Tit-for-tat attacks have breached taboo of direct strikes on each otheras territory but Tehran has no aimmediatea plans to retaliate

• Middle East crisis a live updates

World leaders urged calm on Friday after Israel conducted a pre-dawn drone sortie over Iran following a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that crossed an important red line that has for decades held the Middle East back from a major regional conflict.

There were tentative hopes late on Friday that the apparent strike attempt against an airbase near the city of Isfahan was sufficiently limited to fend off the threat of a bigger Iranian response and an uncontrolled spiral of violence between a nuclear power and a state with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons quickly.

Israeli prime ministeras main concern is his political survival but a multi-front war is still a strong possibility

• Middle East crisis a live updates

In the aftermath of Iranas unprecedented salvo of missiles and drones fired directly at Israel at the weekend, Benny Gantz, a centrist member of the Israeli war cabinet, said the country would respond ain the place, time and manner it choosesa.

That turned out to be explosions in the central Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday morning. Although no Israeli official has claimed responsibility for what seem to have been drone strikes on a military installation, Tehran, which had launched its attack after an airstrike on its consulate in Damascus, has downplayed the incident.

Israel launched a limited attack on Iranian soil on Friday morning, in the latest tit-for-tat between the two countries

• All our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war

Israel launched an attack on Iranian soil on Friday, in a tit-for-tat battle between the two foes, days after Iran launched an unprecedented strike on Israel with a barrage of drones and missiles, most of which were shot down. The Iranian strike was a response to an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.

The strikes have brought a long shadow war between the two sides into the open and also come against the backdrop of Iranas support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose assault on Israel on 7 October triggered the invasion of Gaza.

Labour also turns down European Commissionas proposal, which would allow young Britons to live, study and work in EU

Rishi Sunak has rejected an EU offer to strike a post-Brexit deal to allow young Britons to live, study or work in the bloc for up to four years.

The prime minister declined the European Commissionas surprise proposal of a youth mobility scheme for people aged between 18 and 30 on Friday, after Labour knocked back the suggestion on Thursday night a while noting it would aseek to improve the UKas working relationship with the EU within our red linesa.

Labour leader told PMQs a abillionaire peera was asmearing a working-class womana after coverage of Rayneras tax affairs

The row between Keir Starmer and Michael Ashcroft deepened on Friday after the billionaire Conservative donor demanded an apology from the Labour leader for accusing him of asmearinga Angela Rayner over her tax affairs.

Lord Ashcroft hit back two days after Starmer said at prime ministeras questions on Wednesday: aWe have a billionaire prime minister and a billionaire peer, both of whose families have used schemes to avoid millions of pounds of tax, smearing a working-class woman.a

Department under fire for forcing people to repay huge sums as data shows widespread ill health among those caring for relatives

• aWeare already vulnerablea: the carers told to repay huge sums by the DWP

Carers have described suffering an aavalanche of utter stressa due to the governmentas aabhorrenta approach to clawing back benefits, as official figures revealed the widespread ill health of those caring for loved ones.

The Department for Work and Pensions has been under fire since the Guardian revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers are being forced to pay back huge sums a and in some cases prosecuted for fraud a over ahonest mistakesa that it could have spotted years earlier.

Images of person in flames shown on television and social media amid ex-presidentas hush-money trial

• Trump trial a live updates

A person has apparently set themselves on fire outside the lower Manhattan court house where Donald Trump is on trial in a hush money case.

Pictures of someone in flames were carried live on television and spread on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter.

Trade bodies say ongoing confusion about when checks will come in is aincredibly challenginga

• UK to delay start of health and safety checks on EU imports

Businesses have described Britainas Brexit border plans as being in acomplete disarraya after it emerged the introduction of some checks on EU imports will be delayed.

Post-Brexit border rules, due to come into force on 30 April, will require many meat, dairy and plant products from the EU to be physically checked at government border control posts (BCPs).

MP lost Conservative whip after claims he used political donations to pay off abad peoplea

Lancashire police have said they are areviewinga a letter in relation to allegations against the Fylde MP, Mark Menzies, who is accused of misusing campaign funds.

Menzies lost the Conservative whip and was suspended as one of Rishi Sunakas trade envoys this week after the Times published claims he had used political donations to cover medical expenses and pay off abad peoplea who had locked him in a flat and demanded thousands of pounds for his release.

Charities say high rates of people signed off work are caused by crumbling public services after years of underinvestment

Rishi Sunak has been accused of making mental ill health aanother front in the culture warsa, as critics warned his plan to curb benefits for some with anxiety and depression was an assault on disabled people.

In a speech on welfare, the prime minister said he wanted to explore withdrawing a major cash benefit claimed by people living with mental health problems and replacing it with treatment.

