Secretary of education Linda McMahon says move is part of president’s mission to dismantle department

Taoiseach Micheál Martin is meeting Donald Trump at 10am US time for the annual St Patrick’s Day celebrations, a week early this year because of congressional recess.

He plans to tell Trump that the trade imbalance raised by secretary of state Marco Rubio in a phone call with the Irish foreign minister last week masks the complexity of the relationship.

The public’s views of the economy under Trump seem to be a drag on his overall approval rating, with a plurality of 48% saying they don’t approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 37% approve.

Voters give Trump his highest ratings for his handling of immigration, with 48% approving and 40% disapproving. His weakest areas are the economy, health care and cryptocurrency, in which he has net approval ratings solidly underwater.”

Captain of Solong, which was in collision with tanker, was arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter

The captain of the Solong ship who was arrested after a collision with a tanker off the coast of England is a Russian national, the ship’s owner, Ernst Russ, has said.

The rest of the crew were Russian and Philippine nationals, the company said.

For many Israelis, military service is a rite of passage that lasts two to three years. Being such a formative part of the social contract in Israel, it is unusual for eligible young people to refuse their draft orders. Every year some ask for exemptions, but only a handful openly declare themselves as conscientious objectors, commonly known as refuseniks. However, since 7 October and the war in Gaza, refusenik organisations say the number of people refusing the draft has risen, even though during wartime punishments are harsher. The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Bethan McKernan, spent time with Itamar Greenberg, an 18-year-old who has been in and out of military prison for almost a year as a result of his refusal to serve

Author of Detransition, Baby found success and pushback she never anticipated and now returns with a provocative collection of stories

Author Torrey Peters’ mind has imagined everything from a future virus that turns everyone trans to a crossdressing fetishist in a poreless silicone suit, but the premise of her new novel, Stag Dance, sounded too bizarre even for her. “If I hadn’t read it in a book I wouldn’t have believed it,” she told me during a lengthy conversation about her life and work. “It’s so over the top. It’s literally an upside down triangle. That’s a little too on the nose.”

The triangle Peters refers to is one that is made out of fabric, and that loggers in the early part of the last century used to affix to their crotches in order to denote that they had changed their sex to female for the purposes of dances held deep in the wilderness. This is a fact that Peters uncovered while reading original texts about logging culture while developing the unique lexicon that she employs to write the titular novel. One of these “stag dances” forms the basis of Peters’ story, a remarkable feat of high modernism that channels the ethos of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian into the story of a lumberjack experiencing a remarkable gender transition.

US aid deliveries arriving through Polish logistics hub back to previous levels after US-Ukraine talks towards peace

• Ukraine agrees to 30-day ceasefire

French European Affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad, said the European Union could go further in its response to US tariffs, though a trade war was in no-one’s interest, Reuters reported.

“We have the means to go further, if we want,” Haddad told TF1 TV.

Injecting pollutants into the atmosphere to reflect the sun would be extremely dangerous, but the UK is funding field trials

Some years ago in the pages of the Guardian, we sounded the alarm about the increasing attention being paid to solar geoengineering – a barking mad scheme to cancel global heating by putting pollutants in the atmosphere that dim the sun by reflecting some sunlight back to space.

In one widely touted proposition, fleets of aircraft would continually inject sulphur compounds into the upper atmosphere, simulating the effects of a massive array of volcanoes erupting continuously. In essence, we have broken the climate by releasing gigatonnes of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide, and solar geoengineering proposes to “fix” it by breaking a very different part of the climate system.

Raymond T Pierrehumbert FRS is professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford. He is an author of the 2015 US National Academy of Sciences report on climate intervention

Michael E Mann ForMemRS is presidential distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis

The tournament will be leveraged for the glorification of a leader to a degree not seen since Benito Mussolini dominated the 1934 World Cup in Italy

Two men held a press event in the Oval Office last week to announce a taskforce that would work to resolve the logistical problems surrounding the 2026 World Cup in North America, which were largely created by one of them.

