Francis pays tribute to ‘miracle of tenderness’ after doctors report slight improvement in his condition

Pope Francis has issued a message from his hospital bed thanking medical staff and volunteers for the “miracle of tenderness” that they offer the sick, as he continues his recovery from pneumonia.

After more than three weeks in hospital, the 88-year-old pontiff is responding well to treatment and has shown a “gradual, slight improvement” in recent days, doctors said.

For the fourth Sunday in a row, Francis did not appear for his weekly noon blessing, but the Vatican distributed the text he would have delivered if he had been well enough. In it, he thanked all those who were caring for him and others who are sick and experiencing a “night of pain”.

“Brothers and sisters, during my prolonged hospitalisation here, I too experience the thoughtfulness of service and the tenderness of care, in particular from the doctors and health care workers, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart,” read the message issued from Gemelli hospital in Rome.

“And while I am here, I think of the many people who in various ways are close to the sick, and who are for them a sign of the Lord’s presence. We need this, the ‘miracle of tenderness’ which accompanies those who are in adversity, bringing a little light into the night of pain,” he wrote.

Francis, who has chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, has remained in a stable condition, with no fever and good oxygen levels in his blood, for several days, doctors reported in a Vatican statement on Saturday.

The doctors said the pope’s condition testified to “a good response to therapy”. It was the first time they had reported that Francis was responding positively to the treatment for the complex lung infection that was diagnosed after he was admitted to hospital on 14 February.

But they kept his prognosis as “guarded”, meaning he was not out of danger. On Sunday morning, the Vatican reported the Francis was resting after a quiet night.

In his absence, the Vatican’s day-to-day operations continued alongside celebrations of its Holy Year, a quarter-century jubilee that brings millions of pilgrims to Rome. On Sunday, the Canadian cardinal Michael Czerny, who is close to Francis, celebrated the Holy Year mass for volunteers the pope was meant to lead.

During the mass in St Peter’s Square, the giant banner bearing Francis’s papal coat of arms fluttered from the loggia of the basilica above. Even while in hospital, the Argentinian cleric remains in charge of the Catholic church.

The actor was likely alone in his house for days, disoriented and too frail to seek help, after death of wife Betsy Arakawa

Actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, who were found dead last month in Santa Fe, New Mexico, were rarely apart from each other, and it’s that closeness that may have led to the circumstances of their deaths.

Arakawa had become Hackman’s caregiver in his later years when he developed Alzheimer’s disease and became incapable of carrying out even the simplest of tasks. She ran the household errands, made sure he remained active and protected him from illnesses.

Sepideh Gholian’s diary of prison life came out four years ago. Next month, she will publish a cookbook to honour her fellow inmates

Maziar Bahari used to feel sceptical when people talked of the way that books can change lives. Such statements always seemed like so much hyperbole to him.

But when Sepideh Gholian, one of Iran’s most famous political prisoners, came into his life, everything changed. “If anyone wants to know why writing matters, her book is the best example,” says Bahari, a London-based journalist, documentary maker and the founder of the news website IranWire.

Halal or haram? Flirt to convert? Why didn’t he call? The comedian and matchmaker discusses a fraught Muslim dating scene and her new Hulu show

Does a hedonistic lifestyle prevent young Muslims from ever finding love? Should Muslims flirt to convert? What’s the right halal to haram ratio?

Like any dating demographic, the rules of romance for Muslims looking to meet other single Muslims are fraught. So Yasmin Elhady is stepping in as their nosy auntie, helping them navigate everything from lifestyles choices, which may include alcohol and sex, to spirituality and attachment styles, on Hulu’s new dating show Muslim Matchmaker.

Under the guise of spiritual leadership, Gregorian Bivolaru allegedly exploited hundreds of people through an international network of yoga camps and retreats. Now he’s awaiting trial, accused of kidnap, trafficking and rape. Here, one of his victims reveals how she broke free

From the outside, Tara Yoga Centre looks like a normal, welcoming yoga studio. A pleasant building in an expensive east London postcode, with another popular branch on an Oxford high street. There are positive, even gushing, Google reviews. The website is professional, with photos of smiling people stretching on matching purple yoga mats. It promises “rapid and integral transformation”, as well as “an invitation to awaken now”.

