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Middle East crisis live: Iran strikes oil refinery in Kuwait, says it shot down US fighter jet

UK prime minister Keir Starmer has condemned the “reckless” Iranian attack that set an oil refinery ablaze in Kuwait, in a call with the country’s crown prince. A Downing Street readout of the conversation said: The prime minister spoke to his highness the Crown Prince of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah this morning. The prime minister began by condemning the reckless overnight drone attack on a Kuwaiti oil refinery. He reiterated that the UK stands with Kuwait and all our allies in the Gulf. They discussed the deployment of the UK’s rapid sentry air defence system to Kuwait, which will protect Kuwaiti and British personnel and interests in the region, while avoiding escalation into wider conflict. Regarding ongoing disruption to global shipping through the strait of Hormuz, the prime minister and crown prince welcomed the meeting convened by the foreign secretary yesterday on a viable plan to reopen the Strait. They agreed to continue to work together on this and stay in close contact over the coming weeks.

Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing appointed president after ‘sham’ election

Min Aung Hlaing, the military general who plunged Myanmar into conflict and economic chaos when he took power in the 2021 coup has been appointed president, months after widely condemned sham elections. Min Aung Hlaing, who is wanted by the prosecutor of the international criminal court for crimes against humanity against the Rohingya Muslim minority, was voted president by lawmakers on Friday. Myanmar’s parliament is dominated by the pro-military party, which won a landslide in one-sided elections earlier this year. Min Aung Hlaing has long sought the role, say analysts, but for years his ambitions were thwarted by the electoral success of the hugely popular Aung San Suu Kyi. The former de facto leader no longer poses a threat, however. The 80-year-old has been detained since the 2021 coup, when her government was ousted from power. Her party was banned from contesting recent elections, which were held across three phases from December to January. The election, which the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development party (USDP) won by a landslide, was widely condemned as a sham that sought to give a veneer of legitimacy to military rule. It is not expected that the changes in leadership will ease the political crisis or the deadly conflict that continues to rage across the country. Min Aung Hlaing was already Myanmar’s acting president, and it is likely he will install loyalists in key positions, said International Crisis Group in recent analysis. “He will not trust anybody [enough] to take orders from [them] – he would want to deliver the orders,” said Yanghee Lee, a former special rapporteur for Myanmar, who added that Min Aung Hlaing is seen as a paranoid, suspicious person. The general, 69, was born into a family from Dawei, in south east of Myanmar. He studied law at university in Yangon, but longed to join the military and on his third attempt was admitted to the Defence Services Academy, the country’s elite institution for training officers. Myanmar’s military has been likened to a state within a state, siloed from the rest of society with its own banks, companies, news outlets and hospitals. It considers itself the protector of Myanmar as a Buddhist Bamar nation– Bamar referring to the majority ethnic group. He was appointed commander-in-chief in 2011, but assumed the role at a time when Myanmar was embarking on a fragile transition to democracy. The military remained extremely powerful during this period, even after Aung San Suu Kyi won a sweeping victory in 2015. Under the military’s model of “disciplined democracy”, it was granted a quarter of parliamentary seats, and the power to appoint key cabinet positions. The uneasy power-sharing arrangement broke down after the 2020 election, which Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD again won by a landslide. Min Aung Hlaing accused her party of widespread voter fraud, without evidence, and seized power on 1 February 2021. The coup triggered mass protests that spiralled into a civil war. Min Aung Hlaing has been accused of presiding over repeated atrocities and human rights abuses. In 2009, while overseeing operations in border areas of the north-east, his troops were accused of driving tens of thousands of ethnic minority people from their homes. Such brutality would be repeated on an even greater scale in violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state in 2017, which is now the centre of a genocide case at The Hague. Since the coup, UN investigators have accused Min Aung Haling’s regime of indiscriminate airstrikes killing civilians, “mass killings of detainees, dismemberment and desecration of bodies, rape and the deliberate burning of entire villages”, describing such crimes as “a manifestation of an organisational policy”. Myanmar has denied the accusations of genocide, and the military says its post-coup operations are targeted at terrorists it accuses of destabilising the country. In recent months, Min Aung Hlaing had stepped up his international trips, attempting to clamber back from his status as an international pariah. His diplomatic style has been mocked by his critics – particularly a visit to Moscow last year, when, while heaping praise on Vladimir Putin, he said the friendship between Myanmar and Russia had been prophesied by the Buddha thousands of years ago when the Russian president was a “rat king” in a previous life. It is not clear if Putin understood the obscure reference. Richard Horsey, a senior Myanmar adviser to Crisis Group, said the junta leader presented himself as a politician rather than a “soldier’s soldier”, and even in the midst of a post-coup fight was often photographed inspecting infrastructure and factories, rather than visiting the frontlines. “It’s well known that he’s long coveted the presidency,” Horsey added. Min Aung Hlaing is also a deeply superstitious figure and keen to present himself as devoutly religious, added Horsey. He has frequently commissioned and renovated pagodas and religious sites, including a huge Buddha statue in the capital Nay Pyi Taw. “I don’t think he sees that as [being in] contradiction with his role as a brutal leader,” said Horsey. At home, Min Aung Hlaing is unable to travel to large areas of Myanmar that have been seized by opposition groups or are in the midst of fighting. However, with backing from his ally China, the junta chief probably hopes the recent election will allow him to reverse his isolated status abroad and reassure pro-military voices who have criticised his failure to suppress opposition since the coup.

