The backwards cap, a 90s accessory once dismissed as juvenile, is emerging as the latest shorthand for laid‑back confidence
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Within the first 20 minutes of Love Story, Ryan Murphy’s new take on the often tumultuous relationship between John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, the youngest son of the former US president is depicted wearing five different caps. They include a Kangol flat cap as he cycles to a newspaper kiosk in uptown NYC to read the latest headlines about himself, a Yankees cap as he runs topless on a treadmill and a navy baseball cap as he joins his mother, Jacqueline, for dinner, where she promptly reminds him “no hats at the table, please”.
For Kennedy Jr, hounded by the paparazzi and tabloid press who nicknamed him “The Hunk” and more often than not “The Hunk Who Flunked”, you might think this penchant for peaked caps was thanks to the fact that they let him go somewhat incognito. But he preferred to wear his backwards, pulling the cap downwards over his signature flop of lush black hair, and leaving his full face on view.
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© Photograph: Eric Liebowitz/FX
© Photograph: Eric Liebowitz/FX
© Photograph: Eric Liebowitz/FX
The best places to seek respite from the wintry UK weather in France, Italy and Germany
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Saint-Jorioz in Haute-Savoie will provide a springtime lift for your spirits. On the shore of Lake Annecy, it’s a short bus ride from the city of Annecy, but less busy and with superior lake and mountain views. Hike to the surrounding peaks, towards the lesser-known Col de l’Arpettaz, or cycle on the excellent greenways. Relax by the cool blue alpine water. Behind you lies the underrated Les Bauges Unesco Geopark. The department only joined France in 1860, and has its own Italian-influenced regional cuisine.
Brian Lowry
© Photograph: LenaMeyer/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: LenaMeyer/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: LenaMeyer/Getty Images/iStockphoto
It caused a scandal in imperial Russia, then became a staple of popular art in the USSR. But when I spied a copy of Ivan Kramsky’s portrait in the film Sentimental Value, it opened a door to an untold case of life imitating art
Sentimental Value is one of those films you have to watch very closely. In the Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest work, which swept the board at the European film awards and is nominated for eight Baftas and nine Oscars, stories are hidden in closeups, half-tones and peripheral objects. Some of these stories are so well hidden, in fact, that they aren’t even apparent to the people who made the film.
In one scene, roughly an hour in, the camera glides down a corridor, and suddenly there she is: a woman’s portrait on the wall. Anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union and later Russia between the 1950s and 2000s, like me, would recognise her instantly. She has been endlessly reproduced: as prints, embroideries, portrait medallions, even on boxes of chocolates. In Britain, people may have encountered her on the covers of various editions of Anna Karenina.
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© Photograph: Alamy
© Photograph: Alamy
© Photograph: Alamy
Stranger Things’ Joe Keery is joined by a stellar cast battling an outbreak of virulent brain spores, but the film doesn’t offer much more than endless wisecracks and a splatterhouse grossfest
‘Pay attention! This shit is real!” screams an on-screen warning at the start of this overstuffed horror-comedy-action outing. As much as the deadly fungus it foists on Earth, an outbreak of sardonic attitude runs rampant here. It falls to two bantering storage facility workers, played by Stranger Things’ Joe Keery and Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell, to contain a potential apocalypse event – with intermittent high-grade thespian help from Lesley Manville, Vanessa Redgrave and old faithful Liam Neeson. (Somebody clearly called in a few favours here.)
Things kick off as the Skylab space station falls out of orbit in 1979 – one of its research containers winds up in the Australian outback. Fast-forward to the early 00s and a team of bioterror operatives, including Robert (Neeson) and Trini (Manville), wipe out the virulent fungus that escapes – though not before it turns one of them into a human smoothie. But the Kansas facility where they stow a sample is later decommissioned, and the ground floor converted into storage lockers. Before you can say “heinous government negligence”, night-shifters Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell) are itching to check out the random alarm sounding somewhere behind the walls.
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© Photograph: Reiner Bajo/Studiocanal
© Photograph: Reiner Bajo/Studiocanal
© Photograph: Reiner Bajo/Studiocanal
Leaving behind Cumbria for Oxford in the late 1950s, Bragg navigates class and culture in a world on the brink of change
It’s October 1958, and a nearly 19-year-old Melvyn Bragg is on the platform at Wigton railway station, saying goodbye to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah. He is off to read history at Wadham College, Oxford, one of the youngest in his cohort because national service is being phased out. Another World starts here, picking up the story left off in Back in the Day, Bragg’s previous memoir about his childhood and youth in this small Cumbrian town.
Oxford to Bragg seems “more a theatre than a city, a spectacle rather than a habitation”. After his prelims, the weeding-out exams in his second term, he is left alone until his finals. He discovers Ingmar Bergman and has many earnest pub conversations about whether Pasternak will get the Nobel prize, or jazz is superior to rock’n’roll. He goes on the Aldermaston march and joins the anti-apartheid movement – although in hindsight he sees this as inspired by a residual faith in empire, with South Africa as Britain’s moral responsibility. Even after Suez, he owns a pencil sharpener in the shape of a globe on which the empire is “a continuous governing blur of pink”.
