Britons face a clear choice: fuel the division arising from all the horror abroad or refuse to let that hatred take hold in our own communities

A few weeks ago in Tel Aviv, on my first days there – before what has now become an extended stay due to the war – I stopped at a small place to grab lunch. I began my order in hesitant Hebrew, thinking I was doing well, but after a moment that exposed my linguistic limitations, the man behind the counter switched to English to ask where I was from. “London,” I said. “Ah,” he replied with a chuckle. “Londonistan.”

With the easy certainty of someone stating a fact, he then told me that London is no longer safe for Jews. I brushed it off at the time. It feels harder to dismiss now.

The Home Office has blocked new study visas for applicants from Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar and Cameroon. It means many women will miss out on life-changing opportunities – as five female academics explain

• Six students challenge Home Office visa ban on four countries

Shahira Sadat was thrilled. She had received an invitation to interview for the prestigious Chevening scholarship. “I cannot describe the joy I felt,” she says. “I was hopeful. I allowed myself to dream.” The scholarships are funded by the UK government, enabling future leaders from all over the world to pursue their studies in the UK – most often a one-year master’s degree – developing skills they can use in their home countries.

In recent years, under Taliban rule, Sadat’s home country of Afghanistan has become increasingly hostile to women and girls, and the mother-of-one’s recent career achievements have happened behind closed doors. She is a software engineer, with an interest in AI and how it might help reduce the education gender gap and the digital exclusion of young people of both genders. Her skills could help generations of Afghan women, including her own daughter.

Every PM hopes to emerge having said nothing that makes the news, and with Iran centre-stage Keir played a blinder

What a difference a week makes. At last week’s prime minister’s questions, Keir Starmer tried to persuade us he knew less than he did. His memory was so bad that he could barely remember who Peter Mandelson was, let alone why he had appointed him as ambassador to the US. Fast forward to Monday’s appearance before the liaison committee, the supergroup of select committee chairs, and Keir was desperate to convince us he knew more than he did. He had the inside track on Iran. He was in control. He also wasn’t altogether convincing.

Mind you, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Starmer. The whole point of being prime minister is that you’re expected to know more than the rest of us. And most of the time you do. State secrets are your life blood. Only, just occasionally the veil slips. Having threatened to obliterate Tehran’s power plants just days earlier, on Monday morning Donald Trump announced on Truth Social – along with a strange witch reference – that he was going to delay the bombardment for five days as constructive talks with the Iranian regime were taking place.

It lit up the 1970s with its nihilistic tale of a hippie band imploding in a trail of drugs, booze and violence. What can it tell us about the music business today? Writer David Hare and wild-child rocker Self Esteem plug in

The first time Rebecca Lucy Taylor read David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth ’n’ Smiles, she says, her “mind was blown”. “I couldn’t believe it,” says the artist better known to music fans as Self Esteem. “The way I feel about my actual life is so mirrored in this play. It just mirrors what the music industry today is like.”

In a sense, that’s a surprising thing to say. You could view Teeth ’n’ Smiles as something of a period piece. Set in 1969, it is the saga of a band imploding in a mass of drugs, alcohol and violence backstage at a Cambridge May ball – inspired, Hare says, by the experience of seeing a “grumpy, angry, miserable” Manfred Mann going through the motions at a similar event while he was a student at Jesus College. There is debate among the band’s members about the late-60s countercultural “acid dream”, and the attendant belief in rock music as a revolutionary force capable of inciting social change. But the play seems less a product of the era in which it is set than that in which it was written. It is soaked in the disillusionment and broiling discontent of the mid-70s, when the countercultural dream was unequivocally over.

A new wave of hyper-regional hoagies, subs and pizzas are taking over Manchester’s food scene. But are they really as American as apple pie?

It’s just after midday, on a chilly, wind-whipped Friday in central Manchester, and an ever-growing crowd of people in puffer jackets is spilling out from a Chinatown service alley. A few yards away, there’s another huddle of bundled-up figures, dipping into capacious paper bags to set up an improvised picnic on the junction boxes outside a corner pub. Fistfuls of crinkle-cut chips are snaffled, cans of pop are sipped, and, despite the pervading scent of bin juice and fried chicken, enormous, truncheon-sized sandwiches are unwrapped and messily dispatched.

It looks a little like a staged re-enactment of Covid-era dining practices. Or, perhaps, a group of heavily refreshed, pub-crawling stags, fuelling up with all the restraint and decorum of town-centre pigeons. But if you are even slightly familiar with Manchester and its recent food scene, then you will know that this is a regular sight at Fat Pat’s: a takeaway operation run out of a literal hole-in-the-wall that has turned word-of-mouth, social media virality and a studiedly underground brand identity into one of the city’s biggest success stories.

The US president has extended by five days his deadline to ‘hit and obliterate’ Iran’s power stations and energy infrastructure if Tehran does not allow shipping to move freely. Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey discuss what is behind this change of tone and the impact the uncertainty will have on the cost of living in the UK.

Plus, with just over six weeks until the local elections, they talk through what to watch as the results come in

Iranian parliament speaker says ‘no negotiations’ were held with US, as Trump postpones strikes on power plants for five days

• Israel launches new strikes on Tehran as Trump pauses Iran energy attacks

British prime minister Keir Starmer is set to chair an emergency meeting on the economic fallout from the war in Iran on Monday, with chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey also attending, the UK government has said.

Financial markets face another turbulent week after Iran said it would strike its Gulf neighbours’ energy and water systems if Donald Trump followed through on his threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t fully open up the crucial strait of Hormuz.

Topics expected to be covered are the economic impact of the crisis on families and businesses, energy security and the resilience of industry and supply chains alongside the international response.

New online accounts on Polymarket platform betting a total of $70,000 suggest ‘some degree of inside info’

Several accounts on the online platform Polymarket laid bets on a US-Iran ceasefire over the weekend that appeared to show signs of insider knowledge, according to experts.

Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire. They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.

After Tehran targeted the UK-US base on Diego Garcia, Israel’s military said European capitals were also at risk

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed at the weekend that Iran had weapons able to travel about 4,000km (2,500 miles), posing an immediate threat to European cities including London.

The comments came after it emerged Iran had targeted the joint UK–US military base on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands.

Met police say authenticating claim of responsibility by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia is ‘priority’

• Golders Green ambulance arson attack – live updates

Security agencies are investigating whether a group linked to Iran is behind an arson attack on four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity in north London.

The Metropolitan police said efforts to authenticate a claim of responsibility made by a group known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) were a priority as they sought to track three hooded people caught on CCTV at the scene.