Scientists believe we’re seeing the largest loss of life since the dinosaurs – and it’s a risk to the global economy. Governments and companies need to work together on solutions

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It feels like groundhog day: another week, another warning about the seriousness of the biodiversity crisis. This time it was the financial sector’s turn, as on Monday a major report, approved by more than 150 governments, said that many companies face collapse unless they better protect nature.

From healthy rivers to productive forests, the natural world underpins almost all economic activity. But human consumption of the Earth’s resources is unsustainable, driving what many scientists believe is the largest loss of life since the dinosaurs. And companies are not immune to the consequences.

Economics has failed on the climate crisis. This complexity scientist has a mind-blowing plan to fix that

‘To live a normal life again, it’s a dream come true’: UK’s first climate evacuees can cast off their homes and trauma

‘We’ve lost everything’: anger and despair in Sicilian town collapsing after landslide

‘It sounds apocalyptic’: experts warn of impact of UK floods on birds, butterflies and dormice

Indonesia takes action against mining firms after floods devastate population of world’s rarest ape

‘We thought they would ignore us’: how humans are changing the way raptors behave

Analysis shows that the world is moving closer to China, as Trump’s isolationism rears its head at the United Nations

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has accelerated a profound shift in the global order, according to new analysis.

A report from Focal Data, which analyses UN voting records, reveals how Washington’s “America First” agenda has started to redraw the geopolitical map in favour of China.

Romance is in the air on a roof terrace in Venice, rowing across Lake Bled and a fairytale garden in Stuttgart
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We had our wedding reception at the Grand Hotel Royal in Sorrento, south of Naples. We danced to two guitarists playing Justin Bieber’s Despacito with our 50 guests singing and dancing along with us. We watched as the sun began to melt into the Mediterranean Sea from this time-capsule hotel balancing on the edge of a cliff. I floated out of my body and felt a rush of euphoria – perhaps it was the limoncello spritzers. We’ve returned many times and I get the same rush – the gelato, the pizza, the people, it feels as if I’m in a Richard Curtis film.
Charlotte Sahami

Union urges Leonard Blavatnik to scrap Channel 13 deal, saying it is part of Netanyahu plan ‘to capture the media’

Israeli journalists have appealed to a British billionaire not to proceed with the sale of a stake in an Israeli television channel, which they warn would represent a severe blow to the independence of the country’s media.

Sir Leonard Blavatnik, listed by the Sunday Times as the UK’s third richest person, is selling a nearly 15% share in Channel 13, a commercial channel that has run critical news coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in recent years, including investigations into the prime minister’s financial dealings.

City analysts say financial market investors will be worried if cost is deducted from budget surplus

Rachel Reeves is under pressure to reassure MPs over the state of the UK’s public finances, amid concerns that the rising cost of special educational needs and disabilities (Send) could leave a significant hole in the government’s financial buffer.

Meg Hillier, the chair of the all-party House of Commons Treasury committee, said the chancellor should make clear her long-term plans for the £6bn-a-year Send bill as uncertainty grows over how it will be accounted for at the end of the decade.

Who killed Zorah? Snippets of gossip expose the divisions in a migrant community in this polyphonic portrait of contemporary America

There has been debate lately about whether novels should cater for our cauterised attention spans. If that means narratives constructed in short chunks that can be consumed in five-minute bursts on a phone – intelligent, but with plenty of cliffhangers and well-timed packets of information to keep us coming back – then Good People ticks all the boxes.

Patmeena Sabit’s debut is constructed from a chorus of short testimonies – none more than a few pages, some just a few lines – about the death of Zorah Sharaf, an Afghan American teenager who has drowned in a canal at the wheel of the family car. We hear from family, friends and those in the wider community – neighbours, teachers, schoolmates, journalists, the guy who found the body – as well as those involved in the investigation (though very little from the police), and bites of media commentary. A picture slowly forms of a devastated family, but what kind of family was it? Versions are multiple and contradictory. The Sharafs are perfect, loving, tight-knit. They are dangerously dysfunctional.

Valentine’s, Galentine’s, staying in – or going out? Sometimes it’s just nice to dress up

European leaders divided over how far to accommodate Trump’s ‘wrecking ball’ politics and foreign policy

US Democrats will use a security summit this weekend to urge European leaders to stand up to Donald Trump, with the continent divided over how to keep the unpredictable US president on side.

Democrats at the annual Munich Security Conference will include some of Trump’s most outspoken critics, such as the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego and the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Is it breakfast? Is it dessert? It doesn’t really matter, because this gooey-centred crepe is the perfect Pancake Day treat, whatever the time of day

When it comes to pancake day, I don’t discriminate and fill the day with as many types of pancakes as possible – from a fluffy American-style stack in the morning to a savoury buckwheat pancake at lunch, and finishing off with classic crepes in the evening. This version was heavily inspired by an almond croissant, so although it does lean more towards dessert, I won’t judge if this is what you choose to start your day with. Bake them until the edges go crisp but the middle stays a little gooey.