Both men were in their element. One, Donald Trump, received toady genuflection and a large, golden … thing (actually the Club World Cup trophy). The other, Fifa president Gianni Infantino, occasioned to bask in the proximity to real power, was affectionately referred to as “The king of soccer, I guess, in a certain way” by Trump.

• Berrada hopes investment in team will not be affected
• Plan to build £2bn stadium in five years has this in mind

Omar Berrada has admitted it is a “risk” for Manchester United to try to build a world-class team and venue at the same time. The club announced on Tuesday they planned to construct a 100,000-seat ground on land adjacent to Old Trafford.

Berrada hopes United can move into the £2bn stadium by the start of the 2030-31 season but said the cost of building it could have an impact, acknowledging that Arsenal and Tottenham struggled to juggle building a ground and fighting at the top.

The third season of Mike White’s delicious resort-set comedy drama has teased yet another murder but we don’t yet know the whos or the whys

After a characteristically slow start, we are now halfway through this year’s season of The White Lotus. From what we know of the last two seasons, this means that things are about to get very crazy very quickly. To use season one as a way marker, we are now approximately the runtime of The Brutalist away from watching someone perform the equivalent of a suitcase poop.

More than previous runs, however, a number of mysteries still hang over almost every White Lotus character this year. We know that there’s a shooting. We know that there’s a body. At this point, almost every character could be either one of them. It’s time to theorise wildly.

Mining companies are poised to mine the deep sea – but opposition is growing. What is the environmental cost, and are these metals actually needed?

Nintendo Switch, iPhone/iPad, Mac, PC (version played); Inkle
Inkle’s latest game revels in lying, stealing and blackmail as you resort to any means necessary to avoid expulsion from a posh school

As with seemingly everything in the UK, it all comes back to the class system. Verity Amersham, a scholarship student at Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls, is accused of pushing the hockey captain out of a window, and the school’s fearsome headmistress is determined to expel her despite the flimsiest evidence. When Verity protests her innocence, Miss Mulligatawney remains unpersuaded, spelling out her reasoning in plain terms: as a northerner with working-class parents, Verity simply isn’t the “right sort”.

The injustice of it all is a potent driver, ensuring I set about my goal of preventing Verity’s expulsion with determined zeal, much like Matilda defying the hateful Miss Trunchbull. As in developer Inkle’s 2021 game Overboard!, you’re given a time limit to work within and a handful of areas to move between, from the library to the sick room (AKA the “san”, where the school’s grumpy matron lurks). Each area has characters to talk to and objects to find, and each action moves the clock forward. The game follows a rigid school timetable: at 2pm, for example, all of the students will troop up to the library for Latin.

Expelled! is out on 12 March

Leaving home at 16 to pursue his dream has paid off for Britain’s youngest F1 driver as he begins his first full season

There is an unmistakeable air of steely determination about Ollie Bearman; an almost disquieting sense of purpose doubtless instrumental in propelling the 19-year-old British driver into Formula One with an eye-catching opening to his career.

Bearman is about to enter his first full season with the Haas team and while tearing most teenagers away from their friends is a torturous task, since he left home in Essex at 16 to pursue the dream of reaching F1, everything has been subsumed to the cause.

Plus: high-scoring Premier League games with no English-born scorer and club crests similar to logos

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Liverpool’s 1-0 win against Paris Saint-Germain last week was the ultimate smash-and-grab victory. When was the phrase first used in a football context?” poses our very own Niall McVeigh.

Liverpool’s win in Paris was smash-and-grab bingo. They were away from home, like all burglars. They were battered and their keeper had the game of his life, which made it feel like they had stolen a result they didn’t deserve. The match was low-scoring, which meant there was a single, sudden moment of smashing and grabbing. And that moment came late on, in the 87th minute, increasing the dramatic impact to Hitchcockian levels.

