Researchers say their prototype is a big step towards fully functioning batteries with rapid charging times Australian scientists have developed what they say is the world’s first proof-of-concept quantum battery. Quantum batteries, first proposed as a theoretical concept in 2013, use the principles of quantum mechanics to store energy, and have the potential to be more efficient than conventional batteries. Continue reading...

The author of Finding the Mother Tree is back with an inspiring call to the next generation of ecologists It’s 2021, and Suzanne Simard is in a police vehicle, being escorted off a protest site in Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island, where activists are locked in a standoff with the Teal-Jones Group, an industrial logging company. She decides to give the apprehending officer a piece of her mind – in the way only an earnest Canadian forestry ecologist can. “It takes decades for clearcut forests to stop emitting more carbon than they sequester, and centuries more to recover the sink strength of the original stands,” she tells him. “We don’t have decades for these forests to recover from clearcutting. In the hundreds of years it takes for a forest to mature, our planet could warm upwards of five degrees celsius.” The officer is unmoved. But if you were responsible for one of the nearly 6m views tallied on Simard’s 2016 TED talk, you’ll know it was worth a try: few people can speak about trees with quite as much conviction as Simard. One part Indiana Jones, one part Mister Rogers, she is a Canadian national treasure and global environmental icon. When she’s not getting taken away from protests by the authorities, she’s dodging the flames of forest fires in the Cariboo Mountains of British Columbia, exploring the Haida Gwaii archipelago (“Canada’s Galapagos”), or off learning Indigenous practices in the Amazon. In her TED talk, she describes once sprinting through the forest with a syringe filled with radioactive isotopes in each hand as she is chased by a grizzly bear. Continue reading...

Whether it’s buying and selling clothes online or some freelance work on the side, plan ahead for potential tax issues Since the start of 2024, online platforms such as Vinted, eBay and Airbnb have been required to share data with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for any users who sell more than 30 items a year or earn more than about £1,700 (the threshold is set at €2,000) a year. However, this does not necessarily mean that those users owe any additional income tax. Continue reading...

Last year it was China’s answer to tariffs, now it’s Iran’s retaliation to airstrikes – ‘America First’ keeps foundering on global economics Donald Trump is teaching the world a lesson, but not the one he thinks. The attack on Iran was meant to be a dazzling display of military supremacy. It has instead illuminated chinks in the US’s armour. The US president’s formidable arsenal cannot summon up an insurrection from Iran’s tyrannised and leaderless opposition. It cannot force merchant ships to run a gauntlet of missile and drone attacks in the strait of Hormuz. The government in Tehran and the facts of geography that give it leverage over global trade are unchanged. Trump’s exasperation is showing. He urges tanker crews to “show some guts” by sailing into harm’s way. He calls on Nato members to provide naval chaperones and accuses them of cowardice and ingratitude for refusing. He comes across as peevish and flustered. Impotence is not a good look in a potentate. Continue reading...

The ruins of Tintern Abbey have inspired artists and poets. Now, the restoration of a historic inn has given visitors a perfect base for exploring this corner of Monmouthshire Standing in Tintern Abbey, you can feel the magic that has given this small Monmouthshire village on the banks of the Wye and its famous ruin such an outsized place in culture. JMW Turner, Gainsborough and Samuel Palmer are just some of the artists who have captured this landscape, and Wordsworth and Tennyson famously wrote poems inspired by Tintern. But it was Allen Ginsberg’s Welsh Visitation and his “clouds passing through skeleton arches” that came to mind while I sheltered from a cloudburst in the abbey’s nave. It’s a vast and fascinating site, and seeing it through sheets of rain as the sun went down was really special. Ginsberg was here in the 1960s, following in the footsteps of the Romantics. But Tintern’s fame came thanks to its inclusion in travel writer William Gilpin’s 1782 book Observations on the River Wye. Gilpin’s writing about the “picturesque” – landscapes that inspired art through their rugged beauty – was so popular in the late 18th century that the Wye Tour was created to meet tourist demand, one of the first package trips in British travel history. Continue reading...

Ewan McGregor and Helena Bonham Carter lead an impressive cast in this magical tale – but its focus on two unlikable young protagonists proves wearing Here is a lacklustre kids’ animation with an ostensibly starry voice cast including Ewan McGregor, Helena Bonham Carter, Mel Brooks and the late Terry Jones. (Oddly, David Walliams is announced and credited online as voicing the Guardian, while the film’s credits indicate the role is played by the prolific but little-known voice actor Stefan Ashton Frank. Wonder what happened there?) However, it’s important to know before you watch that the lead characters who occupy most of the film’s runtime are two children not voiced by any of these luminaries. Young Elise and Alfie are twins who wish themselves into a magical world before getting into various scrapes. Sadly, Elise is deeply annoying and Alfie is a bit nondescript, which makes the whole thing rather a chore. Continue reading...

