• Action from women’s (begins 1.21pm) and men’s races
• Get in touch! Email Alex with your thoughts
• Friends relish ‘bucket-list’ battle on opposing sides

The two teams are off! I’m reliably informed the conditions are set for a fast time – but who’s time will be fastest? We’ll know in around 18 minutes.

Word from the Guardian’s correspondent, Luke McLaughlin, who’s at Mortlake. Setting the scene perfectly …

The buildup has been contentious, to say the least, but all is calm at the Boat Race media centre, situated at Quintin Boat Club on the north side of the river (or the Middlesex station). No tense standoffs between rivals groups of fans, that I’ve seen, but then again there are no spectators on this part of the river.

In a few minutes the women’s crews will come to a standstill in the water outside after a gruelling race over four miles and 374 yards. Only one of the crews will be feeling that all the months of blood, sweat and tears have paid dividends. The post-race quotes should be fascinating given all the controversy over eligibility in recent weeks.

• Minute-by-minute updates from this 2pm BST kick-off
• Premier League table | Top scorers | Email Simon

Out come the players! West Ham eschewing the long-sleeved anthemwear that so many teams, including Liverpool, puzzlingly consider de rigeur.

A reader, whose name I can’t discern from their email address so must remain anonymous, reckons they’ve worked out why Liverpool’s players were all out in the corridor: “Robertson let one go in the dressing room; he’s famous for it, and it’s one aspect of his game that hasn’t slipped this year.”

• Chicago score 14 runs in final three innings of victory
• Los Angeles ruin solid start from Roki Sasaki

The Chicago Cubs had a big night against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

One night after being shut out, the Cubs broke out for 14 runs and 15 hits in the final three innings of a 16-0 victory Saturday night, to hand the Dodgers their first home loss of the season and their worst home shutout loss in franchise history.

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

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House sits half in Canada, half in Vermont. Now, the US is planning to cut off main entrance access to Canadians

There is only one building in North America, probably in the world, where one can browse bestsellers and children’s books by crossing an international border and then sit for an amateur theatre troupe in a regal opera house with each half of your body in two different countries.

Standing near the Tomifobia River, a rushing body of water swollen from the spring melt, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the border of Canada and the US. Constructed more than a century ago as a deliberate rebuttal to borders and division, the imposing building split between Quebec and Vermont has become a beloved and fiercely protected part of communities in both countries.

A 12-metre high mosaic will show the reflection of a wading bird native to Utøya island, where Anders Breivik murdered 69 people in 2011

Fourteen years ago, the heart of Oslo was reconfigured by hate. On 22 July 2011, Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik detonated a car bomb outside the office of the then prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, killing eight people and damaging surrounding buildings, before murdering a further 69 people on the nearby island of Utøya.

But now the same site is to be reconfigured by hope. Last week, after a multi-round, three-year-long selection process, a jury of curators, politicians, artists and representatives of the victims and survivors of the attacks announced the winning design for a new Norwegian national memorial to be unveiled in time for the 15th anniversary in 2026.

Reporters Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater shine a jaundiced spotlight on the foibles and foolishness of the US political class

Annie Karni, once of Politico, covers Congress for the New York Times. Her colleague Luke Broadwater, once a Pulitzer prize winner for the Baltimore Sun, makes the Trump administration his beat.

As co-authors, at book length of Mad House, they deliver a sharp and wit-filled portrait of Capitol Hill dysfunction. Generally unflattering, Karni and Broadwater dedicate their book on modern US politics to “the leakers, gossips, and busybodies who populate the halls of Congress”.

In mapping the Palestinian history and culture that persists despite Israeli suppression, Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson display a strength of purpose and a promise of hope

Raja Shehadeh – lawyer, activist and Palestine’s greatest prose writer – has long been a voice of sanity and measure in the fraught, tendentious world of Arab-Israeli politics. His first non-academic book, When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, chronicled the 2002 siege of his hometown, Ramallah, while Palestinian Walks, which won the Orwell prize, traced how Israel’s de facto occupation of the West Bank had fundamentally altered both its geography and its history. Last year, Shehadeh published What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?, his first book since the attacks of 7 October. It was a work in two parts: the first, a characteristically measured analysis of how history led us to this point; the second, a bitterly furious record of the devastation wrought upon Gaza. The overwhelming impression was of a man who, after decades of engagement, had finally, tragically, succumbed to despair.

