After 18 months of policy U-turns and political turmoil we are told not to expect any last-minute policy rabbits

Politicians tend to hate being boring but Rachel Reeves will be delighted if Tuesday’s spring forecast is judged by voters and financial markets to be reassuringly dull.

After Labour’s catastrophic Gorton and Denton byelection result, the chancellor’s future, along with that of the prime minister, is on the line, as backbench MPs fret about the party’s electoral prospects.

In Gorton and Denton, I heard again and again that people wanted seismic political change – Labour and the Tories are no longer part of that conversation

In the wake of Labour’s third-place showing at last Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection, Keir Starmer could have responded with a mixture of magnanimity, grit, and a clear appreciation of what had just happened.

He might have congratulated the Green party’s new MP Hannah Spencer, and insisted that the themes of inequality and everyday struggle she had so loudly emphasised throughout the campaign were at the top of his government’s priorities. He could also have combined that message with a show of determination to learn from the defeat and win back the voters his party lost, and an acknowledgment that Labour’s recent calamities and internal bickering had sent those people completely the wrong signals.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

With the rise of influencer Clavicular and ‘looksmaxxers’, sexist language from niche memes has infiltrated official government accounts and NYT headlines

A recent tweet from the US Department of Defense boasts about the killing capabilities of the US military as follows: “Low cortisol. Locked in. Lethalitymaxxing”. To many, that will sound as indecipherable as the teenagers that discuss “high-tier Beckys” or the New York Times warning of “Tate-pilled” boys.

Many will have now seen the 6 February tweet that went globally viral, viewed more than 24m times and since discussed in endless analyses and explainers:

Clavicular was mid jestergooning when a group of Foids came and spiked his Cortisol levels. Is Ignoring the Foids while munting and mogging Moids more useful then SMV chadfishing in the club?

From live audio descriptions to fabric swatch booklets, designers including Chet Lo are rethinking the catwalk experience for blind and low-vision clothes-lovers

‘If you put your hands out and run your fingers along this skirt, you’ll feel that there are soft feathers appliquéd on to it,” says the fashion designer Chet Lo. “The skirt is emerald green in colour with black panels on the side and it is designed to be very fitted on the body.” Lo is speaking to a group of six guests ahead of his London fashion week show, offering them a sneak preview of his new collection that will shortly be unveiled on the catwalk.

Chet Lo shows his Night Market collection at the Mandarin Oriental hotel at London fashion week

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

We may cringe at influencers and friends who let it all hang out, but research shows that keeping quiet might be worse

Do you recoil at oversharers on social media, or joke among your friends about “TMI”? I know I do. But while mocking public confession comes easy, it’s harder to appreciate the risks of normalising silence: withheld anxieties, unspoken family histories, and the little omissions that make workplaces and relationships brittle. The instinct to pour scorn on “attention seekers” may be masking a deeper public-health problem: chronic concealment.

For much of my career as an academic I made a living scolding people about privacy. I lectured on digital hygiene, warned audiences about the ways social media amplifies folly, and played the role of the wary scientist: don’t put your passwords in a document, don’t take quizzes that leak your intimate preferences, don’t broadcast things you can’t take back. I was a walking contradiction, though. Privately, I did online quizzes for fun. I kept a notepad of passwords on my desktop. I knew the rules and, like many of us, I broke them.

Israeli rescuers respond to missile strike in Beit Shemesh; interim successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named

• How have you been affected by events in the Middle East?

• A visual guide to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran

• How the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded

Loud explosions were heard early on Sunday near Erbil airport, which hosts US-led coalition troops in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, AFP reported. Thick black smoke was rising from the airport area.

On Saturday, US-led coalition forces downed several missiles and explosive-laden drones over Erbil.

Strike on girls’ elementary school in south of Iran has killed 148 people and injured 95 others, according to Iran state media

• US-Israel war on Iran – latest updates

The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media.

Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The news agency cited Ebrahim Taheri, a prosecutor in Minab.

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”.

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.