People of Burkina Faso should forget about democracy, says military ruler

People in Burkina Faso should forget about democracy as it is “not for us”, the military president, Ibrahim Traoré, told the country’s state broadcaster. Traoré took power in a coup in September 2022, toppling another junta that had taken power just nine months earlier. He has since stifled opposition and in January banned political parties outright. A transition to democracy had originally been planned for 2024, but that year the junta extended Traoré’s rule until 2029. “We’re not even talking about elections, first of all … People need to forget about the question of democracy … We must tell the truth, democracy isn’t for us,” Traoré said in an interview on Thursday with the state broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTB). Democracy was “false”, the 37-year-old said, adding: “Democracy, we kill children. Democracy, we drop bombs, we kill women, we destroy hospitals, we kill civilian population. Is that democracy?” Traoré has won fans across Africa with anti-French and anti-western rhetoric that often invokes the legacy of the revolutionary Burkinabé leader Thomas Sankara. Sankara, a Marxist, was president of Burkina Faso, which he renamed from Upper Volta, from 1983 until his assassination in 1987. However, Traoré has failed to stem a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives since 2014 and had displaced 2.1 million people, about 9% of the population, when official data was last released three years ago. More than 1,800 civilians had been killed by the military, allied militias and al-Qaida-linked Jama’at Nusrat al‑Islam wa al‑Muslimin (JNIM) since 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Thursday. The group accused all sides of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes. It alleged the junta and allied militias had ethnically cleansed Fulani civilians that it accused of supporting JNIM, carrying out targeted killings and forcibly displacing communities. In April 2024, HRW accused the military of executing 223 civilians in a day two months earlier. The government denied this and banned the group, along with several international media outlets that had reported it, including the Guardian.

‘It’s not just Flávio’: is surname-dropping son downplaying Bolsonaro connection?

He possesses one of the most famous family names in Latin American politics. But when the Brazilian senator took to the stage at a conservative conference in Grapevine, Texas, last weekend it was only his forename that was on people’s lips. “Flávio! Flávio! Flávio!” the audience shouted as the 44-year-old politician announced he would run for president in order to fight the “radical environmental and woke” agendas he claims have made Brazil awful again. “Let me look you in the eyes and tell you: we will win,” the surname-less senator said in halting English, read from a teleprompter machine. The Flávio in question is Flávio Bolsonaro, the oldest son of the disgraced former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest after receiving a 27-year jail sentence for trying to overturn the result of the 2022 election. As the younger Bolsonaro seeks to catapult his family back to the pinnacle of Brazilian politics in this year’s contest, many believe he is intentionally downplaying his parentage in an attempt to shake off the baggage of a name many associate with anti-democratic tendencies and a coronavirus catastrophe that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Political analysts have detected a deliberate strategy to reposition the rightwing politician in voters’ minds by casting him as a supposedly moderate “Flávio”, rather than a key member of the Bolsonaro clan. A campaign jingle played at one recent rally and broadcast on the candidate’s social networks refers to Bolsonaro’s firstborn as simply “Zero Um” (No One) and Flávio, without citing his family name. Controversially, many Brazilian newspapers have adopted the same style, repeatedly calling the politician only “Flávio” in headlines – something leftwing opponents consider a cynical attempt to camouflage the politician’s hard-right roots. One social media satirist, the journalist Gilberto Porcidonio, took a poke at the Bolsonarian marketing strategy on Threads, joking: – Are you going to vote for Flávio? – Which Flávio? – The one whose surname they got rid of to make him electable! Fabiana Moraes, a columnist for Intercept Brasil who wrote recently about Bolsonaro’s disappearing last name, believed the move was designed to help Bolsonaro sidestep the hugely negative views millions of Brazilians still hold of his father. Moraes saw many reasons for that dislike, including Jair Bolsonaro’s misogyny and the failed coup he plotted after losing 2022’s election to his leftwing rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But perhaps the biggest cause was Jair Bolsonaro’s bungled response to coronavirus, which killed more than 800,000 Brazilians, and his delay in buying vaccines. “Brazil was exposed to such an unthinkable level of suffering [during Covid] … and I think this still reverberates,” Moraes said. Flávio Bolsonaro has not entirely abandoned his surname, which many conservatives still revere. Jair Bolsonaro won 58m votes in the 2022 election, losing to Lula by only 2m. Polls suggest the 2026 vote could be similarly close. “It’s unquestionable that [this surname] is still a real asset – but at the same time it’s also the mirror opposite,” said Moraes, who believed the tactic was aimed at attracting voters who were neither progressives, nor diehard Bolsonaro fans. Moraes feared