So it is an unexpected relief to find in Forgotten something different: a Shehadeh who is engaged, forensic, alert to history’s weight but unwilling to let it crush him. Perhaps this is due to the presence of his co-author, his wife, the academic Penny Johnson. The prose remains lawyerly, precise to the point of fastidiousness, but the collaboration lends it a quiet strength. The first-person plural voice used throughout the book is intimate yet resolute, while the occasional references to “Raja” and “Penny” in the third person suggest a certain distance – a recognition that they, too, are subjects in this vast historical tragedy, just as much as its narrators.

At its AGM this week, the company will face not only the activist investor at its heels, but a global economy being changed from the White House

After Donald Trump’s “liberation day” on Wednesday last week, BP lost almost a quarter of its market value in a share price rout even deeper than the oil giant endured in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The collapse in global oil prices in the wake of the US president’s ­tariff blitz may have wiped billions from its ­market value – but Trump isn’t BP’s only problem.

The oil company will face shareholders this week for the first time since it bowed to investor pressure to abandon its green energy ambitions in favour of a return to fossil fuels, and its chair, Helge Lund, agreed to step down from the board.

World Trade Center healthcare program for people affected by attacks is in turmoil over Trump officials’ overhaul

A program that provides free healthcare to first responders and survivors of the World Trade Center terror attacks has been in turmoil for months, with services cut, restored and cut again as part of the Trump administration’s “restructuring” of the federal health department.

Following the most recent cuts, groups representing survivors and even Democratic US senators say they have no clarity on how the program will continue to provide benefits.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket blasts off on Monday, with his fiancee, Katy Perry and three others on board. But is it more than just a stunt?

Jeff Bezos is blasting his bride-to-be Lauren Sánchez and her “guests” to space on Monday – a plan that might, under other circumstances, contain mixed messages.

A crew of six women – Amanda Nguyen, a civil rights activist who will become the first Vietnamese woman to fly to space; the CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King; the pop star Katy Perry; film producer Kerianne Flynn; entrepreneur and former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe; and Sánchez, a journalist and philanthropist – will blast off on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket from the company’s launch site, 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas, on an 11-minute, suborbital flight to the edge of space and back.

The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading”) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera, a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med spa on a Honduran island.

Yet despite backing from the heavy-hitter venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, their extreme libertarian dreams kept bogging down: it turns out most self-respecting rich people don’t actually want to live on floating oil rigs, even if it means lower taxes, and while Próspera might be nice for a holiday and some body “upgrades”, its extra-national status is currently being challenged in court.

Dr Peter Marks, forced to resign by Trump administration, sees no ‘possible way’ to determine cause by September

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, should not offer “false hope” to families by boasting he can figure out what causes autism as soon as September, says the physician who resigned as the nation’s top vaccine official amid what he called anti-vaccination misinformation from the Trump administration cabinet member.

In an interview during which he alluded to his help helming Operation Warp Speed – the initiative that took only about nine months to develop, manufacture and distribute the vaccines protecting the public from Covid-19 – Dr Peter Marks warned that autism “is an incredibly complicated issue”.

Books detail president increasingly unfit to take on Trump, and party infighting that doomed Kamala Harris’s chances

Joe Biden plans to write a book about his presidency which ended in his historic withdrawal from the 2024 election, pushed out by senior Democrats convinced he was too old and infirm and replaced by his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

Sources close to Biden told news outlets the book could be published next year, by which time Biden will be 83 and doubtless – like other US presidents’ autobiographies – it will be a self-serving narrative lauding his time in office.

Authors from the We Are Not Numbers project on their dreams of becoming architects or artists, and a report on how a young woman found fulfilment in fast food

• Ahmed Alnaouq: ‘It’s our duty that we make Gaza’s stories immortal, on paper’

How Gaza inspired me to be a ‘surgeon’ for historic buildings

As the economic and political pressure became unbearable, the US president changed course – but has the damage been done?

He vowed: “My policies will never change.” He insisted: “Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” He boasted: “I know what I’m doing.” And at 9.33am on Wednesday, he entreated: “BE COOL. Everything is going to work out well.”

But less than four hours later, Donald Trump blinked. As the economic and political pressure became unbearable, the US president announced on social media that he would pause for 90 days higher trade tariffs for most countries, excluding China.

