Robin, 68, a retired property manager, meets Jacquie, 69, a retired secretary

What were you hoping for?
To meet someone with a nice personality and similar interests.

Firing Peter Mandelson, convening with Marco Rubio – then handling the fallout of conflict in the Middle East… it’s been a busy time for the secretary of state, and our writer has had a ringside seat

Before Yvette Cooper joins me in a plush side room at the Foreign Office, an aide comes in and draws the heavy curtains. Outside is Horse Guards Parade. I can see a strip of Downing Street, a patch of the No 10 garden, daffodils in bloom. I say that it’s a shame to block the light on such a beautiful spring afternoon. The aide coughs, embarrassed, and explains that it’s actually for security.

So that people can’t see in?

She wasn’t a great one for dispensing wisdom. Instead, she fought for me whenever I most needed it

Mum was a brilliant non-giver of advice. Now Dad, he had his pearls. “If you do something, do it with a good heart.” It sounded platitudinous to me, but he had a point. And then there was his favourite: “If you think something bad about someone, say it up there [pointing to his head] but not out loud.” Dad was a good man, but that infuriated me.

Mum played a bigger part in my life. She often had to fight like crazy for me – to keep me in school when I’d told the dinner lady to fuck off at the age of five (no, I don’t know where it came from); to take on the doctors who labelled me a malingerer when I had encephalitis; to allow me back into mainstream education after I’d had three years off, and finally to persuade the University of Leeds to let me in after I’d messed up my A-levels.

It’s only the first episode, but alongside Jeff Goldblum’s non-anecdotes about pencils the guests are reduced to discussing the colour of the sofa

Now look. Let’s make a few things clear before we begin.

We love Claudia Winkleman, absolutely, yes.

Iran’s is trying to create wedges between Gulf states and the US, but Trump is very comfortable on the ‘escalatory ladder’

In its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proving ground for two competing concepts of military escalation, each of which threatens to become a trap.

On one side, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have failed thus far in their ill-defined and shifting strategic aims. Despite killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the clerical regime remains and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is unsecured. Airstrikes are intensifying and hitting a greater number of targets.

A National Rally victory in France’s second city in municipal elections that start on Sunday would be hailed by the party as a step towards taking the presidency next year

Nathalie, a market trader in her 40s, had woken early to prepare a pan of paella rice. She was spooning it into tubs at a market in southern Marseille last week when a crowd of far-right canvassers approached, promising cleaner and safer streets if she voted for them in the local elections.

“Our cash tin was stolen right here at Christmas time,” Nathalie said. “I’ve had a bag stolen too. It tends to happen at the end of the day, around 7pm. I worry for the elderly grandmas. I had a necklace ripped off me in the city centre once.”

Trump also threatens to hit island’s oil infrastructure if Tehran does not allow passage for ships via Strait of Hormuz

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

Iranian media has reported there is no damage to its oil infrastructure on Kharg Island, following US attacks that Trump claimed had “obliterated” military targets on the Island.

Iran’s armed forces have threatened to destroy US-linked oil infrastructure if its own energy facilities are hit.

Refusal to kowtow to US president has won public backing – and left Badenoch and Farage playing catch-up

It is not often that Keir Starmer’s allies believe he has Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the run – but on Iran, they think he is on the right side of history and public opinion.

“It could be the making of him,” said Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, who was first out of the blocks to say she thought Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran were illegal. “You’ve not had a British prime minister say no to an American president since Vietnam. This is a big deal.”

Israel has issued a new displacement order for southern Lebanon, instructing residents within 25 miles of the border between the two countries to head north. The order covers major Lebanese cities and dozens of villages. Israel’s military is considering an escalated campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah after the pro-Iran group launched its most intense attacks yet on Wednesday night. Guardian journalist William Christou reports from Nabatieh, a city in south Lebanon hit by Israeli strikes

• Israel strikes Beirut and orders south Lebanon evacuation as conflict mounts

Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds data from flagship medical research leaked dozens of times

Confidential health data has been exposed online on dozens of occasions, a Guardian investigation can reveal, raising questions about the safeguarding of patient records by one of the UK’s flagship medical research projects.

UK Biobank, which holds the medical records of 500,000 British volunteers, is one of the world’s most comprehensive stores of health information and is credited with driving breakthroughs in cancer, dementia and diabetes research. But scientists approved to access Biobank’s sensitive data appear to have sometimes been cavalier about its security.