Party pledges to bring all passenger rail a but not rolling stock a into public ownership as contracts with train operators expire

Labour will fully nationalise the train network within five years of coming to power, with a pledge to guarantee the cheapest fares as part of athe biggest reform of our railways for a generationa.

One of Labouras first major acts in government will bring all passenger rail into national ownership under Great British Railways as contracts with private operators expire, a plan endorsed by the architect of the Conservativesa own rail plan.

Study by World Health Organization shows more than half of children in Britain had drunk alcohol by age 13

The UK has the worst rate of child alcohol abuse worldwide, and more than half of British children have drunk alcohol by the age of 13, according to a report.

The study, one of the largest of its kind by the World Health Organization (WHO), looked at 2021-22 data on 280,000 children aged 11, 13 and 15 from 44 countries who were asked about alcohol, cigarettes and vape usage.

At least 34 arrested at University of Texas in Austin and 50 more detained at University of Southern California while House speaker jeered at Columbia University

Dozens of protesters were arrested on Wednesday while participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations across US college campuses.

At least 34 protesters, including a member of the media from a local news station, were arrested during protests at University of Texas in Austin and at least 50 more were detained by police at University of Southern California (USC).

Day-trippers will have to pay a!5 to visit Italian city under scheme designed to protect it from excess tourism

Authorities in Venice have been accused of transforming the famous lagoon city into a atheme parka as a long-mooted entrance fee for day trippers comes into force.

Venice is the first major city in the world to enact such a scheme. The a!5 (APS4.30) charge, which comes into force today, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city alivablea again.

Israel says the graves were dug by people in Gaza a few months ago but the corpses had been examined by IDF soldiers

Pictures coming in overnight from the news wires show Palestinians mourning those killed by the latest round of Israeli airstrikes on Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, an area where Israelas military has repeatedly ordered civilians to evacuate to.

A memorial at the National Cathedral in Washington on Thursday will honour the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza earlier this month.

JosA(c) AndrA(c)s, the chef and philanthropist behind the Washington-based World Central Kitchen disaster relief group, is expected to speak at the celebration of life service, Associated Press reports.

Aleema Gray used British Libraryas collection to assemble Beyond the Bassline exhibition about Black British music

Young cultural researchers need greater access to the UKas rich archival resources so untold stories can be brought to light, according to the curator of an exhibition that documents five centuries of Black British music, from the Tudor court to grime.

Dr Aleema Gray has assembled Beyond the Bassline, an expansive tour through the past 500 years of Black British musical history, which is being hosted by the British Library a the exhibition pulls from its collection a and seeks to redefine the limits of what we consider Black British music.

UK insurers say they will aim to stop monthly payments falling hardest on those who can least afford it

Insurers have promised to clean up their act after coming under fire over the apoverty premiuma, whereby customers who cannot afford to pay for car insurance in one go are charged punitive interest to spread the cost.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said its members had agreed to an action plan aimed at managing the cost of paying monthly for motor insurance. The pledges include companies giving customers clear cost comparisons between the two payment options and publishing the average finance charge.

Green Finance Institute report said further pollution could cut 12% off GDP by 2030s

The destruction of nature over the rest of the decade could trigger a bigger economic slump in Britain than those caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, experts have warned.

Sounding the alarm over the rising financial cost from pollution, damage to water systems, soil erosion, and threats from disease, the report by the Green Finance Institute warned that further breakdown in the UKas natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s.

Stretch of King Charles III path on Isle of Wight held up over concerns about crownas apriceless collectiona

The long-awaited completion of the 2,704-mile King Charles III coastal path around England is being held up by security concerns about a collection of Queen Victoriaas belongings in the seaside grounds of a former royal palace.

English Heritage is refusing access to the grounds of Osborne House, a summer home built for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1851, located on a stretch of the coast of the Isle of Wight between East Cowes and Wootton Bridge.

The new film marks the reunion of director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, who created 2002as 28 Days Later starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy

Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes will star in 28 Years Later, Danny Boyleas upcoming sequel to the classic zombie horror 28 Days Later.

The new film will mark the reunion of Boyle and writer Alex Garland, who directed and wrote the 2002 original and served as executive producers on the 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later.

Britainas first black female MP faced hostility from the media and political establishment from the start. Nearly 40 years on, she is still not giving up

Six weeks ago, the Conservativesa biggest donor, Frank Hester, was revealed by the Guardian to have spoken at a meeting of his healthcare company, the Phoenix Partnership, about one of Britainas longest-serving and most pioneering MPs. aYou see Diane Abbott on the TV and a| you just want to hate all black women,a Hester said. aI think she should be shot.a

The meeting had taken place in 2019, when Abbott was Labouras shadow home secretary. As a lifelong defender of civil liberties, a radical leftwinger and a close ally of the then party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott was notably different from previous holders of the role. But there was an anger and viciousness to Hesteras remarks, which are being investigated by the police, and also a limit to the Labour support for her that they prompted, which was very striking.