The Gaza-born, UK-based journalist, who has lost more than 20 family members in Israeli airstrikes, has taken pieces from an online platform he co-created for young Palestinians and collated them in a new book

• ‘Gaza, it breaks my heart to see you in this state’: three stories from young Palestinian writers

On 22 October 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit Ahmed Alnaouq’s home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing 21 members of his family, including his 75-year-old father, two brothers, three sisters and all of their children.

At the time, Alnaouq was living in London, where he works as a journalist and human rights activist. “It crushed me,” he says of the attack. Unable to return home, he could only watch helplessly from afar and grieve alone. Later, he tells me that it’s not anger or hate that consumes him now, but survivor’s guilt. “All the time I think: ‘Why? Why am I alive? Why wasn’t I killed with my family?’”

Amid a series of sadistic expulsions, the White House says Trump has reflected kicking Americans out of the country

They’re rounding people up, and you could be next. The Trump administration has largely dispensed with due process rights in deporting immigrants, who are now being targeted for their protected speech, having their visas or green cards summarily cancelled without process and sometimes without notice, and getting kidnapped off the streets and hustled into vans so that they can be shipped to “detention centers” too far away for their loved ones, or their lawyers, to visit them.

Some immigrants are being targeted for disappearance because they oppose Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, an opinion that it is now physically dangerous, instead of merely unpopular, to hold. But others the government seems to be seizing almost at random. More than 200 Venezuelan nationals have been seized and deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, rendered outside of US jurisdiction in defiance of judges’ orders demanding that their deportation flights be stopped. Of those Venezuelans, most had no criminal record. Other deportees, like the Maryland father and sheet metal worker Kilmar Abrego García, seem to have been deported by mistake; the Trump administration says that Abrego García, who they admit they did not mean to deport, will not be brought back to his family in the United States. Conveniently, the fact that they have deported him to a foreign prison is supposed, in the Trump administration’s logic, to absolve them of responsibility for putting him there. “We suggest the judge contact [Salvadoran] President Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador,” the White House said, obnoxiously, after a judge ordered them to bring Abrego García back.

Unnamed tourist fell from viewing platform overlooking the historic structure in Segovia, authorities say

A 63-year-old British man has died after falling from a viewing platform overlooking the historic aqueduct of Segovia in central Spain, according to local authorities.

In a brief statement on Saturday, officials described the man as a British passport holder who had arrived in the city on Thursday with two other people.

Re-examination puts one of biggest #MeToo victories back in court as backlash against women’s rights unfolds in US

Harvey Weinstein goes back on trial in New York this week in a redo of the #MeToo-era case in which the disgraced movie mogul was convicted of sexual criminal assault in the first degree and rape in the third degree, but acquitted on three other counts, including the most serious charge, predatory sexual assault.

The legal drama begins with jury selection that is expected to last up to a week. It puts one of the biggest victories of the #MeToo era back in the courtroom just as a backlash against women’s rights – from abortion access to the rise of controversial male influencers like Andrew Tate – unfolds across the US.

Trump ended the ‘de-minimis’ rule while launching a trade war with China – which will make retail giants such as Temu more expensive, experts say

After a chaotic week of flip-flopping tariff policies, cheap clothes from China are nearly certain to face a steep price hike soon – prompting concern among fast fashion retailers and potentially pushing consumers to look for other alternatives.

As part of a package of global tariff policies announced on “liberation day” last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order that ended a duty-free exemption for low-priced goods to enter the US from China and Hong Kong. Known as the “de-minimis” rule, packages under $800 do not qualify for any taxes or tariffs on the goods and are inspected minimally at the border.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says dozens killed and wounded on ‘ordinary city street’ while going to church for Palm Sunday

At least 31 people have been killed and dozens injured in a Russian ballistic missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Sumy as people were going to church for Palm Sunday.

Two missiles landed in the crowded city centre. One hit a trolley bus full of passengers. Footage from the scene showed bodies lying in the street, burning cars, and rescuers carrying bloodied survivors. Two of the dead were children.

What is happening is, quite simply, annihilation. Yet our politicians keep funding it and media outlets normalize it

Where do I even start? In recent weeks I’ve sat down to try and write about Gaza and, every time I steel myself to write about one atrocity, another atrocity is committed. Palestinian journalists have been burned alive, babies have frozen to death, medics have been executed and buried in mass graves, kids are being killed in their sleep. Meanwhile, in the US and Germany, speaking out about dead Palestinian babies can land you on a deportation list. Arguing that international human rights law should be respected can put you at risk of being snatched off the street and stuck in a detention centre.

