Is it to be a degree and heavy debt when graduate jobs are shrinking? Or foregoing a degree, knowing society still worships them? Confused, angry: who wouldn’t be

Some months ago, I was at my old university, speaking to prospective sixth-form and college students about taking a degree in the arts and what future careers they could expect. It was a cohort of teenagers from underrepresented backgrounds: all of them had that glint of ambition in their eyes, a desire to better their circumstances. After the talk, they showed me their precocious LinkedIn profiles already advertising their talents to future employers. I expected them to ask what would be of more value out of a degree in the arts or Stem, but I was unprepared for something more bracing: whether it was worth them going to university at all.

It is a question that keeps on rearing its head, as the graduate recruitment crisis and crippling student debts paint a picture of a pursuit with diminished returns. Those of us in the orbit of young people increasingly wonder whether we can, in good conscience, encourage them to go and get a degree. The options being presented increasingly look like snake oil, so is it any wonder that young people feel disillusioned and deceived?

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

Aromatic snacks stuffed full of flavourful chicken mince, and a comforting Korean stew

I use a lot of rice paper and always have plenty at home, because it can be used in a wide variety of ways. It’s delicious fried, as are most things! These half-moons are filled with an aromatic chicken mince, while tteokbokki is a Korean dish of chewy rice tubes that are often cooked in a stew. They are not always easy to find, but I love them, so I make my own.

This year’s Baftas were a chaotic mix of wild praise and inadvertent insults as the best actor prize was won by an unknown – and one of the nominees seemingly slurred from a man in the stalls

• How the night went down

• Peter Bradshaw’s verdict on the Baftas’ winners and losers

• News: One Battle After Another defeats Hamnet and Sinners as Robert Aramayo takes best actor

Going into Bafta night, everybody’s secret hopes for a little British movies that could were centred on folkie comedy The Ballad of Wallis Island. In the event though, Ballad wound up with nothing and I Swear, about Tourettes activist John Davidson stormed the show, capped by a jawdropping win for Robert Aramayo in the best actor category. As the man himself said, it was not to be believed that he’d be heading to the podium ahead of the likes of DiCaprio, Chalamet and Ethan Hawke. You probably have to go back to the mid-1980s and Haing S Ngor’s win for The Killing Fields for someone so unheralded to take the prize.

Coincidence or not, the party has timed its congress for the centenary of an infamous Nazi rally. But condemnation didn’t stop Hitler, and it’s not enough now

Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is different from its sister movements across the west.

In a country deeply conscious of its own history, the party, now riding high in the polls, has to decide whether it rejects or embraces Hitler as an ideological antecedent. Rather than answering definitively, the party is deliberately opaque. It flirts with the Nazi legacy without explicitly committing to it. Far from putting voters off, this strategic ambiguity cultivates a surprisingly powerful mix of outrage and plausible deniability.

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. She is the author of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990. Her latest book Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe comes out in May.

From flooding in Peru to the fight for fair wages, a lot more goes into the price of fruit than what supermarkets charge consumers for

Why have apples increased so much in price in the UK? They seem much more expensive than bananas, even though many are homegrown, and so don’t have to travel halfway around the world.

It seems bananas (sorry) that fruit grown in the country where it is being sold costs more than produce which has been shipped thousands of miles. But, unlike other goods, such as petrol, the price we pay at the supermarket for fresh food has become detached from the cost of getting it there.

It is an epic piece of music that literally falls apart – and it perfectly captured the end-of-days chaos after the tragedy. Composer William Basinski and musician Anohni recall its febrile birth in New York’s avant-garde scene

‘Do you remember me phoning and saying, ‘Get over here! You won’t believe what’s happened!’” William Basinski is reminiscing with his old friend Anohni about the summer of 2001, when he made a startling discovery. Out of work and at a loose end, the experimental composer had decided to digitise some recordings he’d made in the early 1980s – snippets of orchestral music and muzak he found on shortwave radio stations. He was planning to add his own instrumentation, but as the tapes started playing on a loop he noticed something else was happening: the music was gradually degrading. The recordings were so old that the iron oxide particles were falling off the tape as they played. Soon, there would be nothing left but crackles and then silence.

It was every musician’s worst nightmare. But for Basinski it was like striking gold.

The Belgian ceremony attracts beekeepers from the Netherlands, France and Germany keen to boost dark bee numbers and stop the spread of the hybrid honeybee

Every summer, 1,000 virgin queens descend on the Belgian town of Chimay. During the “wedding flight”, a male attaches to the female. His endophallus (penis equivalent) is torn off and he falls to the ground and dies. Mission accomplished.

Beekeepers come and pick up their fertilised queens in small colourful hives, driving them back home, sometimes more than 300km away. They will use the genetic material gathered in south Belgium to build new colonies in the Netherlands, France and Germany.