Brazil’s version of Wall Street, Faria Lima, and parts of the mainstream media had already bought into Flávio Bolsonaro’s attempt to portray himself as a moderate, by playing down his roots and even using gender-neutral language in contrast to his father’s notorious homophobia. She was unconvinced by claims newspaper editors were using “Flávio” in their headlines because it was three letters shorter than Bolsonaro. “Jair is much shorter than Flávio and that wasn’t the name that appeared in the headlines [when he was president], was it?” Moraes said. Supporters of President Lula, whom Flávio Bolsonaro looks set to challenge in October’s vote, have cottoned on to the rightwinger’s rebranding effort. In recent days, they have set about hammering home the candidate’s association with what many see as his family’s toxic name. “It’s Flávio Bolsonaro, not just Flávio. He must carry the surname of the dirtiest family in Brazil,” the congresswoman Luizianne Lins wrote on X. In an interview with the news website Metrópoles, the president of Lula’s Workers’ party (PT), Edinho Silva, urged voters to remember what life was like when the father of the politician formerly known as Flávio Bolsonaro held power. “Flávio Bolsonaro is a representative of the Bolsonaro family … We cannot forget what Brazil was like when it was governed by the Bolsonaro family … [or] what Brazil was like when it was left to fend for itself during the pandemic because of a marketing campaign,” Silva said. Moraes believed Flávio Bolsonaro’s reinvention was also designed to conceal numerous skeletons in his own closet, including longstanding corruption allegations and well-documented ties to a police officer turned hitman called Adriano Magalhães da Nóbrega, and other members of Rio’s paramilitary underworld. In 2005, when Flávio Bolsonaro was a state legislator, he awarded Nóbrega a medal while he was in prison, and employed Nóbrega’s wife and mother. Nóbrega, who was killed by police in 2020, was alleged to have run what the Rio newspaper O Globo called the city’s “most lethal and secretive phalanx of hired guns”. Bolsonaro paid a similar tribute to Ronald Pereira, a police officer and paramilitary recently jailed for 56 years for involvement in the 2018 assassination of the leftwing politician Marielle Franco. Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied corruption and links to criminal groups but his rivals are expected to exploit such allegations in the six months remaining before the election. Bolsonaro’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering in Texas – in which he questioned Brazil’s voting system and called for foreign pressure to ensure a “free and fair” vote – appears to have undermined his rebranding push. “Like father, like son … Bolsonarista coup-mongering seems to be genetic,” the conservative Estado de São Paulo complained in an editorial, although on five occasions the newspaper referred to its subject by his first name.

How sheltered really is the US from the Gulf oil supply crisis?

A month has passed since the US and Israel’s war on Iran all but closed the strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies typically flow. Prices have surged, amid fears of sustained disruption to global supplies. Donald Trump argues this is not his country’s problem. “Go get your own oil!” the president urged countries, including the UK, earlier this week. The US has “plenty”, he added. The US is “totally independent” of the Middle East, the president claimed in a prime-time address on Wednesday. “We don’t need their oil.” “Under my leadership, we are [the] No 1 producer of oil and gas on the planet, without even discussing the millions of barrels that we’re getting from Venezuela,” he said. Trump and his allies hail the US as an energy “superpower” after a historic surge in domestic oil production sparked by the fracking boom. For years now, it has produced more oil than the entire country consumes. But the oil market is fundamentally international. Unlike natural gas – another crucial energy source – for which prices can vary drastically in different parts of the world, the oil market is far more interconnected. The US benchmark price for gas, known as the Henry hub, is currently less than $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) while the European Dutch title transfer facility (TTF) price trades above $16. A price surge in Europe doesn’t necessarily cross the Atlantic. “Gas, unlike oil, is hard to move around,” Clark Williams-Derry, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “You can’t just pour gas into a drum, and then move that drum somewhere else.” Significant oil price movements are rarely confined to a specific region. Brent crude, the international benchmark, has by risen by nearly half since the start of the war, to north of $100 per barrel – and climbed sharply after Trump’s latest address. “Think of it like a giant swimming pool,” said Williams-Derry. “There are waves or ripples, but the whole swimming pool rises or falls. The fundamental level is set by the global market.” “Under current policy, being a net exporter doesn’t do anything to cushion the US from global price trends,” he added. The US does export more oil than it imports. But it still imports millions of barrels per day, and relied on Gulf nations for almost a tenth of those imports last year. Many US refineries are geared up to process heavier crude than the lighter, sweeter stuff primarily produced domestically in the US. The energy supply disruption sparked by the war on Iran goes far beyond oil. Global fertilizer costs have risen sharply, prompting US