When Miranda, from Oxford – who has asked to go only by her first name – was in her late 20s, she visited India to practise yoga. It was 2015 and yoga was already a booming industry in the UK. She was working as an English teacher at a London school and gravitated to yoga for the same reason that it’s recommended by health bodies from the World Health Organization to local GPs: healing, exercise and mental wellbeing.

Damage to trees in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene was ‘extraordinary and humbling’ but urban areas face particular problems

The city of Asheville and its surrounding areas have been left vulnerable to floods, fires and extreme heat after Hurricane Helene uprooted thousands of trees that provided shade and protection from storms.

Helene was catastrophic for the region’s trees – in part due to the heavy precursor rainstorm that pounded southern Appalachia for two days straight, drenching the soil before Helene hit, bringing yet more heavy rain and 60-100mph winds.

Waists, heels and lace take centre-stage in Seán McGirr’s ‘modern dandy’ collection, as hourglass tailoring returns

Backstage after his third Paris fashion week show, Dublin-born Seán McGirr, 36, was asked whether he was growing in confidence as the designer of Alexander McQueen. “I guess so?” he replied, with an emphasis on the question mark. “I spend so much time with the incredible atelier. Really getting into it, you know? So, I guess so.”

The clothes spoke with more self-assurance than McGirr took credit for. The setting was the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, built in 1785 as part of the Natural History Museum in Paris, a room catwalk-shaped but Dickens-coded – a tall, narrow alleyway heavy with wooden cabinets, which once showcased scientific curiosities from all over the world. The entrance to the runway was a dazzling glass corridor from which the models appeared before stepping on to the wooden floor, as if emerging from a hall of mirrors.

UK appears to be out of US eyeline for now but it would not be immune to slowdown triggered by rising tariffs

Forget the “Trump put”, as financial analysts called the bet that the US president’s policies would unleash a winning era for the nation’s stock markets. By Friday, the chat was of the “Merz spurt”.

The decision by Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor-in-waiting, to cut a deal on ditching Germany’s debt brake – still to be confirmed by the outgoing parliament – marked a seismic shift.

Operation Nanook, carried out in conjunction with allies, aims to ‘project force’ in a region attracting growing interest from Russia and China

The winter sun hasn’t yet risen above Inuvik’s jagged horizon of black spruce trees, but already, more than 150 nervous soldiers have gathered in a community recreation centre.

Tables clear of their breakfast and fingers fiddle with pens, a giddiness akin to the first day of school settles over the room.

Pioneering architects Alison and Peter Smithson’s no-frills glass box near the ruins of a grand 18th-century folly was an experiment, a second home and a ‘fairy story’ – all of which awaits whoever buys it next…

Upper Lawn is a weekend retreat in Wiltshire built by the late architects Alison and Peter Smithson for themselves and their family and used by them from 1959 to 1982. It’s a place of obvious delight, thanks to a garden enclosed by old stone walls in which it stands, a clump of grand old beech trees just outside, and broad views of sweeping countryside beyond. The house itself is a well-proportioned, thoughtfully detailed, somewhat rustic glass box that makes good use of the transparency and openness that modernist building methods made possible. It’s also a work of less obvious riches, a material diary of building and dwelling, a three-dimensional essay on the passage of time. Now it is being put up for sale by its owners for the past 23 years, the graphic designer Ian Cartlidge and his wife, Jo.

The Smithsons, acknowledged founders of brutalism, never saw themselves as practising a style, but applying an attitude – one that makes evident the ways buildings are made. Upper Lawn is possibly the purest expression of their ideals. Having to satisfy no clients but themselves, it was a “device”, as Peter (1923-2003) called it, “for trying things out on oneself” and for generating ideas they could use on larger projects, such as their headquarters for the Economist in St James’s, London.

The Obama administration veteran’s Chokepoints looks at recent US sanctions policy regarding Iran, Russia and China

Edward Fishman’s first book, Chokepoints, is a study of American economic warfare. Densely reported but fast-moving, the book examines recent US sanctions policy regarding Iran, Russia and China, and how the dollar’s dominance of international financial systems has allowed administrations to pursue political aims.

