The star of the gay hockey superhit shows a penchant for physical comedy in an episode scrambling to cover the events in Iran

Saturday Night Live returns from a short hiatus to find the US newly at war with Iran. From behind the presidential podium, Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) wishes “happy world war three to all who celebrate.” After claiming that “Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon [for, like, the last 15 years]”, he weaves into the Temptations’ War: “What is it good for? Distracting from the Epstein files!”

As to why the US should attack now, Trump explains: “We had to strike in the early hours of Saturday, which has two advantages militarily. One, it’s after the stock market closes for the weekend. And two, it’s to cause immeasurable fear, rage and chaos in the SNL writers’ room.”

Isaiah Martin’s videos have gone viral – he thinks his party should follow his lead and stand up to Republican excess

Dynamism, courage, and wit are words that few are likely to associate with the mainstream Democratic party, particularly after its capitulation to Republicans’ budget demands last year.

Polls show that majorities of Democratic voters think their party is weak and ineffective. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, is even more unpopular than Donald Trump. People are crying out for a bold voice, someone to take the fight to an increasingly authoritarian Republican party.

The desire to see an increasingly ruthless Iranian regime collapse has intensified in Iranian expat communities

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

A decade ago, when Iran signed an agreement with the Obama administration and five other countries to give up its ambitions for a nuclear weapon, Alaleh Kamran was staunchly on the political left and welcomed the prospect of peace in the country of her birth.

Now, though, as Israel and the United States launched punishing airstrikes on Iran, she finds herself in a dramatically different headspace.

Trump calls Anthropic a ‘Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about’

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

The US military reportedly used Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, to inform its attack on Iran despite Donald Trump’s decision, announced hours earlier, to sever all ties with the company and its artificial intelligence tools.

The use of Claude during the massive joint US-Israel bombardment of Iran that began on Saturday was reported by the Wall Street Journal and Axios. It underlines the complexity of the US military withdrawing powerful AI tools from its missions when the technology is already intricately embedded in operations.

Singer and songwriter of such pop canon hits as Oh! Carol, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do and (Is This the Way to) Amarillo

“Prolific” hardly does justice to Neil Sedaka’s songwriting output, which ran to more than 1,000 compositions over seven decades.

If he had been willing to stay behind the scenes, turning out tunes for other singers, he would have still merited a place in pop history thanks to the number of those songs that became part of the pop canon, including Where the Boys Are, Love Will Keep Us Together and (Is This the Way to) Amarillo. However, Sedaka, who has died aged 86, had a constitutional need to see his own name in lights.

Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham defend attack, Democrats say administration must answer vital questions

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

Donald Trump administration allies reinforced on Sunday the administration’s messaging on the Israel-US strikes on Iran, while Democratsdecried it as a “war of choice” that required congressional approval.

On Sunday talk shows, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham defended the strikes, while Virginia senator Mark Warner, vice-chairman of the Committee on Intelligence, and other Democrats welcomed the elimination of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but said the administration must now answer vital questions.

As the second half began, a banner appeared in the Stretford End that read: “MUFC proudly colonised by immigrants.” If this was a riposte to Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s assertion that these shores have been overrun by those from overseas (for which the co-owner half-heartedly apologised), Manchester United needed their own reply to a listless opening period that left them trailing to Maxence Lacroix’s early header.

Eleven minutes after the restart, they did. First came Lacroix’s sending-off, issued by Chris Kavanagh after a pitchside monitor review for yanking over Matheus Cunha. The contact started before the 18-yard line but it continued into the penalty area, so the referee followed up awarding a spot-kick by showing his red card. Fernandes calmly beat Dean Henderson to the left of the Crystal Palace No 1, who guessed wrong.

As each passing week goes by, the threat of relegation becomes more real for Tottenham. This is no longer a quirk that it can be assumed will automatically be corrected. The monster not only exists but is getting closer, and fear is beginning to set in and make itself seen in their play. Defeat on Sunday was not only far more emphatic than the scoreline might suggest, but it was their fourth reverse in a row, extending their run without a win in the Premier League to nine. The only sliver of relief was that all their relegation rivals lost as well.

