Biden will be remembered as a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicit in this war

With great fanfare, Joe Biden confirmed on 8 May that his administration had suspended one weapons shipment to Israel, delaying the delivery of 3,500 bombs that can cause devastating casualties when dropped on population centers. Biden said he warned Israeli leaders that he would also block artillery shells and other munitions if Israel went ahead with a ground invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where 1.4 million Palestinians have taken shelter.

It seemed Biden had finally decided to use the most effective leverage he has over Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his extremist government to force an end to Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. But less than a week later, it became clear that Biden had backtracked and he will continue sending Israel far more weapons than the one shipment he held back. Last Tuesday, the Biden administration notified Congress that it would move ahead with more than $1bn in new arms deals for Israel.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University

The prospect of a high school or college reunion elicits shame, dread and regret. What if going could actually be good for your mental health?

Both of us have 25th college reunions fast approaching. And as we write this, neither of us has registered. The emotions that these events tend to inspire – most notably shame, dread and regret – loom so large in our psyches that we spent the pandemic co-writing a novel that hinges on reunion-phobia.

Apparently we’re not the only ones. A friend of ours, Rebecca, hasn’t mustered the courage to RSVP to her 20-year-college reunion in June. “I am terrified,” she said. “I both really want to go and I really don’t want to go.”

Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling co-wrote The Memo: A Novel, out from Harper Perennial on 18 June

Exclusive: Ads containing AI-manipulated images were submitted to Facebook by civil and corporate accountability groups

The Facebook and Instagram owner Meta approved a series of AI-manipulated political adverts during India’s election that spread disinformation and incited religious violence, according to a report shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Facebook approved adverts containing known slurs towards Muslims in India, such as “let’s burn this vermin” and “Hindu blood is spilling, these invaders must be burned”, as well as Hindu supremacist language and disinformation about political leaders.

After breaking out as a wide-eyed soldier in 1917, the actor showed a darker side to masculinity as a closeted thug in Femme. Now he’s gone further, playing an incel in twisted sci-fi The Beast

George MacKay reaches into his backpack and pulls out a squeezy bottle of honey, squirting it into his americano. “It’s a bit eccentric,” he says sheepishly. He picked up the habit years ago on a shoot in Australia; recognising that requesting a pot of honey might be perceived as “a slightly wanky ask”, he carries his own supply instead. This is typical MacKay – charming, discreet, and more than a little concerned about giving others the wrong idea.

On screen, MacKay frequently plays characters who are suffocated by the codes of traditional masculinity, and turned cruel by them, too. The actor’s breakout role was in Sam Mendes’s Oscar-winning war blockbuster 1917, which plays out as one dizzying, unbroken shot. MacKay’s face – vulnerable, determined, devastated – carried the film’s home stretch. Since then, he has veered towards grittier projects, portraying an angry, closeted thug (the subversive Femme, for which he won a British independent film award), a man who believes he’s a wild animal (Wolf) and a macho outlaw dressed in drag (True History of the Kelly Gang). Today, upstairs at the BFI Southbank and overlooking the Thames, we’re discussing MacKay’s new film, The Beast. A brilliant, demented techno-thriller co-starring Léa Seydoux, it is directed by French provocateur Bertrand Bonello, and loosely based on the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle.

Fixers are the backbone of the western news industry, but they face a profound disparity in pay, recognition and safety. Zleke guided Ann Neumann through a war-torn Ethiopia – a country he soon had to flee, fearing for his life

Zleke knew that he was being watched.

One day in the early summer of 2022, two men knocked on his door. They knew his name and carried pistols, though they wore plain clothes. They took his phone and his ID and told him to come with them. He didn’t resist.

When my husband and I found this tiny creature, we felt we had to rescue him. The next few weeks marked us for ever

One day in 2008, my husband, Hiraki, was making a film for which he decided he needed some vintage birdcages. We headed to the antiques market as the sky was lightening. Get there too late and we might not find anything to buy.

After going around the market a few times and paying for several cages, we were standing under a tree, deciding whether to call it a day, when, suddenly there was a baby bird on the ground at our feet.

You wouldn’t believe how fast these things can move until you try to lock them up. How long until the next jailbreak?

We have entered the season marked in our household by the battle of wits between human and tortoise. All spring, my husband (dexterous, resourceful, engineer) pours his ingenuity into trying to keep the four tortoises (prehistoric, pea-brained, no opposable thumbs) in the garden, while the tortoises, out of the greenhouse and warmed to a point where they are unnervingly speedy, FYI, do their utmost to escape. It makes no sense – here they have a spacious all-you-can-eat buffet; out there it’s cars, cats and chaos. But the reptile heart wants what it wants.