SMASH AND GRAB

Audacious thief sentenced

Sentence of 20 months’ hard labour at Clerkenwell today on William Woolley (31), labourer, for breaking the window of one of Messrs Straker’s establishments in the East End.

Prisoner’s practice, it was shown, was to deliberately smash shop windows with a stone, and then bolt with whatever he could grab from the window.

First such study finds laws on abortion, debt and dress help increase rate of women being jailed twice as fast as for men

Poverty, abuse and discriminatory laws are driving a huge rise in the number of women in prison globally, according to a new report.

With the rise of the far right and an international backlash against women’s rights, the research said there was a risk that laws would increasingly be used to target women, forcing more behind bars.

European Commission says it will impose counter-tariffs on US goods from April while UK takes ‘pragmatic’ approach; US tariffs cover household goods such as tin foil

• Full story: Trump tariffs on steel and aluminium come into effect amid US-Canada trade war
• EU retaliates against Trump tariffs with €26bn ‘countermeasures’

Community Union, Britain’s steelworkers’ union says the tariffs are “hugely damaging” and threaten jobs – and “self-defeating” for the United States.

Alasdair McDiarmid, Community’s assistant general secretary, said:

These US tariffs on UK steel exports are hugely damaging and they threaten jobs. For the US it’s also self-defeating, as the UK is a leading supplier of specialist steel products required by their defence and aerospace sectors.

The UK’s response must include delivering a robust Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and the strongest possible trade defence measures to shield our sector from diverted imports.

Our government must act decisively to protect the steel industry and its workers following the announcement of US tariffs.

This is a matter of national security. Steel should be immediately designated as critical national infrastructure to properly protect it.

Pia-Paulina Guilmoth’s community in rural Maine is not always welcoming to trans women. She deals with the hostility by capturing the local area’s beauty

Kerala is providing lessons on how not to be scammed by employment agencies as US and UK step up immigration raids

On a warm February morning, Devika, 24, sits with more than 60 classmates in the city of Kochi, in Kerala, southern India, learning how to tell a bogus overseas recruitment agency from a genuine one. Organised by the local government, the training session on safe and legal migration is among a handful of interventions in a country making headlines around the world as undocumented Indian migrants are rounded up and sent back home.

The training could not have been more timely.

As a new exhibition celebrating the portraits of Edvard Munch opens at London’s National Portrait Gallery, we take a trip to the artist’s home city in Norway

I reach Ekeberg Park at sunset and walk along the muddy paths to find the viewpoint. The late winter sky is like a watercolour: soft blue and grey clouds layer together, with a sweeping gradient of yellow verging from tobacco stain to pale lemon above the distant, bruise-coloured hills. At the viewpoint, I look out over Oslo and listen for a scream.

In 1892, Edvard Munch took a walk in this same park as the sun was setting. Recording the experience in his diary, he wrote that he heard “a great and infinite scream through nature”. The experience became the basis of his most enduring painting.

This Drabble adaptation about a PhD student who gets pregnant is kitchen-sinky but without humour or even awareness. It’s an interesting curio

Waris Hussein’s earnest 1969 movie, adapted by Margaret Drabble from her own novel The Millstone, is a London-set drama about a young woman who has difficulties with men while researching a PhD in English literature – and as a result we get some tremendously nostalgic shots of the British Museum round reading room, when it was still a working library. American star Sandy Dennis puts on a stage-school English accent to play Rosamund, the graduate student who has well-to-do but insufferable bien pensant liberal parents, the kind of people who, as she explains to someone, “let the charlady sit down to dine with us, that kind of nonsense”.

Rosamund finds herself alone in her parents’ London flat while they are away doing good works in Africa and she exchanges brittle, knowing dialogue with chaps who take her out on dates: Joe (Michael Coles) and Roger (John Standing). However, she is only attracted to an oddly camp television newsreader called George, played with bizarre twinkly eyed condescension by Ian McKellen. (The 60s setting and the air of sexual loucheness put me in mind of McKellen’s performance as John Profumo in Michael Caton-Jones’s Scandal.) Rosamond loses her virginity in a single, unsatisfactory sexual encounter with George; she gets pregnant and resolves to keep the baby despite objections from family, friends and nurses.

