From pirates and skateboarders in Hastings to legends and locks in Devizes, from dolphins in Scarborough to the ‘artists’ town’ of Kirkcudbright, readers put forward their favourite places

Culture secretary Lisa Nandy has launched a search for the UK’s first “town of culture”, similar to the city of culture programme, which honoured Bradford last year. After the Guardian’s writers nominated theirs – including Ramsgate in Kent, Falmouth in Cornwall, Abergavenny in Monmouthshire and Portobello in Edinburgh – we asked readers which UK towns they would put forward.

There is a look of despair in Starmer’s eyes – and a feeling in the room that the endgame has begun

It’s beginning to feel terminal. Not that there hasn’t been talk of Labour MPs wanting to remove Keir Starmer before. Just that this time there’s the sense of a tipping point being reached. No more second chances. No praying for a miracle that will never come in the May elections. A quantum shift of collective despair.

You can’t escape the irony. Starmer has always prided himself on being Mr Rules. It’s how he got elected. He might be a bit dull and lack charisma, but you can count on him to be reliable. To play by the rules. And now he has been undone by having given the prime Washington job to a man who was the epitome of Mr No Rules. And he had thought he had been so clever by acting out of character to make Peter Mandelson the US ambassador. Many in his cabinet had congratulated him, as had many Tories. A sleazy diplomat for a sleazy president. A match made in heaven.

Bankers and billionaires are flocking to the city where income tax is zero but critics say it ignores money laundering – and pay disparities are huge

• Business live – latest updates

Aidan Doyle was an estate agent in Liverpool before he decamped to Dubai and turned a £30,000 annual income into £500,000 a year and climbing.

Acting as an agent for buyers and sellers, Doyle has seen his commission soar beyond anything he could hope to generate in the UK after just three years in the city, one of seven city-states in the United Arab Emirates.

The Swedish band’s frontwoman answers your questions on ‘sweet and curious’ Tom Jones, being changed by cancer and whether the Cardigans will ever make new music

Are you a fan of actual cardigans? garythenotrashcougar
I can see the genius of them as items of clothing, but I never looked good in a cardigan. Our [former] songwriter and guitar player [Peter Svensson] suggested the name. We were super anglophiles. We loved British music. Our first album is called Emmerdale because the series was shown on Swedish TV every day, titled Home to the Farm. We romanticised something sort of rainy and hazy and woolly … like the cardigan.

I like covers that have a new take on the original, so I really enjoyed your lounge-style version of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. What made you choose that band [Black Sabbath] and song in particular? NotDrivingAMiniMetro
We were big fans – for a heavy band there’s a real pop sentiment in the songwriting – and I think it’s interesting when a cover is a stretch away from your natural sound. As a woman, I thought singing a song done by very manly men gave it a wonderfully creepy aspect. Ozzy [Osbourne] came to see us in Los Angeles and said it was the creepiest thing he’d ever heard, which coming from him is the biggest compliment.

More than eight years after the Grenfell Tower fire killed 72 people, the companies, materials and rules that made it possible are still shaping how homes are built, in the UK and around the world.

Neelam Tailor looks at how deregulation, industry lobbying and corporate greed allowed a preventable tragedy to happen, and why, even now, some of the companies criticised by the public inquiry continue to receive million-pound public contracts, impacting the safety of our homes

A leaked pitch to reshape Ethereum’s leadership exposed deep divisions over politics, power and ether’s static price

US crypto developer Danny Ryan submitted a proposal in November 2024 to Vitalik Buterin, the founder and symbolic leader of Ethereum, a prominent blockchain powering the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. Ryan, who had worked for seven years at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), Ethereum’s de facto governing body, suggested that Ethereum could be on the cusp of an era-defining shift.

Since its founding in 2014, the foundation had prioritized technical upgrades and had avoided centralizing power while its user base was growing, but Ethereum had now grown up, and the cryptocurrency world around it had grown up, too. The EF could now “exercise a stronger voice” without compromising its ethos of decentralization, Ryan said – and he was open to leading that charge if appointed as the foundation’s new executive director.

PM says he is sorry for believing ‘lies’ told by former Labour minister and that he too is ‘angry and frustrated’

Keir Starmer has attempted to reboot his faltering premiership, apologising for appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and urging his MPs to unite behind him.

The prime minister gave a lengthy speech on Wednesday about community cohesion, but faced a barrage of questions about his leadership after one of his most turbulent days since entering Downing Street.

Newly unsealed files claim the banker, who has denied any wrongdoing, forced a woman to touch his genitals

US prosecutors reviewed allegations of rape and bodily harm against the former Barclays boss and former JP Morgan banker Jes Staley, according to newly unsealed files linked to the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Multiple documents in the Epstein files cite serious allegations of sexual misconduct against Staley, including that he forced a woman to touch his genitals during a massage before raping her, and left “bloody marks” on the arms of a woman he called “tinkerbell”.

Exclusive: Luxury aircraft owned by property tycoon close to US president’s family has twice flown Palestinian men from Arizona to Tel Aviv

On the morning of 21 January, Israeli authorities left eight Palestinian men at a West Bank checkpoint. Disoriented and cold, they were dressed in prison-issued tracksuits and carried their few belongings in plastic bags.

Hours earlier, they had been sitting with their wrists and ankles shackled on the plush leather seats of a private jet owned by the Florida property tycoon Gil Dezer, a longtime business partner of Donald Trump.

Councils call on ministers to write off special educational needs and disability deficits that are predicted to reach £14bn in 2028

Four in five English local authorities will be in effect bankrupted by rising special educational needs spending unless the government introduces significant reforms to the system, council leaders have said.

Councils have called on ministers to write off special educational needs and disability (Send) deficits accumulated by local authorities over the past few years. These are projected to reach £14bn in two years’ time.