Shifting responsibility for issuing fit notes, formerly known as sicknotes, away from GPs to other awork and health professionalsa in order to encourage more people to return to work.

Confirming plans to legislate ain the next parliamenta to close benefit claims for anyone who has been claiming for 12 months but is not complying with conditions on accepting available work.

Asking more people on universal credit working part-time to look for more work by increasing the earnings threshold from APS743 a month to APS892 a month, so people paid below this amount have to seek extra hours.

Confirming plans to tighten the work capability assessment to require more people with aless severe conditionsa to seek some form of employment.

Idea Angela Rawlings had a decade ago for SnA|fellsjAPkull has snowballed into a full-blown campaign with a team of 50 people

Standing in the shadow of Icelandas SnA|fellsjAPkull, a a 700,000-year-old glacier perched on a volcano and visible to half the countryas population on any given day a in 2010, Angela Rawlings was struck by an unconventional thought.

aIt suddenly just came to me. What if the glacier was president?a said Rawlings. It was a seemingly unorthodox way to push forward a movement that was already swiftly advancing; Ecuador had enshrined legal rights for nature while MAori in New Zealand were working to secure legal personhood for the Whanganui River.

First minister of Scotland describes case as a avery serious and concerning mattera

Humza Yousaf has said he is shocked by the embezzlement charges levelled against Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the Scottish National party.

Police Scotland announced on Thursday evening that Murrell, who is married to Yousafas mentor and predecessor as first minister Nicola Sturgeon, had been rearrested and charged with embezzlement of SNP funds.

Gabriel Marinoaica, 20, dragged victim, who could not swim, out of her depth and attacked her

A man who raped a 15-year-old girl who could not swim after taking her out of her depth in the sea off Bournemouth beach has been sentenced to six and a half yearsa detention.

Gabriel Marinoaica, who was 18 at the time, grabbed the girl as she played a game of catch with her friends and dragged her off the crowded beach into a water.

Myra Carvalho sentenced to 14 weeksa imprisonment and banned from seeing singer perform

A woman who stalked Harry Styles has been jailed and banned from seeing him perform.

Myra Carvalho, who appeared at Harrow crown court sitting at Hendon magistrates court in London, was said to have stalked the singer by sending him 8,000 cards in less than a month.

Former Tory chair turned political biographer and publisher is behind books that have put former PM and Labouras deputy in the spotlights

If this weekas tetchy exchanges between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak at prime ministeras questions proved one thing, it was the ability of the veteran businessman, donor and publisher Michael Ashcroft to set the political agenda.

While Starmer revelled in the publication of 10 Years to Save the West, which was written by the former prime minister Liz Truss and published this week by Ashcroftas Biteback Publishing, Sunak wanted to focus on another Biteback book a Ashcroftas own Red Queen?, a biography of Labouras deputy leader, Angela Rayner.

While most who wrote in favoured some sort of action to reduce the damage caused by tobacco, some warned about the UK becoming a ananny statea

Dozens of people have shared with the Guardian how they feel about Rishi Sunakas tobacco and vapes bill, which aims to create the UKas first smoke-free generation. The proposed legislation would not ban smoking outright, but ensure that anyone born after 1 January 2009 would be banned from buying cigarettes.

About half of respondents said they were in favour of the proposed ban, at least in principle, primarily due to the strain that smoking puts on the NHS. Many of them, however, questioned its enforceability and whether there would be unwelcome consequences.

The prime ministeras speech on cracking down on asicknote culturea was heavy on rhetoric but light on evidence and detail

Rishi Sunakas big speech on reforming disability benefits was intended to show that the government had a grip on the economic and health challenges of the UKas rising levels of long-term sickness. Instead, it came over as an administration running out of ideas, high on strident rhetoric, and desperate to cut welfare bills at all costs.

It was a amoral missiona, Sunak declared, to overhaul the current welfare system, which was aunfit for purposea. Disability benefits were too easy to cheat, too cushy, too easily claimed. The speech was a clear appeal to the notion, in vogue on the right, that amental health culturea has agone too fara.

The Tortured Poets Department depicts a spell of post-breakup mania against the perfect backdrop of the Eras tour a a thrillingly immature reality undermined by safe music

As The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) finally sees its official release, the intention behind the title remains as enigmatic as it was when Taylor Swift announced it two months ago. The title track seems to mock one such tortured poet who carts a typewriter around and likens the budding couple to Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas. aWeare modern idiots,a Swift laughs. The albumas aesthetic wallows in anguish and Swiftas liner notes and social media captions are littered with self-consciously poetic proclamations. And the erratic period captured in the lyrics couldnat be further from a life of cloistered studiousness.

