The far right is using pork consumption as a means to exclude, just as it was in the Inquisition. It should be a source of joy and community Spain makes the best ham in the world, and a multitude of incredible pork-based dishes. You have your crunchy, salty torreznos de Soria, fried cubes of pork belly, which make for a fantastic bar snack. Or cochinillo asado, a suckling pig that’s traditionally roasted in a wood oven, and so tender that it’s cut with a plate instead of a knife when serving. For the more adventurous, I recommend exploring the world of regional morcillas or blood sausages. Morcilla de Burgos, made with rice and on the harder side, keeps its structure very well and makes an excellent pintxo when sliced and fried. Or there is the moist and spreadable morcilla de León, which my local butcher sells in jars. Another to look out for is the Basque morcilla de Beasain – made with leeks, it combines fantastically with black beans, cabbage and pickled green chillies to make one of the tastiest stews you’ll ever have. At the pinnacle, you have the gastronomic and cultural phenomenon that is jamón ibérico. It is distinct from lesser forms of jamón as it comes from the famed Iberian pigs, the best varieties of which are fed on acorns. You’ll see whole legs of it hanging in bars and restaurants across the country, and they’re a staple of the Spanish Christmas hamper, often raffled off by bars to their regular customers. Its standing in Spanish culture transcends the food world: Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz met while filming Jamón Jamón, in which the former beats his love rival to death with a leg of ham. Meanwhile, lower-league football side CD Guijelo’s away kit sees them dressed as a plate of the stuff. It finds its way into Spain’s public festivities, such as the Lance al Jamón in the walled city of Morella, where participants have to climb its walls and grab a leg of ham hanging from the ceiling. The contestant able to hang on the longest gets to keep it. Abbas Asaria is a food writer and chef based in Madrid Continue reading...

Sector bounces back as consumers focus on provenance and healthy eating, but is still well behind Europe Consumers searching for healthy food from trusted sources have fuelled the UK organic market’s biggest boom in two decades, according to vegetable box seller Riverford. The delivery business, which sells meat, cheese, cookbooks and recipe boxes alongside vegetables, recorded a 6% increase in sales to £117m in the year to May 2025, as the UK organic food and drink market grew by almost 9% in that year, according to new figures from the Soil Association. The strong growth, significantly outpacing the wider food market, helped the employee-owned business give a £1.1m bonus to workers. Continue reading...

UPFs are made to encourage addiction and consumption and should be regulated like tobacco, say researchers Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter regulation, according to a new report. UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to the parallels in widespread health harms that link both. Continue reading...

At first, Mike made Tamsin feel good about herself – and his love-bombing led her to leave her family and resign from her job. Soon she had lost her car, phone and all her money Tamsin met Mike in the summer of 2022. He was a mechanic in a garage that she walked past twice each day between home and work. After a while, he’d call out “good morning” or “good evening” and she’d wave and smile back. Then the exchanges got a little longer. (“Hard day?” “Looking forward to dinner?”) Six months later, Mike and Tamsin exchanged numbers. Within two years, her life was wrecked. She had left her marriage, lost her home, quit her job, and sold her car and her phone, spent all her savings and racked up tens of thousands in debt. (Under her current repayment plan, it will take another eight and a half years to pay back her creditors.) Tamsin’s story seems scarcely credible and she is mortified to have to tell it. She stumbles through, piles of notes on her lap and a support worker from Victim Support at her side. Every few minutes, she breaks off to say, “It sounds so stupid”, “I sound like an absolute nutter” or “Where was my head?” In truth, she spent two years in the company of a psychopath, a master manipulator. He is in prison now, serving a 22-year sentence, but not for romance fraud, or anything involving Tamsin. Her experience, police have told her, “would not stand up in court”. Continue reading...

Annual review highlights growing capabilities of AI models, while examining issues from cyber-attacks to job disruption The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market. Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu. Continue reading...

Work by almost 70 artists – including Marina Abramović – has made an art fair in Kochi one of the hottest tickets in south Asia. This sixth instalment uses farmers’ fields and patched-up buildings to take visitors ‘back to nature’ Say someone brings you a bouquet of flowers. You get a vase and one by one intuitively place each stem inside, allowing an arrangement to unfold on its own. It was on this level, as lead curator Nikhil Chopra suggests, that the Kochi-Muziris Biennale was not curated so much as created. On a stroll through the largest contemporary art biennale in south Asia, creation takes centre stage. Against the backdrop of the coastal city’s lush strip of backwaters and the historic Fort Kochi, works by 66 artists animate Kerala’s grand colonial warehouses and bungalows where art feels less installed than encountered. Continue reading...

