Blasts have been heard in several cities, including the capital, Tehran, and Isfahan in central Iran.
Reuters reports there are long queues at petrol stations in the capital, as many people try to leave. An unnamed Iranian official who spoke to the news agency said several ministries in southern Tehran had been targeted.
And what about this chat with the Premier League’s all-time top appearance-maker, Mr James Milner?
It turns out to keep playing as long Milner has, it helps to do yoga, be teetotal and have a direct line to Gareth Barry.
When I was growing up my biggest idol was probably Neuer. I take pride in being an all-around goalkeeper and that’s why I was such a big fan because he didn’t really have a weak point. But I try to learn something from everyone because everyone has strong points.
Butter, her novel about a female serial killer, was a global hit. As Asako Yuzuki’s second book is published in English, she talksabout criticism at home – and why she’ll be writing darker stories in the future
The next time Japanese novelist Asako Yuzuki comes to the UK, she would like to bake some traditional Japanese muffins for Paul Hollywood on The Great British Bake Off, she says when we meet over video call. It is evening in Tokyo, where she lives with her partner and eight-year-old son. “I’ve had my bath and am ready for bed,” she explains, via translator Bethan Jones, apologising for being in her pyjamas. She thinks the Bake Off judge would be particularly impressed by “marubouro” muffins, from Nagasaki. “Kazuo Ishiguro also comes from Nagasaki and British people love Ishiguro, so they are bound to love these muffins,” she continues. “They go very well with tea.”
As anyone who has read Yuzuki’s international bestseller Butter will know, Yuzuki is all about food. Based on the 2009 real-life “Konkatsu Killer” case (konkatsu means marriage hunting), in which 35-year-old Kanae Kijima was convicted of poisoning three men, Butter follows the relationship between journalist Rika Machida and Manako Kajii, a serial killer and gourmet cook, through a succession of interviews in Tokyo Detention Centre. Yuzuki even signed up for the high-class cookery school in Tokyo that Kijima attended as research. The result is an irresistible mix of social satire and feminist thriller, dripping with descriptions of buttery rice and soy sauce.
Legendary nightclub Le Palace, where Serge Gainsbourg and Prince also performed, to rise again
In the late 1970s, Le Palace in Paris’s busy theatre district was one of continental Europe’s most famous nightclubs.
On the opening night on 1 March 1978, Grace Jones stunned VIP guests with her rendition of Edith Piaf’s classic La Vie en Rose. Later, Serge Gainsbourg and Prince came to perform, Bob Marley was photographed there and Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Karl Lagerfeld were part of a glittering cast of international celebrities, politicians, designers and models who came to drink and dance.
The US has launched “major combat operations” in Iran, designed to eliminate “imminent threats” from the country’s regime, Donald Trump announced on Saturday.
The operation is “massive and ongoing”, the US president said in a video on social media, pledging to use “overwhelming strength and devastating force” to destroy Iranian missiles and ensure it cannot develop a nuclear weapon.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the attacks aimed to “remove the existential threat” posed by the Iranian regime, as he urged the people of Iran to topple the government.
Shortly beforehand, Israel said it had launched “preventative” strikes on Iran.
The Israel Defense Forces said Iran had fired back a “barrage of missiles” and they were working to intercept them. Israel has closed its airspace.
Explosions were heard in Tehran, the Iranian capital, where smoke could be seen rising on the skyline, and several other cities. Iran has closed its airspace.
“The hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump told Iranian citizens, urging them to “take over your government” once the operation was over.
Talks between the US and Iran on Tehran’s nuclear programme ended inconclusively on Friday, with a suggestion that further discussions would be held next week. Trump had said he was “not happy” with the progress of the discussions.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not in Tehran, and has been transferred to a secure location, an official told Reuters on Saturday.
In the past he has been urged to follow strategies that don’t really match his core beliefs. That’s changing, as it must, because he knows the clock is ticking
Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography
In a crowded and overheated bar towards the end of the evening a few months ago, I received some strange parenting advice from one of those “Labour strategist” types.