TTPD depicts a manic phase in Swiftas life last year, the reality behind the perfect stagecraft of the Eras tour. Wild-eyed from what sounds like the slow dissolution of a six-year relationship, she lunged at a once-forbidden paramour with a taste for dissolution, a foul mouth and a well-founded bad reputation. The latter, she makes clear as she sings repeatedly about flouting paternalistic and public censure, was a central part of the attraction: aHe was chaos, he was revelry,a Swift sings on But Daddy (evidently about the 1975as Matty Healy).

Sketchwriteras take on memoir of PM who screwed up catastrophically and quickly but thinks thereas still work to do

I was impatient to get going. Plans had been made. I picked up my phone. aChatGPT. Write me a memoir in the style of an excitable five-year-old on acid.a

aWeave only got 10 years to save the west,a I declared solemnly.

Tourists have been descending on Achill ever since Heinrich BAPll wrote effusively about its inhabitantsa customs and idiosyncrasies

In 1954, the German writer Heinrich BAPll landed in Ireland for the first time, headed west and kept going till he reached the Atlantic Ocean. He was seeking a refuge from the brash materialism of postwar Germany, and found it on Achill Island, where waves crashed against cliffs, sheep foraged in fields and villagers went about their business of fishing, farming and storytelling.

The following year he returned with his family and began to observe and chronicle the customs, idiosyncrasies, sorrows and joys of its inhabitants. So began a literary love affair between Germany and a windswept corner of County Mayo that endures 70 years after the Nobel laureateas first visit.

You need to consider why this bothers you so much and if you should bring it up. Without asking directly, itas hard to know his motivation
aC/ Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a family-related problem sent in by a reader

Over a few drinks, a good friend of mine recently let slip that he keeps a spreadsheet of his friends, which he uses to rank them in tiers. Initially I laughed it off as drunken ramblings, but he then proceeded to show me the actual document, saved on his phone with comments next to peopleas names.

I learned that he keeps a running score of his friends based on how often they WhatsApp him, take the time to call him or go to the pub or on a trip abroad together.

The comedian is desperate to make out his jokes about rape and domestic abuse will get him cancelled. In reality, this Netflix special is about as edgy as a Jim Davidson set

The darting eyes are new. As a young man, Jimmy Carr never had so much trouble keeping his eyeballs under control. In Natural Born Killer, the comedianas new Netflix show, his pupils bounce from one side to the other so frequently it is like watching a game of table tennis. Or, as Carr might say in his affected working-class voice: aWatchina a game of fuckina table tennis.a

Why does Carr think he needs to swaddle his punchlines in frantic eye movement? Well, the manas material is so edgy that he actually has to scan the room in case the woke police are in. aThis next joke might get me cancelled,a he says at one point, like a teenager smelling his farts and chuckling that he could get thrown out of a sleepover. If delivering material that might as well have been cribbed from a Jim Davidson set can get you acancelleda (aThereas a reason men propose on their knees a theyave fucking given upa), Carr might well be.

Jimmy Carr: Natural Born Killer is on Netflix now

Maker hopes solein, protein grown with CO2 and electricity, will cut environmental impact of farming

Nothing appears remarkable about a dish of fresh ravioli made with solein. It looks and tastes the same as normal pasta.

But the origins of the proteins which give it its full-bodied flavour are extraordinary: they come from Europeas first factory dedicated to making human food from electricity and air.

At the worldas biggest barrel of laughs, Hannah Gadsby, John Kearns and Rose Matafeo rub shoulders with homegrown stars-in-the-making. Our writer has the time of his life

Whatas the biggest comedy festival in the world? Parochial Britons would say Edinburgh. Internationalists may consider Montrealas Just for Laughs. They would all be wrong. Just for Laughs is out of the running: it filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, its future in doubt. And the Edinburgh fringe is a performing arts festival not just comedy. So for now, if only on that technicality, Melbourne has the biggest comedy festival in the world: a three-week carnival of standup, sketch and beyond, dedicated to nothing but the art of making people laugh.

In 20-plus years writing about comedy, I had never been a until now. But I have felt its influence. Twice recently, the winner of its most outstanding show award went on to win the Edinburgh equivalent. One was Hannah Gadsbyas Nanette, arguably the most significant standup set of the last decade, which launched in Melbourne before conquering the world. And as recently as 2022, a former Melbourne champ a recent Taskmaster star Sam Campbell a won Edinburghas top prize, of which Australia has now provided more winners than any other non-UK country. The festival also played a weathervane role in the atrans debatea, when its main award a for years known as the Barry, after Barry Humphries a was re-named after the Dame Edna staras divisive comments about transgender people.

Protests erupt outside Israel pavilion, official Israeli artist pulls out, and Ukraine team puts up posters showing maps of nearest bomb shelter

Billionairesa yachts and protests; cocktail parties and culture wars; bellinis and boycotts. The Venice Biennaleas opening preview days are always a place of odd clashes and juxtapositions, as artists, curators, critics and wealthy collectors descend on the city to take in often politically radical art.