In spring 2003, exuberance at the fall of Saddam was swiftly followed by a descent into deadly chaos. Whether moving independently or embedded with troops, Guardian reporters witnessed the violence on the ground The allied attack on Iraq began on 20 March 2003. The Guardian’s 4am edition on Friday 21 March carried the headline: “Land, sea and air assault.” The report was by Julian Borger in Washington and Rory McCarthy in Camp As Sayliyah, on the outskirts of Doha, the capital of Qatar. It opened: “The ground war began in Iraq last night as British and American marines stormed beaches on the Gulf coast in an assault on the south-eastern city of Basra, while explosions lit up Baghdad under a heavy bombardment by cruise missiles.” The first British fatalities came shortly afterwards when a US helicopter crashed in Kuwait, killing all on board. Suzanne Goldenberg’s front-page report from Baghdad revealed that only two hours after the decapitation effort, Saddam Hussein himself had made a defiant appearance on television. A Guardian leader stated that the plain fact was this first “surgical strike” had missed its mark. Even had it reached its target, it would have been difficult to applaud. “State-ordered assassination sets an abominable precedent that encourages unwelcome emulation … The US must tread carefully – for the legal and moral grounds for this war are already very shaky.” Continue reading...

Josie Scott, who has played in the Australian heavy metal band with her brother Kim for 40 years, writes to fans: ‘I’ve decided to embrace, rather than endure, who I am’ Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email The guitarist and vocalist in Australian heavy metal band the Mark of Cain has come out as a trans woman, writing that seeing younger trans people live freely had “helped shine a light on the possibility that maybe I can finally be me in my autumn years.” On Monday night, Josie Scott wrote a statement to fans on the band’s social media, announcing that her family know her as Josie or Jo and “given where I identify on the gender spectrum, I fit within the paradigm of being a trans woman”. Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Other countries are expected to join Project Vault, which US president said would ensure that US businesses are ‘never harmed by any shortage’ Donald Trump has announced the creation of a critical mineral reserve worth nearly $12bn, a stockpile that could counter China’s ability to use its dominance of the hard-to-process metals as leverage in trade talks. “Today we’re launching what will be known as Project Vault to ensure that American businesses and workers are never harmed by any shortage,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. Continue reading...

Teen swims 4km, two without a life jacket, to sound alarm which led to the discovery of his family Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast A 13-year-old boy saved his mother and two younger siblings on Friday evening, swimming four kilometres in fading light and rough conditions, after they were swept out to sea in southwest Western Australia. The family were holidaying in Quindalup, 250 kilometres south of Perth, when strong winds pushed their inflatable paddle boards and kayak offshore from Geographe Bay. Continue reading...

As Bangladesh prepares for the first election since Sheikh Hasina fled to India, Awami League figures living in Kolkata believe she can still return a hero Back in Bangladesh they are deemed criminals and fugitives, facing charges of crimes against humanity, murder, sedition or embezzlement. But in the comfort of the crowded food courts of Kolkata shopping malls, over black coffee and Indian fast food, the exiled politicians of the Awami League sit plotting their political comeback. More than 16 months ago, a revolution against Bangladesh’s autocratic prime minister Sheikh Hasina forced her to dramatically flee the country, jumping on a helicopter to India as an enraged onslaught of protesters marched towards her residence. The streets she left behind were bloody; her regime’s final crackdown on protesters in the July uprising had left as many as 1,400 dead, according to a UN report. Continue reading...