Fishman’s own service under Barack Obama, at Treasury, Pentagon and State, stands him in good stead. So does teaching at Columbia and being a Washington thinktank fellow.

Chokepoints is out now

Autonomous digital assistants are being developed that can carry out tasks on behalf of the user – including ordering the groceries. But if you don’t keep an eye on them, dinner might not be quite what you expect …

I’m watching artificial intelligence order my groceries. Armed with my shopping list, it types each item into the search bar of a supermarket website, then uses its cursor to click. Watching what appears to be a digital ghost do this usually mundane task is strangely transfixing. “Are you sure it’s not just a person in India?” my husband asks, peering over my shoulder.

I’m trying out Operator, a new AI “agent” from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Made available to UK users last month, it has a similar text interface and conversational tone to ChatGPT, but rather than just answering questions, it can actually do things – provided they involve navigating a web browser.

Wingfield Manor is part-managed by English Heritage, but has fallen into a state of disrepair

At various points in history it has been a prison for Mary, Queen of Scots, a battleground in the English civil war, and the site of one the country’s first flushing toilets.

But despite its storied past, Wingfield Manor in Derbyshire has fallen into disrepair, and members of the public can no longer visit the magnificent ruins on a hilltop in Amber Valley.

Art lovers catch last glimpse of prestigious art collection before gallery shuts for five years for major revamp

Tourists and French visitors alike filled Paris’s landmark Pompidou Centre at the weekend to catch a last glimpse of its prestigious art collection before it closes for five years for a major renovation.

“Five years – it’s long!” exclaimed one guide, Elisa Hervelin, as people around her took photos of many of the museum’s permanent works, among them paintings by Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse and sculptures by Marcel Duchamp.

Salt cod and sweet pears are just the thing to stir happy memories

I have history with salt cod. Some years ago, we were on our way from the south of Italy, where my father is from, to Tuscany, where my parents now live. We had a new baby and a car suspension compromised by a boot packed with wheels of cheese and salami. We took a break on the outskirts of a town not far from Naples, where we planned to order a quick primi and be on our way.

The pastas came and went, and then more cutlery arrived for one member of our party – my father, unable to resist salt cod, sat bashfully awaiting a sneakily ordered secondi for at least another hour.

Ukrainian president backs negotiations, despite Trump’s remarks he finds Russia ‘easier’, and calls for more sanctions after deadly missile attack

Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the frontline.

The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photos on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia.

• Updates, play due from 9am GMT
• Sign up for our newsletter, The Spin | And email Taha

5th over: New Zealand 37-0 (Young 10, Ravindra 25) A stunner from Ravindra: he flicks a ball on off stump through midwicket, along the carpet, for four. Ravi Shastri and Nasser Hussain are gushing on comms. Mohammed Shami responds well, going around the wicket to find the outside edge … but the ball runs away to the boundary.

4th over: New Zealand 26-0 (Young 8, Ravindra 16) Pandya, key in this side as the only bit of seam support for Shami, begins well until dropping short – Ravindra hits a staggering pull over deep midwicket for six. A gorgeous punch through point follows for four, the crowd silent. Another pull, for four more, ends the over. He’s special, this kid.

Even if the supreme court were to resist the president’s onslaught, it has little means to enforce its decisions

When the chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts, delivered his bombshell ruling last July granting Donald Trump absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, he laid out his vision of an expansive presidency. The executive, he wrote, should be “vigorous and energetic”, and free to carry out duties “boldly and fearlessly”.

If that sums up Roberts’ ideal occupant of the Oval Office, then he has certainly got what he wants in the 47th president. In his first month back, Trump has vigorously fired tens of thousands of federal workers; energetically ignored congressional statutes; boldly run roughshod over the constitution; and fearlessly unleashed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, in a slash-and-burn campaign against the US government.

Trinidad and Tobago and its neighbors mix music genres in a fast-growing transatlantic artistic exchange

It was the wee hours of carnival on Saturday when the soca legend Machel Montano and Nigerian American Afrobeats superstar Davido took to the stage in Port of Spain. By then, the audience of thousands had already been partying for hours, but when the two launched into their hit song Fling It Up , the crowd erupted.

