The government hails the ‘green revolution’ as a solution to economic decline, but some young jobseekers say the rhetoric does not match their experience

On paper, Jake Snell, 19, sounds like the perfect candidate for a role in the UK’s burgeoning green energy sector. He has high grades in maths and physics A-level, a distinction in BTec engineering and another distinction in an extended engineering diploma. He has also done work experience at an engineering company.

He is from Lowestoft, a coastal town in Suffolk, outside Great Yarmouth. Both towns contain areas that fall within the most deprived 20% in England and are part of a wider pattern of coastal places with low employment opportunities.

The 1990s series set her career alight; then came 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and countless theatre triumphs. She discusses Tina Fey, Stephen Sondheim and why it would take a broken leg to keep her off stage

‘I’ve been on three television shows that moved the needle a little bit,” says Jane Krakowski. “It sounds obnoxious for me to say it, so hopefully you’ll phrase that as if you said it.” In fact, I did also say it: the first was Ally McBeal, from 1997 until 2002, in which she played Elaine Vassal, an idiosyncratic character in a groundbreaking show. The kind of people who liked to sit around arguing about telly and post-modernism talked constantly about what kind of feminism McBeal was iterating, in the late 90s, with its scatty, neurotic heroine, such an unfamiliar screen trope of Career Woman, but somehow so much closer to life. Krakowski was almost the photo-negative of Calista Flockhart’s title character: brassy, eccentric, unconcerned by others’ opinions. Similarly, her character in 30 Rock, Jenna Maroney, acted as the bookend to Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon – Krakowski untouched by self-awareness, Fey beset by it. That ran from 2006 until 2013, and two years later, Fey’s follow-up, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, featured Krakowski as Jacqueline White, a magnetically unlikable wealthy socialite, in a fictional world so surreally improbable that it feels like a high-wire act only this particular cast could have pulled off.

You could split hairs about whether Ally McBeal invented the “dramedy” or just honed it, and the question of Fey’s comic sensibility could suck you in like quicksand. But in each show, Krakowski creates a character that you cannot imagine having landed, fully formed, on the page. She is expressive in a way that’s so high-voltage but so controlled, funny in a way that feels so instinctive but so deliberated, that the dialogue and the performance seem to explode together like two chemical elements.

Our cartoonist on the Gunners’ latest wobble and who could be brought in to get final push back on track

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When the UN special rapporteur published her report Anatomy of a Genocide in March 2024, she was lionised by some and demonised by the Trump government. She describes what happened next

In retrospect, arranging to interview Francesca Albanese in a cafe was not the best plan. Before we could start, the waitress wanted a photo with the Italian human rights lawyer. So did the cashier. Then the cook came out of the kitchen in his whites for a group photo. Some of the customers wanted their turn. Albanese was gracious with all comers and chatty in three languages, so the process took some time.

Albanese, 49, has been getting similar rock star welcomes everywhere she goes lately, which is not the norm for unpaid UN legal experts. In other times, her job title – UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 – would sound like a recipe for obscurity. She is one of more than 40 special rapporteurs, human rights experts appointed to do pro bono investigations and reports on areas of concern.

We must hope this vote will be the start of a wider backlash – and send hard-right populism back to the fringes where it belongs

The forces of darkness rolled back on Sunday. The mighty combined power of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Donald Trump’s America were defeated in Hungary, as European liberal democratic values triumphed.

The populist-nativist right put their all into keeping Viktor Orbán in power. The US vice-president, JD Vance, mid-war in Iran, took time out to parade his patronage in Budapest, one month after the hard-right US Conservative Political Action Conference took place there. In January, Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in a video endorsing Orbán, with salvoes of support from Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and France’s Marine Le Pen. Herbert Kickl of Austria’s Freedom party declared that “a patriotic wind is blowing across Europe”. Maybe, but not in their direction. Patriotism does not belong to them.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here

How a reductive worldview is stripping meaning from our most valued activities

• This article was originally published as The six-second hug on Aeon.co

For decades, films out of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios have opened with Leo the roaring lion, garlanded with the motto ars gratia artis: art for art’s sake. Given that MGM is a money-making behemoth, we might doubt the sincerity of this high-minded sentiment. Still, it certainly expresses one of the few legitimate reasons why people should make movies. Art for the sake of anything else – profit, self-promotion, propaganda – isn’t really art at all, or at least not in its purest sense.

It therefore came as a bit of a shock to see a recent advert for the National Art Pass, which gives holders free or discounted entry to galleries and museums around the UK. The tagline “See more. Live more” sounded right: art does indeed enrich our lives. But it turned out that the “more” here was purely quantitative, not qualitative. “Grow some years on to your life with art,” proclaimed the main slogan, followed by: “Spending time in galleries and museums could help you live longer.” Art not for art’s sake, but for your heart’s sake, the fleshy not the spiritual one at that. This messaging around the arts has become ubiquitous, with Arts Council England promoting the idea that “engaging in creative and cultural activities has proven health benefits for individuals and communities”.

Growth forecasts cut for US and global economy, while UK suffers sharpest downgrade in G7

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A further escalation in the Iran war could trigger a global recession, spiralling inflation and a sharp backlash in financial markets, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

Against an increasingly volatile backdrop, the Washington-based fund said the economic damage from the Middle East conflict was steadily rising as it cut its growth forecasts for 2026 based on the impact from the war so far.

Iran-linked vessels pass after start of Trump’s blockade; France and UK to chair talks on Friday

• US starts naval blockade of Iranian ports after deadline passes

South Korean president Lee Jae Myung has said rising tensions around the strait of Hormuz make it hard to be optimistic about the fallout from the Iran war, warning that high oil prices and supply-chain strains are likely to persist for some time.

Lee told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday the government should treat prolonged disruption in global energy and raw materials markets as a given and reinforce its emergency response system.

For the time being, difficulties in global energy and raw materials supply chains and high oil prices will continue … I ask that we pursue the development of alternative supply chains, medium- to long-term industrial restructuring, and the transition to a post-plastic economy as top-priority national strategic projects.”

Lebanon and Israel have been at war in some form since the early 1980s. You’re not allowed to enter Lebanon if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport. The two don’t have diplomatic relations. So the fact that these talks are happening directly between the two governments is something that’s really astonishing.

George Robertson says Iran war should be wake-up call to address military underfunding in scathing remarks

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The government has shown a “corrosive complacency towards defence” and put the UK in peril, according to a government adviser, in fierce criticism of Keir Starmer’s military policy.

George Robertson, the former Nato secretary general and author of the government’s strategic defence review, believes Starmer is “not willing to make the necessary investment”, the Financial Times reported.

Independent Office for Police Conduct examines allegations that the race of victim’s’ families influenced conduct of officers

The police watchdog is investigating complaints made against 11 officers over their handling of an inquiry into a car crash that killed two schoolgirls.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has confirmed that the officers, including a serving commander and a detective inspector, are being investigated over alleged gross misconduct.