A growing divide over benefits and funding could see the party lose out in Wales for the first time in a century

Over the past few weeks, there have been growing tensions between Keir Starmer’s UK Labour and its (apparent) partners in Welsh Labour. If you live in Cymru, this story may have passed you by. If you live outside Wales, it almost certainly will have. But this really matters. It matters to the people of Wales because it is fundamental to their futures. It also matters to the wider UK because it underscores the direction of political travel for the next half-decade. It also has serious ramifications for the future of the union as we know it.

So what’s the issue? Well, you could say that it has all come to a head with the UK government’s plans for benefits cuts. While people all over England will feel the pain of the changes to personal independent payment (Pip) and universal credit, Wales will be hit disproportionately hard. In Cymru there are 275,000 people receiving Pip . This is 11% of our working-age people, compared with 7% in England. Therefore, this political choice is going to hit the part of the UK that most consistently votes Labour the hardest.

Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist

Nearly five months ago, the Indigenous land rights defender went out to herd animals in the forest and vanished. Her family say she had been threatened – and no trace of her has been found

Julia Chuñil Catricura’s home is a wooden cabin nestled within the dense foliage of the hilly Valdivian rainforest. It has no running water, electricity or mobile phone coverage. It is a modest setup – for Chuñil, living here was an act of resistance, a vindication of her rights.

Chuñil, 72, is Mapuche, Chile ’s largest Indigenous group. A land defender who fought for Mapuche land rights and practised ancestral farming methods and medicinal techniques, she moved to this spot in 2015.

South Wales officer was driving van that followed Harvey Evans, 15, and Kyrees Sullivan, 16, in May 2023

A police officer who was driving a van that followed two teenage boys before they died in an e-bike crash in Cardiff, triggering hours of disorder in the city, will not face charges, prosecutors have said.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it had decided not to bring criminal charges against the South Wales police officer following the deaths of Harvey Evans, 15, and Kyrees Sullivan, 16, in Ely, Cardiff, on 22 May 2023.

The actor said he was ‘barbecued’ after a complaint on the set of Being Mortal in 2022, which shut down production on the film

Bill Murray has said he feels he was “barbecued” by a sexual misconduct allegation on the set of a 2022 comedy, which led to the film being cancelled and his reaching a financial settlement with the woman who accused him of straddling her and kissing her.

“It wasn’t like I touched her,” said Murray to the New York Times in a new interview. “I gave her a kiss through a mask. And she wasn’t a stranger.”

Murray defended his actions to the paper, saying that the complainant was “someone that I worked with, that I had had lunch with on various days of the week”. The actor put his actions down to trying to be amusing in a strained and claustrophobic setting.

A big, delicious, melting mush of creamy, garlicky aubergine (even if it does resemble a wet dishcloth)

I have joked in the past about the peeled flesh of a baked aubergine and how, when sitting in a sieve balanced over the sink, it looks like a damp, grubby dishcloth. Well, a week or so ago, I lived this joke when I reached for a dishcloth that was, rather oddly, sitting on a plate, and for a nanosecond I thought that things really had reached a low for the cloth to be not just grubby, but slimy. That was before I realised I was about to pick up an aubergine and future baba ganoush.

Other things occurred that evening, too, and in the end the aubergine was put in Tupperware with some peeled cloves of garlic and a squeeze of lemon (which I hoped might preserve it), and the box put in the fridge. It should not be a confession for a food writer whose job is to be resourceful, but I am going to admit it anyway: every time I put sealed Tupperware in the fridge, I wonder if it will get out in time. Quite often, it doesn’t, which also confirms a friend’s observation that putting Tupperware in the fridge is the equivalent of telling someone you will call them back, then forgetting. Happily, this box did come out in time (the very next day, in fact), and the contents – which still looked like a dishcloth, but a welcome one – had almost become baba ganoush.

Ex-secretaries of state and ministers could also be required to take part in hearings into Manston scandal

A roll call of former prime ministers, secretaries of state and ministers could be called to give evidence into a scandal at a controversial processing centre in Kent for small boat arrivals, according to an internal government memo disclosed to the Guardian, following a legal challenge.

The inquiry into Manston, a former military base used as a short-term detention facility to process people who crossed the Channel in dinghies “will probably be reputationally damaging for the Home Office”, the memo said.

Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan echo president and key ally as experts express fears for ‘bedrock constitutional principles’

As Donald Trump and Elon Musk widen their radical attacks on US judges who have stalled some of Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s slashing of federal agencies, they’re gaining backing from top House Republicans and other politicians, including some to whom the tech billionaire made big campaign donations.

House speaker Mike Johnson and judiciary panel chairman Jim Jordan have echoed some of Trump’s attacks on judges, and a judiciary subcommittee hearing on April 1 explored “judicial overreach” and ways to curb judges who have stymied some Trump orders or Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and its draconian cuts to the federal government.

Whether among executives, lobbyists or university trustees, an elite backlash to the Trump administration won’t work. It’s up to working people to resist

Few historical analogies exist for Donald Trump ’s newly announced tariffs . The investment bank Evercore estimates that the so-called “liberation day” announcement has raised the weighted average US tariff to 29% – its highest rate since 1900. To call it a generational action would be an understatement; my grandmother was born in 1939.

These tariffs, if they remain in place, will raise prices, eliminate jobs and shrink retirements. No one will pay for them more dearly than American workers. Yet a shock to capitalism inevitably raises the question of whether, and how, capitalists will respond. Faced with Trump’s tariffs, what will the US’s business class do?

Rather than running away from disappointment, we need to face it and learn from it. Otherwise we will never try anything new

I don’t remember the context in which my psychoanalyst first brought to my attention how much I hate to feel disappointed. I do remember that I laughed. Who doesn’t hate it? That’s why it’s called disappointment, as Seinfeld would say.

But then I reflected on what she had said, and it really made me think.