This year’s Trinidad and Tobago carnival – which included the finals of the country’s steelpan competition and two days of hardcore reveling – highlighted a growing trend of collaboration between artists from Africa and the Caribbean, with musicians exploring the common threads of their cultural heritage at a time when the campaign for reparations has brought about a closer look at historical ties.

Dealing with PTSD, Merlin Hanbury-Tenison retreated to his family farm in Cornwall. There, working to revive a rare fragment of rainforest, he found a way to heal himself

A straight-backed, well-spoken former management consultant and ex-soldier in a wax jacket might not resemble much of a tree wizard, but the man leading me into a steep Cornish valley of gnarled, mossy oaks is called Merlin. He possesses hidden depths. And surfaces. Within minutes of meeting, as we head towards the Mother Tree – a venerable oak of special significance – Merlin Hanbury-Tenison reveals that he recently had a tattoo of the tree etched on his skin. I’m expecting him to roll up a sleeve to reveal a mini-tree outline, but he whips out his phone and shows me a picture: the 39-year-old’s entire back is covered with a spectacular full-colour painting of the oak. “It took 22 hours. I was quite sore,” he says, a little ruefully. “But I was in London afterwards, feeling quite overcome by the city and I had this moment: I’ve got the rainforest with me. Wherever I go, I feel like I’m carrying the forest and its story with me.”

Merlin is keen to tell the remarkable 5,000-year story of this fragment of Atlantic temperate rainforest – a rare habitat found in wet and mild westerly coastal regions and which is under more threat than tropical rainforests. In fact, he is now the custodian of this special, nature-rich landscape filled with ferns, mosses, lichens and fungi. He is slightly more reticent about his own remarkable life. Both stories are well worth telling.

My American accent inspired pity, empathy and utter confusion. I feel the same: it’s as though we’ve entered hospice care

Traveling abroad for the first time since November, I saw pity in the eyes of strangers when they heard my American accent. Pity, empathy, and utter confusion, as if to convey “What the hell is happening to your country?” with a mere glance or a quiet sigh.

Believe me, I’m American and I’m just as confused as you are.

Shanti L Nelson is a writer and photographer

The gadfly-minded abuser has openly threatened Greenland, Ukraine and Europe. He, and America, are the enemy now

I’d say writing comedy about the ever-shifting opinions of Donald Trump, the Speedy Gonzales of on-the-hoof policymaking, is like playing pin the tail on the donkey, but it’s unfair on donkeys. No donkey ever sexually assaulted someone in a department store changing cubicle.

It’s 4.30pm on Wednesday and I’m done. Last week I filed this column on Thursday, and then on Friday DJ Trump and JD Vance beat up Volodymyr Zelenskyy live on TV in the Oval Office to try to grab his minerals, as brazenly as Trump might grab a pussy, like a performatively cruel Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Sopranos suits.

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

The DJ and podcaster on taking over the 6 Music breakfast slot, coping with grief, and what he learned working as an intern at MTV

Born in Oldham in 1984, Nick Grimshaw has just taken over as 6 Music’s new breakfast DJ . After stints in PR and TV, his radio career began in 2007 on Radio 1 youth strand Switch; in 2012, he became the station’s breakfast presenter, doing it for six years. He’s also been an X Factor judge, a Gogglebox regular (with his niece, Liv), has written a memoir, Soft Lad, and co-hosts Waitrose’s Dish podcast, with Angela Hartnett, and BBC Sounds podcast Sidetracked, with Annie Mac. Engaged to his dancer partner Meshach Henry, he lives in London and will broadcast live from the 6 Music festival in Greater Manchester, later this month.

Congratulations on the new job. How is breakfast DJing different on 6 Music?
Radio 1 is about being at the zeitgeist of what’s going on in popular culture, so when there’s a change of presenter there, it feels seismic – there’s new imaging, new jingles, a new attack. The remit on 6 is more about the music, giving you classics you love to hear, and new songs we hope you fall in love with, to actually make you want to get up and survive a Tuesday morning.

When it comes to appreciating art, genius really is in the eye of the beholder

Not for the first time, I’m examining a picture my daughter has drawn. It’s an expressive piece, formed from purple marker, but presented in a larger format than her usual efforts. The effect is multiplying; there is a feral freeness in her strokes, a sense of passion at play, of creativity unbridled.

