of the far-right AfD.

In a rare intervention in public affairs since stepping down from politics in December 2021, Merkel said that Merz, who is tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor, had in effect performed a U-turn.

Handover delayed by jostling crowd in Khan Younis, Gaza, with Netanyahu suspending release of Palestinian prisoners

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Three Israelis and five Thai citizens held in Gaza have been freed, as Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy met hostages’ relatives, reportedly telling them he was optimistic the ceasefire would hold to allow the return of all the living and the dead.

The handover on Thursday of seven hostages in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was delayed by a chaotic crowd surging towards the group, despite an escort of heavily armed militants, jostling and blocking their passage to waiting Red Cross vehicles.

José Raúl Mulino rules out talks on waterway with secretary of state: ‘That is sealed. The canal belongs to Panama’

• Trump says China is ‘operating’ the Panama canal – here are the facts

Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, has ruled out discussing control over the Panama Canal in a meeting with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is set to visit the Central American country in his first official trip abroad this weekend.

Mulino’s comments during a weekly press conference come after Donald Trump threatened to take control of the canal, claiming it is being operated by China. The Panamanian government strongly denies the accusation.

More than 60 people are believed to have died after an American Airlines regional passenger jet collided with a US army helicopter

• Washington DC plane crash – latest updates
• First confirmed victims include figure skating champions

An American Airlines jet with 60 passengers and four crew members onboard collided with an army helicopter carrying three soldiers while landing at Reagan National airport in Washington DC on Wednesday evening.

Officials are making clean-energy moves in California, New York and beyond, and Republican states will be integral too

As the Trump administration rolls back decades-old environmental protections and pulls Biden-era incentives for renewable energy, state-level advocates and officials are preparing to fill the void in climate action.

Some state leaders are preparing to legally challenge the president’s environmental rollbacks, while others are testifying against them in Congress. Meanwhile, advocates are pushing for states to meet their ambitious climate goals using methods and technologies that don’t require federal support.

Sundance film festival: The cult of celebrity is targeted in a progressively nonsensical and poorly made debut with too much on its plate

Anyone who has written about a much-loved music star with even the vaguest hint of light criticism will be aware of the horrors that can often follow. The tribal intensity of extremely online and extremely sensitive fandoms can lead to either a mild torrent of more tolerable abuse or something far darker, like death threats and sometimes doxing, an unending rage erupting from people who use emojis as avatars. There’s a great thriller to be made about this unpleasant tension, the fans who will do anything for their idol and the idol who will do nothing to stop them, but Opus, a poppy new A24 misfire premiering at Sundance, is not that movie.

It’s the first film from the writer-director Mark Anthony Green, who, like many before him, is so fixated on what he wants to say that he hasn’t been able to figure out how to say it. There’s maybe a slicker, simpler and more satisfying murder mystery to be told here – an assortment of media types picked off one-by-one at the remote ranch of a reclusive pop star – but he’s challenged himself with something far harder and ultimately too far out of his reach.

Bill introduced to parliament includes new offences hoped to disrupt small boat crossings by targeting people smugglers

• UK politics live – latest updates

People seeking asylum on small boats who refuse to be rescued by the French authorities could receive sentences of up to five years under a new law meant to disrupt irregular Channel crossings.

A bill introduced to parliament will also allow people smugglers to be jailed for up to 14 years for handling small boat parts, and will strengthen police powers to seize laptops, financial assets and mobile phones from suspected smugglers.

Road outside high court blocked in protest at ‘draconian’ sentences given to 16 Just Stop Oil ‘political prisoners’

Hundreds of protesters have blocked the road outside the high court in London, where the appeals of 16 jailed climate activists are being heard, in condemnation of “the corruption of democracy and the rule of law”.

As England’s most senior judge heard arguments in the appeal of the sentences of the Just Stop Oil activists, who are serving a combined 41 years in jail, their supporters sat on the road in silence holding placards proclaiming them “political prisoners”.

• Tadhg Beirne moves into second row to partner Ryan
• Leinster playmaker Prendergast keeps hold of No 10 shirt

The Ireland lock Joe McCarthy will miss Saturday’s Six Nations opener against England due to injury. The interim head coach, Simon Easterby, has moved Tadhg Beirne into the second row to replace McCarthy, with Ryan Baird given a rare international start after being named at blindside flanker.

The Leinster fly-half Sam Prendergast is again preferred to Munster’s Jack Crowley, having worn the No 10 jersey for his country’s final two autumn fixtures, victories over Fiji and Australia.

