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From MasterChef to Noma, and street food to the rise of female chefsBy the time OFM launched in April 2001, Gordon, Heston, Hugh, Jamie and others were already on a spectacular trajectory. These were the decades of reality TV so we didn’t just watch them, we took an unshakeable interest in their personal lives. Nobody knew what Delia Smith did when the cameras were off. Keith Floyd never invited us into his beautiful home, but the cooks we now knew by their first names were all over the tabloids and the new gossip magazines. A slightly bewildered Delia Smith expressed it well when, in 2008, she said of Gordon Ramsay: “That’s not teaching. I like him when he does his recipes, but I’m not keen on his swearing.” Continue reading...

The Brazilian state has seen nearly 800 police-caused deaths in nine months, with poor city communities raided almost dailyNearly 800 people were killed by police in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro in the past nine months, as raids remain a terrifying routine for favela families – despite a supreme court ruling to halt incursions during the coronavirus pandemic.New figures show that between June 2020 and March 2021, 797 people were killed in Rio state, 85% in the city of Rio and surrounding metropolitan region. Continue reading...

For OFM’s 20th anniversary, we introduce four up-and-coming chefs – Pamela Yung, Hasan Semay, Adejoké Bakare and Lorna McNee – and their brilliant recipesHead chef at Flor and Asap Pizza, London Continue reading...

Rich countries have key role to play in bringing outbreak to a halt, says Wellcome Trust head

Officials ‘astonished’ at level of public engagement a year into the pandemic

She is as well known for her dizzying talent (Stormzy hailed her as a ‘legend’) as she is for her privacy. So, as Little Simz releases her fourth album, why is she finally opening up?It’s a drab afternoon on an industrial estate in London and I’m sitting, somewhat awkwardly, in the back of a parked car with Little Simz. The British-Nigerian rapper-singer-actor, 27, has spent the morning doing a photoshoot. The combination of closed cafés (England is still in lockdown) and persistent March drizzle has meant we’ve ended up in the car, an enormous 4x4 with TV screens built into the seats. Still wearing full makeup from the shoot, Simz is swaddled in comfortable grey sweatpants and a black, shiny puffer jacket. “People think I’m rude, or antisocial, or awkward, because I’m not chatty,” she says.Simz, full name Simbiatu Ajikawo, doesn’t waste her words. When she talks, she is purposeful, precise, politely withholding. Yet from its overture, her fourth studio album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, reveals an interior world of cinematic proportions. “I’m definitely not the greatest at opening up,” she says today. But there are two Simz: the one that is by nature reticent and the Simz who wants to show you her universe. Continue reading...

Invited to dinner to muse on the EU, I found little to suggest a latent BrexiterIt was a Monday evening in early 2004 when a group of Europhiles and Europhobes gathered for a Buckingham Palace dinner at the Duke of Edinburgh’s invitation. We were there to discuss the proposed treaty for a European constitution, just written and whose ratification across Europe was about to begin. I had been one of 12 European “thinkers” who had made joint recommendations on what European values should be in its preamble, hence my presence. What followed was one of the most surreal evenings of my life, brought to mind by the three German princes the Duke of Edinburgh insisted should attend yesterday’s funeral.Evidently he cared about the issue, hosting the dinner after an Atlantic night flight and two public engagements earlier that day. Conversation over pre-dinner drinks was wary – Labour MP Austin Mitchell relieved our awkwardness by switching the lights on his union jack bow tie on and off – and eventually we were ushered through long corridors to a banqueting room, lit by low chandeliers and guttering candles. Continue reading...

Forcing Syrians to return home shows the left apeing the far right in a race to the bottomWhat do you call a government so hostile to refugees that it wants to send them back to a country that tortures and “disappears” its critics on a mass scale? Reactionary? Monstrous? In Denmark, they call it social democratic.Denmark is the first European nation to insist that Syrian refugees should return to their home country because Bashar al-Assad’s regime is now in control and there is little conflict. It has revoked the residency permits of dozens of Syrian refugees and started detaining those it wants to deport. Yet it cannot actually deport anyone because it has severed diplomatic relations with Damascus. Assad’s regime is, apparently, despotic enough for Copenhagen to abjure relations but not so bad that Syria is unsafe for returning refugees. Continue reading...