The world’s No 9-ranked team, who have been largely absent from international competitions for over a decade, is reaping the benefits of state-sponsored investment

In 1986, when Norwegian delegate Ellen Wille stood on stage at Fifa’s annual congress in Mexico and demanded the creation of a World Cup for women, it sparked support from one of the room’s unlikeliest allies. Delegates from North Korea, so the story goes, were inspired by Wille’s speech and returned to Pyongyang with a plan: to use women’s football as a tool to reassert their collapsing power on the world stage.

The plan was simple: starting in the late 1980s, the government would invest heavily in the women’s game, inserting football programs into school curriculums, establishing women’s teams in the military where players trained full-time, creating youth talent identification pathways, and constructing brand-new facilities across the country.

NSW police say they found links between the car and abandoned Dural property 11 days after man abducted in case of mistaken identity

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Forensic evidence linked to Sydney grandfather Chris Baghsarian has been found in a burnt-out car, with police searching bushland for any further clues 11 days after he was kidnapped in a suspected case of mistaken identity.

Acting Det Supt Andrew Marks on Monday urged the public to share any footage they may have of the grey Toyota Corolla, which was found burnt out in Westmead last Tuesday.

Warwick Davis takes a swipe at Tom Cruise’s height, best actor Robert Aramayo namechecks Ethan Hawke, and Prince William calls the night’s biggest winning film ‘weird’

• How the night went down
• Peter Bradshaw’s verdict on the Baftas’ winners and losers
• News: One Battle After Another defeats Hamnet and Sinners as Robert Aramayo takes best actor
• Find the full list of the night’s winners here
• The best looks from the red carpet

“I absolutely can’t believe it, I can’t believe that I’m looking at people like you, in the same category as you, never mind that I’m stood here. I honestly cannot believe that I have won this award. I really, really cannot. Everyone in this category blows me away.”
Robert Aramayo accepting the leading actor award

“Kylie, have you ever had your gums around a giant Jammie Dodger?”
Host Alan Cumming distributes snacks to Kylie Jenner

Drug lord who was killed by Mexican special forces on Sunday led a cartel known for aggression and military-style arsenal

• Violence erupts after Mexican security forces kill drug cartel boss ‘El Mencho’

The drug lord “El Mencho”, who was killed on Sunday by Mexican special forces, was the co-founder and leader of a gang that in recent years had become the country’s most powerful criminal organisation: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

While less internationally famous than the Sinaloa cartel of the now imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the CJNG is a household name in Mexico, where it is known for its displays of ultraviolence and its big, military-style arsenal.

Message seen as reference to Ukraine war could create unnecessary tensions, says Seoul; Hungary to block new EU sanctions against Russia amid oil feud. What we know on day 1,461

Duterte, 80, is accused of crimes against humanity over an anti-drugs crackdown in which thousands of people were killed in south-east Asian country

The pre-trial hearing for former Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte for his alleged role in a deadly “drug war” is set to begin at the international criminal court on Monday, despite his refusal to attend the proceedings.

Duterte, 80, who was arrested in Manila and flown to The Hague last year, is accused of crimes against humanity over an anti-drugs crackdown in which thousands of people were killed.

Two Olympic finals between Canada and the US were settled by sudden death. The format made the showpieces feel more like a coin toss than a climax

Two Olympic finals against the US, two strong performances, two sudden-death losses. Canada is so over overtime.

While all good things must come to an end, it’s hard to fathom why hockey’s international rule-makers think that the very best things – huge clashes that were some of the hottest tickets of the entire Olympics – should be ended using three-on-three golden-goal overtime, a concept beloved only by people with a train to catch or firm dinner reservations.

• ‘Historic’ Games leaves Britain 15th in medal table

• ‘We can all get excited for 2030 and for Los Angeles’

Team GB have hailed a “historic” Winter Olympics after Britain’s greatest performance in the 102 years of the Games left them 15th in the medal table – and warned their rivals the “Brits are coming again”.

Zoe Atkin’s women’s halfpipe bronze medal on Sunday ensured that Britain left Milano Cortina with five medals – equalling the tally from Sochi in 2014 and Pyeongchang in 2018. However, Team GB also won a record three gold medals with Matt Weston winning two of them in the individual skeleton and the mixed event with Tabitha Stoecker. Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale also took gold in the mixed snowboard cross, while the men’s curling team won silver.

Emboldened by recent wins, elected officials gathered in San Francisco to share strategy for a midterm ‘reckoning’

Fury at Donald Trump was the coin of the realm, as thousands of California delegates, activists and elected officials gathered in San Francisco this weekend, emboldened by a string of victories and confident the Golden State would help deliver a power check on the president in the upcoming midterm elections.

On Saturday, Democrats streamed through the Moscone Center convention complex, sporting lanyards emblazoned with Gavin Newsom’s name and tote bags adorned with one of Nancy Pelosi’s favorite aphorisms: “We don’t Agonize, we organize” – symbols of a party in transition as the former speaker approaches retirement and the term-limited governor eyes a presidential campaign.

