Ukraine says five regions damaged overnight after wave of drone and missile attacks by Russia

• Analysis: Trump team reveals lack of expertise – and patience – as it threatens to abandon peace talks

Donald Trump has said the US will “take a pass” on a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine if “parties make it difficult”. The US president made the comments to reporters during the swearing-in ceremony for Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Trump added that he believed there was a “good chance” of “solving the problem”. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had earlier said the US will abandon its efforts “within days” to broker a peace agreement unless there are clear signs a settlement can be reached.

News outlets pull articles featuring ‘psychologist and sex adviser’ Barbara Santini amid doubts over her credentials

Over the past couple of years, the Oxford-educated psychologist Barbara Santini has been widely quoted as an expert. She has contributed thoughts on everything from the psychological impact of the Covid pandemic to the importance of vitamin D and how playing darts can improve your health.

However, her pronouncements have begun to disappear from articles after concerns that Santini may not be all that she appears. Major news outlets have removed entire articles featuring Santini, or comments made by her, after a series of questions were raised over her qualifications – and even whether her entire identity could be an elaborate hoax.

The writer’s previously unpublished notes from her sessions with a psychiatrist offer an incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression and creativity

Last month, the New York Public Library opened the doors on one of its most thrilling acquisitions of recent times: the archive of Joan Didion and her husband and collaborator John Gregory Dunne. After two years of preparation, both scholars and anyone with a library card can arrange a visit to pore over the material contained in a total of 336 boxes of correspondence, photographs and screenplays from the couple’s joint projects, which included the 1976 version of A Star Is Born and the film that in 1971 provided Al Pacino with his first leading role, The Panic in Needle Park.

Alongside material evidence of two long writing careers, there is much that is deeply personal: paperwork recording the naming of orchids in honour of Didion, Dunne and their adopted daughter Quintana, the couple’s only child; kitchen notebooks and lists of party guests; the handmade cards and pressed flowers that the young Quintana made for “the best mom ever”. But it is infinitely more troubled times that are the subject of a new book drawn from the archive, Notes to John – accounts of Didion’s sessions with psychiatrist Roger MacKinnon at the turn of the century, in which she discussed her daughter’s struggles with alcohol addiction and depression and the writer’s attempts to excavate the roots of their relationship in her own formative years.

Social media is turning the spring festival into yet another opportunity for lavish spending. What’s in your #EasterBasket?

As a child, I was keenly aware of the inequitable practices of the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the so-called Easter Bunny. How could it be that my teeth were less valuable than Abbie Smith-Arthur’s? Why was my stocking sock-sized, and the Walter boys next door had novelty sacks the size of their sofa? For what reason did I get but one big Easter egg, and Bethany down the road got 11?

If I was a child today, I would be even more confused (and radicalised), thanks to the relentless rise of “Eastermas”. More than quarter of British adults now buy Easter presents, giving their loved ones not only chocolate but flowers, toys and clothes. On TikTok, videos tagged #EasterBasket show the headphones, trainers, face creams, keyrings, hoodies, teddies and concert tickets that parents bestow upon their children – in short, more gifts than most people receive at Christmas. I won’t deny that it is nice to give each other nice things, but I fear the trend puts pressure on parents, and normalises a level of consumption that would perhaps have been unthinkable even a decade ago.

A poet’s memoir of family, trauma, and Virginia Woolf pulses with feeling and intelligence

Like most kids, Heather Christle was drilled about “stranger danger”. Like some, she had a family codeword designed to show that an adult picking them up from school when her mother was busy could be trusted. But, in her American home town in the 1980s, no other kid’s word was a bygone British sweet. And so “Dolly Mixture” joins the growing list of things learned from her English mother that Christle, looking back, finds out of place. Things such as dining etiquette, cardigans, M&S outfits, margarine. But also bigger stuff: beliefs and behaviours. Assumptions. Silence. Shame.

With her mother in her 70s and their relationship strained, Christle, a poet and academic, embarks on a quest for new understanding – of her mother, of “Englishness”, and of herself. In a memoir that pulses with feeling and intelligence, she excavates the past to expose difficult truths. As she proved with her acclaimed 2019 cultural history of tears, The Crying Book, she excels at facing the unfaceable, weaving her personal experience into the wider tapestry of science, history, politics and other people’s lives.