I don’t know where to start and I don’t know what is really left to say at this point. After 18 months of endless carnage, it should be clear to everyone that this is not a war. That this is not self-defence. What is happening in Gaza is, quite simply, annihilation. A litany of genocide experts have stated this. Respected international organizations like Amnesty International have concluded that Israel is committing genocide – and yet our politicians are still funding this.

In a triumph of bling over restraint, the bride will get a hen do in space and a party on a super-yacht

Well done us. It can’t be long before Jeff Bezos personally extends his thanks, as he did when we – Amazon employees and Amazon customers – paid for his flight to sub-orbital space, but let’s not wait. As soon as Monday, when his fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, is due with five friends on a rocket trip, Amazon givers could be witness, again, to the kind of unfettered excess that is only possible if everyone, at every level, contributes, even if it’s only via permanent surveillance and a surrendered toilet break.

But no one puts it better than Jeff, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, did himself, after he took his inaugural Blue Origin space trip in 2021. “You guys paid for all this.” More recently, we provided funds – that might not exist without the company’s pitiless working conditions – for Sánchez’s pink diamond engagement ring, proudly exhibited, estimated value, $3m. The billionaire delivered it, an enchanted Vogue writer reported, in the sweetest way, on his massive new yacht, “hiding the ring under her pillow after a starlit dinner à deux”. Few passions have been as exhaustively documented as that between these seasoned lovebirds. (Favourite saying: “Love you to space and back.”) And this week, prior to funding the solemnisation of that love – a June wedding in Venice – it will duly be our privilege to watch Lauren’s hen flight slip the surly bonds of Earth.

• André Onana culpable for both goals in Lyon on Thursday
• Off-field problems add to Amorim’s desire to protect him

André Onana has been rested by Ruben Amorim for Manchester United’s trip to Newcastle on Sunday, after the No 1 was culpable for both goals in Thursday’s 2-2 Europa League draw at Lyon.

While Altay Bayindir is set to make his Premier League debut at St James’ Park, the 29-year-old is likely to be recalled for Thursday’s quarter-final, second leg at Old Trafford, the Guardian understands. Onana was left behind when United travelled to Tyneside on Saturday.

It’s a delicacy in France and Spain, and springing up at the UK’s restaurants, but is the trend for dining on cuttlefish sustainable?

It can be braised low and slow or grilled in a hot flash, covered in sauce and canned or stirred through a paella. Cuttlefish, a cephalopod closely related to squid, is the seafood menu offering du jour.

In March a cuttlefish risotto was added to the menu at Rick Stein’s The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall. In Cardiff, at Heaneys, you can find a dish of pork belly, cuttlefish and borlotti beans. At Cycene in London’s Shoreditch, a goat ragu with cuttlefish noodles, while at Silo in Stratford, cuttlefish is fermented to dress leeks, alliums and padron peppers. In Glasgow, Celentano’s offers a linguine and cuttlefish ragu with black olives and tarragon.

Serpentine South Gallery; National Gallery, London
The arte povera veteran’s passionate celebration of trees risks being eclipsed by the real ones that surround it. And a 19th-century Mexican polymath becomes the first Latin American artist to have a solo show at the National Gallery

A tree towers upwards in Kensington Gardens, slender but unimaginably strong, grey boulders perched like vultures among its branches. Another gestures directly to the sky, twigs spreading in eloquent appeal. A third can be seen at great distance, shattered as if by lightning, its broken glory shining bright cold in the sunshine.

For one exhilarating moment it seemed as if the acclaimed Italian artist Giuseppe Penone had come upon these trees and simply adjusted them, with poetic ingenuity, to emphasise their exceptional strength and beauty. Then, just as viewers were discussing how miraculous trees are – everyone stunned, everyone photographing this radiant glade – someone knocked on a trunk. And we heard the hollow ring of cast bronze.

• Teenager wins 200m title in 19.84 after rival false starts
• Peter Bol returns to shatter Australian 800m record

Gout Gout has recorded a stunning 19.84s in the final of the 200m at the national championships in Perth, but an illegal tailwind of 2.2m/s has again prevented him from officially breaking the 20-second barrier.

The 17-year-old overcame nerves and two false starts, one which disqualified rival Lachie Kennedy, to soar down the straight and stop the clock a massive 14 hundredths of a second under his previous best.