Rowan Moore’s son Felix came out as transgender to his family seven years ago, when he was 19. Here they address some of the significant themes in the discussion about trans rights todayFelix Moore Upon his death in 1989, retired jazz singer Billy Tipton, who lived as a man for more than 50 years, was discovered to be transgender. His story generated sensationalist press attention, but it also drew the notice of the trans community. “Men like Billy,” trans activist Lou Sullivan wrote at the time, “prove that we as FTMs [female to males] are not a bizarre recent phenomenon.”Here I am as a trans man today, still having to explain and justify my identity. Growing up, I couldn’t have been less like the popular idea of a trans man. I played with Sylvanian Families, not monster trucks. I loved sparkly dresses and anything purple. I was a girly child who grew into a girly man. People sometimes expect trans people to embody a stereotypical image of their gender identity, but in my experience trans people are much more likely to be creative and unconventional in how we express gender. This is even more true among people I know who are both autistic and trans, myself included. Continue reading...

Israel’s prime minister is creating a climate of fear and crisis as his best hope for holding on to powerIn a region famous for warmongers and tyrants, who is the most dangerous man in the Middle East right now? Not Bashar al-Assad, the isolated gauleiter of Damascus. Not disgraced Mohammed bin Salman, the princely Saudi executioner. Not even Turkey’s misogynist-in-chief, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the local neighbourhood bully.Step forward Benjamin Netanyahu, easily the most convincing contender for the “danger man” title. Israel’s prime minister has outdone himself of late, threatening war with Iran, ordering one-off attacks, assassinating a top scientist, sabotaging international fence-mending, and defying the US, his country’s indispensable ally. Continue reading...

The ‘league table’ is changing and it’s not over yetLast April, one of us (DS) wrote an article saying it was too soon to compare how lethal the pandemic had been in different countries. Nearly a year later, has the time come?Unfortunately, countries have different ways of counting; Sciensano in Belgium counts both suspected and confirmed deaths from Covid-19, while Hungary counts only hospital deaths within lab confirmation. So the Office for National Statistics ignores these labels and just looks at excess mortality compared with the 2015-2019 average, standardising the figures to a “standard European” population, so accounting for differences in population size and age structure. Continue reading...

The dangers women face make your anxiety understandable, says Mariella Frostrup. However, you must – as we all must – keep worries to a minimum in order to live lifeThe dilemma I have four lovely children, all now adults and left home. I rarely worry about my sons, but I constantly, constantly fret about my daughters, who both live in shared houses in distant cities.They are very good about keeping in touch, and sympathetic to my anxiety, but it is reaching unmanageable proportions. For example, if I look at WhatsApp, I might see that one daughter was on it, say, 30 minutes ago, but the other hasn’t been on it all day. I will then look to see when they were last active on Facebook. If she hasn’t been active on Facebook either, I will telephone her. Continue reading...

Patrick Radden Keefe delivers a damning account of Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin and a family that grew richBy 2016, opioids had torn a piece out of Appalachia and the rust belt. The deep drop in life expectancy among white Americans without four-year degrees would no longer be ignored. OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s highly addictive painkiller, helped elect Donald Trump.Related: George Floyd's girlfriend shared his opioids pain – Derek Chauvin refused to see it Continue reading...

Ex-CNN reporter and founder of the news site Rappler on life under the relentless social media assault of the Duterte regimeAs terrible as the events were that played out on Capitol Hill on 6 January, Maria Ressa admits to feeling “a small amount of relief” about them. An ex-CNN bureau chief, and now the founder of her own news organisation, Rappler, she had spent the past two years sounding a warning about what she’d seen happen in her native country, the Philippines.There, a Facebook-fuelled tsunami of lies had assisted an authoritarian into power. And she had seen where that had led: to opponents of the state being killed in their homes or turning up dead in ditches. As a Filipino American with a foot in both countries – she calls herself “the first of the CNN hybrids” – she was perfectly positioned to warn America about what happens when a populist president is allowed to spread out-of-control lies across a vast, unregulated tech platform. “A lie told a million times becomes a fact,” she repeated again and again. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison flags changes to international travel and hotel quarantine but says he is in ‘no hurry’ to reopen bordersScott Morrison says Australia is in “no hurry” to reopen international borders, but vaccinated Australians may be able to travel for “essential” purposes in the second half of the year, with the possibility of quarantining at home on return.Just days after saying Australia would “have to get used to dealing with 1,000 cases a week or more” if the international border restrictions were lifted, the prime minister said on Sunday there was no rush to reopen Australia to the world. Continue reading...

