Lyric, Belfast
Nancy Harris, the writer of acclaimed dark comedy The Dry, reveals her early mastery of family power games in this taut new production of her 2012 play that feels fresh and relevant

Since the premiere of this tightly wound drama of domestic noir in 2012, Nancy Harris has gone on to win acclaim for the television series, The Dry . Her sharp observations and crackling dialogue were evident in her earlier playwriting, too and, in director Rhiann Jeffery’s taut new production, feel fresh and current.

Striking a note of distress in the opening moments as a small boy raises a knife, tension escalates from there. The unannounced arrival of an Irish nanny to their elegant London home is the catalyst for exposing trouble in the marriage of pregnant ex-lawyer Hazel (Lisa Dwyer Hogg) and her globe-trotting husband Richard (Mark Huberman), a cosmetic surgeon. What ensues is so tense that the audience was audibly inhaling, as the child, Daniel (Milo Payne; alternating with Canice Doran) is drawn into the couple’s power games. The initially unflappable nanny, Annie (Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle), finds herself adjudicating between them all.

Over 250 former intelligence agency figures back letter urging prioritising return of hostages held in Gaza

Hundreds of former operatives from Israel’s intelligence agency have criticised the return to war in Gaza amid growing frustration over the failure to bring home the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

A group of over 250 former figures from the Mossad – including three ex-chiefs – gave their backing to a letter first signed by air force veterans and reservists that urged the Israeli government to prioritise bringing back the hostages over fighting the Palestinian militant group in Gaza.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

After four days of great action that ended with Rory McIlroy sealing a career grand slam , a look back at some of our favourite images from the first major of 2025

Brighton Dome
The orchestra marked its centenary in style with a superbly articulated performance of the Turangalîla Symphony that captured the emotional immediacy

The Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra marked its centenary with a performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony under their principal conductor Joanna MacGregor – only the fourth music director in the orchestra’s 100-year history. MacGregor herself is a familiar interpreter of the obbligato piano part, which here was played by her former pupil, Australian pianist-composer Joseph Havlat , while MacGregor conducted the symphony with considerable fire and brilliance. Cynthia Millar, meanwhile, was the ondes martenot soloist.

Completed in 1948, and inspired by Messiaen’s fascination with various versions of the legend of Tristan and Iseult, Turangalîla is essentially an examination of sexual and spiritual love, in which consuming desire can be seen at once as affording access to the divine and bringing in its wake the potential for suffering or destruction. Though a devout Catholic, Messiaen was no prude, and music of deep sensuality and carnality gives way throughout to ecstatic dances of cosmic jubilation and moments of incipient menace.

The great revelation from the finale of The Baldwins was that the actor had looked moderately slimmer for a bit part in 2013 and plans get back into that shape

You’d be forgiven for not watching The Baldwins, the just-concluded TLC reality series about Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and all their children. This is because it was exactly the thing you assumed it to be.

On one hand, The Baldwins desperately wanted to be a show in the traditional TLC mould; a zany happy-go-lucky series about the chaos of raising an enormous family. But on the other, it was also about what happened on the set of Rust in 2021. And so every wack-a-doodle moment of family fun found itself being counterbalanced with the explicit acknowledgment that Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in an accident that caused untold pain to countless people and has cast a long dark shadow over Baldwin’s career.

Putin is planning for this war to continue. That leaves two key questions for Ukraine’s European allies

• David Shimer was the director for eastern Europe and Ukraine on Joe Biden’s National Security Council

The war between Russia and Ukraine is approaching a historic turning point: unless the Trump administration adjusts course, US military aid for Ukraine is about to cease.

In the months before leaving office, Joe Biden made a series of decisions to augment Ukraine’s stockpiles of vital munitions. Toward the end of 2024, the Department of Defense surged hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets and hundreds of armored vehicles to Ukraine, and that December, he approved an additional $1.25bn security assistance package for Ukraine, which has enabled the continued flow of US arms ever since (with the exception of the damaging pause ordered by Donald Trump in March).

David Shimer served on the White House National Security Council from 2021-25, including as the director for eastern Europe and Ukraine and as director for Russian affairs. He is an adjunct senior research scholar at the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

A recent study shows the benefit of being a middle-aged ‘weekend warrior’ who only exercises once or twice a week

In these bleak times, glimmers of hope often seem to come out of the pages of scientific research. Take what we know about exercise. Just in the past few months, we’ve learned that moderate exercise may almost halve the risk of postpartum depression for new mothers, and that even five minutes of exercise a day could help lower blood pressure .

But what really caught my eye recently was a study from Latin America that included roughly 10,000 people who were assessed over two decades using the Mexico City prospective study. The research, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, examined cognitive function with the aim of understanding the impact of exercise on mental ability, including mild dementia. The researchers took account of confounding variables such as age, diet, smoking and alcohol intake, nightly sleep and educational attainment, which have all been shown to affect overall health and wellbeing. By controlling for these factors, the contribution of physical activity towards mild cognitive impairment was estimated.

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)

Karolina Domagalska’s film follows the tireless work of an activist group founded to battle the country’s legislation against reproductive rights

Under Poland’s near-total abortion ban, a group of courageous activists step up for women’s autonomy. Deploying a fly-on-the-wall approach, Karolina Domagalska’s dynamic film closely follows the tireless efforts of Abortion Dream Team (ADT), an advocacy group founded in 2016. Forming a staunch resistance to oppressive legislation, they provide medical consultancy and assistance to tens of thousands of women who can no longer access abortion services legally.

The hotline never stops ringing. Abandoned by the healthcare system, women from all over Poland reach out to the ADT volunteers, who guide them through these moments of uncertainty and confusion with extraordinary care. In addition to abortion pills and emergency contraceptives, the group also provides logistics support to those who need to travel to other countries for critical procedures. Every day comes not only with this flood of cries for help, but also an onslaught of threats and abuse from anti-abortion supporters. In one harrowing scene, the activists confront a group of policemen about a moving bus plastered with the faces of ADT associates, branding them as so-called murderers. The law, however, is not on their side. Justyna, one of their core members, was put on trial and convicted for distributing abortion pills.