We are at my sister Maeve’s house, where she and her brother have been happily ensconced in a drawing session with their cousins all afternoon. Paper and markers and crayons are scattered in every direction, and each child’s own style is on display. For my son, the endless Minecraft characters and dinosaurs he can now reproduce with frightening speed and accuracy; for his older cousins Nora and Ardal, a menagerie of beautifully rendered characters from their favourite books and games. My daughter, however, has eschewed such figurative works, preferring to rely on pure expression.

More governments seeking to keep millions of people offline amid conflicts, protests and political instability

Digital blackouts reached a record high in 2024 in Africa as more governments sought to keep millions of citizens off the internet than in any other period over the last decade.

A report released by the internet rights group Access Now and #KeepItOn, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, found there were 21 shutdowns in 15 African countries, surpassing the existing record of 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 2021.

Since becoming president, Trump has upended the US approach to Ukraine and treated Moscow more as an ally

In just seven weeks since returning to the White House for a second term, Donald Trump has upended the US approach to the invasion of Ukraine and treated Russia increasingly not as an adversary, but an ally.

After tossing aside decades of alignment with Europe against Russian aggression, the US president suspended military assistance and intelligence to Kyiv and said on Friday he finds it “easier” to work with Russia than Ukraine.

Photographer Meyerowitz, 87, and artist and writer Barrett, 78, invited two documentary-makers into their lives for a year. The result, Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, is an intimate portrait that all couples should see

We might all have domestic arguments that demand to be preserved on film for their drama, but few of them would ever live up to the intensity, eloquence and glamour of the barneys between American photographer Joel Meyerowitz and his English wife, novelist and artist Maggie Barrett.

The best (or worst) of those clashes comes toward the end of the extraordinary, intimate documentary of Joel and Maggie’s marriage, aptly entitled Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other (their own private update on “till death us do part”). In that final set-to, Maggie conjures all the frustrations of the 30 years they have been together – years in which Joel has become ever more world-famous and celebrated as a photographer, and she has seen her novels rejected by publishers and her paintings go unsold – and lets them go in a formidable rush.

National Gallery, London
From young Christ in a strop to Lazarus coming back from the dead, astonishingly relatable paintings by medieval Siena’s finest reach into the present in this dazzling show

The picture glows in the dark, small but incandescent. It shows three men by the shore. Two are in a boat, trawling the sea with a net, delicately visible beneath the surface. The other stands on a rock, inviting them to follow him in an atmosphere of glimmering gold air. Fish swim straight at you, head on through translucent green waters, as the boatmen turn in amazement at the speaking gestures of Christ. Everything is fluid, mobile, elemental.

Duccio painted this panel for the spectacular double-sided altarpiece installed with immense pageantry in Siena Cathedral in 1311. The scene is from Saint Luke. The front of the altar is still in the city, but these wooden back panels were hacked apart in the 18th century – some lost, possibly destroyed, others scattered across the globe. Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 unites eight long-separated paintings from as far afield as Texas, New York and Madrid, along with many other radiant wonders. The show is as beautiful as it is transformational.

Some of the president’s Tory fans seem to find the grim reality of the president’s actions invigorating rather than terrifying

Short of emigration, what is the best option for Britain’s dazzled Trump followers now their hero confirms he is not Europe’s ally but Vladimir Putin’s? That’s assuming what we can’t in the case of Nigel Farage MP: that they do not share the US president’s well-documented weakness for a genocidal invader. Even his more respectable British acolytes have until recently finessed, quite successfully, their love of Trump with his long history of Putin-pleasing. No one more so than Boris Johnson, former prime minister, self-styled saviour of Ukraine and still Trump’s most dependable British idiot.

To Johnson’s way of thinking, detailed in numerous Daily Mail columns, it is Trump-doubters who are always the ridiculous, panicking, hysterical, whingeing headless chickens. When Trump looked likely to win the US election, Johnson likened the reaction of the “western liberal intelligentsia” to “the shriek of elderly beldames leaping on the piano stool after spying a mouse in their petticoats”. The virile Johnson was more than willing to forget that business at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

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

The documentary is both antisemitic and Israeli propaganda, according to critics. The truth is, it provides a rare glimpse of hope

In 2009, Tony Blair visited Masafer Yatta, a collection of hamlets in the Palestinian West Bank. He had come to see a school that had gained attention for having been rebuilt in defiance of Israeli attempts to tear down the village. After he returned home, Israel cancelled the demolition order for the school. “This,” Basel Adra says, “is a story about power.”