We’re already had one jailbreak by our worst recidivist. Despite double wooden sleepers corralling her and in defiance of all physical laws, she’s been apprehended previously trundling down the street, destination unknown; wedged, thwarted, under a gate, still fighting to free herself; and repeatedly in our neighbours’ garden, demolishing her summer-flowering annuals (sorry, J). We’ve tried a GPS tracker; she rubbed it off in minutes.

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist

Indiana’s rookie star has been thrown into the WNBA cauldron 38 days after her final college game. How much is too much?

The Caitlin Clark Experience did not disappoint when it came through Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. After a rocky start to her professional career, the Indiana Fever rookie showed glimpses of why she turned women’s basketball into appointment television during her record-breaking run at the University of Iowa.

She was all over the court against the New York Liberty, scoring 10 of her team’s 19 first points with a flurry of pull-up threes and slashing lay-ups, whipping one-handed passes to create opportunities for her teammates and prompting deafening roars from a packed crowd, drowning out the scattered boobirds. She was cooled off after leading all scorers with 15 points at half-time by a platoon of defenders led by Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, a wily veteran eight years Clark’s senior, but not before depositing one of her signature 30-footers.

These small, soft balls make for a speedy supper – serve them with a generous grating of parmesan and a well-dressed green salad

The combination of ricotta, wilted chopped spinach, grated parmesan or pecorino, egg and a good grating of nutmeg is a familiar and typical filling for ravioli. In today’s dish, though, there is no pasta covering, hence the nudità (nudity) of the little lumps (gnocchi simply means “little lumps”), which is neatly captured by the Tuscan dialect word gnudi. They have other names, too. In Casentino, in the province of Arezzo, for example, they are possessive and call them gnocchi di Casentino, as well as gnocchi di ricotta, while in the provinces of Siena and Grosseto gnudi are known as malfatti (“badly shaped”), which is a reassuring name, as well as a charming one.

That said, my gnudi are well formed, ever since I learned an entertaining and satisfying technique (I wish I could remember who to thank for this): you put a walnut-sized lump of the spinach-speckled gnudi mixture into a small bowl along with a little semolina (or plain) flour and move the bowl in a circle, so the cheese mixture rolls around like a ball bearing in a slot machine and eventually turns into a satisfying oval. Another way of shaping is simply by rolling the balls between floured hands, or the two-teaspoon method, which involves turning and smoothing each side until it forms a neat lump, then dusting it in flour.

Ex-president’s jail sentence precludes him from standing for new MK party in decision that could affect general election results

South Africa’s top court has ruled that the former president Jacob Zuma is not eligible to run for parliament in the general election on 29 May, a closely watched decision as it could affect the outcome.

Zuma, who was forced to quit as president in 2018, has fallen out with the governing African National Congress (ANC) and has been campaigning for a new party called uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), named after the ANC’s former armed wing.

Low pressure also expected to raise temperatures in eastern Canada and north-east US, while temperatures plummet in west

After a lull in recent weeks, storm season in the US has begun to ramp up again, with 100mph winds and tennis ball-sized hail hitting Kansas on Sunday. It has been a busy season so far in terms of severe storms, with late spring into early summer typically bringing the greatest risk for tornadoes across the plains and midwest. An area of low pressure moving in across the central US, combined with rich moisture streaming in from the Gulf of Mexico, will probably continue the threat of tornadoes and large hail across numerous states. On Tuesday in particular, this severe weather risk may extend from Oklahoma all the way up to the Great Lakes.

This setup of low pressure could lead not just to a large outbreak of severe weather across the US later this week, but also to a sharp temperature gradient across the US and Canada as the warm air is fed into higher latitudes. In eastern Canada and the north-eastern US, temperatures are likely to reach 10C above the average for the time of year. Cities such as Ottawa and Detroit could have daytime maximum temperatures of 30C by Wednesday.

I’ve been a bereavement counsellor and a bereaved daughter. Both taught me that we need to face our emotions

It’s almost a year since my dad died. Even though he lived into his late 80s, and even though his health problems began when I was a child, his death was nevertheless a terrible shock. It still is. It was the most predictable thing in the world, but I still can’t believe it. The wave of grief surges up whenever I think of a joke he would have liked, or whenever I hear his advice in my head, and whenever I catch sight of his ashes, stored in a Hellmann’s mayonnaise jar on my bookshelf until a more suitable container can be found. (He liked Hellmann’s, but not that much.) Each time I’m left gasping for air from the pain and, strange as it sounds, I’m grateful for it. Because I know this grieving life is far better than the alternative.