Denounced as giving a aveneer of legality to slaveholdinga and despite claims of reform, kafala laws persist, allowing bosses to abuse women, who vanish from society. This is their testimony, gathered over two years in a Guardian investigation

Condemned as dangerous and abusive, the kafala labour system not only disregards migrant workersa rights but depends on exploitation. But 10 years after Qatar was advised by the UN to abolish kafala (asponsorshipa) entirely and replace it with a regulated labour network, the system is thriving across Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf states a with the regionas most vulnerable migrants hidden behind closed doors.

Over two years, the Guardian spoke to 50 women who are or were domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar or Jordan. Their testimony reveals asection of society operating under appalling conditionsfacilitated by the stateas employment apparatus.

Exclusive: Hungaryas PM and EUas most isolated leader says he is pursuing afriendship with everybodya a particularly the former US president

Europeas most isolated leader was beaming.

Standing in a hallway in Brussels, Viktor OrbA!n, the Hungarian prime minister, spoke excitedly about the politician he hopes will change his political fortunes a Donald Trump.

Do you love reading a but all too often find yourself just scrolling through your phone or watching TV? Here is how to get lost in literature again

In the age of digital distractions, it is easy to struggle to find the time and headspace to get lost in literature. How can you get back into the habit? Librarians share the best ways to rediscover reading, make it a regular habit a and their tips for the most unputdownable books.

As the country marks 50 years since the end of fascism, people celebrate the coupas legacy but say the fight must continue

At 4am on 25 April 1974, Filipe Villard Cortez got the signal. He barricaded the door of the Monte Real air base commanderas room and cut his phone line. A few hours earlier, Portugalas Carnation Revolution had begun.

Cortez was 21 at the time, a commissioned air force officer who wanted the democratisation of Portugal and the end of its colonial rule. In the weeks before the revolution, he had become involved in meetings with the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) a the group that instigated the military coup that toppled Portugalas authoritarian Estado Novo regime, ending its war to prevent independence in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.

At community centre where politician would make himself at home, there is gratitude for his work and sadness at his death

In a community cafe in Rock Ferry, one of the most deprived parts of Wirral, a landline phone connected directly to Frank Fieldas Westminster office. It was an ever-present link to the areaas veteran MP a not that they needed it.

Field, who represented Birkenhead for 40 years, could often be found mingling with residents in the Neo Community centre, where he would make himself at home, even down to washing the dishes. Volunteers knew they were in for a long chat if he said: aShall we have a butty?a

And They Lived a| Ever After is a south Asian book of reworked European classics written by women with disabilities

A deaf Snow White, a blind Cinderella, a neurodivergent ugly duckling and a wheelchair-using Rapunzel: classic European fairytales have been reimagined in a new anthropology of stories written by south Asian women with disabilities.

aWhen disabled people donat see themselves in the world, it tells us that we donat deserve to exist, that these stories are not for us, that stories of love and friendship are not for us, and certainly not happy endings,a says Nidhi Ashok Goyal, the founder of Rising Flame, a feminist disability rights group that has produced the book, called And They Lived a| Ever After.

aI canat. There is no ramp from the room to the garden.a

aWe will find a way. I can carry you down,a says the prince.

A Wild Weekend on the 42 Acres estate near Frome offers fresh air, cosy rooms, sumptuous food and a chance to get hands dirty with some land regeneration work

The honk of the geese as they take off from the lake is comically loud, reeds quiver and the reflection of the clouds on the water is momentarily fractured. A butterfly flits by, landing on my boot. Weare on a guided walk at 42 Acres, a regenerative farm, nature reserve and retreat centre near Frome in Somerset a and the whole place feels vibrantly alive.

Our guide Tasha Stevens-Vallecillo, a font of knowledge on plants and wild food and one of the visionaries shaping the retreat, stops to point out yarrow, ribwort plantain and a giant white reishi mushroom as we walk. aThereas medicine everywhere on the land. You just need to know where to look,a she says.

After the disruptions of Covid, director David Pickard has managed to balance innovation with tradition in his final year of programming the festival

David Pickardas nine years in charge of the BBC Proms, one of the most enviable jobs classical music has to offer, have certainly not always gone as smoothly as he might have hoped. If the consequences of Brexit and the difficulties it has created for musicians wanting to perform and tour in Britain were not enough to work around, then the havoc that Covid restrictions inflicted on the 2020 and 2021 seasons made nonsense of many carefully laid plans.