Photographs of the Queen in splendid isolation at Prince Philip’s funeral make a suitably sombre sendoff for Sunday papersImages of the Queen sitting alone with her thoughts at the funeral of Prince Philip dominate the front pages of the Sunday papers.Most titles chose to illustrate their royal coverage with pictures of the monarch in the otherwise-deserted quire of St George’s Chapel in Windsor, during a ceremony pared back dramatically due to social distancing. Continue reading...

Two men, aged 23 and 37, died after being shot in Caboolture on Saturday afternoonPolice have charged a man with murder after a fatal double shooting and a manhunt in Queensland.Police say two men, aged 23 and 37, died after they were shot on Lower King Street at Caboolture, north of Brisbane, just after 5pm on Saturday. Continue reading...

Content of at least one phone call about collapsed finance firm with ex-PM is yet to be releasedChancellor Rishi Sunak is facing mounting pressure over his private phone calls with David Cameron about the scandal-hit finance company Greensill Capital, amid claims that their discussions may have breached the ministerial code.Questions over the extent of Cameron’s lobbying of serving ministers ballooned last week, with seven inquiries now announced into various aspects of the new lobbying scandal. Two senior Treasury officials will be asked this week why Greensill was granted a series of meetings with the department, as it repeatedly tried and failed to gain access to an emergency Covid loans scheme. Continue reading...

UK put 600,000 vaccine doses into arms on Friday; Global death toll tops 3m

Their accents, children and homes are in one country, but people jailed for more than 12 months are being sent back to a land they don’t know, where ‘everything that made you who you were is gone’On an overcast day at Brisbane airport in early February, a plain white Airbus 319 with an Australian flag marking on the tail was waiting on the tarmac.Boarding the aircraft was Taryn O’Dowd, a New Zealand citizen who had lived in Australia for 32 years. Continue reading...

Disagreement over Alexander Sosonyuk, who was allegedly caught trying to obtain sensitive information, escalates tensions after troop buildupRussia on Saturday said it would expel a Ukrainian diplomat, prompting an immediate pledge of retaliation from Kyiv, further escalating tensions after Moscow’s troop buildup on Ukraine’s eastern flank.The detention of a Ukrainian consul in the second city, St Petersburg, comes at a time of global concern over a possible repeat of Moscow’s 2014 aggression, when Russia annexed the peninsula of Crimea and backed separatists in Ukraine’s east. Moscow claimed that the diplomat had been caught “red-handed” trying to obtain sensitive information. Continue reading...

State television identifies suspect in 11 April sabotage as 43-year-old Reza Karimi and vows to repatriate himIran has named a suspect in the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility that damaged centrifuges there, saying he had fled the country “hours before” the sabotage happened.While the extent of the damage from the 11 April sabotage remains unclear, it comes as Iran tries to negotiate with world powers over allowing the US to re-enter its tattered nuclear deal and lift the economic sanctions it faces. Continue reading...

Prince Philip’s funeral was an unusual affair, watched by the monarch from her familiar seat in the family chapelNearly everything about the setting itself must have felt touchingly familiar. Just before 3pm the Queen took her usual place in the corner oak pew under the ancient banners of the Knights of the Garter in St George’s Chapel, Windsor – her family’s “home” church. It was a seat she had occupied countless times for Sunday communion, for christenings and weddings and funerals. Only this time, for what must have seemed the first time, her consort and husband, her “strength and stay” of almost 75 years was not sitting beside her. During yesterday’s funeral service for Prince Philip, the monarch remained steadfast as ever, head down, perhaps grateful for her black mask, with only the ever-present cameras for company. In her bubble of one, however, socially distanced from the sparse congregation around her, it went without saying that she had never looked quite so alone.Until last March the only funerals that many of us had ever watched on screens had probably been royal ones. Princess Diana’s, maybe the Queen Mother’s. The long months of pandemic have made virtual send-offs horribly commonplace, though. Death and farewells have come to Zoom and Facebook Live. That fact gave a particular poignancy to yesterday’s events, attended by only 30 of Philip’s family and closest friends, instead of the planned 800. Continue reading...