We were discussing – maybe arguing – over the government’s position on Gaza. Eventually I asked if he could provide me with a decent explanation to give my son who had shown me stuff on his phone a couple of days earlier about how Israeli army officers were still being trained by Britain’s military. “Here’s what you say to your son,” began his reply, followed by a portentous pause that made me lean in closer. “You should tell him to fuck off.”
As the director general prepares to stand down, potential candidates have fallen away amid a series of crises
There is an impressive shortlist circulating in Britain’s media circles, comprising some of the most talented executives in the business. Unfortunately for the BBC, it contains the names of figures no longer in the running to become its next director general.
Those closely observing the corporation’s search for a successor to Tim Davie have been quick to note how the events of the past week help explain the alarming attrition rate.
A “Pastafarian” in rural Queensland has vowed to fight to keep his driver’s licence featuring a photo of him wearing a colander on his head, arguing it’s a matter of freedom of religion.
But the state government has told him he must hand it in and get a new one, as it was issued “in error”.
‘The professional game must evolve if it is to thrive’
English rugby has adopted a franchise system for the first time with promotion and relegation from the Prem scrapped from the end of this season.
In the biggest change to the club game since the introduction of a formal league in 1987, the Rugby Football Union’s council voted overwhelmingly in favour of proposals to ringfence the existing 10-team Prem on Friday, with a view to expanding to 12 clubs in 2029-30.
For one heart surgeon, seeing the Renaissance artist’s anatomical drawings gave him a natural understanding of the body that was often overlooked in modern medical science
If you’d asked my teenage self, growing up in a small village in Shropshire, what I wanted to do with my life, I would have talked about art and music long before I spoke of scalpel blades and operating theatres. As an 18-year-old, I intended to go to art school, until my mother sat me down and told me rather bluntly that being an artist wouldn’t earn me much money. As she spoke, a surgical documentary flickered across the screen of the black-and-white television in our living room. I told her, half joking, that that was what I’d do instead. Which is how I ended up repeating my A-levels and fighting my way into medical school, where I qualified in 1975.
By 1986, I was a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Papworth hospital in Cambridge, repairing failing hearts in a nascent field of medicine. Since then I’ve repaired more than 3,000 mitral valves – more than any surgeon in the UK – but the work that truly reshaped me came not from a textbook but from an encounter with centuries-old drawings.
From Curthose, Rufus and Beauclerc to ‘the Somme with Santana’, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Which country is named after the creator god Ptah? 2 What did music writer David Hepworth call “the Somme with Santana”? 3 Which wildlife census attracts more than half a million participants each January? 4 What is the largest blood vessel in the body? 5 China’s Hou Yifan is the women’s world no 1 in what game? 6 Which fabric’s name comes from the Persian for “milk and sugar”? 7 Which philosopher designed the Panopticon prison? 8 Who was infamously acquitted of an 1892 axe murder in Massachusetts? What links:
9 Yates, white; Cavendish, green; Millar (now York), polka dot; Wiggins, yellow? 10 Curthose; Rufus; Beauclerc? 11 Gentlemen only, ladies forbidden; New York, London; port out, starboard home? 12 Taurus-Littrow (17); Descartes Highlands (16); Hadley-Apennine (15); Fra Mauro (14)? 13 Jonathan Anderson; Matthieu Blazy; Sarah Burton; Demna; Alessandro Michele? 14 Georgie Fame; Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot; Beyoncé and Jay-Z? 15 Mississippi v Loire; East, Harlem and Hudson v Foss and Ouse?
Steve Conrad’s dark comedy is full of twists and sad laughs. As for the fate of Harbour’s character, does Lily Allen have an alibi?
Last October, Lily Allen released a jaw-dropping album about the sexual politics of her marriage to actor David Harbour. It was a musical assassination – reportedly written in the wake of her personal sleuthing into his long-term infidelities via the dating app Raya. Therefore the timing of DTF St Louis (Monday 2 March, 9pm, Sky Atlantic), in which Harbour plays a man in a stagnant marriage who downloads a hook-up app to enjoy some extramarital boom boom, is juicy. For everyone except his publicist.
From the trailer, this was a hard-to-read show. Was it a dark comedy, a bedroom farce, a police procedural? The answer turns out to be yes, to all of those things. I also wondered whether it might be a televisual return to the erotic thrillers of the 90s. The answer to that one is no, although it’s a show with sex on the brain.