Adra is one of the directors of No Other Land, a documentary about the experience of living through, and attempting to defy, Israel’s attempts to erase Masafer Yatta to create an IDF “firing zone”. Last week, it won an Oscar. In the 1980s, Israeli authorities designated part of the area as “Firing Zone 918”, a closed military area. In 1999, the government issued eviction orders against Palestinians in the area for “illegally living in a firing zone”. Two decades of court battles ended in 2022 when Israel’s supreme court ruled the villagers could be expelled.

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

Open up and let the shame in… It will set you free

Halfway around the Tate’s new Leigh Bowery show, my friend, Sophie, said to me, “Wait, why does this look like history when it feels like only 10 minutes ago?” We were admiring photos taken at nightclubs and while we were very much not there, in the backgrounds squinting awkwardly at the flash with backcombed hair, it felt as if we could have been.

This was the – I suppose – narcissism I brought to the exhibition with me, riding on my shoulder like a chip or a parrot. Maybe it’s always there when looking at art – the connection and liberation that comes from seeing parts of yourself reflected. But this time, marvelling at Bowery’s performances and otherness, I was acutely aware of searching for myself in this story about a time that, despite being more than 30 years ago, seems so close. Perhaps because it represents, for me, the first dangerous feelings of freedom. This was what I was thinking about – freedom and also embarrassment, a tool that Bowery sharpened and used as a poker.

Alexander Dyukov and his fellow Putin-backed officials’ continuing role has largely been ignored

Uefa’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine could not have been swifter. Hours after the fighting had started in Luhansk, European football’s governing body convened an extraordinary meeting of its executive committee and, three days later, on 28 February 2022, Uefa, with Fifa, announced that all Russian clubs and national teams had been banned from their competitions until further notice.

Under-17 male and female teams were allowed back in September 2023, on condition they compete without their national kit, flag or anthem, only to be banned again after a dozen member associations threatened a boycott.

‘There’s magic here,’ says the F1 veteran whose mission at Scuderia is under threat from McLaren and Verstappen

In the maelstrom of the buildup to the new Formula One season, which opens in Melbourne next week, one figure stands at its heart, preternaturally calm as the crescendo builds around him. Lewis Hamilton, the sport’s most successful driver, now in a Ferrari, the sport’s most successful team, promises to make F1 in 2025 unmissable, his grand, romantic challenge playing out to the backdrop of what may be the most closely fought season in more than a decade.

Hamilton, now 40 years old and with seven titles, has nothing to prove but is set on securing the greatest achievement in his career. To return a record-breaking eighth title with Ferrari, who have not won the drivers’ title since 2007, would be a feat to rank among the greatest of them all. Watching him try will be as gripping as McLaren trying to steal his thunder.

• Tatum scores 40 as Celtics beat Lakers 111-101
• James goes to locker room with strained groin

Jayson Tatum had 40 points, 12 rebounds, and eight assists, and the Boston Celtics held off a late rally to beat the Los Angeles Lakers 111-101 on Saturday night.

With LeBron James in the locker room with a strained groin, the Lakers cut a 20-point, fourth-quarter deficit to single digits. But Tatum and Jaylen Brown scored Boston’s final 12 points to preserve the win.

Idit Arad calls for better protection for music students as London college admits failing in its duty of care to her

It should have been the start of a great career in classical music for Idit Arad. Everything was lining up for the talented 18-year-old opera singer. She had arrived in London from Israel in 1987, the proud winner of a sought-after scholarship to train at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. But instead of building the foundations of a successful future, she was singled out by a tutor 20 years her senior for a long period of obsessive attention and abuse.

Paul Roberts pursued her from their first lesson, Arad says, inviting her for coffee and then for a dinner to discuss her talent, before sending a stream of explicit letters, calling her a “witch” and urging her into sexual intimacy. Senior leadership, it is now admitted, knew of their involvement and yet failed to discipline Roberts.

