One minute, Dennis Biesma was playing with a chatbot; the next, he was convinced his sentient friend would make him a fortune. He’s just one of many people who lost control after an AI encounter

Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.”

Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself.

LLMs-gone-rogue dominated coverage, but had nothing to do with the targeting. Instead, it was choices made by human beings, over many years, that gave us this atrocity

On the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, 28 February 2026, American forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, hitting the building at least two times during the morning session. American forces killed between 175 and 180 people, most of them girls between the ages of seven and 12.

Within days, the question that organised the coverage was whether Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, had selected the school as a target. Congress wrote to the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, about the extent of AI use in the strikes. The New Yorker magazine asked whether Claude could be trusted to obey orders in combat, whether it might resort to blackmail as a self-preservation strategy, and whether the Pentagon’s chief concern should be that the chatbot had a personality. Almost none of this had any relationship to reality. The targeting for Operation Epic Fury ran on a system called Maven. Nobody was arguing about Maven.

Unruly behaviour, safety concerns and lost trade are forcing some landlords to act, but others argue pubs should remain for everyone

“It was like the wild west. If you had an hour, I could talk you through so many scenarios,” says Egil Johansen, the landlord of the Kenton pub in Hackney, east London. He sounds exhausted just remembering them.

Johansen is still shaken by the three-year-old who recently toddled behind the bar and tumbled down the cellar hatch while his parents sat, oblivious, in a different part of the pub.

How about a bunny – or a mini sheep – instead?

If you like chocolate and nut butter, Radek’s Chocolate is doing wonderful things with both, and its dairy free Silky Almond Chocolate Rabbit is magically creamy. Looking more like subservient mice than bunnies, NearyNógs’ dark chocolate bunnies, stuffed with salted caramel, were my favourite. A superb, successful marriage of very good Ecuadorian chocolate and caramel: worthy of a royal telegram.

Upmarket bakery Birley has an excellent little bag of various flavoured Little Chocolate Bunnies, some of which look a bit psychedelic.

I’m not a fan of spiced chocolate, but North Chocolates gets it right with its Hot Cross Bunny Bar in dark or milk (my preference: the former). Family visiting? For the black sheep, there’s Mike and Becky’s subversive Box of Mini Sheep – 70% cocoa lambs sprinkled with amaranth seeds.

Zotter has various offerings for Easter. Avoid all the fruit-flavoured ones and head for its Easter Delights: a dark milk bar with hazelnut praline, which requires discipline. It has no blocks or break lines, so there are no boundaries – not for the weak willed.

The journalists Ruaridh Nicoll and Daniel Montero report from Havana as Cuba suffers from a devastating oil blockade imposed by the US

When asked about Cuba by journalists last week, Donald Trump replied: ‘It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter, because they’re really down to the fumes.’

It was the only the latest in a series of increasingly belligerent statements from the White House about the island 90 miles off the Florida coast. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state and a Cuban-American himself, openly threatens Cuba’s communist leadership. Trump says ‘I can do anything I want with it’.

A new ruling valuably highlights the ways social media can damage very young users. But has it really ruined my whole generation?

Recently I read Girls®, a new book seeking to explore the problems posed by digital and social media to young women’s mental health. It has been praised by reviewers as “punchy” and “a starting place for young women seeking guidance”. As a young woman always open to improving myself, I rolled my sleeves up.

Written by 26-year-old Freya India, the book encourages young women to “look past what you’re being TOLD and see what you’re being SOLD”. Big tech, India says, is preying on the insecurities of its users; the recent mental health crisis in young women should be chalked up to social media, the internet and our addiction to it. It’s a debate playing out on the world stage: in a landmark case in the US, Meta and YouTube have been found liable for deliberately designing addictive products.

Isabel Brooks is a freelance writer

Israeli defence minister says Alireza Tangsiri was responsible for blocking the strait of Hormuz

• Analysis: Trump pitches peace plan but military buildups rarely veer to off-ramp

An Iranian envoy has said South Korean ships can pass through the strait of Hormuz only after coordinating with Tehran, the Yonhap News Agency has reported.

Such an agreement had to be reached in advance of the transit, said Saeed Khuzechi, the Iranian ambassador to South Korea, at a press conference in response to a question about guarantees for South Korean vessels to navigate the vital conduit for oil.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says UK economy will grow by just 0.7% this year

The conflict in the Middle East will damage the UK’s economy more than any other industrialised nation, according to analysis by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which warned over rising inflation.

In the first major assessment by a leading international thinktank of the economic impact from the attack on Iran, the OECD said the UK economy would grow by just 0.7% this year, compared with its last forecast, made in December, of 1.2% for 2026.

Reluctance to cheerlead alleged US ceasefire efforts reflects suspicion talk of peace could be another foil for escalation

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Not long after Donald Trump said the US was engaged in “strong talks” to bring the war with Iran to an end this week, Qatar took the unusual step of distancing itself from the alleged diplomatic negotiations.

Qatar was not involved in any mediation efforts, said government spokesperson Majed al-Ansari at a briefing on Tuesday night, before adding as a telling aside: “If they exist.”

Government-backed bank in talks about recompensing about 37,000 people whose money was misplaced

• UK politics live – latest updates

• Business live – latest updates

National Savings and Investments is preparing to repay hundreds of millions of pounds to its customers over missing savings, in what is expected to be the single biggest payout in the bank’s 160-year history.

The government-backed savings institution is in discussions with the Treasury to recompense about 37,000 people whose money has been misplaced due to historical failings.