Playing a surfboard-shaped axe, Takanaka was a stadium-level artist at home but little known in the west – until YouTube brought him a huge new audience

In November 2025, Masayoshi Takanaka announced his first ever UK solo gig. Originally slated for London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire, there was such demand that it was upgraded to two nights at Brixton Academy – nearly 10,000 people will flock to see a 72-year-old Japanese jazz fusion virtuoso play a surfboard-shaped guitar in March. Come the summer, he’ll headline an outdoor festival in London’s Crystal Palace park. “I was actually planning to fade out [my career],” he says on a video call. “But now I feel like this might be my second coming. My life has changed so much in the last few years.”

Born in Tokyo in 1953, Takanaka picked up the guitar in middle school, taking inspiration from western artists such as Cream, the Beatles and Ten Years After. He hung out in Shibuya jazz clubs while still in school uniform, asking bands if he could jam with them, and by 1972 he was playing with Sadistic Mika Band, who became the first Japanese rock band to tour the UK when they were invited to support Roxy Music in arenas. “They were already rock stars, so they had a limousine,” recalls Takanaka. “We were driving a Rover.”

In contrast with the takedowns of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson, US consequences have been limited to resignations and apologies

Weeks after justice department officials released more than 3m investigative documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, there have not been any arrests in the US, prompting questions about whether any potential co-conspirators will be held accountable on American soil.

Indeed, consequences in the US for the sex trafficker’s associates have largely been limited to a handful of sombre resignations and public apologies of late – not high-level criminal prosecutions that victims and advocates have long demanded.

The war has already become regional: Iran is attacking American-aligned Arab states in the hope that they will pressure Trump to sign a ceasefire

Last week, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday and again on Friday, just before launching Operation Epic Fear, Donald Trump laid out his case for attacking Iran.

The US president offered a lengthy bill of indictment against Iran’s Islamic Republic, stretching back to the 1979 revolution: the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran, support for terrorism, brutality towards its citizenry, and support for proxies that have killed Americans.

AI is transforming our world. Accepting independent oversight is the least companies can do to protect our rights

The speed with which AI is transforming our lives is head-spinning. Unlike previous technological revolutions – radio, nuclear fission or the internet – governments are not leading the way. We know that AI can be dangerous; chatbots advise teens on suicide and may soon be capable of instructing on how to create biological weapons. Yet there is no equivalent to the Federal Drug Administration, testing new models for safety before public release. Unlike in the nuclear industry, companies often don’t have to disclose dangerous breaches or accidents. The tech industry’s lobbying muscle, Washington’s paralyzing polarization, and the sheer complexity of such a potent, fast-moving technology have kept federal regulation at bay. European officials are facing pushback against rules that some claim hobble the continent’s competitiveness. Although several US states are piloting AI laws, they operate in a tentative patchwork and Donald Trump has attempted to render them invalid.

Heads of AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini say they care about safety. But owning the future of AI means pouring billions into models that not even their creators fully understand, and making choices like adding ads – and the capabilities that the Pentagon is now seeking from Anthropic – that raise risk. Anthropic, which styles itself as the most conscientious frontier AI company, says its model is trained to “imagine how a thoughtful senior Anthropic employee” would weigh helpfulness against possible harm. The directive echoes criticisms levied years ago over Silicon Valley companies that shaped the lives of users worldwide from insular boardrooms. Consumers don’t believe they are in good hands. Fully 77% of Americans surveyed last year think AI could pose a threat to humanity.

Even though my algorithm knows I’m a sucker for outlandish reality TV property shows, it’s now offering me less-than-glamorous copycats trying to flog a buy-to-let in Beaconsfield

I’m not proud to admit that I love property as entertainment, especially smooth-brained “reality” shows in which peptide-plumped, pilates-honed NYC Amazons in towering Louboutins scrap over commission on Upper West Side condos. It’s a world where make-believe sums of money are bandied around, drama is manufactured, people say “I’m super excited” without any part of their preternaturally glossy faces moving and every surface is Carrara marble. I’m never more at peace than when I’m slumped under a crisp-strewn blanket, muttering “that’s hideous” at a $26m (£19m) penthouse.

Inevitably, social media cottoned on to my proclivities and now offers me endless real estate content. I appreciate the aspirational stuff: the Modern House (brutalism but make it chic), Inigo (for people with a cornicing kink), and Parisian internet “personality” @ZacharyMaille with his alarming blazers and Eiffel Tower views. And who doesn’t enjoy wondering why castles cost less than Sydenham semis (because they’re riddled with dry rot, haunted, and two hours from the nearest Spar, presumably)?