Briton overcame crippling self-doubt to become F1 world champion and is determined not to relinquish his crown
Lando Norris recalls being rendered speechless with joy when he was given his first contract with McLaren. Sitting in the cramped office of a paddock truck, the confirmation that he had made it to Formula One left him “very smiley for a long time”. Seven years on, he enters the new season having achieved his lifelong ambition of becoming world champion and is wearing an equally irrepressible grin as he sets about defending his title.
Claiming the championship after a monumental season-long tussle that went to a thrilling three-way fight at the finale in Abu Dhabi was the defining moment of the 26-year-old’s career and perhaps something of a turning point.
The IPC’s Andrew Parsons tries to ease growing tension as Ukrainian president calls the decision ‘dirty’
The Paralympic torch left its home in Stoke Mandeville this week and has arrived at the gateway of the Dolomites. The towns of Bolzano and Trento will host “flame festivals” over the weekend to welcome the Paralympic movement and commemorate its progress on the 50th anniversary of the first Winter Games. It will be a joyous, poignant start to what could be a fractious fortnight.
While the flame is being passed between torch bearers, the leaders of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) will be scrambling to contain what increasingly resembles a diplomatic incident. A decision last week to invite 10 Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the Winter Paralympics at Milano Cortina has been met with full-throated criticism from across Europe and beyond.
In this week’s newsletter: After a controversial awards moment thrust the condition into the spotlight, we look at the new biopic of John Davidson and the decades of portrayals that led to it
The wildfire surrounding last week’s Bafta ceremony – where Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson involuntarily shouted a racial slur at actors Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo, and the BBC aired the moment – continues to rage. Criticisms have been levelled at, and investigations opened by, the Beeb and Bafta; hundreds of news stories and comment pieces have been devoted to the incident (if you read anything, make sure it’s this clear-eyed piece from Jason Okundaye, who was at the ceremony); and the climate on social media has been toxic, with much of the ire directed at Davidson himself. It’s an ire that is based on a complete misunderstanding of coprolalia, the form of Tourette syndrome (TS) that Davidson has, which results in the unintended and completely involuntary utterance of offensive or inappropriate remarks.
There’s an unhappy irony at play here because Davidson, arguably more than any other person in Britain, has been responsible for raising awareness of TS. There’s an unfortunate symmetry, too, to the fact that the incident was shown on primetime BBC, because that was where Davidson was first brought to national attention as the subject of the landmark 1989 documentary John’s Not Mad. Directed by film-maker Valerie Kaye, and aired as part of the popular science series QED, the half-hour film – available on DVD or to rent or stream on Prime Video – shadows a 15-year-old Davidson around his home town of Galashiels, in the Scottish Borders, as he struggles both with his condition and the intolerance of those around him (his own grandmother claimed that he was possessed by the devil).
You don’t have to travel to Japan to see a stunning floral display. Every spring, this corner of Extremadura is transformed as two million trees come into bloom
It’s late March and the villagers of the Jerte valley in Extremadura, Spain’s wild west, are twitchy – as if they’re hosting a party and wondering if all the guests will show up. The event they’re waiting for is the flowering of the valley’s cherry trees, which number about two million. So far, only a handful – a variety called Royal Tioga – have dared to don their frilly spring frocks. The rest are still clutching their drab grey winter garb.
Predicting the arrival of blossom is always tricky, but thanks to an unseasonably wet March the trees are three weeks late when I visit. With snow still cloaking the surrounding sierras, the tourist office in Cabezuela del Valle, halfway up the valley, is hastily finding alternative activities for the coachloads of blossom-seekers from Madrid. As with any nature-reliant activity, such as whale watching or aurora hunting, timing is challenging. But unlike hit-and-miss spectacles involving wild animals, at least I know the blossoming will happen eventually. (Sadly wildfires later affected parts of the Jerte valley last summer, but thankfully few cherry trees were affected.)