Buildings reportedly damaged in capital and Kharkiv also under fire hours after US president says ‘we’re doing very well with Ukraine and Russia’. What we know on day 1,441 Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital with missiles early on Tuesday, officials said, with initial reports saying apartment blocks and other buildings had suffered damage. Witnesses reported loud explosions in Kyiv and said missiles and drones were being deployed. Several apartment buildings, an education establishment and a commercial building had been damaged in districts east of the Dnipro River, Kyiv military administration chief, Tymur Tkachenko, said on Telegram. Mayor Vitali Klitschko ordered emergency medical crews to affected parts of the capital. Russian missiles and drones were also attacking Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv in the north-east, mayor Ihor Terekhov said. The governor of south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said his region was also under attack and anti-aircraft units were in action in neighbouring Zaporizhzhia region. Donald Trump said earlier that his administration may have some good news soon on its push to end the war in Ukraine. “I think we’re doing very well with Ukraine and Russia. For the first time, I’m saying that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I think we’re going to, maybe, have some good news.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that Russia had largely observed a temporary ceasefire on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russia had not carried out any targeted missile or drone strikes on the infrastructure in the past 24 hours but steady Russian shelling had hit energy facilities near the front line, the Ukrainian president said. “The de-escalation measures ... are helping to build public trust in the negotiation process and its possible outcome. The war needs to be ended.” Zelenskyy said Russia’s continued shelling of Ukrainian positions and logistics had damaging transmission lines and other sites in parts of the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Speaking in his nightly video address on Monday, he said the pause in strikes on energy infrastructure underscored the fact that US efforts to pursue negotiations to end the war were having an impact. “This demonstrates that when the United States has the motivation to genuinely change the situation, the situation can indeed change.” Zelenskyy said it was “realistic to achieve a dignified and lasting peace”, ahead of the next round of peace talks with Russian and US officials due this week in Abu Dhabi. “Ukraine is ready for real steps,” he said. The talks are scheduled to take place over two days from Wednesday. A White House official said Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff would attend. Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian delegation would also hold bilateral meetings with US officials during the two days. Russia has repeated that it would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as unacceptable foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Russian foreign ministry said on Monday, citing foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate such troops’ presence there. The EU’s decision last week to ban Russian gas imports was “100% legally sound”, the bloc’s energy commissioner said, adding it would prevent Russia from weaponising energy. “We’ve said we will no longer help indirectly finance [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s war in Ukraine by buying gas there,” Dan Jorgensen told reporters in Lisbon on Monday after meeting with Portugal’s energy minister. “That also means it’s no longer possible for Russia to blackmail EU member states to weaponise energy against us.” Germany has detained five people suspected of operating a network that exported goods to Russian defence companies, contravening EU sanctions imposed over the war, German federal prosecutors said on Monday. The federal prosecutors’ office estimated the group had allegedly arranged 16,000 shipments, worth a combined €30m ($36m) since February 2022, and that Russian state agencies were suspected of directing the procurement activities. The Russian embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the accusations. Continue reading...

CEO Alex Karp hails ‘iconic’ financial results despite criticism over contracts with ICE and homeland security Palantir celebrated its latest financial results on Monday, as the tech company blew past Wall Street expectations and continues to prop up the Trump administration’s push to deport immigrants. Palantir has secured millions of dollars in federal contracts amid Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. The multibillion-dollar Denver-based firm creates tech focused on surveillance and analytics, to be used by the government agencies and private companies. Continue reading...

Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté thrown curveball days before Games Music rights disputes create Olympic chaos for skaters ISU pushes for global music clearance system fix soon The Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté faces a last-minute scramble to redesign his Olympic short program after a copyright dispute blocked him from using music from the Minions franchise just days before competition begins at the Milano Cortina Winter Games. The six-time Spanish national champion from Barcelona, who is set to make his Olympic debut in the men’s singles event, said he learned late last week that the routine he has performed throughout the 2025-26 season would not be cleared for Olympic use. Guarino Sabaté said he had submitted the music through the International Skating Union’s recommended rights-clearance process months ago and had competed with the program without issue during the season, including at last month’s European championships in Sheffield. Continue reading...

Buddhist spiritual leader wins best audiobook and says he sees win ‘as a recognition of our shared universal responsibility’ Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar win big in Grammys ceremony filled with anti-ICE sentiment The Dalai Lama has taken home his first Grammy award, prompting criticism from China. The 90-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader, who lives in exile in India, was announced as the winner for the narration and storytelling category for his spoken word album, Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama – adding the award to a collection that includes a Nobel peace prize, a presidential medal of freedom and the Gandhi peace prize. Continue reading...

Decision to give testimony comes days before House was expected to vote to hold pair in contempt of Congress US politics live – latest updates Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed on Monday to testify in a House investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, days before the chamber was expected to vote to hold them in contempt of Congress. The concession follows a tense back-and-forth between the Clintons and the Republican James Comer, chair of the House oversight committee, who on Monday said that he would insist both Clintons sit for a sworn deposition before the committee in order to fulfill the panel’s subpoenas. Continue reading...

Caroline Willgoose, whose 15-year-old son was killed by another pupil, says murder was ‘senseless and avoidable’ The family of a 15-year-old boy who was stabbed to death at school by another pupil has said her son’s murder was “senseless and avoidable” and that a report ordered by the school showed too many “red flags” were missed. Harvey Willgoose died one year ago to the day, and his killer, Mohammed Umar Khan, is serving a minimum term of 16 years’ detention. A report commissioned by the trust that runs Harvey’s school, All Saints Catholic high school in Sheffield, has highlighted a number of missed opportunities in the run-up to the murder. The review was undertaken by a former school headteacher and inspector of schools at Learn Sheffield. Continue reading...