But this yearas edition vibrates with particular uncertainty and tension a even, perhaps, an end-of-days atmosphere. The biennale, which this year stages exhibitions from 88 national pavilions, has been touched by political currents that originate far beyond the lapping waters of the Venetian lagoon.

Both seem keen to limit hostilities, and key Arab states are ready to resist Tehran. But real change will require new Israeli leadership

When it comes to the Middle East, itas the pessimists who look smartest. Predict the worst and youall rarely be proved wrong. If you are, itas usually because your forecast was insufficiently bleak.

So put on your gloom-tinted spectacles and assess the events of the last week. Youall see the dawn of a grim new era, in which the regionas two strongest powers, Israel and Iran, trade blows directly. Last weekend, Iran crossed what had previously been a red line, aiming a barrage of missiles and drones directly at Israeli territory for the first time. In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel responded with a series of drone strikes on targets inside Iran, including Isfahan, site of an airbase and the countryas burgeoning nuclear programme. You donat have to be Clausewitz to know that two regional powers, one an aspirant nuclear state, the other already there, engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire aimed at each otheras sovereign terrain spells danger.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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Compulsory maths and English retakes speak of a system that ignores pupilsa real talents. But hope is on the horizon

That time of year approaches when we ritually sacrifice 40% of our 16-year-olds to mark them down as failures. Exam season is coming up a that summer rite when we sit down all the young, hunched over cramped desks day after day for weeks, to sit far too many GCSE papers. The ceremony has one great national purpose: to elevate the 60% who pass their crucial 5 GCSEs including maths and English to a superior destiny on a level 3 course and up a and to stamp down on the rest. Over two thirds of those failing to get that vital maths and English grade 4 are from families in the bottom fifth of incomes.

Then we force them through it again and again in resits most will fail again and again. Dividing the sheep from the goats is harsher after this government ordered everyone failing maths and English to keep resitting between the ages of 16 and 18: colleges and sixth forms lose their funding for any pupil who doesnat keep resitting. Those hoping they were leaving behind schooling they failed (or that failed them), to escape into the green pastures of a further education college, perhaps for BTecs and City & Guilds qualifications, find they are forced to keep taking the English and maths GCSE medicine. Without grade 4, many courses are closed to them a whole vistas of new horizons, anything above level 2, however good they might be at, say, graphic design, cabinet making, gardening, art, caring, engineering or cooking. aNot everyone needs grade 4 English and maths,a says David Hughes, head of the Association of Colleges.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Her cookery and lifestyle show looks like a sensible retreat from the abuse sheas suffered simply for being a modern black woman

Meghan Markle has bottled it. Or more precisely, she has been making jam. Branded jars of her strawberry preserves, adorned with one of those frilly caps you see at village fete produce stalls, were distributed this week to assorted celebrity friends to post on social media (though possibly not for actually eating, given the restrictions of a Hollywood diet). This housewifely offering marks the debut of American Riviera Orchard, which sounds like one of Jamie Oliveras children but is in fact the name of the Duchess of Sussexas new commercial venture, under which she plans to flog everything from tableware to yoga kit to her reinvented self.

In a retro, sepia-tinted launch video, the woman we once hoped would put a rocket up the royal family is seen blissfully stirring a saucepan and arranging flowers. Itas only three years since she wrote an open letter to US congressional leaders lobbying for paid family leave for working parents, sparking wild speculation about a run for political office, but suddenly that feels like a very long time ago. For now at least, itas goodbye to the much-mocked empowering feminist podcasts and hello to the safety of her Californian kitchen. Meghan is, it seems, entering her tradwife era.

Tobacco is already on its way out. The state should not deny adults the right to make personal decisions for themselves

Just because Liz Truss and Boris Johnson a both opposed to the governmentas proposed new smoking ban a hold a belief does not make it wrong. Smoking is unpleasant, but in this weekas parliamentary debate, the word nicotine could have been replaced by cannabis, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, base jumping or mobile phones for children. All have their dangers. But in each case those in favour of restrictions rely on the same argument; if something produces a burden on the state it should be banned. Personal liberty can go hang.

Rishi Sunakas anti-smoking bill carried the same smudgy fingerprints as his bill on Rwanda. It suggested a late-night Downing Street cabal desperate for somethingeye-catching to inject into the election campaign. It does not ban anyone from smoking, despite appearances. It bans shops from selling cigarettes to an ever-expanding age cohort, currently anyone under 18, with the legal cutoff increasing by one year each year. People born in or after 2009, in other words, will never be able to legally buy a cigarette in Britain. The billas target is shopkeepers, charged with juggling the ID cards of hordes of adult purchasers and presumably proxy buyers. The smugglers must be cheering.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist