With a world-class cast that will have you constantly saying ‘hey, it’s that guy!’, this horror drama about a doomed Royal Navy expedition is a grand treatise on colonial folly

There’s an old adage that adventure is extreme discomfort remembered from an armchair. But what if there is no armchair waiting at the end of your journey? What if you never return at all? Well, then you have the first season of AMC anthology series The Terror. Based on the bestselling book of the same name by Dan Simmons, who died last month, it chronicles a doomed Royal Navy expedition dispatched to the Arctic in search of the fabled Northwest Passage.

Under the leadership of Captains Sir John Franklin and Francis Crozier, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, manned with 129 crew, set sail from England in 1845. They became locked in pack ice off King William Island in the winter of 1846. After that, the entire expedition vanished – both ships and all hands lost – a sort of Victorian-era MH370 that has fascinated historians, geographers and artists ever since.

• All-rounder ‘excited for the challenge’ of facing hosts

• ‘Baz and Brooky are keeping the group nice and calm’

England have pledged to go into Thursday’s T20 World Cup semi-final against India with no fear, with Sam Curran describing the fixture as “a dream” and “a brilliant opportunity” about which they are feeling “hugely confident”.

On the face of it the challenge England face is daunting. Though they won all three games in the Super 8 stage to ease into the semi-finals those matches were played in Sri Lanka, where they now have a 100% record in six outings this year. They have since returned to Mumbai, where they were so nearly beaten by Nepal in their tournament opener and then actually beaten by West Indies, and where they can expect nothing but hostility from a sold-out crowd of 33,000.

Artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson found an unusual way to remember those who were killed or died by suicide between 2018 and 2025

Between 2021 and 2025, Black nonbinary artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson visited 91 locations across 15 states – in all of these sites a trans, gender nonconforming, or intersex individual had died, either by murder or suicide. At each site they conducted a ceremony of their own to bear witness to what had happened there.

“It was very challenging in ways that I’m continuing to mend from and rest with,” they said. “It is not ‘inexpensive’ on my body and spirit. That cost I knew would be there.”

Susan Everard says her daughter ‘added to the beauty of the world’

Sarah Everard’s mother said her daughter “added to the beauty of the world” as she paid tribute to her humour and principled nature on the five-year anniversary of her murder.

Writing for British Vogue, alongside a picture of Sarah taken at V festival for an online street style series in 2010, Susan Everard said she “loved clothes and fashion” and had “her whole life ahead of her” when the photo was taken.

US county attorney is ‘confident’ her office will be able to pursue charges in cases which led to criticisms of use-of-force policies

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A Minnesota state prosecutor announced an investigation Monday that may lead to charges against federal officers, including Greg Bovino, for misconduct during an immigration enforcement crackdown.

Hennepin county attorney Mary Moriarty said in a news conference that her office is already looking into 17 cases, including one where Bovino, a border patrol official, threw a smoke canister at protesters on 21 January.

Olivier De Schutter says ‘frivolous and destructive demands’ of ultra-rich restrict fight against inequality

The global economy must be reordered to ensure it serves ordinary people around the world rather than the “frivolous and destructive demands of the ultra-rich”, according to a leading UN figure.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, says politicians must stop prioritising “socially and ecologically destructive growth” that only increases the profits – and serves the consumption demands – of the world’s richest individuals and corporations.

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

• Point guard argues with official during team’s loss

• Four-time All-Star arrived in January trade

Trae Young has managed to earn an ejection before even stepping on the court for his new team.

The four-time NBA All-Star guard, who was acquired by the Washington Wizards from the Atlanta Hawks in early January, is not set to make his debut for the Wizards on Thursday night against the Utah Jazz. However, he still found a way to be ejected for leaving the bench area in Washington’s 123-118 loss at home to the Houston Rockets.

Cosa Nostra leader, who controlled most of eastern Sicily, dies while serving multiple life sentences for murder

Benedetto “Nitto” Santapaola, a Sicilian mafia boss and one of the most dangerous figures in Italian criminal history, has died aged 87.