farmers to reconsider their planned crops, as the strait of Hormuz remains paralyzed. A small but significant share of US fertilizer imports come from the Middle East. Qatar typically supplies about a third of the world’s helium, which plays a key role in the manufacturing of semiconductors. But the country halted output last month – a potentially worrying move for chipmakers and the many industries that rely on them. But for now, oil remains the most visible indicator of the turmoil. Simply being a net exporter “doesn’t differentially protect American households” from higher prices, said Neale Mahoney, Trione director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. “Because of the oil [price] increasing, it is going to be beneficial to certain sectors of the US economy – the energy production sectors – and certain states within the US: Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, big energy-producing states,” he added. “While it doesn’t protect the US consumer, and US consumers will be feeling the squeeze, there are winners as well as losers in the US.” But the rally of big oil stocks this year will do little to cheer most drivers filling up at gas stations across the US. Average nationwide fuel prices breached $4 per gallon for the first time since 2022 earlier this week, amid widespread frustration over the increase in costs. “In the US, because we produce oil and gas, when there’s a price spike, consumers are paying more, and producers are making more,” said Williams-Derry. “The talk of ‘energy independence’ has to be seen as a smokescreen,” he added. “For a low-income person, with a livelihood balanced on a knife-edge, they literally cannot afford higher prices at the pump.” High fuel prices, many incumbent presidents and congressional candidates have learned, can scupper political campaigns. With seven months until November’s midterm elections, and Republican control of Congress in the balance, voters nationwide are paying more and more to fill up their cars. Trump’s professed confidence that they won’t feel pain for long is perhaps best distilled into an old adage: what goes up must come down. “When this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally,” he claimed on Wednesday, predicting that fuel prices “will rapidly come back down”. Mahoney, a member of the White House national economic council during Joe Biden’s administration, isn’t so certain of a swift reversal. “There is the famous rockets-and-feathers phenomenon with retail gas and petrol prices, where they shoot up fast and float down like a feather,” he said. “Even if crude prices were to drop pretty quickly, we are likely to see elevated pump prices over the spring, and through the middle of the summer.”

‘Every night they are bombarding’: at border crossing, some Iranians are fleeing war and some are heading home

He could not help but splutter out a laugh at the question. Amir, whose name has been changed for his safety, had just crossed the Kapıköy border point in eastern Turkey, a mountain pass between snow-topped peaks that is one of the few gateways to the west from Iran. Until a few weeks ago, this was a busy place, popular among Iranian daytrippers coming across to Turkey to do some shopping in the lively city of Van, a further two hours drive west, or to spend a couple of nights out in its discreet Iranian-only nightclubs and bars serving alcohol. Back then, there had been plenty of reasons that an Iranian might give for making this trip. But today, just about visible behind Amir, was the lifeless black flag raised a month ago by the Iranian regime after the death under US and Israeli strikes of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. “Why? Amir asked back with a smile when questioned as to his motivation for leaving Iran. “Boom,” he responded. “Because of the war. Every night they are bombarding.” Not that Amir, who had come from Tehran, was bitter about the American and Israeli campaign. “We must want to get rid of the regime,” he said. “Thank you to Trump,” he added with a weary nod of the head. Amir, 33, a foreign exchange and crypto currency trader by profession, had no means to make a living in Tehran now. “No internet, no job,” Amir said of the internet blackout imposed by the Iranian regime over the last month. “I hope [the bombing] is working. Every night, bombs. Nearby cities, industrial areas and military bases, completely destroyed.” A pharmacologist from Tehran was travelling to see her three adult daughters in Europe and intended to spend three months away. “All of the people live with anxiety,” she said. “I don’t like Trump but it is right this time for the Iranian people. We are very tired about the revolution of [the] Islamic republic of Iran. Most people like Trump because he might change the regime. We are very tired.” Kapıköy, which translates as “village of the gate”, has not witnessed huge numbers of people fleeing Iran. According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), close to 64,000 Iranians arrived in Turkey between 3 and 30 March and more than 48,000 Iranian nationals went back into the Islamic Republic. “The current volume of movement remains notably lower than pre-conflict levels, when crossings from both sides averaged approximately 5,000 individuals per day,” a UNHCR spokesperson said. Turkey has plans to manage mobility from the border in case of an influx, creating a buffer zone and establishing tent cities for up to 90,000 people. It has not yet been necessary, although there are four army and security service checkpoints for those driving from the border to Van. Heavily armed soldiers in khaki could