Pickardas programming has sometimes seemed shaped more by a concern to ensure that every politically correct box was ticked than by determination to come up with a summer season that was as adventurous and attractive as an organisation with BBCas resources should have no problems in assembling. But first impressions of the new season, his last in charge, suggest that Pickard might finally have got close to achieving a decent balance between all the elements and the different genres that are now expected in a full Proms season.

You will laugh and may cry watching these charming youngsters prepare for their bar and batmitzvahs a but with antisemitism on the rise, this film feels bizarrely flimsy

In itself, the hour-long documentary Growing Up Jewish is a| fine. Gentle and uplifting, it follows three British girls and a boy as they prepare for their bat and barmitzvahs, the Jewish rite of passage that will mark their transition at 13 into adulthood. Dylan, whose parents were raised Orthodox but attend a Reform synagogue, is thoughtful and increasingly nervous as the day approaches. aI wouldnat describe myself as a confident person,a he says, eyes wide in his tiny, beautiful face. As with all bar and batmitzvahs, the story of the flight of the Israelites from Egypt will be central. But he worries about the deaths of the Egyptians as the sea Moses parted closes over and drowns them. He doesnat think this should be celebrated. His rabbi, Miriam, talks him through other texts and commentaries on the story that give it depth and context, and suggest it is an illustration of Godas acknowledgment of human imperfection and the need to strive for better. He incorporates all this into his speech and if there is a dry eye in the house, Iad be surprised. There wasnat in mine.

Talia has a more robust approach. Her batmitzvah is about becoming a woman (aFinding love! Doing things on your own!a), then having a party. A party that must go with a swing after the traditional service her Orthodox family want. She practises her entrance (to Europeas The Final Countdown). Lovely, says the Jewish DJ, who has obviously had much experience in these matters. aBut letas remember this is about everyone whoas been part of your life for the last 13 years.a Talia takes the point without letting it lessen her ebullience one iota. It is impossible not to want more of her. aMy parents think Iam funny,a she says, puzzled. aWhen I havenat a clue what Iave said.a If she doesnat make you laugh at least three times in the hour, I would advise you to see a doctor.

The two deputies had another chance to trade blows but it was a one-sided contest, as Angela Rayner went in for the kill

It had come billed as the great set-piece of the parliamentary week. Month even. With Rishi Sunak away in Germany a strange how the prime minister so often finds the only free slot in his diary is a Wednesday a prime ministeras questions was delegated to the two deputies.

It was the first time Oliver Dowden and Angela Rayner had had a chance to go head to head since the Daily Mail had taken a voyeuristic interest in the possibility that Labouras deputy leader had failed to pay capital gains tax on the sale of a home. There are now reportedly 12 police officers investigating the disputed APS1.4K. Obviously a terrific use of resources. Beats solving burglaries any day.

Our capital has many problems, but it is time to push back against attacks from those who neither know nor understand it

I have been reading about the most abysmal place. It is a land where children, red-faced with their own radicalism, march alongside bearded Islamists to make the streets a no-go zone, while nodding-dog liberals curse the Brexiter masses for inflating the cost of their arugula. It boasts an infinite array of pronouns; multimillion-pound townhouses whose residents demand you check your privilege; a thousand rainbow flags, but not a single St Georgeas cross. It is rife with criminal behaviour, which extends far beyond the prices charged by pub landlords. Hieronymus Bosch, put down your paintbrush: this place truly is Hell.

It also happens to be my home.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

It is perverse that adults are legally protected from violence, yet striking a child can be defended. Calls for a ban are getting louder

When a child is scared of their parents, they can spend a long time plucking up the courage to talk. I learned this during a decade of volunteering as a Childline counsellor. There is a 20-second period, in between saying your name and waiting for them to share theirs, that is the most silent the air can ever be. You could hear a pin drop or just a calleras breath echoing on the receiver. In that moment, a young girl who has been slapped by her father is deciding whether to ask for help or to hang up and try again to form the words in a week or two.

I thought of this silence as I read calls from leading doctors to ban parents from smacking their children in England and Northern Ireland. Unlike in Scotland and Wales a where over the past four years the Victorian-era law that allows it has been overturned a it is still legal for a parent or carer to hit, smack or slap their child if it is a areasonablea punishment.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist and author of Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People

Finance chiefs say higher taxes for the super-rich are key to battling global inequality and climate crisis

• Billionaires should pay minimum 2% wealth tax, say G20 ministers

When the governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund convened for the spring meetings last week, it was all about the really big questions. What can the international community do to accelerate decarbonisation and fight climate change? How can highly indebted countries retain fiscal space to invest in poverty eradication, social services and global public goods? What does the international community need to do to get back on track towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? How can multilateral development banks be strengthened to support these ambitions?