The musician is championing the annual Quick Reads initiative, which will release six short, digestible titles for ‘nonreaders and lapsed readers’ in April for £1 each Stormzy called reading a “superpower” as he backed an initiative aimed at encouraging people who don’t see themselves as readers to pick up a book. The musician’s publishing imprint #Merky Books, which is part of Penguin, is publishing one of this year’s six Quick Reads – short, accessible books created “specifically for nonreaders, lapsed readers, people with short attention spans, and neurodivergent readers”, according to The Reading Agency, which has run the Quick Reads initiative for 20 years. Continue reading...

Support from more than 20 countries propels National Trust to its target to protect chalk figure and local wildlife It feels like a very British monument: a huge chalk figure carved into a steep Dorset hillside that for centuries has intrigued lovers of English folklore and legend. But an appeal to raise money to help protect the Cerne giant – and the wildlife that shares the landscape it towers over – has shown that its allure stretches far beyond the UK. Donations have flooded in from more than 20 countries including Australia, Japan and Iceland, and on Tuesday, the National Trust confirmed it had reached its fundraising target to buy land around the giant. Continue reading...

There were 579,475 instances of emergency hospitalisation being needed in the year to March 2025, analysis finds The number of people requiring emergency care for pneumonia has risen by a quarter over two years to reach more than half a million cases, new figures show, amid warnings that preventable cases are adding pressure on overstretched A&E departments. Analysis of the most recent NHS England data from between April 2024 and March 2025 found that there were 579,475 cases of pneumonia requiring emergency hospitalisation, and this was likely to have risen further since, according to the charity Asthma + Lung UK. There were 461,995 cases between April 2022 and March 2023. Continue reading...

Minister announces Microsoft, Cisco and Adobe to help apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses In 2002 Barnsley toyed with a redesign as a Tuscan hill village as it sought out a brighter post-industrial future. In 2021 it adopted the airily vague slogan “the place of possibilities”. Now it is trying a different image: Britain’s first “tech town”. The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has anointed the South Yorkshire community as a trailblazer for “how AI can improve everyday life” in the UK. Continue reading...

Deal comes as Musk pursues plans for datacenters and solar-powered satellites in space to propel AI Elon Musk’s aerospace firm SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year, at a valuation likely to exceed $1tn. The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”. Continue reading...

Prosecutors say other man was lured to Brendan Banfield’s house as a fall guy in scheme to get rid of Banfield’s wife A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair was found guilty Monday of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of 24 February 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhães, the au pair, shot him, too. Continue reading...

This documentary about four women, victimised as teenagers by the same man, is an instant rebuttal to that most unsympathetic question: why don’t women just leave their abuser? Last year I began a review of the BBC documentary To Catch a Stalker with the words “Welcome to part 86,747,398,464 of the continuing cataloguing via television documentary of the apparently infinite series Ways in Which Largely Men Terrorise Largely Women and Prevent Countless Millions of Them from Living Their Lives in Freedom and Contentment.” Welcome now to part 86,747,398,465 (providing, that is, we limit ourselves only to products from the BBC. To include Netflix’s contributions could break calculators.) Lover, Liar, Predator tells the stories of several women who were coerced, abused and raped by a man called Aaron Swan over his decades-long career. He was 17 when he approached Natalie at a party. She was 17 too but, as a devout Christian with a very protected upbringing, effectively younger and highly vulnerable to his charms. He put pressure on her to give up her virginity. She got pregnant and they married. He was “demeaning and unkind” to her, insulting her looks, claiming to be in love with his ex and subjecting her to violent, unwanted sex (“I endured whatever was required … I thought that’s what sex was”) for years. Continue reading...

‘We have the most goals, the most clean sheets’ Liam Rosenior predicts ‘physical’ Carabao Cup second leg Mikel Arteta has laughed off a suggestion from Paul Scholes that Arsenal would be the most boring team to win the Premier League, insisting his side are considered “the most exciting in Europe” in other countries. Scholes, the former Manchester United midfielder, pointed to the lack of goals from Arsenal’s front four this season and reliance on set pieces as evidence for his claim. Viktor Gyökeres is the club’s top scorer in the league with six, and Arsenal have scored 17 goals from set pieces – three more than any other club. Continue reading...