Santapaola, who was widely believed to have been the architect of a campaign of bloodshed that scarred Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, died on Monday in a Milan prison where he was serving multiple life sentences. An autopsy has been ordered.

A father trains his teenage daughter to fight monsters, while mum, Milla Jovovich, is away leading the human resistance

Perhaps this is just coincidence, but it feels like a lot of action movies these days revolve around grown men and their daughters or daughter surrogates struggling to survive. Although rugged and ready to kill, the men involved are also “girl dads”, protectors and nurturers who train their female offspring to fight as hard as any man in order to survive a world they may not be in themselves someday. Obviously there’s The Last of Us and Stranger Things, but also recent Jason Statham vehicle Shelter, the upcoming feature One Mile: Chapter One, and now Worldbreaker, which is bang on trend.

With its sci-fi frame in which monsters called breakers have emerged from the poisoned earth and can turn humans into a second kind of monster (called hybrids), this feels a lot closer to The Last of Us, but with its own weird extra bangs and whizzes. For a start, Milla Jovovich is in it, in a distinctly supporting role as the female general of the human resistance and leader of what’s become a quasi-matriarchal society (because people with Y chromosomes are more likely to be infected). While Jovovich hasn’t got the best range as an actor, the one thing she’s good at, as proved in all those Resident Evil movies, is fighting monsters.

A drop of lemon and being selective about your choice of cookware could zap any troubles with blackened spuds, as would a highly novel solution from the seaside

Why do some potatoes turn black on cooking, and how do I stop this happening? I usually leave them to cool in the cooking water, but should I plunge them in cold water instead?”
Jean, Hampshire
“We’ve all been there,” sympathises spud queen Poppy O’Toole. “It’s a harmless chemical reaction,” the author of The Potato Book continues, “but it looks rank and only gets worse with the slow cooling process that Jean’s using.” But let’s wind things back for a moment. According to the food science guru Harold McGee, in his bible On Food & Cooking, the darkening of cooked potatoes “is caused by the combination of iron ions, a phenolic substance [chlorogenic acid] and oxygen, which react to form a pigmented complex”. So what’s the solution? Make the pH of the water “distinctly acidic”, which McGee does by adding cream of tartar or lemon juice “after the potatoes are half-cooked”.

Another possible suspect for Jean’s blackening tubers is her cookware: “Reactive metals such as a carbon steel knife or aluminium pan may also be the cause of the issue,” says the Guardian’s Tom Hunt, which is why he recommends using a non-reactive metal (think stainless steel) instead. “Leaving the cooked potatoes in water is also a bad idea,” adds Jess Murphy, chef patron of Kai Galway in Ireland and author of The Kai Cookbook:“They are like little sponges.” Hunt couldn’t agree more: “The potatoes will absorb the water and turn soggy and less fluffy – and never refresh them under cold water or in a cold plunge, either, unless it’s momentary.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

British institutions can keep politicians somewhat in check. But in the US, shamelessness has become contagious

It is both sad and ironic that, 250 years after the revolt against George III, the British monarchy is teaching its former colony lessons about accountability. While elite impunity is rampant in the US – from a president who conspired to steal an election, to the “Epstein class” – the man formerly known as Prince Andrew is facing both shame sanctions and legal consequences. The same is true for a towering member of the British establishment, the man still known as Lord Mandelson. Just what explains the difference?

Being shamed is not the same as being convicted in a court of law – a difference that those pushing back against #MeToo and other supposedly woke movements never failed to emphasize. But both can be crucial for upholding norms of decency as well as democracy. Successful shaming depends on someone credibly accused of misconduct being part of groups whose approval matters to them. Larry Summers might well be resigning from Harvard because it would just have been too uncomfortable to face students and colleagues who might have voiced their disapproval of the attitudes revealed in the Epstein files. By contrast, certain Republicans appear to feel utterly unashamed, no matter how cruel or racist their utterances, because constituents do not seem to mind or because they can safely keep away from any unpredictable encounters (after all, GOP congressmen systematically cancel town halls).