Goaded by Tottenham and lampooned by Wolves, Mikel Arteta’s side face Chelsea this weekend with rivals hoping to prey on their sensitivities
Arsenal had to expect the jibes from Tottenham and they were not disappointed. Just before kick-off in last Sunday’s north London derby, the Spurs support in the South Stand of their stadium spelled out a giant message in mosaic form. “North Ldn since 1882,” it read.
A clear dig, then, at Arsenal’s south of the river history from the Woolwich days and, as mentioned, very much a part of a rivalry where goading and baiting go hand in hand with the loathing. Arsenal had been similarly provocative before the derby against Spurs at the Emirates Stadium last November, lighting the pre-match scene with a tifo featuring images of various club greats. The most prominent at the top of it? Sol Campbell, of course.
Hearts are threatening to upset the dominance of Celtic and Rangers in a break from the deadening European trend, which could be just what audiences need
There’s a good advert right now on the rolling TV sports news channels. It starts with a rush of beeps and plinks and flashing symbols, generating instantly the flat, glazed, hungry quality of the online casino. A well-groomed middle-aged woman is shown sitting in an armchair in a suburban living room. It’s a jarring tonal shift, but we’re still in that same space, betting graphics dancing around her head.
The middle-aged woman turns to the camera and says: “The games are all different … It never gets boring,” eyes gleaming strangely, hands gripping the struts of her chair. Here is a person who is not just pleased, but uncontrollably energised by the prospect of WowBet.com’s 10bn mildly divergent AI-generated gambling patterns. At this point the words “Sandra Frottwangle, funeral director” appear on the screen.
Falling groundwater, extreme heat and water-intensive farming are accelerating land collapse, forcing a rethink in agricultural practices
Fatih Sik was drinking tea with friends at home when he heard a rumbling sound outside that grew to a loud boom, like a volcano had erupted nearby. From the window, he saw water and mud shoot into the sky, as high as the tallest trees, less than 100 metres away.
The 47-year-old knew what it was, because it is common in Karapınar, Konya, a vast agricultural province known as Turkey’s breadbasket. A giant sinkhole had opened up on his land. Fifty metres wide and 40 metres deep, it had appeared almost a year to the day after a previous one had formed. It was August – the hottest month of the year.
Understanding biodiversity within species is key to our understanding of why nature works the way it does, say researchers
Words and photographs by Roberto García-Roa
Twelve miles from the heart of Rome, Dr Javier Ábalos pauses his walk, lifts his sunglasses and points. To his right, perched on a rocky wall, sits a beautiful lizard. Its body is coated in charcoal-black tones speckled with striking yellow across a green dorsum, and its head, with a prominent jaw, is splashed with fluorescent blue spots. The reptile basks in the sun, unconcerned by our presence.
About 80 miles (130km) drive farther along the road that connects the capital with the small village of Poggio di Roio, the researcher from the University of Valencia has barely stepped out of the car when he spots another lizard. This one is smaller, with a brownish body and a narrower head crisscrossed by a network of dark stripes.
Researchers fear the common wall lizard of the white morph could be driven to extinction by the arrival of a new variation
The fallout from the violent death of Quentin Deranque exposes Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s flaws – and leaves the wider left facing an impossible dilemma
In 2023 Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand leader of the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI), made a fundamental miscalculation. He publicly promoted a small group of young antifascist activists. La Jeune Garde, founded in Lyon in 2018, were politically inexperienced and had organised a series of sometimes violent confrontations with far-right groups.
At 17, the England Under-23s defender is juggling the demands of first-team football with her engineering studies, with a little help from ballet
“I just want to have my name out there to the point where when someone hears it they know instantly who is being talked about,” says the Chelsea full-back Chloe Sarwie. “I want to be that player who can amaze people constantly and that is up there as one of the best.”
You could be forgiven for viewing this level of confidence as arrogant, but you would be wrong. The talented 17-year-old defender comes across as grounded, intelligent, hard-working and humble, but her edge is a steely belief in her football.
Israel and the US have launched a war on Iran, with Donald Trump declaring the start of “major combat operations” and calling on Iranians to rise up against their government.
The US president’s comments came soon after explosions were heard across central Tehran. One apparent strike hit near the offices of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran is preparing a “crushing retaliation”, an Iranian official told Reuters.
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