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Activists who dispute safety of vaccines are pushing to limit immunization requirements in schools

As South Carolina grapples with a measles outbreak that has infected nearly 1,000 people, groups with ties to the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, are pushing to eliminate immunization requirements that protect children.

Activists are targeting vaccine mandates in states trying to tamp down measles as communities across the country struggle to stop the worst spread of the illness since the early 1990s. The Guardian found anti-vaccine groups are encouraging their followers to organize opposition to vaccine mandates in more than 20 states, including at least six with current measles outbreaks.

Yoo Hae-jin’s confident performance redeems this disjointed parable about an exiled king, which awkwardly straddles satire, sentiment and social commentary

It seems that the 15th-century Korean equivalent of a special economic zone was a court official exiled to a remote backwater, with all the attendant wealth and comforts that arrive with them. That’s the hook of this lively period piece, in which village chieftain Um Heung-do (Yoo Hae-jin) strays into a neighbouring settlement and – because the former minister of justice is in residence – is amazed to find the place awash in mouth-smacking treats.

Wanting a piece of that action, Heung-do puts in a bid to sinister government official Han Myeong-hoe (Oldboy’s Yoo Ji-tae) for his own outcast. But a pasty-faced youth turns up on a palanquin, and turns out to be a much bigger fish than the elder can handle: the kid is the recently deposed king Yi Hong-wi (played by K-pop singer Park Ji-hoon), who is too conspicuous to be openly bumped off like the rest of his retinue. With counter-rebellion brewing, Heung-do realises that his new ward is more likely to bring a landslide of trouble than an influx of goodies.

I used to scroll through scores of online reviews to put together a trip itinerary before I’d even left home. Now I just let my feet – and my nose – guide me wherever I go

I have always been indecisive and scared of wasting money. When it came to travel, this meant I was forever desperate for someone to tell me where to go, what to see and what to eat. Before any holiday or day out, I’d already scoured the area on Google Earth, watched endless videos on social media, and read scores of online reviews. I knew exactly where I was going before I’d even left my house.

My Google Maps would be filled with saved spots and I would build a plan to cram them all into a few days’ holiday. I was reluctant to go anywhere without a well-recommended “hidden gem” in my back pocket. Sometimes, one of those places I’d scouted out weeks in advance would truly be sensational. Bistrot Victoires in Paris, for instance, really did earn its spot on a top 10 list (the duck confit was incredible), and I was glad to have done the research to find a good, affordable place to eat in a notoriously expensive city. But more often than not, reality fell far short of what was promised. The images of colourful, likely Photoshopped views, unspoilt historical landmarks and huge, gourmet, mouthwatering sandwiches I’d come across online would turn out to be utterly underwhelming in real life.

Warmth was result of high pressure developing across central Europe, which brought southerly winds

The end of winter brought unseasonably high temperatures across much of Europe but particularly so in northern Spain and south-west France as numerous February temperatures records were broken.

Cities across Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the Basque Country, including Bordeaux, Bilbao and San Sebastián, matched or exceeded their long-term February records, with temperatures of 27.1C and 27.6C recorded in Bilbao and San Sebastián on Wednesday, more than 13C above average for the time of year.

• He points to narrowing gap and reliance on set plays

• Liverpool head coach will not change his team’s style

Arne Slot has admitted he does not enjoy watching most Premier League matches but says he will not change Liverpool’s philosophy. The head coach feels the narrower quality gap between top and bottom and a growing reliance on set plays have reduced the entertainment.

“Most of the games I see in the Premier League are not for me a joy to watch,” Slot said, “but it’s always interesting because it’s so competitive and that is what makes this league great – because there’s so much competitiveness. Everyone can win against everyone, but just as someone who loves to watch football, without being interested in who’s winning or losing it, just to be enjoyed, I think there’s a big difference now between three or four years ago in the Premier League.

Former Oxford University professor and UK government adviser faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted

The prominent Swiss academic and Islam scholar Tariq Ramadan will go trial in Paris on Monday on charges of raping three women in France between 2009 and 2016.

Ramadan, who advised previous British governments on Islam and society, denies all the charges in a case that has been seen as one of the biggest repercussions of the #MeToo movement in France.

The latest in our series of writers singling out their go-to comfort watches is a look back at a complicated comedy showcase for Robin Williams

I can’t think of another film that pulls at my heartstrings while making me chuckle as reliably as Mrs Doubtfire does. It has that rare tonal elasticity: genuine sadness, even grief, followed almost immediately by absurdity and welcome comic relief. You might feel your throat tighten one minute, only to find yourself laughing out loud the next. Few films manage that without emotional whiplash, but this one does it with warmth.