Mayor caps tourist bus numbers after thousands of visitors descend on Roccaraso, clogging roads and leaving litter

The mayor of a popular Italian ski resort is clamping down on day-trippers after the town was suddenly overwhelmed by 260 buses bringing more than 10,000 visitors from Naples and the surrounding Campania region, lured by a TikTok star and cheap tickets.

The onslaught on Sunday severely clogged the road leading up to Roccaraso, nestled in the mountains of Abruzzo, and overcrowded its ski slopes. Residents were furious after the crowds, many of whom brought picnics, left the resort strewn with rubbish.

The actor on saying yes to everything except pornography, working with ‘sweet’ Mick Jagger and why he wants to play a detective like Humphrey Bogart

What do you think is the dark “thing” directors see in you when they cast you as the antagonist? link98
That is assuming they see a dark thing, right? There have been quite a lot of those nasty ones. I honestly don’t know, because I think I’m quite nice.

Your performance often explores complex, morally ambiguous characters, from Christian in The Square to Dracula. What draws you to these roles, and how do you approach finding humanity in such layered, sometimes dark, figures? WeirdDug
I’m drawn because there’s often more to play with. You can get out all your Legos and have fun. It’s quite fulfilling. Dracula’s not so nice, but he’s so over the top and actually quite sympathetic. Then the next bit of the question comes into play: where do I find the humanity? I always look for something I can relate to – the inferiority complexes, the insecurity – and that becomes the humanity.

Thousands left hopeless as new administration has been relentlessly and systematically dismantling safety nets

Mass deportation – at least in theory – is apparently popular among the American people.

So over and over again, Trump and his allies have loudly touted their plans to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, initially focusing on those with criminal records. In doing so, they’ve redirected the US public’s attention toward their “shock and awe” tactics that led to thousands of arrests across the country in less than a week.

The poet, author and musician fell during a performance with Soundwalk Collective, who later posted ‘she is being cared for by the best doctors’

Patti Smith collapsed during a performance in Brazil after experiencing a severe migraine for several days. Smith, 78, was performing with the Berlin group Soundwalk Collective, in which she recites her writing to a musical backing.

Associated Press reported that the newspaper Folha de S Paulo said that Smith passed out about 30 minutes into the event while reading a piece about the climate crisis. After falling, she was taken backstage in a wheelchair.

Star says she looks forward to playing the last days of ‘this iconic woman’ for whom Edward VIII abdicated the throne

Joan Collins is to play Wallis Simpson in a new biopic focusing on the US socialite’s final years.

The film, currently titled The Bitter End (and previously known as In Bed with the Duchess), will be directed by Four Weddings and a Funeral’s Mike Newell and depict the last years of Simpson, who died in Paris in 1986, aged 89.

President Tshisekedi vows ‘a vigorous and coordinated response’ to the M23 group

Rwandan-backed rebels have pushed south and consolidated gains in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, as international calls for restraint appeared to have little impact on the ground.

Local sources told Agence France-Presse that fighters from the M23 group had seized two districts in South Kivu province as they advanced towards the provincial capital Bukavu. “There was no fighting” in the latest advance, a local civil society leader said.

As Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag turns 60, we rate the prolific funk/soul powerhouse’s finest studio, live and soundtrack albums

If you want a roll call of James Brown’s formative influences, just check the covers on this album: Hank Ballard, Roy “Good Rockin’ Tonight” Brown, dirty blues supremo Bull Moose Jackson and Billy Ward’s impressively morbid The Bells, which – never knowingly understated – Brown used to perform on stage with a doll representing his lover’s corpse.

Hundred-metre wide asteroid rises to top of impact risk lists after being spotted in December by automated telescope

A 100 metre-wide asteroid has triggered global planetary defence procedures for the first time after telescope observations revealed it has a chance of colliding with Earth in 2032.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 was spotted by an automated telescope in Chile on 27 December last year but has since risen to the top of impact risk lists maintained by the US and European space agencies.

The final night of the group stage produced plenty of drama. We hand out honours and dishonours from the latest round of action

Manchester City

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

The South American country has begun exploration in its Atlantic waters, with experts warning it is endangering livelihoods, marine life and climate goals

When he hears the news, the only words that fisher Francisco Méndez can use are those of war. “What they are planning to do is like dropping a bomb – and when you drop the bomb, everything dies,” says the 41-year-old father of five.

For 22 years, Méndez has sailed into the Atlantic Ocean, fishing for brotula and striped weakfish alongside his father, brothers and uncles. He is also joined, occasionally, by dolphins and whales, curious about his white and orange vessel. But now Méndez fears his family’s way of life and livelihood are under threat.