Eating with my family was a source of joy and pleasure until illness ravaged my digestive system. After my stoma was fitted, everything tasted amazing again

Growing up, I always loved food. On Sundays, I’d ask for seconds of my roast dinner. My gran would bake cakes every weekend, which I would drown in custard. I can still remember how the chocolate digestive biscuits I’d eat when I got in from school tasted, how satisfying it was to dip them in my tea as I chatted with my dad about my day. Food brought us together as a family and it was something I always relished.

Then I got sick. I was 12 when I first displayed symptoms of Crohn’s disease. I started getting unbearable pain in my stomach and going to the toilet a bit more. Then a lot more. And I stopped feeling hungry. My weight dropped three stone (19kg), my periods stopped and I had no energy, but it was my sudden lack of appetite that I missed the most. Food had always been a source of joy; I’d watch cookery shows and cry, remembering how much pleasure I used to take from eating. Now, my body rejected everything except supplement drinks that pretended to have flavours like lime and orange but always just tasted like bile. I was fading away and it was terrifying.

Centre-right party wins most votes ahead of the Naleraq party, with coalition talks expected to begin

Greenland has voted for a complete overhaul of the its government in a shock result in which the centre-right Democrat party more than tripled its seats after a dramatic election campaign fought against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire the Arctic island.

Tuesday’s election, in which the Democrats replaced Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA), the party of the former prime minister Múte B Egede, as the biggest party in Inatsisartut, the Greenlandic parliament, also led to a doubling of seats for Naleraq – the party most open to US collaboration and which supports a snap vote on independence – making them the second biggest party.

The EU has its Trojan horses and Nato’s cornerstone has crumbled. But European allies, including the UK, are bound by an urgent shared purpose

Moscow’s immense military mobilisation is clearly not aimed just at Ukraine. Unless Vladimir Putin accepts a ceasefire with meaningful security guarantees there will be no end in sight to the war. If anything, we could see the extension of Russia’s aggression beyond Ukraine. The bleak reality is that Europe still faces an unprecedented threat and notwithstanding signs of progress for Ukraine at talks in Jeddah, we face it alone.

Worse, we now have to confront it with the US working against us. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump appear to share a plan: a Vichy-like regime in Ukraine and a European continent split into spheres of influence, which Russia, the US (and perhaps China) can colonise and prey upon. Most European publics sense this. A critical mass of European leaders gets it too. They are beginning to act.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

US betrayal of Ukraine is the rehearsal for a grander bargain with Moscow and an assault on continental solidarity

A prime time current affairs programme; a discussion about Donald Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine. “He’s doing excellent things,” says a firebrand politician on the panel, before listing White House actions that have belittled Volodymyr Zelenskyy and weakened his battlefield position – military aid suspended; satellite communications obstructed; intelligence withheld. “Do we support this?” It is a rhetorical question.

“We support it all. Absolutely,” the celebrity host responds. “We are thrilled by everything Trump is doing.”

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

• Ukrainian overcomes weather delay to win 5-7, 6-1,6-2
• Iga Swiatek wallops Muchova 6-1, 6-1 in last-16 match

Elina Svitolina waited out a three-hour rain delay in the Californian desert to beat fourth-seeded Jessica Pegula 5-7, 6-1, 6-2 and move into the Indian Wells quarter-finals.

After the Ukrainian dropped the first set, she rallied before the weather interrupted proceedings early in the third set.

Cladribine tablet for those with active multiple sclerosis will reduce hospital visits and free up appointments

Thousands of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) in England are to become the first in Europe to benefit from a major roll out of an immunotherapy pill.