Princes downplay rift drama as brothers are seen talking after the service at St George’s chapelThere was speculation about what they would wear, where they would stand in the funeral procession and, as royal biographer Andrew Morton put it, whether they might have “a damn good row and make up”. But in the end, Prince William and Prince Harry put on a front of stoic dignity at their grandfather’s funeral.Related: Queen sits alone as she bids farewell to Prince Philip Continue reading...

Employees were demanding unpaid wages and a pay rise at a Chinese-backed power plant, officials and police saidAt least five people were killed and dozens injured in Bangladesh after police opened fire on a crowd of workers protesting to demand unpaid wages and a pay rise at a Chinese-backed power plant, officials and police said.Police opened fire after about 2,000 of the protesters began hurling bricks and stones at officers at the construction site of the coal-fired plant in the south-eastern city of Chittagong, local police official Azizul Islam told Reuters. Continue reading...

Mourners limited to 30 and only the pallbearers not socially distanced for service at Windsor Castle. Follow live updates

Actor did not want her professional or charitable work overshadowed by illness in final weeks, says friendHelen McCrory, the Peaky Blinders actor who died from cancer on Friday, “swore friends to secrecy” as she underwent treatment, her friend Carrie Cracknell has revealed.Cracknell, who directed McCrory in a 2014 production of Medea, said the performer did not want her illness overshadowing her family and professional life. McCrory’s husband, Damian Lewis, announced the news that his wife died peacefully at home aged 52. Continue reading...

Social distancing, face masks and only 30 mourners at service for the Duke of EdinburghWhen future historians come to retell the story of the pandemic, the image of the Queen sitting alone, masked and in mourning, will surely rank among the most poignant.The Duke of Edinburgh’s final farewell at St George’s Chapel was like no other royal funeral. And though not a family like any other, with mourners limited to 30 and only the pallbearers not socially distanced, it was in no small way symbolic. Continue reading...

Richard Eyre, the National Theatre director who cast the actor in some of her earliest roles, pays tribute to her after her deathPart of the tragedy of Helen McCrory dying at such a young age, leaving a husband and two young children, is that professionally she had everything to look forward to. She had established herself as a very considerable actor in the theatre and on film and television.She had a brightness about her, a luminosity: she was, in short, a star. She lit up a stage or a screen – you knew you were in the presence of a force of character and talent. Continue reading...

Italy’s former interior minister says he was doing his job by refusing to allow ship with 147 people on board to dockA judge in Sicily has ordered the former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini to stand trial for refusing to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019, keeping the people at sea for days.Judge Lorenzo Iannelli set 15 September as the trial date during a court hearing in Palermo, LaPresse news agency reported. Continue reading...

Former PM took part in virtual call with ambassador and financial firm’s representatives in NovemberDavid Cameron lobbied a senior German official on behalf of Greensill Capital as an investigation into the financial firm’s banking division in Germany was accelerating, it has emerged.The former prime minister took part in a virtual call with the German ambassador in November in which senior Greensill representatives discussed introducing Earnd, a system that allows staff to draw their salary in instalments, to the country’s civil service. Continue reading...

The singer, 53, on Mardi Gras parades, When Harry Met Sally, feeling thankful each day and the females in his familyI’d be completely different if I hadn’t grown up in New Orleans – there was music everywhere. So much of it was live. You could walk down a street at any time of the day or night and there would be people making music: a tuba player, horn players, bass drum players. And there would be brass bands and people dancing. All this was normal to me, and it wasn’t until I left that I realised how fortunate I’d been to be surrounded by this incredible diversity of live music. You feel its energy in the air.Both my parents were lawyers. My father was the district attorney of New Orleans and my mother was a judge, so they were both in public service. From them I got ideas about trying to be vocal about change. The first thing I did, in 1993, was to start a Mardi Gras parade inclusive of everyone – men, women, black, white – because I thought people should be able to celebrate together. The parade is called Krewe of Orpheus. Today it’s the biggest, most beautiful parade in the whole of the New Orleans Mardi Gras. Continue reading...

