In the past few months, there has been a boom in tradwife novels, while the accounts of influencers only grow more popular. What is it about this culture that makes it so compelling to young women?

‘No one I know wants to go spend their one wild and magical life being a shill for some billionaire tech asshole,” says Shannon, a character in Yesteryear, the buzzy new novel about a tradwife influencer by Caro Claire Burke. Shannon is a gen Z woman who is working as a producer for the protagonist, Natalie, a 32-year-old social media star seemingly with more than a little in common with some aspects of the real-life influencer Hannah Neeleman, who rose to fame documenting her life as a wife and mother on her ranch, Ballerina Farm.

“Just so they can breastfeed in a broom closet someday,” Natalie quips back.

Plans for return of such transport have been discussed for years, and not all local people believe that service will come

It is 1993 and a young James Lewis is going to do work experience in Leeds city council’s highways department. His team, Leeds United FC, have only just relinquished the title of defending English champions. And the council is marching on with big ideas: putting the abandoned 1980s Metroline tram plan behind them, and forgetting the unloved 1991 concept of a Leeds Advanced Transit skytrain. The Supertram is the coming thing.

“I remember these drawers and drawers, full of big paper plans,” says Lewis, 33 years on. Lewis is now leader of the city council, and it is all done online. Much of the city centre has been transformed, rebuilt and pedestrianised. Leeds United have never threatened to be champions again. But as Lewis stands outside Elland Road stadium, explaining how to cross the adjacent motorway, one thing has not changed. What Leeds really wants is to build a tram.

Struggle for justice symbolises limitations of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose hearings began 30 years ago

Darkness had fallen on 27 June 1985 when Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto set off on the 150-mile drive back from a meeting of anti-apartheid activists in the South African city of Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha. They never made it home.

About an hour into their journey, as the road wound north from the coast towards their home town of Cradock (now called Nxuba), the four men were pulled over by three white security police officers. They were handcuffed and driven back towards Gqeberha.

A legal dispute led to Letty Lynton, the golden age superstar’s controversial drama, being sealed away. Only now can audiences see what all the fuss was about

Joan Crawford was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s golden age, but one of her most famous, and controversial, films has not been screened legally since January 1936. Ninety years later, thanks to her grandson, that is all about to change. The 1932 MGM film Letty Lynton tells the lethal tale of a Manhattan socialite, her fiance and her vindictive ex-lover. It was a hit at the box office – although something of a conundrum for the critics. They just couldn’t understand how MGM had managed to sneak such a risque story past the censors. That was only the start of the trouble.

MGM had wanted to buy the rights to a play called Dishonored Lady, written by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes. This was a hit on Broadway in 1930, but its booze, drugs and sex content meant it had already been designated by the Hays office as “unfit for motion picture adaptation”. MGM only backed out when the authors demanded $30,000 – and the Hays office made it clear they wouldn’t give an inch, not on a story about a woman they considered a “nymphomaniac”. Instead, for just $3,500, MGM bought the rights to Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novel Letty Lynton, which, just like Dishonored Lady, was inspired by the real-life case of Madeleine Smith. In 1857, Smith, a Scottish socialite, was tried for murder, accused of poisoning her lover with arsenic after he threatened to use her love letters to expose their affair and jeopardise her engagement.

Prof Yasuyuki Aono’s meticulous work charted shifting bloom dates as a marker of climate change

Even in his final months, he counted the days until the cherry blossoms. Prof Yasuyuki Aono of Osaka Metropolitan University spent his career gathering data on the spring flowering dates of cherry trees in Japan in what is one of the world’s longest climate records tracking a seasonal occurrence.

Using sources dating as far back as the 9th century, he revealed that cherry tree flowerings have occurred progressively earlier in recent decades – a now famous marker of climate change.

Lisa O’Carroll reports on the ‘resetting’ of the relationship between the UK and the EU

This week, the Guardian reported that Labour is planning to bring in new legislation that will forge closer ties between the UK and the EU. Nearly 10 years on from the Brexit vote, the Guardian’s senior correspondent Lisa O’Carroll speaks to Helen Pidd about what a UK-EU reset would look like.

Lisa and Helen also discuss the strength of the EU in the wake of Viktor Orbán’s defeat in the Hungary elections on Sunday.

US president says negotiations could restart in Islamabad under ‘fantastic’ Pakistani army chief Asim Munir

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has said that US-Iranian peace talks could resume in Islamabad over the next two days, and complimented the work of Pakistan’s army chief as mediator.

The US president was speaking on Tuesday to a New York Post reporter who had gone to Islamabad for the first round of ceasefire talks over the weekend. After an interview discussing prospects for negotiations, the reporter said the president had called her back “with an update”.

Growth forecasts cut for US and global economy, while UK suffers sharpest downgrade in G7

• Reeves arrives at IMF with little leeway to prove its UK downgrade wrong

A further escalation in the Iran war could trigger a global recession that would affect the UK more than any of the other G7 nations, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

Against an increasingly volatile backdrop, the Washington-based fund said the economic damage from the Middle East conflict was steadily rising as it cut its growth forecasts for 2026 based on the impact of the war so far.

Exclusive: Fiona Hill, a former White House chief adviser, joins ex-Nato chief in criticising Starmer’s leadership on defence

A co-author of Britain’s strategic defence review has joined criticism of Keir Starmer’s leadership on military policy, warning of a “bizarre” lack of urgency in defence planning.

Fiona Hill, a former chief adviser to the White House on Russia, echoed the concerns of George Robertson, her co-author with Gen Richard Barrons on the strategic defence review (SDR), over what he had called the prime minister’s “corrosive complacency”.

ASA rules ads on Instagram and Daily Mail website broke ban on promoting items high in fat, salt and sugar

Lidl and Iceland have become the first companies to have ads banned after the introduction of rules cracking down on the marketing of junk food in the UK.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has been policing the ban on ads featuring junk food on TV before 9pm, and in paid online advertising at any time of the day, since 5 January.