There is one issue that makes addressing these global challenges much harder: inequality. While the disparity between the richest and poorest countries has slightly narrowed, the gap remains alarmingly high. Moreover, in the past two decades, we have witnessed a significant increase in inequalities within most countries, with the income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 50% nearly doubling. Looking ahead, current global economic trends pose serious threats to progress towards higher equality.

Svenja Schulze is Germanyas minister for economic cooperation and development; Fernando Haddad is the minister of finance in Brazil; Enoch Godongwana is the minister of finance in South Africa; Carlos Cuerpo is the minister of economy, trade and business and MarAa JesAos Montero the minister of finance in Spain

Just because we find a political leader ludicrous, that doesnat mean theyare not dangerous

Thereas something I heard that I canat get out of my mind. Itas one line in a very long book full of other very good lines. This was the audiobook of Ian Kershawas seminal biography of Adolf Hitler. Itas absorbing, exhaustive, fascinating and alarming in equal measure. But there is this one line that wonat leave me alone. I was driving on a bleak day on a country road when I heard it for the first time. I instantly rewound to hear it again, and then again. And then when I got to where I was going I bought the book itself so I could see it as well as hear it. The line torments me still. And since a problem shared is a problem halved a or whatever the expression is a I ask you to bear the burden with me.

It comes in a chapter called The Beerhall Agitator, about the absurd-looking little rabble-rouseras activities during the early 1920s. As a kid I always wondered how they could all have been taken in by such an apparently ludicrous man. The awful truth, of course, was that enough people thought him ludicrous for this ludicrous man to be calamitously underestimated.

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This yearas globally inclusive lineup is part of a much deeper and longer conversation about what culture is a and who has a voice
aC/ Claudette Johnsonas art for Cotton Capital nominated for Turner prize

This is a great shortlist. The artists here make art in highly individual and different ways and none are the next hot young thing. Sixty-five-year-old Claudette Johnsonas work reflects her first generation British Caribbean background. The art of Delaine Le Bas, 58, has its origins in her Romany Traveller heritage. Born in Manila in 1983, Pio Abadas practice often focuses on the complexities of postcolonialism. A lot of the inspiration behind Jasleen Kauras art comes from her Punjabi Sikh upbringing in Glasgow, where she was born in 1986.

Their works approach the world in very different ways, obliging us to look at it from their own particular standpoints. Johnson makes large-scale pastels and Kaur works between sculpture, sound, performance and writing. Abadas art is as much involved in material culture and exhibition-making as it in having a preferred, signature medium, while Le Basas wide-ranging works feature embroidery and decoupage, sculpture, installation and performance.

This Passover, we donat need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name

Iave been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf.

The ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of God is jealous of animals? What kind of God wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself?

A desperate prime minister has given up trying to meaningfully account for the money he is putting into pre-election promises

According to the myth, Catherine IIas courtier Grigory Potemkin recruited peasants to populate fake villages erected along the Dnipro River, so the Russian empress, passing in her barge, might get a favourable impression of conditions in newly conquered Crimea. Historians doubt that it happened, but the idea of counterfeiting progress to appease the boss was plausible enough for the name aPotemkin villagea to have stuck.

In a democracy, the boss is the electorate, which leads governments to erect Potemkin policies a paper pledges puffed up as substantial measures a to convince voters that all is well. Rishi Sunakas announcement on defence spending this week is a case in point.

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Wealthy nations exploit their position as the worldas bankers to siphon off hundreds of billions from the needy

Developing nations have long complained that globalisation has enthroned western currencies in such a way as to subsidise living standards in the rich world. Last year, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa a the Brics a even talked of an alternative common currency to replace the dollar. Wealthy countries, perhaps, think that their ambitious goals for aid defuse arguments over their aexorbitant privilegea.

As TS Eliot put it, abetween the idea and the reality a| falls the shadowa. A paper out last week calculates that the bottom four-fifths of humanity finance the richest fifth to the tune of $660bn a year. The reason, say GastA3n Nievas and Alice Sodano of the Paris School of Economics, is that wealthy countries have become the worldas bankers, able to squeeze debtors. Poor nations borrow in rich-world currencies because they run deficits in energy and food, while exporting low-value goods relative to their imports. Markets are liberalised in poor countries and profits flow to the global north.

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