A 46-year-old from Neasden, north-west London, will appear before Westminster magistrates on SaturdayA man has been charged with trespassing at Buckingham Palace with a knife.Police arrested a 46-year-old man on Thursday who was attempting to enter through a gate into a service yard at the rear of the royal residence in London. Continue reading...

Interviews undermine the US state department claim that extremist group has links to Islamic StateInsurgents in Mozambique have abducted hundreds of women and girls, forcing many into sexual relations with fighters and possibly trafficking others elsewhere in Africa, interviews with some who have escaped the extremists reveal.Most of the abducted women are under 18, with the youngest about 12 years old. They are being held in a series of camps and bases across insurgent-controlled territory in north-eastern Mozambique. Continue reading...

It is not known if those freed to mark new year holiday include activists seized since military coupMyanmar’s junta has pardoned and released more than 23,000 prisoners to mark the traditional Thingyan new year holiday, but it is not known if they include pro-democracy activists detained after the military seized power in February.The releases were announced on the state broadcaster, MRTV, which said the junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, had pardoned 23,047 prisoners, including 137 foreigners who will be deported. He also reduced sentences for others. Continue reading...

Hundreds of Christian clergy say proposal could ‘bring about the end of liberal democracy’

Cross-party group says people should be housed in community rather than ‘unacceptable’ camp in KentA cross-party group of parliamentarians has urged the home secretary to close a controversial military barracks being used to house asylum seekers with immediate effect, and instead house them in the community where they can receive appropriate support.Members of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on immigration detention, which has more than 40 members, have written to Priti Patel to say they “entirely agree” with serious concerns aired by the then independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Bolt, about conditions at Napier barracks in Kent. Continue reading...

The author and journalist on the cold war, his Adam’s apple, and nearly being deportedBorn in England and raised in Canada, Malcolm Gladwell, 57, has written for the New Yorker since 1996. In 2000 he published The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference, the first of six bestsellers. His new book, The Bomber Mafia, is out on 27 April. He lives in New York with his partner.What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Two 15-minute meals that are perfect for WFH lunches: a quick-cook pasta with a zippy fusion sauce, and an all-day brunch of buttery asparagus and eggs on toastThe days are getting longer and our freedom to roam outside is getting greater. As a result, the amount of time we want to spend indoors cooking is perhaps getting smaller. But lunch hour continues, every day, for those still working from home. Eat we must, happily, so cook we must, too – we might just want to spend a bit less time doing it. So here are two 15-minute meals to help you cook, eat and then get outside. Continue reading...

The ceremony will reflect the duke’s military affiliations and personal elements of his lifePrince Philip’s funeral will take place on Saturday afternoon within the grounds of Windsor Castle, to avoid crowds gathering during the coronavirus pandemic, but will be televised to the nation.The congregation will wear masks and members of the royal family will be wearing morning coats with medals or day dress. Continue reading...

Bustle Digital Group, which bought Gawker in 2018, is to bring back the website with Leah Finnegan as editor. Will it work?For five years, the pioneering gossip website Gawker has lain dormant with a blunt message from co-founder Nick Denton: “It is the end of an era.”Now Gawker, which came to represent the freedoms and excesses of web-only publishing before it was closed down following a convoluted $140m libel case brought by the wrestler Hulk Hogan in 2016, is set to be rebirthed (again). Continue reading...

With mass events on the horizon, nightclubs are getting ready to welcome ravers again. But is there such a thing as a Covid-safe crowd – and will it be as fun?Robert remembers the first time he went to Fabric nightclub in London. “It was a few months after it opened, in 1999. I remember looking down from a balcony at the crowd below and being mesmerised by it all.” As the mass of people throbbed, he found “the darkness and that damp-earth smell of sweating bodies, skanking and grinding” completely intoxicating.The particular joy of big clubs, Robert argues, is that despite their size (Fabric can hold 1,600 people), they are made for close contact. “They are about as far from social distancing as we can get with our clothes on,” he says. Now 48, Robert used to go to Flesh, one of the UK’s first gay club nights, at the Haçienda in Manchester. “As a gay man in that period, you were hard pressed to find space and acceptance. I felt I could be myself on that dancefloor. Clubbing became a form of self-expression. It was about being close – physically and ideologically – to others who were having the same experience. I’ve missed that a lot,” he says. In recent years, clubbing has become a less frequent occurrence for him: “But before the pandemic I’d go out at least once a month.” Continue reading...