Employees are choosing to opt out of a new era of corporate malignity, epitomised by Elon Musk

Almost any workplace study in the last decade will tell you that the death of productivity – and the death of profits – is a direct result of having miserable, overworked and micromanaged employees. In an attempt to make themselves feel in control, bosses delude themselves into believing that a tight grip will yield big results from their staff.

Overwhelmingly though, the reality is the opposite: that relaxed, empowered workers (with plenty of free time) are the ones who manage to do the best work, often in shorter days than 9-5.

Leftwing challenger Luisa González in statistical tie with President Daniel Noboa who champions ‘iron fist’ policy

Ecuadorians go to the polls on Sunday in a vote seen as a referendum on a “war on drugs” offensive that has led to numerous human rights violations, as the incumbent Daniel Noboa faces the leftist Luisa González in a tightly contested runoff.

Noboa, 37, edged out González, 47, in the first round in February by just 16,746 votes (0.17%) from a 13.7 million electorate.

Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’s spry study of the couple in early 70s New York is as much as jittery collage of the era’s culture as it is a revealing portrait

John and Yoko. Greenwich Village. Television. Activism. Vietnam. Richard Nixon. Insects. Peace. This skittish, channel-surfing archival documentary, co-directed by Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards, touches on all of this and more. But it lingers on nothing. It’s a spry, fleet-footed film that makes an intriguingly angular and jittery companion piece to Peter Jackson’s weighty series The Beatles: Get Back, which explored, over nearly eight exhaustive hours, the making of the Beatles’ 1970 final album, Let It Be.

One to One, in contrast, covers an 18-month period shortly afterwards. It’s 1971. Unshackled from the Beatles and burned by the hostility of the British press, Lennon and Ono have upped sticks and moved to a bohemian two-room apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The John Lennon we see in Jackson’s film can be abrasive, a guarded presence. In One to One, he’s lighter: engaged, curious and open, he seems positively chipper in some archival snippets. Ono, meanwhile, is reframed from the Beatles-wrecking succubus of popular media opinion at the time and shown as an articulate, if eccentric avant-garde artist who is candid about the personal cost of the hate campaign levelled against her. The move to New York is not just a relocation, but also, as the film tells it, a rebirth of sorts.

With $1.5bn ploughed in by SSG, Jay Monahan and co have plenty of money and no need to agree a deal with LIV

The Ryder Cup could become the next piece to move in the apparently never-ending game of elite golf’s three-dimensional chess. Multiple sources have confided during the Masters that PGA Tour Enterprises, a commercial body set up almost two years ago, is seriously considering an offer to take part ownership of the United States element of the Ryder Cup. That domain is controlled by the PGA of America, which also runs the US PGA Championship. Any such deal would cost PGA Tour Enterprises hundreds of millions of dollars.

PGA Tour designs on the Ryder Cup are nothing new. Indeed, it has been a longtime frustration of the PGA Tour that the five key elements in the sport – the four majors plus the biennial joust between Europe and the US – are run by other organisations. PGA Tour Enterprises now offers an avenue to do something about that.

Almost as amazing as the knowledge we have gained in the past four decades is the fact that some people continue to deny the damage we are doing to our world

Earlier this year I received an email from a reader asking background questions about an article I had written more than four decades ago. Given the time gap, my recollection was hazy. To be honest, it was almost non-existent. So I was intrigued – and then astonished when I read the feature.

I had written about the British glaciologist John Mercer, author of a 1978 Nature paper in which he warned that continuing increases in fossil fuel consumption would cause amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide to soar. Global temperatures could rise by 2C by the mid-21st century, causing major ice loss at the poles and threatening a 5-metre rise in sea levels, he warned.

Bridgerton star Bessie – soon to play Nancy Mitford in a new TV drama – and her mum, acting royalty Imelda, talk Sondheim, sandwiches and taking the stage together in Shaw’s sex worker scandal Mrs Warren’s Profession

‘It’s amazing that I came from you,” says Bessie Carter to her mother, Imelda Staunton, during a break in rehearsals for the forthcoming revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, in which they’ll play a mother and daughter and share a stage for the first time. She has a point. Carter, 31, best known as Bridgerton’s Prudence Featherington, is 5ft 10 and aquiline, glamorous in a maroon leather coat and silver-studded shoes. Staunton, 69, is barely 5ft tall, quiet and unassuming in slacks and a blouse, short grey hair pinned back.