Nominees for key Senate seat to be set while voters choose in congressional contests reshaped by GOP gerrymander

The first votes of the 2026 midterm cycle will be cast on Tuesday, with a pair of high-stakes US Senate primaries in Texas that will test both parties’ appetite for political change in the Trump era.

Voters across the state will decide their nominees for a critical Senate seat, as well as for several key congressional contests reshaped by a mid-decade gerrymander sought by Donald Trump to preserve the GOP’s fragile House majority.

From the ghostly Shutter Story to road trip adventure Outbound and strategy puzzler Titanium Court, here are the titles we enjoyed the most from this year’s Steam Next Fest showcase

These days, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that every new indie game is either a co-op extraction shooter or a roguelike deck-builder – fortunately that’s not quite the case. Each February, the week-long Steam Next Fest is a vast and varied showcase of forthcoming titles, all with downloadable demos, and only a minority of them adhere to those dominant genres. It’s a lovely chance to dig into the sometimes bewildering Steam store and pick out interesting treats – and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Here are five of my favourites.

FTSE 100 on track for its worst day in 11 months, while Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi also fall

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The war in the Middle East has plunged financial markets into turmoil for a second day, with oil and gas prices surging, global stock markets slumping and chances of a UK interest rate cut later this month plummeting.

The London stock market has fallen deep into the red, a gloomy backdrop for the chancellor’s spring forecast at 12.30pm GMT. The FTSE 100 index lost about 280 points on Tuesday morning, falling to 10,501 in a 2.6% drop and leaving it on track for its worst day in 11 months – since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff shock of April 2025. Almost all stocks fell.

A strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school during the US-Israeli bombing campaign killed up to 168 people. The Guardian has pieced together the incident and its aftermath using verified footage and images from the site

Above the pastel murals of trees, paintbrushes, crayons and microscopes, black smoke rises. The glass windows of the school have been blown out by the force of the blast, and its curtains hang shredded from the frames.

Against one burned-out wall, the remains of a playground lie scattered: a red plastic slide, a jumble of child-sized chairs. On an overturned bookshelf a pair of pink plastic sandals have been neatly placed, now covered in dust from the blast.

‘What should have been an evening celebrating diversity and inclusion turned into a trauma-triggering shitshow,’ says host after racial epithet was left in the broadcast

Alan Cumming has joined the chorus of disapproval at the BBC’s failure to edit out a racial slur from their Baftas telecast, saying it turned “what should have been an evening celebrating diversity and inclusion into a trauma-triggering shitshow”.

Before the live event, Cumming warned the audience that disturbances might occur on account of the involuntary tics of Tourette syndrome activist John Davidson, whose life was the basis for multi-award-winning I Swear, and asked for their understanding.

Trump administration accused Luis Muñoz Pinto of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang. Now living in Colombia he hopes to clear his name and study engineering in the US

It was the busiest hour of the evening in Bolivar Square, one of the most iconic spots in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital. Amid the buzz of smiling tourists, however, Luis Muñoz Pinto sat very still, his head in his hands, as memories of his deportation from the United States to a Salvadorian prison flooded back.

Muñoz Pinto, 27, was one of more than 250 Venezuelan men accused by the Trump administration of being part of the dangerous Tren de Aragua gang and deported from the US to the brutal terrorism mega-prison called Cecot in El Salvador last March.

The world’s most popular podcaster seemingly disapproving of ICE does not mean he has soured from the administration

Joe Rogan, the world’s most popular podcaster, is struggling to sleep. In an interview last week, he complained that the “madness” of the news cycle – from the release of the Epstein library, to US military strikes on Iran – has him “overwhelmed”. For some, this admission is just the latest sign that the world’s most popular podcaster might be regretting his role in cheerleading Donald Trump back into office.