I watched it endlessly as a teenager on video tape on a tiny TV in my bedroom as I grappled with the peculiarities of my own ultimately loving family life. I adored Mrs Doubtfire for the obvious reasons: all of Robin Williams’s voices, the slapstick and the sheer range of comedic force that the late actor unleashes.

He could use door handles and steal catnip from the kitchen cupboards. And, when I became very unwell, he would pace around me like a doctor on call

Harvey came into our lives during a year of loss. It was 2004, and my grandmother had just died, quickly followed by our beloved cat Skeet (Manx English for “nosy”). With the family thrown into mourning, the house became eerily quiet and still, and my mother was grieving.

I was only 11, and did not know how to take care of her, but I did know that we needed the chaos and joy of a new cat. We found Harvey at the local cattery on the Isle of Man: he sat squeezed at the back of his pen, looking curiously at us with enormous, owl-like eyes. My mother smiled for the first time in months. We knew he was the cat for us.

The OU has capitulated to a pro-Israel lobby group about the use of the term ‘ancient Palestine’. The wider context is impossible to ignore

The west is in the midst of the most serious assault on free speech and academic freedom since the heyday of McCarthyism seven decades ago. For years, we were told the danger came from the left: oversensitive students, censorious activists, no-platforming zealots. Yet the most aggressive and successful campaign to police speech in our public institutions is being waged by cheerleaders of a state currently committing genocide.

Consider a recent case. Last December, a pro-Israel lobby group, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), celebrated another apparent victory. It describes its mission as contributing “generally as lawyers to creating a supportive climate of opinion in the United Kingdom towards Israel”. In practice, this has meant lawfare, directed not only at pro-Palestinian activism, but at the public existence of Palestinian identity itself.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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Kicking off this year’s series in which our writers advocate for one Academy Award nominee, our chief critic on why the Brazilian drama-thriller is the most audacious and fully realised film in the race

As ever, this year’s Oscars have their half-dozen or so favourites and frontrunners, some truly outstanding movies among them. But the one that has stayed in my mind is a knight’s move away from the talking-point consensus: an amazingly sophisticated, wayward and garrulous film from Brazil, a film about love and fatherhood, tyranny and resistance, and coming to terms with the past. It is digressive and droll and yet in its final act escalates stunningly from lugubrious mystery to cold-sweat tension and violence.

When the best picture Oscar is announced, my heart would sing to see its husband-and-wife producers Emilie Lesclaux and Kleber Mendonça Filho go on stage to accept it for their drama-thriller The Secret Agent. Directed by Mendonça Filho, it’s a movie made with effortless style and touched with pure cinematic inspiration. The opening scene alone, with its queasy black-comic unease, is itself a kind of masterpiece. It is like Antonioni’s The Passenger mixed with Leone and Peckinpah and a pulp shocker by Elmore Leonard. Yet it has a kind of novelistic, episodic quality – a cool, discursive self-awareness. You might call it a little miracle, although at near-epic length (2hrs 40mins), it’s actually a very big miracle.

• Lionesses face Ukraine in Antalya on Tuesday

• Wiegman says ‘reassurances’ received before trip

Sarina Wiegman says England’s women’s team have had reassurances they are safe in Turkey but remain in close contact with the authorities about the developing conflict in the Middle East, as they prepare to face Ukraine in a Women’s World Cup qualifier.

Tuesday’s match is being played in Antalya, along Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast, on neutral ground because of the war in Ukraine. The Lionesses travelled to Antalya to begin a training camp last week, landing before the war began in the Middle East.

A reappraisal of one of literature’s most sensational personalities, the author of more than 70 books

If we really are in a reading crisis – whether you blame TikTok or podcasts – it stands to reason that, of all the genres, literary biography might have particular cause to fear for its life: who wants the life story of somebody whose books no one reads?

Such anxiety, justified or not, can be heard jangling away in the background amid some of the noisier claims made by Fiona Sampson at the start of her new biography of the pseudonymous 19th-century author George Sand, “one of the most famous writers in the world, at a time when books had something of the glamour that would later surround, say, Hollywood movies”. Best known for the 1832 novel Indiana, whose eponymous young heroine walks out on a loveless age-gap marriage, Sand’s life “reveals … the nature of all lives as self-invention”, not least because she scandalously wore trousers: “by suiting up as a garçon she was, criss-cross, acknowledging that to be a writing woman is a little off-centre: is queer,” writes Sampson, calling Sand “one of the boldest precursors of that perhaps final hope modernity holds out: that we might choose what we become”.