There’s no hint of grandeur to this theatrical dame, who was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake in 2004, played Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter series from 2007 and was the last iteration of Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix’s The Crown. Staunton’s stellar stage career in both straight plays and musicals also brought her a fifth Olivier award for her recent performance in Hello, Dolly! at the Palladium. If anything, she seems slightly in awe of her only child with her husband of 41 years, Jim Carter (AKA Downton Abbey’s Mr Carson).

This Easter feast that’s made for sharing is how the Greeks celebrate the new season

Spring in Greece is all about Easter, a time for family, tradition and lots of good food. Today’s recipes bring those celebrations to the dining table with slow-roasted lamb seasoned with Greek flavours of oregano and garlic, and paired with a crisp fennel and herb salad that celebrates the new season’s bounty. It’s a meal that’s just made for sharing – and for toasting the end of a long winter.

After attaining comfort and a shift in the culture, high heels have returned – for some a symbol of retrogressive femininity, for others a protest

I mean, it sounds mad now. I know this even as I write, it sounds impossible, like a weird lie you tell kids to show them how good they have it, but listen: in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I worked in a fancy underwear shop, I had to wear heels that were at least 3in high every day, no sitting down allowed. And then, and then, in my leisure time, instead of easing myself into, say, a bath of Uggs, I also wore a heel. “Eva,” I hear you say, “Did somebody hurt you? I hope you have someone to talk to.” But – it was normal. It was normal! I wore a spike-heeled boot, a massive platform, or sometimes for comfort, as a treat, a 1940s mule.

It was about fashion, yes, but it was also about growing up, and about authority, and about swagger. Also, I lived at the top of a very steep hill and the angle of a heel was sometimes helpful when walking home. Heels have never been about just one thing. Their meaning, pain and politics, move and merge.

Ministers call denial of entry for Wera Hobhouse ‘concerning’ after she flew there to visit newborn grandson

The UK government is “greatly concerned” and wants an account of why the Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse was denied entry to Hong Kong on a family visit to meet her three-month-old grandson for the first time.

Hobhouse, 65, the MP for Bath, said she was held at Hong Kong airport on arrival on Thursday, told she was being refused entry and put on a flight back to the UK five hours later.

Condemning them as ‘sectarian’ is only adding to the clamour that they have no place in the west

A poll suggests that most British Muslims identify more with their faith than with their nation. The head of the Saudi-backed Muslim World League counsels British Muslims to talk less about Gaza and more about domestic issues. Labour MP Tahir Ali is criticised for campaigning for a new airport in Mirpur in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir; he claims the criticisms have led to “Islamophobic” attacks. After push-back, the BBC changes a headline describing converts to Islam as “reverts”, a term some Muslims use to suggest that Islam is the natural state of humankind.

Just a taster of debates about British Muslims over the past week. At the heart of each of these controversies is the question of how Muslims should relate to western societies, and western societies relate to them. For some, the answer is easy. On the one side, many claim Islam to be incompatible with western values and that allowing Muslims to settle here has led to what they regard as the degeneration of western societies. On the other are those who insist there is no issue, and those who raise concerns are bigots. Both are wrong. There are issues about Muslims and integration that need discussing, but those issues are rarely as presented in these debates.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

• Trump and all the president’s men feted at UFC card
• Volkanovski claims featherweight belt at UFC 314

US president Donald Trump entered to a standing ovation and cheers from a crowd of thousands attending a UFC event on Saturday night, shaking hands with supporters against a backdrop of fans waving his trademark Maga hats.

Just as Trump entered, he greeted podcast host Joe Rogan, who sat to the right of the president. On the other side of Trump sat Elon Musk, billionaire and chief of the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump, who accented his dark suit with a bright yellow tie, pumped his fist in the air, prompting cheers to strains of Taking Care of Business.

Nearly 6,000 victims of modern slavery chose not to be referred for help last year, new data shows

Thousands of trafficking victims have rejected the government’s support, many due to fear of the authorities or of being deported, lawyers have said.

Nearly 6,000 trafficking victims rejected support from the government’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for victims of modern slavery last year, according to data based on research from the British Institute for International and Comparative Law and the Human Trafficking Foundation at the University of Oxford. Researchers found a range of reasons for this among respondents, including fear of traffickers, receiving support elsewhere, wanting to put things of being trafficked behind them and being reluctant to engage with UK authorities.