Bleuse/Favre/Vassilakis
(Alpha)
Berlin-based Chin’s intricate music is performed with panache in this disc of three of her orchestral works

Unsuk Chin describes her music as a conscious attempt to render in sound the visions she encounters in her dreams. This ear-catching profile album from Ensemble Intercontemporain presents three of the Korean-born, Berlin-based artist’s works: a triptych of visionary panels that flicker and swarm with kaleidoscopic colours.

It opens with Gougalon, a playful suite inspired by the travelling amateur theatres of her native country. Prepared piano and a percussion section that hums with gongs, bells, bottles and vibraslap lend a riotous jocularity to six contrasting episodes, including the lugubrious Lament of the Bald Singer, the clangorous Grinning Fortune Teller With the False Teeth and the madcap Hunt for the Quack’s Plait. First-class engineering allows the listener to savour every sonic jot and tittle.

A debating society didn’t want to invite two figures connected to the party to speak. Cue an authoritarian response

It must have seemed the easiest offer in the world to refuse. Would students at Bangor University enjoy a question-and-answer session with Sarah Pochin – the Reform UK MP famous for saying it “drives me mad” to see TV adverts full of black people – and Jack Anderton, the 25-year-old influencer who helped send Nigel Farage’s TikTok account viral among teenagers? No, the university’s debating society decided, it would not.

And had it filed the request in the bin, you wouldn’t be reading this. Until now, Anderton’s A New Dawn campus tour – a homage to the “debate me bro” style of the American rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, killed last year, who was famed for inviting liberal students to take on his arguments and live-streaming the results – hadn’t exactly set the heather alight. Reform is actively pushing to recruit inside universities, but in Cambridge, according to its student newspaper Varsity, only about 30 people turned up to hear Anderton argue that migrants are taking the part-time jobs students once used to do.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Monday 30 April, ahead of May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party
Book tickets here

• Lewis-Potter equalises from long throw by Kayode

• Arsenal miss chance to restore six-point lead at top

Mikel Arteta admitted that Arsenal weren’t ruthless enough to beat a physical Brentford team as they missed the chance to restore their six-point lead over Manchester City.

Noni Madueke’s header broke the deadlock in west London in the second half but Keane Lewis-Potter equalised 10 minutes later from a long throw by Michael Kayode to set up a grandstand finale that saw both sides spurn chances to win it.

UK charity warns against excessive academic pressure and suggests reducing the number of high-stakes tests

Exam stress at age 15 can increase the risk of depression and self-harm into early adulthood, research suggests.

Academic pressure is known to have a detrimental impact on mood and overall wellbeing, but until now few studies had examined the long-term effects on mental health.

• Updates from the R. Premadasa Cricket Stadium in Colombo

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1st over: Zimbabwe 4-0 (Bennett 4, Marumani 0) Ben Dwarshuis makes a fine start on his return to the XI as he has the ball moving off the deck and he carves through Brian Bennett several times. Australia are excited by a noise after a delivery that jags off the seam and send a review upstairs. That is quickly declined and Bennett responds with two runs through point.

Zimbabwe openers Brian Bennett and Tadiwanashe Marumani are on their way out to the middle and hoping to set the tone for the underdogs who are facing their own injury concerns. Ben Dwarshuis is back in the XI and has the white ball in hand as we’re about to get under way in Colombo …

Everyone should get their eyes tested every two years, but there are other ways to optimise your vision, say ophthalmologists – and yes, eating carrots may help

Eye health is often something that we take for granted until we encounter problems. But lifestyle choices such as screen time and smoking can affect your vision. Here, ophthalmologists share their tips on maintaining healthy eyes, from sight tests to sunglasses.

Kremlin’s repeated targeting of infrastructure has left thousands without heating, reliant on shelters and desperate home hacks

Natalya Pavlovna watched her two-year-old son, Danylo, play with Lego. “We are taking a break from the cold,” she said as children made drawings inside a warm tent. Adults sipped tea and chatted while their phones charged. The emergency facility is located in Kyiv’s Troieshchina district, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Outside it was -18C. There was bright sunshine and snow.

“Russia is trying to break us. It’s deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. Putin wants us to capitulate so we give up the Donbas region,” Natalya said. “Kyiv didn’t use to feel like a frontline city. Now it does. People are dying of cold in their homes in the 21st century. The idea is to make us leave and to create a new refugee crisis for Europe.”

Natalia and Danylo near the ‘resilience point’ in Troyeshchyna district

You have to be careful managing supplies – there is one delivery a year

The first time anyone goes to the Antarctic is truly special. Just getting there is an adventure: it takes several planes, and about three to five days. Travelling there was a childhood dream of mine. I saw it as a way to test myself against something so much bigger. I nearly applied for a role at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) 30 years ago, but then my wife and I were expecting our first child. Instead, I’ve worked as a chef in Michelin-star restaurants in Paris and London, hotels in Kuala Lumpur and St Moritz, and even at a school in Oxfordshire.

In 2016, I took a sabbatical and finally joined BAS as a chef for a summer. Five years later, I went back for the winter, and last year, I became the organisation’s full-time catering manager. I felt ready for an adventure. Now I oversee the catering across BAS’s five Antarctic stations: bases for the organisation’s research and also where the staff live. Each year, I spend three months there; for the rest of the time I work at BAS’s HQ in Cambridge.

