As for Keir Starmer, even when he tries to make a reasonably sound judgment he somehow ends up losing both sides of the argument

Maybe we should have just had done with it back in December. Instead of offering a polite reservation, every western country should have sent a full, state delegation to Norway. Begging, imploring the Nobel Committee to award Donald Trump the peace prize. We could all have chipped in a couple of billion just to make it even more worth winning.

And if that wasn’t enough, we could have twisted the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, to upgrade his “Peaceiest Ever President” award to the “Makes Jesus Look Second Rate” prize. A large solid gold statue of The Donald would have done the trick. There’s more than enough in the Fifa slush funds.

A collection of 3,000-year-old artefacts at Battersea power station gives Egypt’s most ambitious, self-aggrandising pharaoh a chance to emerge from Tutankhamun’s shadow

The mummy of Egypt’s most ambitious pharaoh, Ramses II (often spelt Ramesses), is a masterpiece of the embalmer’s art. The amazingly preserved 3,000-year-old face with its proud, beaky nose looks much as it must have when he died at the age of 90 or 91, after ruling for 66 years, fathering more than 100 children, smiting his enemies and making ancient Egypt great again. And that’s even before you notice how his hand seems to reach forward to grasp spookily at power from beyond the grave.

I’ve never forgotten Ramses since looking on his face, and that hand, in Cairo. But the world at large seems more interested in Tutankhamun, whose unspoiled tomb was found by Howard Carter in 1922.

The home secretary is seeking to make refugee status temporary. Let’s go in the opposite direction and fight for an essential right

Nigel Farage is worried about democracy. Specifically, he’s worried about his Reform party losing the Gorton and Denton byelection, feeling that they are the victim of “sectarian voting and cheating”. Sectarian voting is a peculiar little concept: if it means “everyone sharing the same belief system has voted the same way”, isn’t that all voting? Is it a problem if everyone in the same NCT group also voted the same way? Surely there’s more to it.

Drill down a little further, and the problem is “family voting”, wherein one family member dictates the votes of all the others. One volunteer polling observers group says it witnessed this in 12% of cases, but it hasn’t been clear on what it means or looks like. Does the head of the family stand at the door saying, “You know what to do” to a crocodile formation of cousins? Would they not have been more likely to do that by WhatsApp? I have personally been the victim of family voting, when in 1997 I wanted to spoil my ballot and my mum told me to vote Labour and stop being stupid. Taking the incredibly long view, it’s possible that I was not stupid, but too late now, I’ve already been party to election rigging.

I disliked my first encounter with pole, but two years later my experience with the sport has made me appreciate my body and my self-determination

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When my friend Bea took up pole dancing, she enthusiastically tried to convert everyone she knew to it – a common trope, I’d later find out. As a childhood gymnast and dancefloor enthusiast, I was scouted as a potential recruit, so along with my sister in 2023 we joined her for a class.

The class was packed and the studio felt overly commercialised. The friction of the metal pole against my skin was straight-up painful and spinning around made me so dizzy I had to sit down to reorientate myself several times.

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The queen of children’s edutainment is back after four very long months, with her most extraordinary, envelope-pushing and moving special yet. Cue absolute relief for parents the world over

For those whose cultural experiences are largely absorbed through the prism of their mewling infants’ demands for the same thing 437 times in a row, it’s been a long four months. In late October last year, Rachel Accurso released Brush Your Teeth Song with Ms Rachel and Elmo. The 48m views it has since racked up reflect its status as a solid addition to the Ms Rachel canon, and the whole thing is obviously enhanced by Elmo’s guest spot. But it was studded with reheated clips from previous compilations, such as The Wheels on the Bus from Blippi & Ms Rachel Learn Vehicles, and It’s Potty Time from Potty Training With Ms Rachel. There is a limit to the number of plays an adult can reasonably be expected to endure of a bear puppet in a nappy hymning his ability to relieve himself, and the Ms Rachel hive is thirsting for something new.

Enter, on Friday, Learn With Ms Rachel – Friendship & Social Skills, an hour-long compendium, in which the leviathan of contemporary children’s edutainment helps her guests “model important social skills such as kindness, taking turns, sharing, asking a friend to play and helping others”. A few minutes on any of the subreddits that pore over Ms Rachel content clarifies the weight of this cultural moment. Or you could ask my two-year-old about it.

Millions of people aged 50 to 64 are out of work – sidelined by sickness, care duties or ageism. If Labour can’t convince them they’re a priority, Farage will step in

Penny Lancaster was 50 when she retrained as a special constable. Wrangling Saturday night drunks and shoplifters might seem an odd fit for the ex-model and wife of Sir Rod Stewart; she got the idea after making a Channel 4 show in which she temporarily swapped jobs with a police officer. But to Lancaster, who has previously disclosed that she was sexually assaulted as a teenager by a senior figure in the fashion industry, it makes perfect sense: she has said her weekly shifts with City of London police are a way of dealing with things that happened to her as a younger woman, where “the suspects never got found, justice was never had”.

Buried memories have a habit of resurfacing in middle age. But with them sometimes comes a fierce urge to be useful: to make changes in your working life while there’s still time, look out for other people’s kids now your own are nearly grown and pass on life lessons you didn’t realise at the time were valuable. On a policing podcast recently, Lancaster talked about drawing on her experience as a mother of teenagers to talk down a suicidal 19-year-old who approached her on a bridge. Not everything in policing, she pointed out, is about chasing bad guys down the street. Steadiness, patience and emotional maturity matter too.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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Earlier, Donald Trump laid out US objectives, saying mission could go on for four-five weeks, adding US has ‘capability to go far longer’

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Bahrain has said that one person was killed by shrapnel from an intercepted missile. The death of a foreign worker at Salman Industrial City, working on a boat there, marks the kingdom’s first reported fatality in the war.

Bahrain, home to the US navy’s 5th fleet, said it intercepted 61 missiles and 34 attack drones launched against it. It said some shrapnel had gotten through, striking buildings and the naval base.

Trump says the US is already ‘substantially ahead’ of its time projections after telling New York Post, ‘I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground’

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While speaking today, Pete Hegseth acknowledged the fourth US service member killed in Iran’s counterattacks.

“War is hell and always will be,” he said. “Our grateful nation honors the four Americans we have lost thus far and those injured – the absolute best of America.”

UK considering all evacuation options, including charter and military flights and bus trips across land borders

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More than 100,000 Britons were stranded in the Gulf on Monday, with airspace in the region still closed to most flights and overland evacuation regarded as risky while Iran continues to launch missile and drone strikes across the region.

Downing Street said UK officials were considering all options to get citizens home safely, including using commercial, charter and military flights and bussing evacuees across land borders into Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Meeting of six-country cooperation council says option to respond to attacks by Tehran remains on the table

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Gulf states, encouraged by Donald Trump, are on the verge of ending their neutrality in the war against Iran in reprisal for Tehran’s repeated “reckless and indiscriminate attacks” on their territory and infrastructure.

The calls, led by the United Arab Emirates from inside the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council, are for the Arab states to act in self-defence against Iran, but it would be a huge step for Gulf leaders in effect to side with Israel in a war that will determine the future shape of the Middle East, probably to the advantage of Israel.