The Reform UK leader has a lucrative side-hustle sending paid-for Cameo messages. But an analysis of more than 4,000 show they include videos for a neo-Nazi group and a rioter. Henry Dyer reports Continue reading...

I was 12 and it was the first makeup I had ever worn. While people’s responses ranged right up to genuine repulsion, they couldn’t quell my happiness I wore makeup for the first time just after I turned 12: a tube of green mascara from a pound shop in my home town in south Wales. This was not a chic emerald or a flattering forest green. It was a frosted, mucous-tinted green – a colour that looked like the aftermath of a minor chemical incident involving Shrek. There was a reason it cost only a pound. I slicked it on with no real understanding of beauty, but a clear instinct that I loved how it altered my face. The outside world was less enthused. People hated it. Teachers told me to take it off; I’d then reapply it in the toilets. Girls in my year looked at me with genuine repulsion. It wasn’t pretty, or cute – so nobody understood why I would want to look like that. Continue reading...

Emma Harte’s head and heart are torn in A Woman of Substance. Plus: a hen do from hell. Here’s what to watch this evening 9pm, Channel 4 The rags-to-riches period drama continues with young Emma Harte (Jessica Reynolds) choosing a secret relationship with her employer’s son, Edwin Fairley (Ewan Horrocks), over taking the chance to move to Leeds. It can’t end well, though, as present-day Emma (Brenda Blethyn) still holds a grudge with the Fairleys. It continues on Thursday with Lenny Rush giving a heartbreaking performance as Emma’s brother. Hollie Richardson Continue reading...

As Iran war drives up cost concerns, thinktank says £3.7bn discount system should be developed before next winter The UK government is facing calls to spend almost £4bn to launch a “social tariff” providing cheaper energy for poor households amid growing concerns over the Iran conflict. As households brace for an increase in living costs, the Resolution Foundation said ministers should develop a system of discounted domestic energy bills in time for next winter to protect the most vulnerable households. Continue reading...

Thirty years since the cult show about sweary lawyers swaggered on to our screens in a fug of cigarette smoke, creator Amy Jenkins talks F-bombs, fellatio … and giving Ricky Gervais his big break Oral sex in the kitchen. Weed-smoking and talk of temazepam. A full-frontal Andrew Lincoln shower scene. And that’s just in the first episode. Welcome to This Life. Pop on a Portishead CD and leave your inhibitions (and clothes) at the door. This Wednesday marks 30 years since the landmark drama swaggered on to our screens in a fug of cigarette smoke and swearing. The BBC is celebrating the anniversary by rerunning the none-more-90s saga, with a new introduction by the actor Daniela Nardini, who played the breakout heroine Anna. It enables viewers to revisit a cult classic that not only captured the hedonistic spirit of the Cool Britannia era but left a lasting mark on TV. Continue reading...

A spicy, aromatic way with lentils that’s redolent of north African cuisine and that pairs wonderfully with white fish, and a rustic Italian pasta Like most people in 1980s Britain, I didn’t really understand lentils, even though I was a professional cook in my 20s at the time. Until, that is, I had them at a restaurant in France, which braised them very carefully; thereafter I was for ever a convert. My favourites are French puy, Italian casteluccio and Spanish pardina, because they’re all refined, resilient and delicious; they’re versatile, too, and complement all sorts, from fish and meat to vegetables. The rich, Italian-style braised lentils for today’s pasta can also act as a base for all manner of other dishes, and they taste better reheated the next day – it’s the best earthy comfort food imaginable and just so happens to be seriously good for you, too. The fish dish, meanwhile, is a complete contrast, and packed with sweet and spicy flavours more reminiscent of southern Spain and north Africa. Continue reading...

Exclusive: finding out who owns land will become simpler under plans to make the best use of green spaces and hit net zero targets Finding out who owns land in England is to become much simpler because a paywall will be lifted from large parts of the Land Registry, the government is to announce. A small number of landowners control the majority of land but finding out who owns what is difficult to piece together, even for government departments, owing to the way the Land Registry operates. Freeing up access will make it easier to determine ownership of key areas, such as river catchments, grouse moors and peatland. Continue reading...

PM’s proposal to tax super-rich and fund schools wins praise as her handling of the Greenland crisis boosts her standing across party lines – but not all voters are convinced Only four months ago, Copenhagen student Sven Li’s view of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was, like many Danish voters, less than favourable. The 21-year-old, who was about to host an election event for Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti, known as SF) in his cramped but cosy halls-of-residence kitchen, said the woman who had led Denmark’s centrist coalition government for the past three and a half years had shown herself to be a “very cold, calculating figure”. Her Social Democrats were suffering too, going down to sweeping defeats in municipal elections in November and losing control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than a century. But since then, and as Denmark prepares for an early general election on 24 March, Li’s view of the prime minister has transformed, first as a result of her handling of the geopolitical crisis with Donald Trump over Greenland, and second because of her recent shift to the left in some areas – including a 0.5% wealth tax to fund smaller class sizes in schools. Continue reading...

This glossy murder mystery, starring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington and Kate Mara, should be better than this. But if you brace yourself for a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment, you’ll have a good time You can’t say Imperfect Women doesn’t warn you. It is clear from the very first shots – three women dancing, drunkenly but happily, laughing but not scream-laughing, as the camera whirls round their beautifully lit selves – and the first line – an earnest voiceover about “a kinship from deep in our souls” – what we’re in for. That is, an overwritten, far-fetched, glossy but derivative murder mystery – a descendant of Big Little Lies, intermarried with touches of everything else Nicole Kidman has done in the last 10 years. Adjust your expectations accordingly and you’ll have a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment. Dwell on the fact that you could well have expected better of an Apple TV production and a main cast that includes Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara and you’ll have less of a good time. So don’t do that. Continue reading...

Armed with Orbán’s ruthless playbook and Trump’s political style, Janez Janša would be another illiberal threat to the EU if he wins on 22 March Stroll through almost any town in Slovenia – or simply drive along its regional roads – and you can’t miss them. Posters cling to lamp-posts, bus stops and construction fences, proclaiming the triumphs of one political party or another. It is the unmistakable visual language of campaign season: Slovenia is heading to the polls. On 22 March, the country will hold parliamentary elections. That the outgoing coalition, led by the centre-left prime minister, Robert Golob, will have served a full term is, by Slovenian standards, almost miraculous. It was formed ahead of the 2022 election by Golob’s Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda, GS), a party established only months earlier by the former executive at the state-controlled energy company. In its first electoral outing, the party won 41 of the 90 seats in the national assembly – the strongest single-party result since independence. Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian novelist, editor and critic Continue reading...

As the hit travelogue about the worlds beneath us becomes a film, its maker takes us on a voyage through Las Vegas storm drains and the caves of Yucatán – via Goatchurch Cavern in the bowels of Somerset Just off the B3134 in Somerset is a portal to the underworld. The smaller of two openings to Goatchurch Cavern, it’s called the Tradesman’s Entrance – and through it I am squeezing. After tumbling on my bum over damp smooth rock, lacerating a jumpsuit in the process, I venture down and down, sometimes crawling, sometimes standing upright, trying to find footholds in the dark. I’m here with film-maker Robert Petit, so he can show me something of what he’s been experiencing for the past five years, on his way to making an endearingly poetic documentary film called Underland, which riffs on nature-writer Robert Macfarlane’s bestselling 2019 subterranean travelogue of the same name. We’re heading 100ft underground to the Boulder Chamber where, over sugary snacks, I will quiz him about his obsession. Continue reading...

House to consider amendment that would pardon women in England and Wales affected by prior ‘unjust’ laws Women who have been arrested, investigated and convicted under abortion legislation in England and Wales “must not be left behind” if the law is changed to prevent women being criminalised in future, campaigners have said. Last summer, the House of Commons voted to end the criminalisation of women who terminate their pregnancies outside the legal framework, through a new clause in the crime and policing bill. Continue reading...

As a child, the singer loved to start fires. As an adult, he was barely less chaotic. He discusses Bez, charisma, ADHD, his new memoir – and why making music is great, even if the record industry will always screw you over There are thousands of pictures of Shaun Ryder and Bez in Happy Mondays, from the mid- to late 80s, that run the gamut from mashed to wrecked. They don’t always look that cheerful, but when they do, they look insanely fun. In Ryder’s new memoir, 24 Hour Party Person, he quotes a critic: “The poorly educated might just call [Bez] a dancer, but he’s the proprietor of good times.” What Bez did for the band, the band did for the era: just went way too far, in an absolutely magnetic way. Ryder, in a Novotel hotel to the west of Manchester, explains what drew the whole band together. “When you are neurodiverse, you attract other people who are,” he says. “I would have said at the time we were all fucked-up loonies. I mean Bez [he launches into a spirited impression]: ‘I’m-not-fucking-neurodiverse’… it’s like, mate. You are. ‘I’m fucking not.’ Mate, you are. The same with all of them. None of them have been tested and gone through the thing, but they are. All of them. Continue reading...