Destined to a perilous life with no right to an education or to vote, state recognition ‘gives them hope’, campaigners say

Through the decades that the Daulatdia brothel in Bangladesh has existed, children born there have been invisible, unable to be registered because their mothers were sex workers and their fathers unknown. Now, for the first time, all 400 of them in the brothel village have their own birth certificates.

That milestone was reached after a push by campaigners who have spent decades working with Bangladesh’s undocumented children born in brothels or on the street. It means they can finally access the rights afforded to other citizens: the ability to go to school, to be issued a passport or to vote.

The Games could have showcased Milan’s abundant culture and architecture. Instead it has filled the city with gaudy pavilions and gentrification

On a bad day, Milan can feel less like a city than an open-air shopping mall. Since winning the bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2019, the urban landscape has been flattened into construction dust and swamped in corporate messaging. What started as a logo on a tram has gradually evolved into a feverish, full-scale takeover of the public realm. From Piazza del Duomo to the Sforzesco Castle, the city’s most popular spaces have been appropriated by gaudy pavilions, turning Milan into a bizarre spectacle staffed by dancing mascots.

Last Friday, I sat down with friends to watch the opening ceremony, broadcast live from the San Siro, the much-loved brutalist football stadium that has been slated for demolition The reaction in the room was telling. On the one hand, after so much buildup, most people were excited the big moment had finally arrived. But as the proceedings went on and the parade of familiar faces gave way to the peculiar sight of bobble-headed puppets of Rossini, Puccini and Verdi dancing to Italo disco hit Vamos a la playa, the melancholy kicked in. Was this really what these years of disruption had been for? Was this strange, kitsch pop concert worth all the political repression, the public inconvenience, the relentless marketing, the unspecified millions of euros in cost?

Jamie Mackay is a writer and translator based in Florence

The genre-hopping bass virtuoso has backed Ariana Grande and Herbie Hancock, appeared in Star Wars and become a dedicated boxer. Ahead of his fifth album, Stephen Bruner explains his polymath mindset

It is an overcast Thursday afternoon at the end of January, and Thundercat is telling me about the time he tried to interest Snoop Dogg in the mid-70s oeuvre of Frank Zappa. He wasn’t Thundercat then, he explains. He was still Stephen Bruner, bass player for hire, who had fetched up in what he calls a “stupid-as-hell, Rick James-level band” backing the venerable rapper, packed with Los Angeles jazz luminaries who would later contribute to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly: Kamasi Washington, Josef Leimberg, Terrace Martin. Alas, their jazz chops were sometimes deemed surplus to requirements. At one point, while Bruner was playing an expansive bass solo on stage, Snoop sidled up to him and flatly announced: “Ain’t nobody told you to play all that.”

So perhaps it was in the spirit of horizon-broadening that Bruner took it upon himself to play Snoop the song St Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast, a knotty, marimba-heavy slice of jazz-rock from Zappa’s 1974 album Apostrophe, which switches time signatures three times in less than two minutes, and features lyrics about a man stealing margarine and urinating on a bingo card. “Yeah, I hit him with the rollercoaster,” Bruner chuckles. “He was smoking, and he almost ate his blunt, saying: ‘What the hell is going on?’ I said: ‘My sentiments exactly.’ I think I did a cartwheel after that and left the band: I played Snoop Dogg St Alfonzo’s Breakfast, my job is done here, I have no more work to do.” He thinks for a moment. “Or maybe I got fired: ‘Get out of here dude, you’re too weird.’ I forget. It was a great moment.”

A sign for the northern beaches Hop, Skip and Jump bus says ‘clothing must be worn over swimwear’

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Sydney’s Northern Beaches council has banned bikini-clad and shirtless passengers from riding its free community bus service after receiving feedback from passengers.

The Hop, Skip and Jump is a daily 30-seat shuttle bus that services the coastal suburbs of Manly, Fairlight and Balgowlah and is frequented by beachgoers.

Prime minister to meet mourners in mining town as families speak of their loss in one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney is to join mourners in Tumbler Ridge on Friday, as authorities and relatives released details of the six children and assistant teacher killed by a shooter in the remote mining town’s high school.

Carney will attend a vigil in Tumbler Ridge in memory of the victims, and he invited leaders from all political parties to join him in the town, the site of the country’s deadliest mass shooting in years.

Japan’s fisheries agency said the vessel failed to comply with an order to stop. The incident comes weeks after a row between China and Japan over Taiwan

Authorities in Japan have seized a Chinese fishing boat and arrested its captain in a move that is likely to inflame an ongoing diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing.

The seizure, which occurred on Thursday about 170km from the south-western port city of Nagasaki, came after the skipper refused an order to stop for an onboard inspection, according to media reports.

Donald Day discussed extreme conspiracies with Queensland family before they killed two police officers and a neighbour at rural property

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An American man who spent a year discussing extreme conspiracies with the Queensland family behind the Wieambilla shootings has been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.

Donald Day, 58, was arrested in the US after a year-long investigation into his contact with Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train before the trio killed two police officers and a neighbour at their rural Queensland property.