be seen on patrol by the roadside. Salvador Gutiérrez, the chief of mission in Iran for the International Organization for Migration, speaking via a video call from Tehran, said people were moving internally within Iran, largely to the northern provinces close to the Caspian Sea. People had been coming back to Tehran and the other cities in recent days, he said. It is understood that part-government-owned corporations that are central to the Iranian economy have started to order people back to work. “Many people have savings or are receiving some support from their families, so I would say they are waiting to see what the outcome will be of this situation,” Gutiérrez said. Trump has spoken of sending Iran “back to the stone age” and he vowed in an address on Wednesday night to hit Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks. Gutiérrez said: “We have seen some interruptions to electricity, water and in some cases fuel supply. If people really begin to struggle having regular access to services, this may trigger onward movement.” The International Organization for Migration estimates more than 82,000 residential units have been hit by the US and Israeli strikes, affecting 180,000 people, but for all the dangers of the war to civilians it is the further economic hit, on top of longstanding sanctions, that is being felt hardest, many at the Kapıköy border point said. Muhammed, 42, who runs a travel business, was heading to Oman. “I have had to completely close the offices,” he said. “I have said to my staff to go and just rest for minimum two months and after that I don’t know what will happen. I am sure that for one year I cannot do anything. “Our house is near to the airport. Each night you hear the big noises. More than a hundred times we have had the bombings. Each night I hear the big noises and then boom, boom. It was very hard for the first three days, but after four, five days it is normal to your mind … I am not sure about the future but I am sure about this point: the war is not good.” A 39-year-old woman on her way to Istanbul from her home in east Tehran said she too quaked at the bombs as they fell at night, although it appeared only military targets were being struck near her. “The people live day by day, go shopping, but at night we are a little bit scared,” she said. “I hope for a change to [the] regime. For more than one month, no internet. It is 2026 – without internet!” The sentiments of those passing through Kapıköy – largely western-facing, often well-educated and with money in their pockets – cannot be said to be a fair straw poll of sentiment in Iran. Selma Ghaemzadeh, 24, said her city of Maragheh, in north-east Iran, had recently come under attack but that she was proud that she lived in a “strong not a weak country”. She was travelling to Van with her parents and 15-year-old brother to do some shopping for a few days but could not imagine a permanent move. “It is not safe, but Iran is my country and it is safe for me,” she said. Many others were too scared to talk. High-profile dissidents hiding in Van have been snatched and returned to Tehran in the past. One woman in designer clothing who had started to talk abruptly stopped after being told by a man to keep quiet. “They are from Iran International,” he said, in reference to the Persian-language TV station based in the UK that has been described by the Iranian regime as a terrorist actor. There was similar reticence as the Iranian Raja Rail Transportation Company’s 24-hour sleeper train from Tehran rolled in to Van train station mid-afternoon with a full load of passengers in its 12 carriages. “It isn’t safe to talk here,” one man said. Others disembarking in the rain were less fearful. Soha, 29, a computer programmer, was on her way to Bangkok. She had no work due to the internet blackout, but it was the bombs landing a kilometre from where she lived that had driven her to get on the train out. “Safety was my biggest problem – a bomb hit next to my house,” she said. Arash, 56, from Kiraj, said: “There are no sirens or shelters. People are getting hurt when they go to the windows to watch the bombs fall.” Moji, 75, and his wife, Sholeh, 73, said the east and west of Tehran had been particularly badly hit. They were off to the US to stay with their sons for six months. Moji, a retired accountant, said he knew of a lot of people who had been injured in the attacks. “People hope it will lead to big changes,” he said. Did he have hope? “Not much.” It is perhaps a strange truth that on some days there are more people returning to Iran via Turkey than leaving, often to be closer to relatives in peril. The Iranian men’s national football team passed through Kapıköy on Wednesday after their 5-0 victory in a friendly against Costa Rica played in Antalya, in southern Turkey. Among others returning at the crossing were a couple who said they were doctors living in Canada. The husband, heaving bags out of a car on to the dusty road, did not want to talk. He vainly suggested that his wife keep her counsel too. “I want to say something, I want to say something,” the woman insisted, balancing her handbag on top of a suitcase and stepping forward. She was in her 40s, smartly dressed, with a white scarf around her neck. “This war is affecting everybody,” she said with intent. “My mum passed away from the stress, the heart attack she had. She was 65. She didn’t have anything wrong with her at all. This war is affecting everyone, either directly or like my mum.” She said she would stay in Tehran for as long as her father needed her. “Thank you,” she added. “I just wanted to tell my story.”