Statistics can help assess a potential recruit’s emotional control and leadership, while highlighting red flags

“The players didn’t show enough fight.” Listen to any pundit’s post-match reaction and you will hear variations of that soundbite. But can you analyse an athlete’s state of mind, based on their on-pitch body language?

In an era when football is increasingly leaning on data to demonstrate physical attributes, statistics offering an accurate indication of a player’s psychological qualities, such as emotional control and leadership, are harder to come by. But Premier League clubs including Brighton are using a technique intended to help in that regard with selection and recruitment.

Nayib Bukele has shown how brutal control can be sustained not just through force, but by raising the cost of speaking out

The Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) maximum security prison in El Salvador is the crown jewel of President Nayib Bukele’s efforts to quash not only criminal gangs, but also criticism and political opposition to his government. The “mega-prison” is also one of the more visible destinations in the emerging map of American deportations – a sprawling archipelago that includes conservative US districts, the Guantánamo military base and Central American waypoints connected by a tangle of military and charter flights.

That the two states have connected their penal architecture is no coincidence. Donald Trump’s aggressive policies towards foreigners build on Bukele’s infamous iron fist crackdown against criminal gangs: it’s a political toolkit that leverages anti-establishment anger to justify an authoritarian slide. In deploying strongman tactics to address social concerns, both leaders also cultivate a chilling culture of fear.

Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She edits the Latin America Daily Briefing

Coconut yoghurt basmati with a lemony finish, served with fried spiced potatoes

These “pickled” potatoes are for anyone whose mouth waters at the idea of dousing chips in salt and vinegar, as mine does. They’re not actually pickled, but cooked in a similar way to the Indian achar style of cooking that uses particular spices alongside an acidic ingredient, such as lemon juice. They go really well with a typical south Indian curd (yoghurt) rice and a fiery little shop-bought pickle.

Chicken chain has been buying up art since 2004, which it displays on walls of its restaurants

On a weekday lunchtime the Nando’s restaurant in Maponya Mall in Soweto, the sprawling former Black township on Johannesburg’s outskirts, was busy with couples, white-collar workers and older women dining alone. Behind them, a vivid graffiti portrait of a young Black woman filled the wall.

The mural, by the Cape Town artist Kilmany-Jo Liversage, is part of one of the largest private art collections in the world and, its curators believe, potentially the largest on public display.

City residents are working out how to fill their streets with trees as evidence grows of their benefits

“I wanted to do something that would benefit as many people from the community as possible,” says Chloe Straw, pointing at a small but promising sapling visible through the window of her local cafe.

In 2023, Chloe began chatting to her neighbours in Haringey, north London, about trees. “I thought it’d be really nice to raise some money for trees on the main road. Everyone uses West Green Road, regardless of whether you have a lot of money or not, regardless of your background.”

Most working people can be put into one of three categories, from idealistic yet unambitious to greedy and immoral. But there is another option …

Of all the things wasted in our throwaway times, the greatest is wasted talent. There are millions of people around the world who could help make the world a better place, but don’t. I’m talking about the ones who have got the power to shape their own careers, though you would never know it from their utterly unsurprising résumés. About the talented folks with the world at their feet who nonetheless get stuck in mind-numbing, pointless or just plain harmful jobs.

There’s an antidote to that kind of waste, and it’s called moral ambition. Moral ambition is the will to make the world a wildly better place. To devote your working life to the great challenges of our time, whether that’s the climate crisis or corruption, gross inequality or the next pandemic. It’s a longing to make a difference – and to build a legacy that truly matters.

Sonia Bompastor has her shot at ending the European champions’ reign and moving Blues step closer to history

As Chelsea’s quest for a quadruple enters its final month, there is no more imposing obstacle to navigate than this. Barcelona, the European champions in three of the past four campaigns, are once again standing in the way of the English champions as Chelsea strive to lift the only major trophy that has eluded them, and there could be no more worthy adversary.

There is more than a hint of deja vu about this semi-final. Not only because the first and second legs are taking place on the same dates, 20 April and 27 April, as they did last season, but also because it is the third straight year in which they have gone head-to-head at this stage, which both clubs can feel a touch unfortunate about. Once was tantalising. The rematch was welcome. The trilogy sounds enthralling but comes with a lingering sense that it might have been the final.

The mysterious death of an artist causes havoc among siblings in a novel that astutely observes family dynamics

What would writers do without problematic patriarchs? From King Lear to Logan Roy, they are the linchpins of countless family dramas: adored fathers who dominate and damage their children in equal measure.