Years ago I volunteered as a bereavement counsellor, and I remember vividly the moment in training where it finally clicked: my job was not to take away people’s grief, but to help them feel it. You see, you may not need counselling or therapy if you are truly grieving; but you may well need it if you aren’t. Grief is a horror, and it’s supposed to be. Where grief has got stuck, or when it has still not even begun – that is when you might need a protected space, and time, and a good, receptive listener with whom you can find it in yourself to truly suffer the pain of your loss.

Cannes film festival
Close attention is required for this sombre but impressive Taiwanese feature debut about exploited illegal staff, and their patients and gangmasters

Taiwan-based Wei Liang Chiang and You Qiao Yin have made this feature directing debut in the Directors’ Fortnight selection at Cannes. It evokes an almost Zen state of suffering and sadness – a feeling that penetrates the film’s fabric like months of steady rain in a rural landscape.

If that sounds like a daunting prospect, it is, and this movie requires patience and attention, a calibration of your viewing expectations to match its stasis. Yet it’s an andante tempo that makes its moments of drama, and even sensation all the more striking. The film’s executive producer is Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien: his influences are there, and there is also something of the work of Tsai Ming-liang.

A new docuseries traces the highs and lows of the Memphis record label, soaring with major acts like Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes but a victim of both capitalism and racism

During its breakout phase in the mid-1960s, Stax Records seemed to be soaring. The small company from Memphis managed to score huge, international hits with the new stars it introduced, like Booker T & the MGs (Green Onions), Otis Redding (I’ve Been Loving You Too Long), and Sam & Dave (Hold On, I’m Coming). Just one year later, however, the label teetered on the edge of collapse. “Stax had to come back from the dead,” said Jamila Wignot, who has directed a new, four-hour documentary on the legendary company titled Stax: Soulsville USA. “In that way, it became more than a record label. It became a beacon of hope.”

Unfortunately, the label needed that hope as much, if not more, than the millions of fans who came to its music for inspiration. In its classic years, between 1962 and 1975, Stax was nearly killed off several times by forces larger than itself, before the final blow came from a foe no one saw coming. The label’s story, which brims with as many triumphs as tragedies, not only says a lot about the ruthlessness of the music business but about the treatment of many Black-run companies in corporate America. “Some of those who had power and influence in the world were repulsed by Stax as a money-making and creative venture for Black people,” said Deanie Parker, who served as an executive for the label in its prime. “They were singing from the sheet music of hate and envy – and that had a terrible effect.”

We select a few contenders for the Premier League’s match of the season – and invite you to have your say

• Players of the season | Managers of the season | Goals of the season | Young players of the season | Flops of the season | Signings of the season

This was the season of goals, goals and more goals – a total of 1,246 were scored, a Premier League record with a goals-per-game ratio of 3.28. There were, incredibly, 84 games with five goals or more. So, where to start? This is as good a place as any: a rain-lashed November stramash that set up the relentless winter of scoring to come. Both sides led in a pulsating contest which featured thudding headers from centre-backs Thiago Silva and Manuel Akanji, defensive scrambles and what looked to be a dramatic deflected winner from Rodri – only for Cole Palmer to coolly convert a last-gasp penalty, joining Raheem Sterling in scoring against his old club and trying his best not to celebrate. Oh, and Erling Haaland scored with his balls. This game really had everything.

We select some of our favourite strikes of the season – and invite you to nominate your own choices

• Players of the season | Managers of the season | Matches of the season | Young players of the season | Flops of the season | Signings of the season

“I can’t believe it,” Garnacho told Sky Sports. “I didn’t see how I scored, I just listened to the sound and thought, ‘Oh my God’. It’s the best goal I’ve scored, of course.” Sometimes it is best to leave the scorer to indicate how good the goal was. What the Argentinian winger is missing out is that he leapt a good five feet in the air with his back to goal, performing an acrobatic overhead kick to send Diogo Dalot’s cross into the top corner. Everyone inside Goodison Park was silenced for a moment; few could believe what they had witnessed. After a second or two, the away end went wild, enjoying one of the few positive moments of Manchester United’s season. Few players even have the audacity to try such things but Garnacho has impeccable technique and youth on his side, making him fearless even in an underperforming team.

Deputy governor of Kharkiv border town, Roman Semenukha, told national television on Monday that ‘the assaults do not stop’

Russian shelling killed one person in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, regional authorities said.