Friday briefing: Why does your Easter egg feel smaller? Because it is

Good morning. Today is Good Friday – if you are following the western church calendar, at least – which still leaves time to panic-buy Easter eggs. While you are doing that, you will almost certainly leave with the impression that you are paying more for less. Why? Shrinkflation is the answer. The chocolate economy has been hit by a series of shocks over the past few years, meaning the pound in your pocket now buys a lot less cocoa than it once did. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Zoe Wood, the Guardian’s consumer affairs correspondent, about why chocolate has become such a visible symbol of inflation, and whether there is any hope that prices might fall again. First, here are the headlines. Five big stories Middle East | Emmanuel Macron has sharply criticised Donald Trump’s inconsistent pronouncements on the Iran war and Nato, saying if “you want to be serious” it was better not to come out with something different every day. UK politics | Yvette Cooper said coordinated action was needed as more than 40 countries gathered to discuss “every possible diplomatic, economic and coordinated measure” to pressurise Iran into reopening the strait of Hormuz. NHS | The NHS is bracing for the longest strike yet by resident doctors after last-ditch talks failed, prompting Wes Streeting to accuse the medics of suffering from “delusion”. Reform UK | Reform UK’s housing spokesperson has been sacked from his role after he described the Grenfell Tower fire as a “tragedy” but said that “everyone dies in the end”. Weather | The UK is bracing for Storm Dave over Easter with winds up to 90mph expected. In depth: ‘People don’t like feeling ripped off. You might just decide you’re not prepared to pay that price’ This year a Galaxy milk chocolate extra large Easter egg is £5.97 in Asda and weighs in at 210g. Last year, the same egg was £4.98, weighing 252g – a 44% increase in the price per 100g. This is shrinkflation: the practice of reducing a product’s size, weight, or quantity while keeping the price the same, effectively raising the price per unit, acting as a hidden form of inflation. It is particularly acute in the chocolate market, where the climate crisis is affecting cocoa growers. “It’s pretty straightforward,” Zoe says. “You’ve had a huge surge in cocoa prices, then energy shocks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and now fresh disruption from conflict in the Middle East. All of that is still rolling through the economy – which is why shrinkflation feels here to stay.” *** What has caused the price increases? “What you’ve had,” Zoe says, “is a huge spike in cocoa costs.” Today the price of cocoa is about £2,500 a tonne, but in 2024 it peaked at nearly £9,000. “It’s nowhere near that peak now, but there’s a time lag because companies buy cocoa in advance on contracts. Big manufacturers would have had some cocoa at lower prices, but they also had to buy at those very high prices. There’s about an 18-month delay before price changes fully feed through,” she says. The cause? The climate crisis. “It was down to impacts on harvests in west Africa responsible for about 70% of global cacao production – particularly in Ghana and the Côte d’Ivoire. They had very difficult growing conditions, with heat, disease and unusual rainfall in recent years contributing to falling production which led to a shortage of cocoa,” explains Zoe. Some manufacturers have even shifted away from cocoa altogether, producing “chocolate-flavoured” products using alternatives such as palm or shea oil. Club and Penguin bars are no longer allowed to describe themselves as featuring chocolate. The price of cocoa may have fallen back to a more reasonable level, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the price of chocolate on our shelves will fall. *** Why do people care about the price of chocolate so much? Rather like Olympic swimming pools, football pitches or “a country the size of Wales” becoming a shorthand for various sizes, the price of a Freddo has become a kind of shorthand for inflation. (It was 10p from 2000 to 2010, but last year reached 35p, in case you were wondering) Part of that, Zoe explains, is because groceries are universal. “It’s a very crude measure of the cost of living. Retail is something everyone has an opinion on because everyone has to buy food.” That visibility helps explain why chocolate has become so culturally loaded. Alongside familiar, cyclical culture-war rows (“GCSEs are too easy!”; “That person on TV wasn’t wearing a poppy!”; “It’s Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays!”) comes the annual complaint that Easter eggs are no longer called Easter eggs. Last year Cadbury’s even had to put out a statement saying, “Rest assured that all Cadbury Easter Eggs sold in the UK reference Easter. Cadbury has used the word Easter in our marketing for over 100 years and we continue to do so.” “I think that’s a bit of a distraction,” Zoe says. “I don’t think there’s any deliberate attempt by retailers to downplay Easter. You see similar complaints about hot cross buns or mince pies. It excites people, but retailers just want to sell their product.” Calls for boycotts over pricing, portion sizes or overseas ownership crop up regularly, but “that ship has sailed”, she says. “Most big chocolate brands aren’t UK-owned anyway.” Although she recognises people will still forgo their Easter chocolate, on a point of price as well as principle. “People don’t like feeling ripped off. You might just decide in the supermarket that you’re not prepared to pay that price.” Easter eggs, she adds, have historically been loss leaders – discounted to get shoppers through the door. “If you look at Easter eggs now, they can work out at £40 to £50 per kilo. That’s why they’re getting smaller – it’s the only way to keep the shelf price at something people might pay. Even then, they’re often heavily discounted.” *** But things will get cheaper again, right? After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there was a sharp increase in shelf prices, with food inflation reaching about 19% at its peak. “There’s that old expression – prices go up like a rocket and fall like a feather,” Zoe says. “I wouldn’t be overly optimistic about big price falls. We still have inflation – it’s just not rising as quickly as it was.” And there may be more pressure to come. “We’re now looking at the possibility of another round of food price inflation, driven by supply chain disruption and energy costs linked to conflict in the Middle East.” There is also a delay built into the system. Fuel prices react quickly to shocks, but food takes longer. “With food, it’s more of a slow-burn effect. You have to buy ingredients, ship them, manufacture the