The new novel from Rachel Joyce, bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Miss Benson’s Beetle and others, revolves around one such man: Vic Kemp, a successful artist with four grown-up children. Vic is a widower who raised his offspring alone, and the story begins with him summoning them to a noodle bar to announce that he’s in love with a twentysomething called Bella-Mae he met online. He’s also the proud owner of a goatee, a surefire sign of an identity crisis. The offspring are aghast. “If he’s so lonely, he could get a cat,” says one.

The order is the latest example of how the courts are challenging the Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration system

The US supreme court has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the deportation of Venezuelan men in immigration custody, after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices.

“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the justices said early on Saturday.

Survey finds social media main cause of poor behaviour, with pupils mimicking Donald Trump and Andrew Tate

A rise in misogyny and racism is flooding UK schools as pupils ape the behaviour of figures such as Donald Trump and Andrew Tate after exposure through social media and online gaming, teachers have warned.

A survey by the NASUWT union found most teachers identified social media as “the number one cause” of pupil misbehaviour, with female staff bearing the brunt. Teachers also raised concerns about parents who refuse to accept school rules or take responsibility for their children’s behaviour.

• Striker left out of squad for win against West Ham
• Coach confirms Núñez will be back for visit to Leicester

Arne Slot has denied Darwin Núñez was dropped from Liverpool’s win against West Ham because of a training-ground row with a member of his coaching staff.

The Liverpool head coach said on Sunday that Núñez was absent from the 2-1 victory at Anfield having felt unwell during training the day before, although the striker sat behind the substitutes throughout the game. Speculation has been rife that the Uruguay international, whom Slot criticised for his work rate against Wolves and Aston Villa in February, was left out for disciplinary reasons.

As a film of Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir The Salt Path is released, we follow in her footsteps along the Cornish section

‘I want to tell you something. I have a stage 4 brain tumour, and I don’t know how long I have left.” When fellow walker Peter utters these words to me at the Minack theatre in Porthcurno on Cornwall’s south coast, I half think he might be reading lines for a new play. Behind him, the waves are dancing, while mist swirls on the wind as though spooling from a smoke machine.

It had only been an hour since I first met him and his wife, Michelle, as we all took shelter from the freezing wind in a hut at nearby Gwennap Head. I had asked why they were walking the South West Coast Path – the 630-mile (1,014km) trail that weaves its way from the seaside town of Minehead in Somerset around to Poole harbour in Dorset, via the windswept headlands, secluded coves and beaches of Devon and Cornwall.

After two decades of video sensations, here’s a reminder of the streaming platform’s most unforgettable clips – year by year

From weird elephant videos to revolutionising TV: 20 years of YouTube

YouTube is 20 years old. Although video had existed online before, YouTube’s ease of use – for the first time sites could easily embed video into their content – made it revolutionary. As such, we now live in a world where people watch more YouTube than anything else. But how did we get here? Perhaps the best way to find out is to trace the most significant videos produced in each of its 20 years.

From grunge anthems and deodorant to weasel and woodpecker, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which trend started on a bridge in Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia?
2 Which grunge anthem was inspired by a deodorant?
3 Where is the Roodee, the world’s oldest working racecourse?
4 Who was the legendary ninth-century female pope?
5 What Chinese book of divination contains 64 hexagrams?
6 Which two countries are named after the line of zero degrees latitude?
7 What fabric is made with the help of bombyx larvae?
8 Who is the only writer to win the Booker and Baillie Gifford prizes?
What links:
9 Pudong; Lantau Island; Urayasu; Marne-la-Vallée; Lake Buena Vista; Anaheim?
10 Dachshund; African kigelia tree; bad actor; angry Brexiteer?
11 Atomic; Bullet; Crazyhouse; Dunsany’s; Entangled?
12 Vaalbara; Ur; Kenorland; Columbia; Rodinia; Pannotia; Pangea?
13 Évariste Galois; Alexander Hamilton; Mikhail Lermontov; Alexander Pushkin?
14 Colossae; Corinth; Ephesus; Galatia; Philippi; Rome; Thessaloniki?
15 Cane toad and python; octopus and mako shark; weasel and green woodpecker?

Think you look better with a suntan? Worried you don’t have a 12-step routine? Dermatologists cut through the noise to reveal the products they swear by – and those they’d run a mile from

• Anti-ageing products that actually work: Sali Hughes on the 30 best creams and treatments

Looking after your skin used to seem so simple: for decades, a basic “cleanse, tone, moisturise” routine was seen as the gold standard. But the skincare industry has recently exploded with thousands of new products, while skincare influencers have been racking up millions of views with often bewildering (and conflicting) advice.

So, should you be putting snail slime or beef tallow on your face, like that video you saw on TikTok? And which products are safe for your teenager to use, if any? We spoke to eight dermatologists to find out their own skincare routines – and which mistakes they see most often. Spoiler: none of them use snail slime.

Kat, 30, who works in the music industry, meets Matt, 30, a civil servant

What were you hoping for?
Great food, a fun story and hopefully someone to explore London with.

Regular parks are out of the question – there are just too many other dogs. And besides, lonely routes are better for hiding my embarrassment

It is mid-afternoon – post-lunch but safely before the schools let out – and I am walking the dog in the direction of what my wife and I now call the Triangle parks. The Triangle parks are the result of a long road cutting diagonally across the regular grid of suburban streets, leaving two small, three-sided communal gardens. They are close but hard to get to – a lot of roads round here come to unceremonious dead-ends – and it was only during my long lockdown walks that I eventually discovered a route to them.

Recently, however, they have proved useful: they’re both fenced and likely to be deserted mid-afternoon. When your dog is on heat, regular parks are out of the question.

Expectations of inflation, and recent waves of price rises, could be self-fulfilling and fuel ‘greedflation’ – and it may not only apply to US consumers

Over the past few years consumers have grown used to seeing prices rise at an exorbitant rate. The cost of everything – from used cars to utility bills and the humble loaf of bread – has rocketed in the worst inflation shock across advanced economies since the 1980s.

While inflation has cooled in the past year, talk of fast-rising prices is back on the agenda from Donald Trump’s escalating trade war.

Here’s a fun way to turn an excess of egg whites into a tray of moreish bouncy sweets

Marshmallows are a magical sweet, with vivid, popping colours and an unbelievably soft, squishy texture. Even after 25 years as a chef, I still love making them and, like most things, they taste better homemade.

If you’ve cooked something like a creme brulee, mayo or carbonara, and have a few egg whites spare, today’s recipe is a fun and delicious way to turn waste into taste.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will resume talks in Rome on Saturday

Iran’s top negotiator believes reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme with the US is possible as long as Washington is realistic, as the two sides prepare to resume talks in Rome on Saturday.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and the US Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, will begin indirect negotiations through mediators from Oman, after their first round in Muscat, which both sides described as constructive.

The companies are believed to have helped produce Iskander missiles used by Russia in the conflict; Trump says he could soon ‘pass’ on peace talks. What we know on day 1,151

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Tentative evidence for life on a distant world is exciting, but unconfirmed. As new telescopes bring exoplanets into sharper focus, is the truth out there?

Towards the end of his life, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking was asked about the odds of finding intelligent alien life in the next two decades. “The probability is low,” he declared in 2016, and took a lengthy pause before adding: “Probably.”

This week, other scientists from the University of Cambridge reported tentative evidence for two compounds in the atmosphere of a planet, K2-18b, that sits in the constellation of Leo 124 light years away.

• Grizzlies beat Mavericks 120-106 to lock up No 8 seed
• Heat beats Hawks 123-114 to book spot in playoffs
• Miami become first No 10 seed to reach postseason

Two-time All-Star Ja Morant promised a sprained right ankle wouldn’t keep him out of Memphis’ play-in game against Dallas with the Western Conference’s last postseason berth up for grabs Friday night.

Morant did more than just play. He delivered a thrilling start that included a high-flying, one-handed slam of a dunk that had teammate Desmond Bane yelling “Showtime!” at him in celebration as Morant elevated so much his eyes were level with the rim.

Senator Chris Van Hollen accuses El Salvador’s government of planting margarita glasses to undermine his trip – key US politics stories from Friday 18 April at a glance

Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen revealed that Kilmar Ábrego García had been moved from El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison – where he was sharing a cell with 25 other inmates – to a detention center with better conditions.

Van Hollen met with Ábrego García, whom the Trump administration admits it mistakenly deported, and said that he had been left “traumatized” after facing threats in the Cecot facility.

Maker of triangular-shaped almond-and-honey-laced chocolate bar says it has made ‘difficult decision’ to withdraw product

Mars Delight, Cadbury Dream and Rowntree’s Texan are just some of the once beloved chocolate bars that have been discontinued over the years, and now after almost six decades the dark chocolate Toblerone is joining them in the confectionery graveyard.

The triangular-shaped almond-and-honey-laced chocolate bar is a staple of supermarkets and airport duty-free shopping, but will be discontinued in the UK.

Chris Van Hollen describes meeting with constituent held in Salvadoran prison against supreme court order

• US politics live – latest updates

Wrongly deported Salvadoran man Kilmar Ábrego García has been held incommunicado and faced threats in prison that left him “traumatized”, a Democratic senator said Friday after returning from meeting him in El Salvador.

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the state Ábrego García had been living in with his US citizen wife and son until he was deported last month in what the Trump administration conceded was an “administrative error”, traveled to the central American country this week to see his constituent. After initially rejecting his request to meet Ábrego García and preventing him from traveling to the prison where he was being held, president Nayib Bukele’s government on Thursday facilitated a meeting at Van Hollen’s hotel.

Judges on the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit issued a memorable call for the return of Kilmar Ábrego García and the separation of government powers. Here is the text

Upon review of the government’s motion, the court denies the motion for an emergency stay pending appeal and for a writ of mandamus. The relief the government is requesting is both extraordinary and premature. While we fully respect the Executive’s robust assertion of its Article II powers, we shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision.

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

This was excerpted from the order by the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit in Kilmar Abrego Garcia v Kristi Noem. It has been edited to remove some legal citations

Beijing rejects Ukrainian president’s accusation as ‘groundless’ and says it is committed to ending the conflict

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

China’s foreign ministry has dismissed as “groundless” the accusation by Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the country had been supplying weapons to Russia.

The comments, made at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Friday, came a day after the Ukrainian president said China was supplying weapons to Russia, including gunpowder and artillery, and that Chinese representatives were involved in weapons production on Russian territory.

Fire broke out during onboard cooking before wooden vessel capsized with 500 passengers aboard

The death toll from a boat fire and capsizing in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this week has risen to 148 with more than 100 people still missing, officials said on Friday.

About 500 passengers were on board the wooden boat when it capsized on Tuesday after catching fire on the Congo River in the country’s north-west.

Students in Lamar can no longer learn about the state of Virginia on their online research database due to the ban

Virginia’s state flag and seal, depicting the Roman goddess Virtus standing over a slain tyrant, her drooping toga exposing her left breast, has been banned from younger students in a Texas school district.

The district, Lamar consolidated independent school district, near Houston, took action against the image late last year when it removed a section about Virginia from its online learning platform used by third through fifth graders, typically encompassing ages eight to 11, sparking a row, Axios reported on Thursday.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained that Gary Shapley had been chosen without his knowledge

Donald Trump is replacing the acting commissioner of the US Internal Revenue Service after treasury secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained to the president that the agency head had been appointed without his knowledge and under the instruction of Doge leader Elon Musk.

According to a report from the New York Times published on Friday, Bessent believed that the Doge head “had done an end-run around him” to get Gary Shapley installed as the interim head of the IRS, despite the fact that the IRS reports to Bessent. The report cited five anonymous sources with knowledge of the situation.

Internal mission statements from Harmeet Dhillon pivots division’s priorities away from marginalized groups’ rights

The justice department’s civil rights division is shifting its focus away from its longstanding work protecting the rights of marginalized groups and will instead pivot towards Donald Trump’s priorities including hunting for noncitizen voters and protecting white people from discrimination, according to new internal mission statements seen by the Guardian.

The new priorities were sent to several sections of the civil rights division this week by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who was confirmed a little more than two weeks ago to lead the division. Several of them only give glancing mention to the statutes and kinds of discrimination that have long been the focus of the division, which dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Several of the mission statements point to Trump’s executive orders as priorities for the section.

After cutting off $2.26bn in funding, the US president reportedly gave the IRS a potentially illegal order

Harvard University is in a standoff with Donald Trump after rejecting a series of demands from the president’s administration, which critics view as an attack on the elite college for its reputation among conservatives as a bastion of liberal thought.

After cutting off its funding, Trump has reportedly given the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a potentially illegal order to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status. Such a decision would mark an escalation in the Republican president’s weaponization of federal government agencies against the people and institutions that defy it.