Kherson was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in late 2022, months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, but the region and its largest city have been under persistent Russian attacks since.

This account of Lilian and her four young children undertaking a dangerous journey from Guatemala to the US brings a human face to the migration crisis

Heading for the US-Mexico border from Guatemala, single mum Lilian and her four children endure an arduous 3,000-mile journey, the perils of which are intimately captured in Danilo do Carmo and Jakob Krese’s piercing documentary. The film opens with the startling sight of dozens of migrants huddled on the side of the road under makeshift tents. Lilian is only one of the many faces here, and the story behind her hardship is far from unique. Fleeing an abusive partner, Lilian looks to the US as a place of emancipation for herself as well as her young children.

In the face of the numerous dangers that lie on her path, Lilian perseveres. When not crammed in the back of a caravan, the family roam the highways under the scorching sun until their feet bleed. There is little support from government agencies, but the solidarity between the migrants is incredibly moving to witness. Like Lilian, many of her fellow travellers are women who are victims of male and cartel brutality. Countering the scaremongering rhetoric that surrounds migration, do Carmo and Krese’s film shows how a large number of those seeking asylum are women and children – those most vulnerable to gender violence and poverty.

A French cartoonist has doubts about her boyfriend in Mirion Malle’s third book in English, a striking hymn to women and solidarity

• Enter the Faber/Observer/Graphica graphic short story prize 2024

I always read the acknowledgments first – is there anyone who doesn’t? – and thanks to this, I came to So Long Sad Love by the French-born, Canada-based cartoonist Mirion Malle half expecting to see women in corsets and long skirts falling madly in love with one another at the back end of the 18th century. But, alas, this was not to be, for all that Malle credits Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire as her inspiration for this, her third graphic novel to be published in English. While it’s certainly full of women, some of whom may (or may not) be about to fall in love, it’s also set resolutely in the now: an era when, courtesy of WhatsApp and Facebook, word of a bad man’s misdeeds may spread faster than wildfire at midnight.

Malle favours a soapy, forward momentum in her storytelling, and she can’t resist a neat, even a happy, ending. But I found her book irresistible for a different reason. This one celebrates female solidarity, something I feel more and more strongly about at the moment (would that it had arrived at my desk early enough to be included in an anthology I’ve edited on this subject). With its cast of smart, voluptuous female characters – Malle’s women are all eyes, mouths and hair – it reminds me, in the best way, of a classic of 1970s feminism: The Women’s Room by Marilyn French, perhaps, or Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Powerful. Like those writers, she understands the importance of our subterranean networks: grapevines that men, deeming women’s talk to be only gossip, underestimate at their peril.

Alternative music event series Death of Classical invites small groups to witness one-of-a-kind performances at crypts, catacombs and other unlikely spaces

The Church of Intercession rises on West Harlem’s vibrant 155th Street with an ornate gothic heft. A less conspicuous feature of the 110-year-old gargantuan Episcopal sanctuary is its small underground crypt. There, curved arches and a haunting serenity accompany the names of those whose ashes are stored inside. It was this enigmatic aura that mesmerized Andrew Ousley – the founder of the alternative classical music series Death of Classical – when he first stepped into the chamber after a friend’s recommendation a decade ago. “Hearing immediately the bloom of the sound when I walked down the steps was powerful,” he says. “I had found a place with a naturally unique acoustics to experience music.”

The vaulted crypt, which can accommodate 45 guests at a time, is among the organization’s main venues, in addition to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery and its long tunnel catacombs. Each event – generally an instant sellout – draws an audience in search for an intimate concert through a stimulating experience. A drinks hour generally precedes the show and guests are ushered together into the venue, where an innately dramatic setting is elevated by candlelight and absorbing acoustics.

Jeff Bezos’s $10bn climate and biodiversity fund has garnered glittering prizes, but concerns have been voiced over the influence it can buy – and its interest in carbon offsets

Late last month, the coronation of Jeff Bezos and his partner Lauren Sánchez as environmental royalty was complete. At Conservation International’s glitzy annual gala in New York, with Harrison Ford, Jacinda Ardern and Shailene Woodley looking on, the couple were given the global visionary award for the financial contribution of the Bezos Earth Fund to the natural world.

“Jeff and Lauren are making history, not just with the sum of their investment in nature but also the speed of it,” said the Conservation International CEO, Dr M Sanjayan, whose organisation received a $20m grant from Bezos in 2021 for its work in the tropical Andes.