It follows seemingly scathing criticism of ICE after the killing of Renee Nicole Good. Rogan compared ICE to the Gestapo in a short clip that quickly went viral. It led this newspaper to reasonably ask “Has Joe Rogan fully soured on Trump’s presidency?”, with ABC, Bloomberg and CNN all recently reporting on Rogan’s apparent disapproval of ICE.

The president needs a quick win to avoid a quagmire – but he needs a long war to justify potential emergency powers

Donald Trump has trapped himself in his war with Iran by announcing that his intention is regime change. That uncertain objective is linked to his most urgent objective at home. While pursuing regime change in Iran, he is desperately attempting to stop regime change through the midterm elections. He needs a swift victory in Iran to avoid a quagmire, but he needs a long war to attempt the assertion of unconstitutional emergency authority over the electoral process.

Plunging into war followed Trump’s signature style: he negotiated in bad faith, turned to bombing when the sides were making “significant progress”, according to Oman’s foreign minister, was heedless of international law, and shut out congressional consultation. He offered as his imperative Iranian “imminent threats”, which the Pentagon briefed congressional staffers after Operation Epic Fury began was simply without basis in fact. There was no intelligence suggesting an “imminent threat”. Where’s the WMD?

The midfielder on her nomadic life, experiencing Nigerian celebrations and the national team’s World Cup prospects

Being an integral figure in the distinguished history of Nigeria’s women’s team is an experience that will never dim in the mind of Jennifer Onyinyechi Echegini. Seven months on from beating the hosts Morocco in a pulsating Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final at Rabat’s Olympic Stadium, in the process winning a record 10th African title, “Joe”, as her Paris Saint-Germain teammates call Echegini – an acronym of her three initials – is yet to come down from her career high.

“Winning the Wafcon is on another level, you know?” the 24-year-old midfielder says from Paris. “The pride and the achievement that I felt … when you’re playing with a group of girls that you love and care for, it makes it even more special.”

Multiple sources say the deployment of HMS Duncan is under consideration; Yvette Cooper says flight will take off from Muscat this week

Ellie Chowns, the Green party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, has said she has tabled an “armed conflict (requirements) bill’” which would require any UK military intervention to have a lawful basis, viable objective and approval from MPs.

In a letter addressed to the prime minister, which she shared to X, Chowns, who is the Green’s MP for North Herefordshire, wrote:

In recent days we have seen a deeply concerning escalation in conflict in the Middle East following a series of illegal and dangerously irresponsible airstrikes on Iran by the United States and Israel.

You have now confirmed that UK bases will be used by the US for their operations in the area. This is a significant concession to President Donald Trump and one which risks drawing the UK into a dangerous conflict.

ChatGPT owner’s CEO says it will bar its technology being used for mass surveillance or by intelligence services

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OpenAI is amending its hastily arranged deal to supply artificial intelligence to the US Department of War (DoW) after the ChatGPT owner’s chief executive admitted it looked “opportunistic and sloppy”.

The contract prompted fears the San Francisco startup’s AI could be used for domestic mass surveillance but its boss, Sam Altman, said on Monday night the startup would explicitly bar its technology from being used for that purpose or being deployed by defence department intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA).

Though the art world is supposed to be inclusive, that isn’t the experience of many disabled creatives – and in a groundbreaking online exhibition at dis_place they have poured their frustrations into art

“I had a lot of frustration about the performance of diversity, equality and inclusion,” says curator Nathalie Boobis. Feeling that the art world’s commitment to access for disabled people was often performative rather than manifesting a sincere commitment to change, Boobis decided to step away. But then came an opportunity to be the in-house curator for Disability Arts Online’s new exhibition space dis_place, and she felt this was finally her chance to highlight disabled experiences in art.

Her inaugural exhibition for dis_place is called I Need to Be More Than a Lesson You Learned. Featuring the work of nine artists and collectives working across several media, it explores the ways in which disabled artists have experienced inaccessibility within the art world and wider society.