Current treatments involve regular trips to hospital, drug infusions, frequent injections and extensive monitoring, which add to the burden on patients and healthcare systems.

Young women wear their jeans low and ultra-baggy, while laughing at the ‘moms’ with their high waists and exposed ankles. It’s time to bring the generations together – if only to try on each other’s trousers

Every day, it feels as if social media finds new ways to let us know how old we are. Just joined TikTok? You’re probably a millennial. Wear your hair in a centre parting? Must be gen Z. Paid off your mortgage – or even have one? OK boomer.

This generational divide is particularly strong, it seems, when it comes to jeans. Look around you and you have probably noticed that younger people prefer to wear them low-rise, long-hemmed and ultra-baggy, while millennials wear them high on the waist and high off the ground – AKA the “mom jean”. TikTok is full of videos of young people mocking their elders for their jeans choices. Now even millennials are coming after their generation’s commitment to the style. “My fellow millennials,” begins a video from TikToker Indigo Tshai Williams-Brunton, “Just completely stop with the mom jeans.”

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2018: The foreign policy establishment has been lamenting its death for half a century. But Atlanticism has long been a convenient myth

By Madeleine Schwartz. Read by Kelly Burke

Tesla sales are falling and apps and online groups are springing up to help consumers choose non-US items

The renowned German classical violinist Christian Tetzlaff was blunt in explaining why he and his quartet have cancelled a summer tour of the US.

“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” Tetzlaff said, describing his horror at the authoritarian polices of Donald Trump and the response of US elites to the country’s growing democratic crisis.

Standing room only in pubs and bars long before the action begins, thousands of British tourists now enjoy the festival in the Spanish hotspot

A bell rings for half past happy hour on Cheltenham festival eve in a city that has discarded time.

Not entirely, of course. Conventional clocks are required to determine the midday cut off between a cheap full English breakfast – available in a range of sizes, from large through to extra, extra large – and an ever so slightly pricier one. So, too, to distinguish between upcoming performances from Michael Jackson, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Queen, who, extraordinarily, have descended on the same Spanish bar, on the same night. Just as they will again tomorrow; at least, tribute acts of varying quality.

They played Red Square, launched MTV Russia and got driven home from a gay club by the police. But the freedoms witnessed by Pet Shop Boys have been crushed. Singer Neil Tennant relives those heady days – and calls for a revolution

The journalist Andrey Sapozhnikov of Novaya Gazeta Europe, the independent Russian newspaper that now operates from Latvia in order to avoid censorship by Putin’s regime, recently asked Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys: “You have been actively commenting on Russian politics since 2013 and the Pussy Riot case, and you are arguably one of the most engaged western artists in relation to the Russian context today. Why do you care so deeply about what is happening specifically in Russia?” Here is his reply, which the Guardian is publishing in English.

I have been interested in Russia since reading a book when I was a young boy about the 1917 revolutions. It fascinated me that the Russian empire was replaced by another empire, the Soviet Union, which unleashed a lot of energy but rapidly became a brutal dictatorship under Stalin, a 20th-century Ivan the Terrible. Since then I have read a lot about Soviet culture, particularly the work and struggles of Shostakovich and Prokofiev and other artists, writers, musicians. This interest fed into the lyrics I wrote. For instance My October Symphony, or indeed our first hit single, West End Girls: “In every city, in every nation / From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station.”

Daughter accuses government of ‘kidnapping’ the former president as victims of his ‘war on drugs’ express jubilation over his arrest

Lawyers for the former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte have demanded that he be returned to Manila in a petition filed to the supreme court, as victims of the former leaders’ bloody “war on drugs” expressed jubilation.

Duterte, who was flown to The Hague on Tuesday night to face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to anti-drugs crackdowns is the first former Asian leader to be served an arrest warrant filed by the ICC. Activists say as many as 30,000 people were killed in the “war on drugs”.