product, then distribute. If disruption continues, you might see the impact in the summer.” *** Is there any way to feel better about what you’re buying? For those thinking more broadly about what they buy, Zoe points to the growth of more ethical brands. “There are companies like Tony’s Chocolonely that focus on fair supply chains.” And even the big brands, she adds, now often carry Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance certification. If you are still in the market for Easter eggs, then Tom Hunt taste-tested British supermarket ones for the Filter – a job I am slightly envious of. So whether you are marking the religious holiday, the long weekend, or simply the annual ritual of eating slightly too much chocolate, enjoy it – and have a very happy Easter. What else we’ve been reading Swedish singer-songwriter Zara Larsson has taken the music industry by storm in the past year, now fourth-biggest female artist on the global Spotify. Owen Myers speaks to Zara about her rapid rise. Patrick An in-depth look for i-D magazine by Nicolaia Rips asks – not to put too fine a point on it – are gen Z having sex? It makes me glad my formative dating years were all strictly offline. Martin Coverage of the Iran war has been dominated by missiles and oil prices. This piece about how the Iranian regime is using the death penalty to suppress dissent is a very human read on life inside Iran at the moment. Patrick Be warned, the details in this are almost unthinkable, but Kim Devins talks to Anna Moore about the murder of Bianca Devins, whose dead and mutilated body became memeified on the darkest corners of the internet. Martin Henry’s mum is constantly losing her headphones, and he is sick of buying her replacements. Is this fair? Our You be the judge series is a mother and son dispute this week. Patrick Sport Football | The French giants OL Lyonnes booked another Women’s Champions League semi-final meeting with Arsenal after they fought back with a convincing second-leg victory to eliminate Wolfsburg. World Cup 2026 | More than half of World Cup countries face extra costs as Fifa fails to agree US tax deal. Football | How 11 Premier League clubs could qualify for Europe next season. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now Film Fuze | ★★★☆☆ There are some lively if borderline ridiculous shenanigans in this London heist thriller from screenwriter Ben Hopkins and director David Mackenzie, brazening out its innate silliness with chutzpah, heavily researched police and army lingo and athletic plot contortions. It’s a violent affair of double-cross and triple-cross that ups its narrative game in the final act for the massive reveal: a head-spinning story of diamonds, some fake … yet also … some real. It all rattles along watchably enough, taking in more locations than just boring old London, though you’ll find your credulity stretched almost to breaking point. Peter Bradshaw TV Dear Killer Nannies | ★★★★☆ You’d be forgiven for thinking that we didn’t need another TV series about the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s life, and that it’s been milked for all its worth in popular culture. The new Spanish language series Dear Killer Nannies, however, manages to find a new and unexpected way into the life of an archetypal villain, which focuses very little on the bloodshed that has made his life so ripe for movies and television. In terms of genre, the show – co-created by Escobar’s son Juan Pablo Escobar – is far more coming-of-age than action. Of course, you can expect the obligatory car crashes and shootouts. But Dear Killer Nannies’ biggest gut-punches are quieter and bloodless. Micha Frazer-Carroll Music Sunn O))): Sunn O))) | ★★★★☆ Nearly seven years on from Sunn O)))’s last two albums, the Steve Albini-produced companion pieces Life Metal and Pyroclasts, the drone metal pioneers’ 10th album presents itself as a return to basics. But clearly the notion of a back-to-basics album should not be confused with that of an understated one. It’s not really an adjective that fits something that lasts the best part of 90 minutes, comes wrapped in a sleeve featuring two Mark Rothko paintings – by permission of the painter’s estate – and features somewhere between 130 and 180 tracks of guitar per song. This is music you have to submit to – that doesn’t make sense unless you give it your full and undivided attention. Alexis Petridis Games Life Is Strange: Reunion | ★★★★☆ In 2015, Life Is Strange stood out for two reasons: its female protagonists, a depressingly rare feature at the time, and its unique brand of millennial cringe. The thirtysomething Frenchmen who created this series may not have had the best grasp of the 2010s teen lexicon, but they did have a good gauge on what’s important about any coming-of-age story, and that’s the relationships between the characters. If Life Is Strange were a Netflix series, I would probably have stopped watching it a few episodes in. Instead, it’s a game I’ve been playing for more than a decade, and I care about these characters. Max and Chloe deserved this chance to end their story – and so did we. Keza MacDonald The front pages The Guardian reports on the Nato crisis, with “You have to be serious, Macron tells Trump in rebuke over Nato”. The Mirror leads on the funeral home scandal in Hull, with “Faces of the betrayed”, while the Express has “Funeral home ‘monster should rot in jail’”. The Mail leads with “Fears of ‘thousands’ hit by Britain’s worst funeral home scandal”. The Times says “Miliband set to back North Sea gasfield”. The i says “King will warn Trump: don’t turn your back on us.” The Telegraph leads with a report on shoplifting, with: “M&S attacks lawless Britain”. The Sun reports on the struggles of Artemis II with “Houston wee have a problem”. Today in Focus The families torn apart by the Minab school bombing Tess McClure reports on the US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Iran, and the families who lost loved ones in the attack. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Swifts are wheeling, screaming endurance athletes. They don’t touch the Earth for nine months of the year and fly about 14,000 miles annually – travelling from sub-Saharan Africa to nest in the UK, then back again. In Britain, they’re the sign that summer is coming or taking its leave. In between, they provide a heart-soaring display of beauty. No wonder they’re beloved. They are also in trouble, with populations declining by 68% in the UK from 1995 to 2023. But don’t despair, there are things you can do to help out our flying visitors this summer including protecting insects, helping grounded birds and buying a swift brick. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Pope Leo’s first Easter: one year in, what do Catholics think of the new pontiff?