The two-time Oscar winner on dressing Michael B Jordan’s twin antiheroes, her start with Spike Lee and crafting the period detail of Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending epic

Ruth E Carter’s costumes were a crucial part of establishing the identities of the two identical twins, both played by Michael B Jordan, in multi-Oscar-nominated Sinners. Particularly the hats. One brother, Stack, wore a red fedora. The other brother, Smoke, wore a blue newsboy flat cap. Finding the hats was a critical moment in the film’s backstory. When director Ryan Coogler first saw Jordan try on Stack’s red fedora, bought by Carter in Los Angeles’s Melrose Avenue, “he was like – that’s it. Then he goes up into the rest of the office, and people are coming down, like, ‘Ryan’s talking upstairs about a red hat?’ You know when you’ve hit it – it’s a transformation.”

This is just a small example of the canny period world-building that has made Carter the most-garlanded Black woman in Oscars history, and the owner of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (her family were in attendance, she says, of its Covid-era unveiling, while Oprah and Eddie Murphy dialled in via Zoom). Her work on Coogler’s genre-squashing, Jim Crow-era drama, which has gained a record-breaking 16 Oscar nods, has landed a fifth nomination for the two-time Oscar winner (she is, according to a poll by Variety, a favourite in the category). Among her starry upcoming projects: a biopic of the pioneering Black fashion designer, Ann Lowe – designer of Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress – which she will produce alongside Serena Williams.

Trump cited debunked claims in video address that Iran was on verge of nuclear weapons to justify US casualties

• Latest updates: US-Israel war on Iran

Donald Trump recorded a new video address on Sunday, vowing to avenge three American deaths after the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran and accusing the Iranian regime of “waging war against civilization itself”.

The US president addressed the deaths, saying “we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives” and called for prayers for “the full recovery” of five others that were seriously wounded.

Fears that decision to strike could be open-ended as Trump comes under pressure to spell out his vision for the country

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

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Donald Trump is under pressure to spell out his vision for Iran amid the ongoing attacks on the country and reports of the first American casualties since the launch of unprovoked US and Israeli military strikes.

Trump’s critics are demanding that the White House provide greater clarity about what comes next. Opponents and analysts say the lack of a clear plan outlined so far has created a danger of the US being sucked into a long-lasting conflict of the sort that Trump repeatedly vowed to avoid.

For once we can celebrate a British custom: grabbing lunch away from your colleagues to do whatever you like

It’s often striking to me – as a British person and a Francophile – what prompts bewilderment among the French. Most recently, an article in Le Monde describes a concerning trend: younger adults are choosing to dine alone during their lunch breaks, flying in the face of longstanding workplace tradition. Almost one-third of employees under 25 regularly lunch alone, according to a survey by Openeat, compared with 22% of 25- to 34-year-olds, 16% of 35- to 49-year-olds and 12% of over-49s.

These statistics were shocking to me too, but in entirely the opposite way: so few? I forgot that when I was a waitress in Paris, I would serve groups of colleagues all the time. Whenever I visit, I am always struck by tables of people in workwear eating a prix fixe lunch menu of several courses, normally traditional French fare and often with a glass of wine. It always seems so very civilised. This culture may well be shifting, but it remains far more the norm there than in this country.

Jordan Pickford’s ‘best save ever’, Antoine Semenyo’s shifting mentality and Liverpool’s set-piece threat grows

• Premier League top scorers: check the latest standings

Arsenal won the battle of set pieces, beating Chelsea 2-1 to keep Manchester City at bay. In a game that offered few clearcut chances from open play, it was a familiar story of Arsenal overpowering their opponents from corner kicks. Gabriel bullied Reece James to set up William Saliba for their first goal and Jur​riën Timber punished a flailing Robert Sánchez for their second. Mikel Arteta’s side have equalled the record for the most goals scored from corners in a Premier League season (16) with nine games still to go. Meanwhile, Chelsea have conceded seven goals from set pieces in Liam Rosenior’s first 13 games in all competitions. Despite posing a threat offensively through Reece James’s delivery for Piero Hincapié’s own goal, they repeatedly failed to match Arsenal’s physicality when defending. Xaymaca Awoyungbo

Match report: Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea

Match report: Manchester United 2-1 Crystal Palace

Match report: Fulham 2-1 Tottenham

Match report: Newcastle 2-3 Everton

Match report: Leeds 0-1 Manchester City

Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered

Once Art Borkent starts speaking about biting midges, he rarely pauses for breath. Holding up a picture of a gnat trapped in amber from the time of the dinosaurs, the 72-year-old taxonomist explains that there are more than 6,000 ceratopogonidae species known to science. He has described and named more than 300 midges, mostly from his favourite family of flies. Some specialise in sucking blood from mammals, reptiles, other insects and even fish, often using the CO₂ from their host’s breath to locate their target, he says. Tens of thousands remain a mystery to science, waiting to be discovered.

But to Borkent’s knowledge, nobody will continue his life’s work of identifying and studying this group of flies once he has gone.