Insiders portray defense secretary as increasingly isolated after officers with impeccable reputations forced out

Since Donald Trump’s first term, they have been viewed comfortingly as the “adults in the room,” a last line of defense against the impulsive whims of a president with access to the nuclear codes.

Now – after an unprecedented wave of firings that has been compared by some to Stalin’s purges – the Pentagon top brass no longer seem like such a reliable bulwark.

Jamie Oliver’s head of restaurants is optimistic about new recipe of smaller site, slimmed-down menu and no burgers

When Jamie’s Italian crashed and burned in 2019, with the company in £83m of debt and causing 1,000 job losses, no one imagined the celebrity chef would try again.

But seven years later, Jamie Oliver has opened a flagship site under the same name in Leicester Square in central London, and believes he has a new recipe for success: a smaller restaurant with a slimmed-down menu, which features cheaper cuts of meat and no burgers.

Unintended consequence of US president’s actions will be boon for China, the leading renewables manufacturer

Operation Epic Fury has thus far achieved none of Donald Trump’s war aims, but it may well accelerate the global transition towards the clean energy he loves to hate.

Last week brought the latest exchange of verbal blows in the standoff over the strait of Hormuz. Iran was “choking like a stuffed pig” on the oil it was unable to export because of the US blockade, Trump claimed.

We tend to think of intelligence like height – and imagine ourselves being overtaken. That misses the point

Until recently, we humans have been able to be smug about our abilities. No other animals play boardgames, write essays or prove mathematical theorems. But lately, progress in AI seems as though it might challenge our self-image as the smartest entities around. AI systems not only beat us at the most complicated games, but can also write polished prose and win medals in maths. Tech CEOs promise us that superhuman AI is just round the corner. So, in an age of AI, are human minds still special, or merely also-rans?

Talking about superhuman AI assumes that intelligence is a single scale. My parents used to mark the heights of my younger brother and me on the doorframe of our laundry. Each year he would get a little closer to me, until one year the unthinkable happened and he outgrew me (he’s now 6ft 3in). The current moment feels a bit like that, as we look at these new younger siblings with concern that they might overtake us.

Island’s tourism industry been hit hard by severe US pressure – but some say foreigners should still visit

Leslie Simon and Marc Bender had arrived in Havana for a 10-day holiday, despite their president’s repeated threats of military action against Cuba.

The two retired union lawyers from Los Angeles flew in via Miami sporting badges reading “ICE OUT!” and shared a somewhat negative opinion of the US’s past.

Can a sentence affect the course of your life? Five authors reveal the interactions that transformed the way they saw themselves – and the world

When I was 14, I had to start a new school. I wasn’t great at starting new schools, even though I had done so quite a few times – once for my dad’s work, once because I wasn’t fitting in at my primary school and once because my parents didn’t like the teachers. Of course, 14 is possibly the most awkward of all the ages to start a new anything. Anyway, it was halfway through the first term at the new school in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and I was taken aside by my history teacher, Mr Philips, at the end of a lesson. He didn’t like me very much. To be fair, I was probably hard to like, from a teacher’s perspective. I had trouble concentrating, I stared out of windows, I clowned around. However, it is difficult to explain the shock to my self-conscious teenage soul when he told me, “I think it would be a good idea for you to join a special needs class.” Now, for context, the year was 1989, and in my state comprehensive at that time the idea of being “special needs” was akin to being given a leprosy bell or being marked with a cross for the plague. It was a binary system. You were either “normal” or you were “special needs”. To make matters worse, I was told that another teacher – my art teacher – had come to a similar assessment.

Green party leader says specifically outlawing controversial phrase would restrict freedom of speech

Zack Polanski has said he would discourage pro-Palestine protesters from using the chant “globalise the intifada”, but the Green party leader warned against specifically outlawing the phrase or banning a protest planned in London later this month.

Speaking earlier in the weekend, Keir Starmer called for “tougher action” against marchers using the chant after last week’s attack on Jewish people in Golders Green, saying pro-Gaza marches risked having a cumulative effect of being intimidating.

Avon and Somerset police declare major incident and say cause is being treated as suspicious

Two people have died after a “suspicious” explosion at a house in Bristol.

Avon and Somerset police have declared a major incident after the explosion, which happened at about 6.30am on Sunday. The families of those involved had been informed, police said.

Deputy leader plays down leadership talk and says party must focus on long-term challenges rather than personnel

Labour’s deputy leader has warned there will be “no magic bullet” to solve Labour’s problems – or major challenges facing the country – as its MPs grapple with how to navigate the fallout out from the local elections.

Lucy Powell told the Guardian she understood there was “huge anger and despondency” from Labour MPs in the aftermath of the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal, but said the prime minister would not make a similar mistake again.

Two were found dead in the early hours of Sunday in boat carrying about 82 people, several of whom were injured

Two female Sudanese asylum seekers have died trying to cross the Channel in the early hours of Sunday morning, off the coast of Boulogne.

According to some reports, one was a teenager aged 16 and the other a woman in her 20s. They were found dead in the boat, which had run aground on the beach of Neufchâtel-Hardelot, according to Christophe Marx, the secretary general of the Pas-de-Calais Prefecture.