Education secretary Linda McMahon describes layoffs as ‘significant step towards restoring greatness’ – key US politics stories from Tuesday at a glance

The US Department of Education intends to lay off nearly half of its workforce, the department has announced. The layoffs of 1,300 people were announced by the department on Tuesday and described by the education secretary, Linda McMahon, as a “significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system”.

In a post on X, McMahon said: “Today’s [reduction in force] reflects our commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”

The former governor of the Bank of England has a new role – saving his country from becoming America’s 51st state. Leyland Cecco reports

Just a few months ago, the future of Canada seemed clear – the Conservatives were on the rise. After almost a decade in power, Justin Trudeau resigned and his Liberal party seemed down and out. But then came not just Donald Trump’s tariffs – but his threats that Canada could become the “51st state”.

Canadians were appalled. The government hit back with retaliatory tariffs and strong words. Ordinary Canadians began boycotting goods from the US. And support for the Liberals surged. Now Mark Carney, who has never been an MP but was the first non-British head of the Bank of England, has swept into the role of prime minister.

Over the next few days police will be ‘present’ in the remote Marokopa area where Tom Phillips and his three children are believed to be hiding

New Zealand police are launching a fresh operation in the rugged North Island wilderness to track down a fugitive father and his three children who have been missing for more than three years.

Just before Christmas 2021, Tom Phillips fled into a remote area of Waikato with his children Ember, thought to be now aged 9, Maverick, 10, and Jayda, 11, following a dispute with their mother. Phillips does not have legal custody for his children.

Research shows apex predators are increasing in numbers and excreting important nutrients into Top End waterways

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The growing saltwater crocodile population in the Northern Territory has led to the creatures gorging on nine times more prey than they did 50 years ago, with the apex predators contributing important nutrients to Top End waterways, new research suggests.

Saltwater crocodile populations have increased exponentially in recent decades, from less than 3,000 in 1971, when a ban on hunting was introduced, to more than 100,000 animals today.

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Eight states had requested a temporary restraining order, which judge granted saying ‘programs ... will be gutted’

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s plan to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training, finding that cuts were already affecting training programs aimed at addressing a nationwide teacher shortage.

The US district judge Myong Joun sided with the eight states that had requested a temporary restraining order. The states argued the cuts were likely driven by efforts by Trump’s administration to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Firings announced Tuesday as administration decried as ‘detached from how Americans live’

The US Department of Education intends to lay off nearly half of its workforce. The layoffs of 1,300 people were announced by the department on Tuesday and described by the education secretary, Linda McMahon, as a “significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system”.

In a post on X, McMahon said: “Today’s [reduction in force] reflects our commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”

• PSG beat Liverpool on penalties in Champions League
• Slot praises ‘teams of an incredible level and intensity’

Arne Slot described Liverpool’s Champions League exit as the finest game of his career after Paris Saint‑Germain stunned Anfield with victory in a penalty shootout.

The Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma proved the decisive figure in the last-16 second leg with penalty saves from Darwin Núñez and Curtis Jones. The game had gone to extra time and penalties after Ousmane Dembélé’s winner cancelled out Liverpool’s first‑leg lead from Paris. PSG converted all four of their penalties in a flawless shootout display.

Swings between drought and floods striking from Dallas to Shanghai, while Madrid and Cairo are among cities whose climate has flipped

Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed.

Dozens more cities, including Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh have suffered a climate “flip” in the last 20 years, switching from dry to wet extremes, or vice versa. The report analysed the 100 most populous cities, plus 12 selected ones, and found that 95% of them showed a distinct trend towards wetter or drier weather.

Sydney surgeons ‘enormously proud’ after patient in his 40s receives the Australian-designed implant designed as a bridge before donor heart

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An Australian man with heart failure has become the first person in the world to walk out of a hospital with a total artificial heart implant.

The Australian researchers and doctors behind the operation announced on Wednesday that the implant had been an “unmitigated clinical success” after the man lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor heart transplant in early March.

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