As Leo marks his inaugural Easter as pontiff, almost a year after his predecessor’s death, some Catholics are still trying to work out what kind of pontiff he is. The feast – the most important in the church’s calendar – comes against the backdrop of war in the Middle East, sparked by the US-Israeli strikes in Iran. Leo, mild-mannered and diplomatic compared with the charismatic but often hasty and divisive Francis, has on more than one occasion indirectly rebuked the actions of US president Donald Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and on Palm Sunday delivered his strongest condemnation yet when he said God ignores the prayers of leaders with “hands full of blood”. And while popes rarely criticise world leaders by name, instead railing against their policies, Leo did name Trump on Tuesday when he told journalists he hoped the US president would find an “off-ramp” to end the war in Iran. Still, some Catholics are hoping for a more explicit moral reckoning from their pope. “I’d like to see him be a bit more vocal about what’s going on in the world, we are in such turmoil,” said Joanne Coleman, a religion teacher from Ireland. Speaking as the pope delivered his general audience in St Peter’s Square on Wednesday morning, she added: “I think he’s a good person with good intentions but he must get louder, especially with Trump.” Gabriele, who works at a souvenir shop on the corner of the square, agrees. “People say to give him time, but now is not the time for being timid. He’s an American for goodness sake – I thought they were supposed to be more direct?” Francis often condemned Trump’s policies on issues such as immigration and the climate crisis, and ruptured Vatican relations with Israel after sharply criticising its war on Gaza. In the months before being elected pontiff, when he was cardinal Robert Prevost, Leo made no secret of his distaste for the Trump government’s policies, criticising its immigration and deportation plans on social media and sharing an op-ed published in the National Catholic Reporter titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” after the US vice-president claimed Christianity’s concept of love was to prioritise one’s family before others. This led to an expectation that Leo would be just as publicly outspoken as Francis – but diplomacy was quickly favoured: Vance and Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, were hosted at the Vatican within two weeks of Leo’s election. Iacopo Scaramuzzi, the Vatican correspondent for La Repubblica newspaper, said Leo was a “pragmatic” person whose strategy is “calibrated not on the resonance of his words but on the efficacy of his actions”, pointing to the Vatican’s behind-the-scenes role as a mediator in Venezuela and Cuba and attempts to prevent US military action in both countries. “The Holy See is playing a role of mediation within its limits,” said Scaramuzzi. “It can’t present its intervention as a magic wand or the divine intervention … the Holy See is a chancellor listened to throughout the world because it has a moral authority, but also a relative power.” In July last year, Leo toughened his tone on Israel when he condemned the “barbarity” of the Gaza war, including a strike that hit the strip’s only Catholic church. Two months later, he held a private audience at the Vatican with Israeli president Isaac Herzog, in an effort to restore diplomatic attempts to end the war. Holy Week began with another clash, after Israeli police prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, an Italian archbishop with Catholic jurisdiction across Israel and the Palestinian territories, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to conduct mass on Palm Sunday. The US, France and Italy criticised the incident, and the US ambassador in Israel, Mike Huckabee, a devout evangelical Christian, described it as “an unfortunate overreach”. Israeli authorities subsequently apologised to Pizzaballa, a move Scaramuzzi said was probably due to Leo’s influence. Scaramuzzi believes the Vatican is discreetly intervening with the White House too, perhaps using the channel established with Vance and Rubio. “We’re in a very delicate period and Leo’s strategy is to use his influence and work discreetly rather than make public pronouncements. He appears soft in form, but is strong in substance.” As Leo moves cautiously, he has been relying on his college of cardinals to make harsher criticisms of the US-Israeli decision to go to war in Iran without the UN’s backing. In March, Cardinal Domenico Battaglia in Naples addressed an open letter to “the merchants of death” profiting from weapons’ sales, while the Washington DC cardinal Robert McElroy said the conflict “fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war”. And while he will refrain from naming names, he is expected to up his opposition to the war in Iran and other wars in his promotion of peace during his Easter Sunday address, which tends to be as much a political message as it is a spiritual one. “When people say they want him to be louder, what they’re saying is they want him to be Francis,” said Andrea Vreede, Vatican correspondent for NOS, the Dutch public radio and TV network. “His words might not be accompanied by fireworks or unexpected gestures, which was Francis, but at the same time Leo is not mincing his words. The problem is he’s not being heard enough, but I think since Palm Sunday, that is changing.”