Two weeks in, it’s increasingly clear that the US-led war has taken every problem it aimed to solve – and made it worse

It’s not easy, but let’s try to look at this war in the best, most charitable light. Let’s try to see the US-Israel conflict with Iran as its prosecutors and advocates would want us to see it.

They would say that it has two aims, both legitimate. The first is to weaken if not remove a regime that has done terrible evil to its own people. Who could mourn the supreme leader of a government that, according to one report, gunned down 30,000 of its citizens on the streets in just two days on 8 and 9 January? Listen to those Iranians who long ago reached the glum conclusion that the only way they could be rid of their tormentors was through external military action. As one exiled Iranian put it to me this week: “The Iranian people have been begging the world for help for so many years. They tried voting for change in 2009; they were killed. They tried protesting in 2019, 2022 and this year; they were massacred in the tens of thousands … They were out of all other options.”

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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As it searches for a new editor and presenter, programme is facing questions over its direction and status

With well over 5 million listeners a week tuning in to hear whether another tongue-tied minister will fall foul of its legendary 8.10am interview slot, Radio 4’s Today programme continues to be one of the BBC’s flagship news shows.

It has also traditionally been the pinnacle for broadcasters, producers and editors alike, keen to be associated with a show that has strived to set the daily news agenda since the 1950s.

Ridiculed, ‘memed’ and consigned to worst-dressed lists, seven standout Oscar outfits from over the years

At the 2001 Oscars, Gladiator won best picture with Russell Crowe picking up best actor. But, if those facts might have faded to fodder for a pub quiz, the red carpet produced a moment of fashion legend – Björk wearing what is now known as “the swan dress”.

Made by the Macedonian designer Marjan Pejoski, the tutu skirt with the swan draped around the musician’s neck – and egg accessories – was panned. “It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen,” said the TV fashion critic Steven Cojocaru.

The art of the heel: if you want a shot at the US presidency, you better be ready to sartorially debase yourself on the world stage

The secretary of state of the United States of America is openly slopping around in a pair of too-big shoes that he has to wear because the president gave them to him. Why? Possibly as a piece of exquisite and complex satire about the size of his penis; possibly because Marco Rubio exaggerated his shoe size because he rightly assumed it would be linked to presidential speculation about the size of his penis.

According to the vice-president, JD Vance, Donald Trump gives all his best boys a particular brand of shoe, either after guessing their size or making them disclose it. “The president, he kind of leans back in his chair,” explained Vance a couple of months ago, “and he says: ‘You know, you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.’” Strong words, particularly from a president with such famously tiny hands. Incidentally, Vance casually dropped it into the anecdote that he wore a 13.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Whether it was a solo trip to a cafe, a nice lipstick or merely wandering around a shop that was out of her price range, my mum showed me that a little luxury goes a long way

My mum’s best advice was “You’re allowed to enjoy nice things.” Both elements – the nice things and being allowed them – were equally important. She was a fervent believer in the restorative power of a treat, taking herself out for solo breakfasts most weeks (a bacon muffin and a cup of coffee in the cosseted calm of Bettys Tea Rooms), ordering chips at the slightest provocation, staying in chic hotels she had a pre-internet gift for ferreting out and being coaxed by department store salesladies into buying expensive unguents.

She was even keener on treating others, including me. During my teens and early 20s, when I was ill and unhappy in my body, she took me for lavish lunches, booked me massages and accompanied me on spa trips. I recently found a note she had sent me when I was slogging, lonely and sad, through my finals, which had obviously come with some cash. “Buy yourself something frivolous darling,” it read. “A nice nail polish?”

It has swept awards, been lauded for its accuracy and become a word-of-mouth triumph. Now, after a big delay, The Pitt launches in the UK. We visit the set to meet the team behind this tense, unflinching US medical drama

Like many US hospitals, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (PTMC) is a place where time melts away. Rain or shine, 1am or 1pm, everything is bathed in the same retina-frying fluorescent light. Wait times often exceed several hours; in the lobby is a barrage of all-caps warnings (“aggressive behavior will NOT be tolerated”), while several TVs play clips of a Deadliest Catch-style show in two-minute loops. Purgatory, it seems, looks a lot like an American hospital … as recreated on a soundstage in Burbank, California.

On the day I visit PTMC, the 52-bed ER on the Warner Bros lot, the hold-up is some babies. The infant actors are here to film a second season scene for The Pitt, the HBO Max medical drama that singlehandedly resuscitated the genre back from its Grey’s Anatomy flatline, swept almost every television award in the US and is now, finally, heading for the UK. (No bad blood, though: on set, I glimpse a flyer for a Pitt softball game against the crew of Seattle Grace.) Developed by the team behind 90s hospital hit ER, The Pitt follows a melange of hospital workers – the doctors, nurses, social workers, security and administrative staff of a cash-strapped emergency room in Pittsburgh – as they deal with everything from gunshot wounds to burnout, fentanyl overdoses to dreaded note-taking, with all the emotional trauma in between.

Tehran residents report relentless bombing with US and Israeli planes launching wave of attacks

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has said Iran will be hit “very hard” in the coming days, describing leaders of the regime as “deranged scumbags” who it was a “great honor” to kill, as Tehran residents reported relentless bombing and violence continued to spiral across the Middle East.

The US president’s comments, which signaled an intensification of the US-Israeli campaign, came as Israeli and US warplanes launched successive waves of attacks on the Iranian capital and elsewhere on Friday. One strike reportedly hit close to a square near Tehran University where crowds were gathered in support of Iran’s regime. The area is home to many government buildings.

US defense head is eager to frame operation as a success – and slam journalists for not portraying it in a positive light

• Has the pro-Maga media turned on the Pentagon over Iran?

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Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield.

Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.

White House contends with reality of shoddy preparations for war and unclear conditions for victory

• Middle East crisis – live updates

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As US and Israeli jets descended to deliver the opening salvos of the war in Iran, Donald Trump’s back-of-the-envelope plan for regime change in Tehran was about to run into the reality of the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

That reality came quickly.

Israel has issued a new displacement order for southern Lebanon, instructing residents within 25 miles of the border between the two countries to head north. The order covers major Lebanese cities and dozens of villages. Israel’s military is considering an escalated campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah after the pro-Iran group launched its most intense attacks yet on Wednesday night. Guardian journalist William Christou reports from Nabatieh, a city in south Lebanon hit by Israeli strikes

• Israel strikes Beirut and orders south Lebanon evacuation as conflict mounts