Pattinson plays a hapless space explorer replicated for further hazardous duties every time he dies in the South Korean director’s timely follow-up to Parasite

We can only speculate about the reasons behind Warner Bros’ decision to delay the release of Mickey 17 for a full year (it was originally scheduled to hit cinemas in March 2024). A science-fiction satire with the tantalising prospect of Robert Pattinson in a dual role, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his 2020 best picture Oscar winner, Parasite, has been at the top of most film fans’ need-to-see list since it was announced. The date shift sparked alarm and speculation that the director’s consistently high standards might have slipped. In fact, while Mickey 17 isn’t in the same elevated league as Parasite, it’s a lot of fun. What’s more, the delay has made the picture, with its themes of genetic “purity” and an on-the-nose Donald Trump parody courtesy of Mark Ruffalo’s performance as politician turned space coloniser Kenneth Marshall, feel rather more uncomfortably timely. Whether this was the intention is uncertain: given Hollywood’s current reluctance to incur the wrath of the White House, it seems unlikely.

The English-language picture, adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, represents Bong in brute-force Okja mode rather than the elegant, refined savagery of Parasite. This is not subtle film-making, but then again these are not especially subtle times. The story of a vain, populist leader obsessed with making great television; his followers with their slogan-daubed red hats and the zealot-like fervour of fully signed-up members of a personality cult – it all feels like a bit of a blunt weapon. But a blunt weapon can still do a lot of damage: a pivotal scene in which Naomi Ackie delivers a profanity-laden onslaught of truth to power is as galvanising as anything I’ve seen in the cinema so far this year.

In UK and Irish cinemas

Over turmeric tea one evening, double Oscar winner Cate Blanchett talks about the secret of relationships and how to survive the current news cycle. The answer? Jump into the ice…

Cate Blanchett saw in the New Year in the Arctic, with her husband and four children, by cutting a hole in the ice and jumping in. It was -30C and she wore a “funny hat” for the cold and, “It was fabulous,” because, she says, “Everything… paused.” It’s February now, and the restaurant near the river is just beginning to fill with evening diners when Blanchett slides between the tables in her tartan “chicken feeding coat” and striped shirt, collar popped. “Who are they murdering out the back?” she shouts – the noise of dough being pounded in the kitchen sounds as if they’re beating somebody to death and means we need to lean in, over her pot of turmeric tea. “I always thought, if the acting thing didn’t work out, which it still might not, I would love to be a Foley artist,” creating sound effects for film, smashing watermelons, clicking cups. “Yes, I can burp to order.” Oh? “Not fart, though. One of my primary school friends, vomiting sounds was her trick. Are you any good at noises?” I attempt, quite sweetly, a generic beatbox. “That sounded slightly like a kangaroo. I’ve been away from Australia a long time, though, so…”

Of course she can burp to order. She is Cate Blanchett, two-time Oscar winner, one of our greatest living actors. This is a person who, at 55, is balancing Hollywood movie stardom and motherhood (her eldest is 23; the youngest, who she and husband Andrew Upton adopted in 2015, nine), while also maintaining the freedom to regularly veer away from the family blockbusters or exquisite thrillers and take a part that is gloriously insane, like a German prime minister set upon by wanking bog-men (Rumours, 2024) or a female spider (Red, 2017) or, following her Oscar nomination for Tár (she remains the most nominated Australian, a feat!), the dancer in a Sparks video (The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, 2023). The women she plays (and, as in her sly portrayal of Bob Dylan, men) are unpredictable, inscrutable and occasionally icy. Which takes us back to the Arctic.

South-east Queensland and northern NSW struggle to recover amid heavy downpours and flash flooding

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Swathes of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales were on alert for heavy rain and flash flooding as almost 290,000 properties were still without power on Sunday evening due to ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

After the former cyclone made landfall just north of Brisbane as a tropical low on Saturday night, the Bureau of Meteorology predicted up to 700mm of rain could hit the region through to Monday.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Card giants processing payments for unlicensed operators as customers report losing thousands

Mastercard and Visa are processing payments for illegal gambling websites accused of scamming UK customers out of thousands of pounds.

An investigation has found that the payment giants are failing to stop their networks being used to make transactions on unlicensed sites despite a previous pledge to do so.