‘Generational’ reforms are a key moment for Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, and for Keir Starmer

Ministers will unveil a “generational” overhaul of special educational needs and disabilities (Send) support, pledging £4bn to transform provision in schools in England and warning councils they could lose control of Send services if they fail to meet their legal duties.

The reforms are expected to be a key policy moment for Keir Starmer and for the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson – who delayed the changes last autumn after a ferocious backlash from MPs and parents.

Nigel Farage’s party plans to deport up to 288,000 people a year on five flights a day and expand stop and search

Reform UK would create an ICE-style agency dedicated to deporting hundreds of thousands of people, as well as terminating the status of those with indefinite leave to remain (ILR), the party will say.

It would also ban the conversion of churches into mosques and fund a radical expansion of stop and search, the party’s new home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, will also say in a speech on Monday. The deradicalisation programme Prevent would also have its mandate redrawn to focus on Islamist extremism.

Six wins for US director’s ICE-baiting film of American resistance recognised Anderson’s commitment to complex drama, while best actor win for rising British star was thoroughly deserved

• News: One Battle wins six Baftas

• Full list of winners

• The night as it happened

• Best quotes from the 2026 Baftas

• The best looks from the red carpet

This turned out to be a very British night for the Baftas, a smidgen more British than usual in fact. It started out with the Hollywood A-listers in the audience being presented with hilarious British snacks, of whose existence they had no more idea than they had of life forms on the moons of Saturn. Emma Stone got some Hula Hoops, Timothée Chalamet had a bag of Scampi Fries and Leonardo DiCaprio got his laughing gear around a Hobnob flapjack.

The other intensely British thing was the red-carpet appearance of the Prince and Princess of Wales (the former being Bafta’s president); their presence enforced that other terribly British tradition of everyone, as if in a Mike Leigh film, avoiding the subject. Everyone trying not to talk or think about the elephant in the room or the elephant slumped and stricken in the speeding car on the way home from the police station. Well, at least William never liked him.

• Manager delighted with reaction to midweek draw

• Arsenal go five points clear of Manchester City at top

Mikel Arteta said that he could not be “prouder or happier” after his Arsenal side restored their five-point lead at the top of the Premier League table with a 4-1 win against Tottenham on Sunday that he suggested could be a “turning point” in their season.

This was an emphatic response after squandering a 2-0 lead at Wolves on Wednesday, a result that means City will win the league if they win all their remaining 11 games this season.

• Country wins most golds (18) in Winter Games history

• USA, GB and Australia also set team records

• Norwegians put emphasis on participation

Norway has once again topped the Winter Olympics medal table, surpassing countries with far larger populations.

The Scandinavian country won more gold medals (18) and more total medals (41) than the US, who came second in both categories (12 golds and 33 total medals). Norway’s 18 golds were the most by a country in Winter Olympics history, while their cross-country skiing hero Johannes Høsflot Klæbo accounted for six golds on his own, more than the all but seven other countries at this year’s Games.

• Center secures first men’s title for US since 1980

• Americans break Canadian hearts in overtime

It might not have been a shocker on the order of a bunch of scrappy college kids toppling the polished Soviet juggernaut at Lake Placid. But 46 years to the day of the Miracle on Ice, it often felt that way as another underdog United States men’s hockey team ended their Olympic gold drought in a white-knuckle contest dominated by Canada until Jack Hughes’ seismic overtime winner.

Call it the Marvel in Milan.

Paul Thomas Anderson drama scores six awards, as Jessie Buckley becomes first Irish woman to win leading actress prize

• Full list of winners

• Peter Bradshaw’s verdict

• How the ceremony unfolded – the action as it happened

One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy about a washed-up revolutionary trying to protect his daughter from a ruthless military officer, has dominated the Baftas, taking home six awards including best film, best director, best cinematography, best editing, best supporting actor and best adapted screenplay.

The film, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, was nominated for 14 awards going into Sunday’s ceremony, the most of any contender – including nods for stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti and Teyana Taylor.

• Miami star confronted officials in a doorway after 3-0 loss

• League determined area was not off-limits to players

• MLS has suspended players for entering officials’ room

Major League Soccer has cleared Lionel Messi of wrongdoing after the Argentinian appeared to pursue match officials after Inter Miami’s season-opening loss to LAFC on Saturday evening.

In a video posted to X by Síntesis Deportes reporter Giovanni Guerrero, Messi appears to confront match officials as they entered a doorway within the LA Coliseum after the match, a 3-0 win for LAFC. Miami forward Luis Suárez is seen restraining Messi, who slips out of his teammate’s grip and disappears behind a door. He emerged seconds later and retreated with Suárez to Miami’s locker room.