But this was grim stuff from Spurs. Igor Tudor had hoped the 4-1 defeat in the north London derby would be a wake-up call. But if anything, this was even worse. Arsenal won because they are better than Tottenham; Fulham won because Spurs were terrible. Tudor, the arch-firefighter, has a huge job on his hands.

These are concerning times for Vítor Pereira. Nottingham Forest’s fourth permanent manager of this crazy season may be only four matches into his spell in charge but – given the record of the owner, Evangelos Marinakis – his position is already looking most precarious.

A second Premier League defeat in succession since he was appointed to replace Sean Dyche a fortnight ago leaves Forest only two points clear of the drop zone and facing a daunting trip to Manchester City on Wednesday.

Late designer’s niece opts for natural womenswear look after Bottega Veneta features swishy yeti coats in faux fur

Does it matter who designs women’s clothes? Silvana Armani – niece of the late Giorgio, creative director of womenswear and one of the few women in charge of a fashion house – thinks so.

“The way women and men relate to their bodies is different, which affects the design process. Dressing a woman is more complex than dressing a man,” she said before her first solo show on the last day of Milan fashion week. “Yet, as a woman, you know your body. You try things on and notice if a jacket’s length is off, adjusting it as necessary.”

Belgian special forces boarded the Ethera, which was sailing under the flag of Guinea, on Saturday night

Belgium has seized an oil tanker believed to form part of the so-called “shadow fleet” used by Russia to circumvent western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Special forces assisted by French helicopters boarded the ship in a clandestine operation in the North Sea on Saturday night, Belgium’s defence minister, Theo Francken, said on Sunday.

President says in social media post that Iran tried to ‘stop Trump’ and now ‘faces renewed war with United States’

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

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Donald Trump on Saturday appeared to link the massive attack he ordered against Iran to his persistent claims about his 2020 election loss to former president Joe Biden, in a social media post about allegations that Tehran’s government interfered in the US president elections.

“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump,” his Truth Social post said, “and now faces renewed war with United States”.

Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demand

Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand.

Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a “serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid”.

After closing her scene-making record label and moving to the US, Barnett decamped to Joshua Tree – where she learned to slow down and make noise again

In the early months of 2024, Courtney Barnett was living in the kind of limbo that usually precedes a major psychic shift. The Grammy-nominated Australian musician was bouncing between sublets as a transplant to Los Angeles – a city she still navigates via a mental map of Melbourne, the place that made her: “Silver Lake is kind of like Collingwood,” she says, laughing. She was simultaneously winding down Milk! Records, the independent label she co-founded more than a decade earlier, and writing her fourth record. Her head was spinning.

“It felt like the end of a chapter, and then the next chapter kind of began without me totally realising.”

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4 min: A fairly shapeless start, actually. “The best pints are Thursday night.” Hello Ian McCourt, formerly of this parish. “Or about 1.30pm on a Friday.”

2 min: A mid-octane start to the game. No real shape yet, though it’s obvious that Palmer is prowling the left wing today, opposite to his usual beat.

MHRA says Prof Jacob George will no longer be involved after gender-critical social media posts from last year

A health official who reportedly intervened to pause a clinical trial on the use of puberty blockers has been removed from any further involvement due to accusations of bias.

Prof Jacob George, who was appointed chief medical and scientific officer at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January, raised concerns that led to the Pathways trial being put on hold by the government, according to the Sunday Times.

Their actions are no different from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo

We shouldn’t beat around the bush: Donald Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s military attack on Iran is an illegal act of aggression. There is no lawful justification for it. It is no different from Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The United Nations charter allows the use of military force in only two circumstances – with authorization of the UN security council, or as self-defense from an actual or imminent armed attack. Neither was present.