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© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
© Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
The youth minimum wage is set to rise over this parliament, but it’s putting off employers from hiring people into their first roles
When Keir Starmer was 14 years old, he got a part-time job clearing stones from a local farmer’s field. At 16, Kemi Badenoch was flipping burgers and cleaning toilets in McDonald’s. Me, I waitressed at weekends from the age of 15 in an Essex pub owned by an ex-paratrooper with two formidable rottweilers roaming behind the bar, which was a life lesson all of its own.
But whatever your first job may have been, there’s a reasonable chance it combined the thrill of hard cash with several mortifying mistakes and a crash course in handling stroppy customers, taking criticism more or less gracefully and moaning about it only out of earshot. Though teenage starter jobs have been in decline for decades – for reasons varying from academic pressures on sixth-formers to the rise of side hustles on Vinted that don’t show up in official statistics – everyone still has to start somewhere, even if it’s now more likely at 18 than 14. But getting that start is becoming harder than it was.
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© Illustration: Ellie Foreman Peck/The Guardian
© Illustration: Ellie Foreman Peck/The Guardian
© Illustration: Ellie Foreman Peck/The Guardian
Information content manager Rosie Weatherley says harmful inaccuracies are presented as uncontroversial facts
A year-long commission has been launched by Mind to examine AI and mental health after a Guardian investigation exposed how Google’s AI Overviews, which are shown to 2 billion people each month, gave people “very dangerous” mental health advice.
Here, Rosie Weatherley, information content manager at the largest mental health charity in England and Wales, describes the risks posed to people by the AI-generated summaries, which appear above search results on the world’s most visited website.
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© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
FCAS, which also involves Spain, is imploding at a high-stakes moment for Europe, as threat rises from Russia
France and Germany’s plan to build a fighter jet of the future, planned to come with a swarm of drones and a “combat communications cloud”, is collapsing.
Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said this week that the €100bn programme no longer worked for him. He insisted it was “not a political dispute”, but a technical one. France needs a jet that can carry nuclear weapons and launch from aircraft carriers, while Germany does not. However, the problems go back much further.
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© Photograph: Benoît Tessier/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Benoît Tessier/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Benoît Tessier/AFP/Getty Images
Exclusive: England and Wales charity to examine safeguards after Guardian exposed ‘very dangerous’ advice on Google AI Overviews
Mind is launching a significant inquiry into artificial intelligence and mental health after a Guardian investigation exposed how Google’s AI Overviews gave people “very dangerous” medical advice.
In a year-long commission, the mental health charity, which operates in England and Wales, will examine the risks and safeguards required as AI increasingly influences the lives of millions of people affected by mental health issues worldwide.
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© Photograph: Daniel de la Hoz/Getty Images
© Photograph: Daniel de la Hoz/Getty Images
© Photograph: Daniel de la Hoz/Getty Images
A bright, fruity pudding topped with a toasted pebbly crumb
Rhubarb brings its late-winter brightness to this favourite pudding, while ripe, buttery pears soften the edges and add a gentle creaminess. Instead of the traditional rubbing-in method, the crumble is made by pouring warm browned butter straight into the dry ingredients, creating a pebbly topping with a deeper toasted flavour. Leave out the crushed fennel seed, if you prefer, but this small addition, bloomed briefly in the butter, gives the whole thing a subtle aromatic lift.
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© Photograph: Patricia Niven/The Guardian. Food styling: Katie Smith. Porp styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Allegra D'Agostini.
© Photograph: Patricia Niven/The Guardian. Food styling: Katie Smith. Porp styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Allegra D'Agostini.
© Photograph: Patricia Niven/The Guardian. Food styling: Katie Smith. Porp styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Allegra D'Agostini.
Can’t wait to ditch that heavy parka? Here are three lighter options for the warmer days ahead
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© Photograph: PR
© Photograph: PR
© Photograph: PR
Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels plus subsidies for cleaner heating has led to clearer air and better health
As a child, Marcel Mazur had to hold his breath in parts of Kraków thick with “so much smoke you could see and smell it”. Now, as an allergy specialist at Jagiellonian University Medical College who treats patients struggling to breathe, he knows all too well the damage those toxic gases do inside the human body.
“It’s not that we have this feeling that nothing can be done. But it’s difficult,” Mazur said.
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© Photograph: Łukasz Gągulski/EPA
© Photograph: Łukasz Gągulski/EPA
© Photograph: Łukasz Gągulski/EPA
US president links deal with military strikes against Iran in connection with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions
Donald Trump changed his mind on supporting the Chagos Islands deal because the UK will not permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran, the Guardian has been told.
In his latest change of heart on the deal, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.
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© Photograph: AP
© Photograph: AP
© Photograph: AP
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