Show in part a rediscovery of more than 40 mostly forgotten women who plied their trade in the Low Countries Judith Leyster, an artist of the Dutch golden age, was thought to be about 21 when she painted her self-portrait in 1630. In the picture she presented to the world, Leyster exudes cheerful confidence. Clad in shimmering silks and a stiffly starched lace collar, she leans back in her chair, palette and brushes in hand, a painting by her side. This work, completed in the year she was admitted to a painters’ guild in Haarlem, proclaimed her arrival as an established artist. It was one of the first self-portraits by an artist in the Dutch republic, a device most male painters did not adopt until years later. Continue reading...

Negotiators had reached agreement on key issues despite Trump team’s idiosyncratic approach. Two days later, war began In the many bizarre exchanges that occurred in the run-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps the most unexpected was an invitation by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to join him and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. The idea that Araghchi would leave talks in Oman about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme to tour a ship sent to the Gulf in an effort to dislodge his government seemed idiosyncratic at best. Continue reading...

Meta’s announcement comes after years of criticism from child safety groups over feature Instagram will stop encrypting private messages between users from May, after enduring years of criticism from law enforcement and child safety groups over the feature. Meta quietly announced this month on its help page for Instagram and in an updated 2022 news post that end-to-end encryption would no longer be available on direct messages between users on Instagram from 8 May 2026. Continue reading...

Suárez double seals Venezuela’s first WBC title Harper HR ties it, but USA fall short in ninth Caracas celebrates as Venezuela win – in pictures Venezuela defeated the United States 3-2 on Tuesday night to win their first World Baseball Classic title, a landmark triumph in a politically charged final that resonated far beyond the diamond. Eugenio Suárez drove in the winning run in the top of the ninth inning to seal a dramatic victory for the South American side at Miami’s LoanDepot Park. Continue reading...

The Reform UK leader has a lucrative extra gig sending paid-for Cameo messages. But an analysis of more than 4,000 show they include videos for a neo-Nazi group and a rioter. Henry Dyer reports For many, Cameo – the site where you can pay celebrities to send personalised video messages – is a bit of fun. For Nigel Farage, it’s a lucrative extra job. Recording several a day, he has charged at least £374,893 for them since he joined the platform five years ago. But what has he been saying in them and who has he been making them for? Investigations correspondent Henry Dyer has been looking at the videos and found some disturbing messages. The Reform leader endorsed a neo-Nazi event and repeated extremist slogans. He also charged £155 for one video he made for a man he was told had received a 16-month sentence for his involvement in a far-right riot. In others he references antisemitic conspiracy theories and makes misogynistic remarks about leftwing politicians – including a comment about the US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s breasts. Continue reading...

Ali Larijhani killed in an Israeli strike; Israeli military calls for evacuations in central Beirut, warning of an imminent attack on Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran and the broader crisis in the region, and global economy. Here are the latest developments: The Iranian army has vowed revenge for the killing of security chief Ali Larijani in an Israeli airstrike, with Iran’s army chief threatening to launch a “decisive and regrettable” retaliation. Iran also confirmed the death of the Basij militia commander Gholamreza Soleimani, after Israel earlier claimed its military assassinated him. It marks the highest level assassination in the war since joint US-Israeli strikes killed the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei on 28 February. The Israeli military called on residents of a central Beirut neighbourhood to evacuate early Wednesday, warning of an imminent attack on the Lebanese capital targeting Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. In a statement on social media, the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee issued “an urgent warning to residents of... Bashoura neighbourhood”, saying Israeli forces would operate against a Hezbollah facility there. Donald Trump continued to lash out at Nato allies, claiming “we don’t need” their help in the Iran war after pressuring them to help the US secure the strait of Hormuz, but added that “they should’ve been there”. Trump said Nato was making a “foolish mistake” and once again framed the issue as a loyalty test for the alliance. The US military said it targeted sites along Iran’s coastline near the strait of Hormuz because Iranian anti-ship missiles posed a risk to international shipping there. US Central Command said US forces successfully employed “multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions” in the strikes. Trump’s former director of the national counterterrorism center Joe Kent quit, saying he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran”. In his resignation letter, Kent accused “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” of deploying “a misinformation campaign” that ultimately “sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran”. Israel’s assault on Lebanon has killed at least 912 people, including 111 children, and wounded 2,221 others, per the Lebanese health ministry, with over a million people displaced. Israeli attacks on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon may amount to war crimes, the United Nations human rights office said. The Israeli military earlier issued a fresh evacuation order for the coastal Lebanese city of Tyre and its surrounding villages and Palestinian refugee camps, sparking an exodus of residents from Lebanon’s fourth largest city. A projectile hit the premises of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant on Tuesday night. But no damage to the plant or injuries to staff were reported, Iran told the UN nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Continue reading...