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

O2 Arena, London
Morrissey is in impressive voice and the old songs still retain their power, but the conspiracy theorising and nationalist rhetoric are miserable in all the worst ways

It could almost be the 90s: at a sold out O2 Arena, a pink-shirted Morrissey and his five-piece band rally the crowd with Suedehead, each oscillating “why” roared en masse. It is as if his past two decades of inflammatory political activism hasn’t hurt his reputation. What’s more, things will soon pick up, he assures us, because his morphine has just kicked in. A smatter of laughter. Probably joking?

Opiate allusions aside, the between-songs narrative is a classic tour-de-Moz. He stumbles from self-hype to castigating “jealous bitches” and his customary bete noire, the cancel culture that has so thoroughly deplatformed him that he has no choice but to stand on a big platform and tell 20,000 fans all about it. Though its insinuations appear lost on the crowd, his alignment with far-right talking points comes to the fore on recent single Notre-Dame, a repugnant synth-pop lament seemingly based on debunked (and broadly Islamophobic) conspiracies that arsonists started the 2019 fire at the Paris cathedral. “We know who tried to kill you,” he sings, addressing the cathedral itself. “Before investigations they said: there’s nothing to see here.”

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

A penny for the thoughts of the Hearts manager, Derek McInnes, as John Beaton was diverted by the video assistant referee towards the pitchside screen. Only seconds of regulation time remained. An afternoon that for so long looked to belong to Rangers was about to take a significant twist. As Beaton awarded Celtic a penalty, from which Reo Hatate eventually scored, idle Hearts emerged the real winners.

The Edinburgh club’s aspirations of winning the Scottish title for the first time since 1960 have been enhanced over back-to-back weekends. Hearts lead Rangers by six and Celtic, who play their game in hand at Aberdeen on Wednesday, by eight. McInnes has the making of history within his grasp. No wonder Sir Alex Ferguson, the last non‑Old Firm manager to win the top league, thought it appropriate to take in the weekend fixtures at Tynecastle and Ibrox.

There was no ATM at the airport and banks were closed. If I missed this flight, all my subsequent flights would have been cancelled

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I was 19 and travelling by myself for the first time. It was 1994 and departure tax wasn’t always part of a plane ticket, so it sometimes had to be paid before flying out of a country. And if you didn’t have it, you didn’t leave – something I was about to learn the hard way.

I was on a five-week trip around South America that I’d spent years saving for, visiting the pen pals I’d written to as a teenager. At the airport in San José, Costa Rica, I was waiting in line for customs when I realised the border guard was asking those ahead of me to pay US$5 in departure tax – money I didn’t have. It doesn’t seem like a lot now but it was back then. I’d flown in from New York’s JFK airport two days previously and the only ATM had been out of order, so I hadn’t been able to get cash out there, and I’d spent my remaining few dollars on an overnight stay in the city.

James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett adopt contrasting strategies as party hopes to tap into Trump backlash in reliably red state

At a packed town hall meeting last month in Laredo for James Talarico, the 36-year-old Democrat vying for a US Senate seat in Texas, Cristina Rodriguez took the microphone. Rodriguez, a 16-year Marine Corps veteran, said she had never cast a ballot. She didn’t identify as either a Democrat nor a Republican, and to her it didn’t matter. Regardless of what party the president belonged to, she had to obey orders.

Her attitude changed after the re-election of Donald Trump, whom she viewed as spiteful and divisive. In Talarico, a state representative from the Austin suburb of Round Rock, she found the exact opposite – a former middle school teacher and current seminary student who speaks in measured tones and preaches mutual respect.

The success of any relationship hinges on the same pillars of trust, respect, honesty and shared values. Polyamory simply tests their integrity daily

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

Emilio* and Jessica* sat in front of me, disconnected and barely looking at each other. They had been together for seven years and had recently opened up their relationship and tried polyamory, upon Emilio’s suggestion. Jessica agreed to this, but it was not her first choice for how she wanted the relationship to be. They were now in a crisis, as betrayals and secrets had occurred before and during the attempts at this new relationship configuration.

In my practice as a psychologist, a helpful question I often ask my clients is: “Is the configuration of this relationship working for you?”