Instead of looking south, campaigners are looking north, to the egalitarian models of small Nordic nationsWhat kind of country should Scotland be and how can it prosper? Surprisingly, given the swell of Scottish opinion in favour of independence, these questions aren’t much discussed. A swirling mist obscures the road beyond the referendum, occasionally lit up by neon signs reading “green” and “fair” and “free”. Independence, like Brexit, is predicted by its supporters to have a galvanising effect. Few are as gung-ho as Alex Salmond, who estimates that Scotland is one of the world’s richest countries, the “Saudi Arabia of renewables”. Nonetheless, despite the contrary evidence of a recent economic forecast by the London School of Economics, a view prevails that any damage will be easily overcome. In the words of the scientist and engineer Hillary Sillitto, there has always been “lots of talk about a better, fairer society [and] none about where the wealth was going to come from to pay for it”.Last month Sillitto and two other Edinburgh-based writers – another reputable scientist, Ian Godden, and a nurse-turned-entrepreneur, Dorothy Godden – published an online edition of their book, Scotland 2070, which aims to rectify what the writers identify as “the poor quality and short-term perspective of Scotland’s political debate”. Avowedly detached from political parties, they warn against conventional solutions such as inward investment and low corporate taxes: the first is a poor substitute for the development of local industry, and the second is already well-catered for by Ireland. Continue reading...

It’s the song, not the album, that rules modern pop – but payment for writers is dysfunctional at best. We urgently need a new modelIn 1973, Abba were invited to submit a song as Sweden’s entry to the Eurovision song contest. We had a perfect song: it was called Hasta Mañana. It was a ballad, it was catchy, it sounded like the kind of thing that did well in the Eurovision song contest. So we didn’t enter it. We chose Waterloo instead, which sounded like nothing we had ever heard at Eurovision before. That was the point: I thought we might come sixth or seventh, but people who saw the show – people outside Sweden, who had never heard of Abba – would remember us. It was a huge, calculated risk, and it paid off in a way we could never have imagined.Related: Songwriters fight to be heard in streaming revenues debate Continue reading...

Lay member of synod says bishops should be ‘moved out of palaces’ and their salaries cut to match priestsChurch of England bishops should be forced to declare extra earnings and outside interests, according to radical proposals submitted to the church’s general assembly.The call for bishops to state any income on top of their salaries and membership of clubs, organisations and political parties on a register of interests comes amid growing concern over cronyism and conflicts of interest at the heart of government. Continue reading...

Men brought to Australia for medical care removed as Kangaroo Point hotel owners reclaim possessionNineteen asylum seekers brought to Australia from Nauru and Manus Island for medical care have been forcibly removed from the the Kangaroo Point Central Hotel and Apartments in Brisbane, which was used for their long-term detention, supporters say.It is understood they have been taken to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation Centre on the outskirts of the city, but it is unclear if the men will be held there long term or be moved to another centre or another state. Continue reading...

Boy, 2, suffers bites to leg, arm, neck and shoulder and lacerations on back of headA two-year-old boy was airlifted to hospital after being mauled by a dingo on Fraser Island when he wandered away from a house while his family was asleep on Saturday.The boy suffered wounds to his leg, arm, the base of his neck, his shoulder and also had a laceration at the base of his head, a Fraser Island paramedic said. Continue reading...

In his first in-person summit since taking office, the US president hosts Yoshihide Suga as part of efforts to face down BeijingJoe Biden has sought to present a united front with Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, to counter an increasingly assertive China as the US president held his first face-to-face White House summit since taking office.Biden hosted Suga for talks on Friday that offered the Democratic president a chance to work further on his pledge to revitalise US alliances that frayed under his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Italian restrictions to ease in many areas from 26 April; Latvia offers vaccinations following hesitancy in older population