With membership soaring, the Green party is grappling with logistics, culture shifts and a flood of new activists

It is, as one Green activist put it, a never-ending series of “constantly good problems to have”. But how does a party adapt to the sudden trebling of its membership? And when a majority of people in an organisation are new, is it even the same thing anymore?

The basic facts alone are startling. Before Zack Polanski took over as leader last September, the Greens in England and Wales had around 66,000 members. They are now at 215,000, and still rising at speed.

Current and ex-staff claim demise of London restaurant can be traced back to the departure of chef’s right-hand man

Dinner by Heston was once one of the world’s most revered restaurants, known for its decadent and unusual dishes such as the “meat fruit”.

But Heston Blumenthal announced this week that he is winding down operations at the two Michelin-star restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge, London, saying it was because the tenancy had “finished”.

For these art forms to thrive, they need to attract young people. The Oscar contender’s comments are just the conversation starter they need

• Rebecca Humphries is an actor and author

Timothée Chalamet thinks no one cares about opera or ballet. He told Matthew McConaughey so. Also, the entire world.

“I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more’,” Chalamet said in a recorded conversation for Variety.

Rebecca Humphries is an actor and author

Ukrainian photographer Arthur Bondar has amassed a huge collection of pictures from often unknown photographers

After pulling on white cotton gloves, Arthur Bondar carefully takes a handful of 4cm by 9cm negatives from an old cigarette box and holds them up to the light of his study window. Inverted images of a woman on a horse, a group of women tending cabbages in a field, laughing figures at the seaside, a woman posing as a military ship sails by, hover in front of him, almost ghostlike. Although they are tiny, he is able to make out key details such as the insignia on a uniform, or the name of a ship, that trigger his curiosity and give him a starting point for his research.

Arthur Bondar examines some of his negatives. Photograph: Oksana Yushko/The Guardian

Datacentre investment boom is one of the biggest infrastructure gambles of this era, and Britain may be uniquely exposed

Stargate was to be the world’s biggest AI investment: a $500bn infrastructure project to “secure American leadership in AI”. Never shy of hyperbole, its key backer, the ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, promised “massive economic benefit for the entire world” with facilities to help people “use AI to elevate humanity”.

Now, OpenAI appears to be dropping out of a part of the deal – the expansion of a flagship datacentre stretching across a swathe of land in Abilene, Texas, which has become one of the most visible manifestations of a frenzy of investment in the chips and power plants required to build and run AI. There has been a breakdown in negotiations over project financing, as well as the timeline of when the expanded capacity might come online.

After my parents split up, my older sister and I lived with our dad while the youngest stayed with our mum. It became an experiment in nature v nurture – and had a profound effect on our relationships

There is a paradox at the heart of sibling relationships and it is this: that children raised in the same family are for ever bound by shared experiences, yet have different childhoods. The paradox is partly (and most commonly) explained by the topic of birth order theory – the idea that your position in the family shapes your personality and potential. Oldest children, for example, are born into an adult world, full of grown-up language and behaviour. Governed by anxious, inexperienced but still fresh parents, they bask in the glow of undivided attention. Their infancy will be markedly different to that of their little brother or sister who will be born into a family. These second-born children have a toddler as their role model/ally/nemesis, no new clothes, and they also have to share their parents’ attention. These parents are a little less fresh and little more savvy. By the time any subsequent children come along, parents are at their most relaxed and most exhausted. Youngest children get away with a lot (spoken as a true middle sibling).

But neat as birth order theory may be, our place in the family roll call cannot fully account for the ways in which we grow up “together apart” as siblings. To do that, we must examine – and in some cases untangle – all of the knottiness underpinning our accepted roles as “responsible firstborns”, “problematic middles” or “spoilt babies”. We need to look at the home environment, the state of the parents’ relationship, their careers, the pressures placed on each child on account of gender or aptitude, the expectations in families where a child has additional needs – or indeed, in the worst-case scenario, where a child may not have survived – before we can begin to comprehend our brother’s or sister’s version of events. Difficulties typically arise because of the slipperiness of memory, often shot through with profound emotions – making it hard to pull together a coherent and agreed-upon story of our pasts.

US president said he did not want to make a deal with Iran yet, while claiming that he might hit Kharg Island again ‘just for fun’

• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Donald Trump has said he is “surprised” that US allies in the Gulf have been targeted by Iran, in an interview with NBC News.

The president called these countries “terrific”, adding that “they got shot at unnecessarily.” When talking about Iran’s decision to target them, Trump said it was “the biggest surprise I had of this whole thing.”

Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes have killed 826 people, including 65 women and 106 children, since the start of the war. In a statement today, the ministry said 31 paramedics were among those killed. Local health authorities reported this morning that an Israeli strike killed 12 medical staff at a clinic in the southern town of Burj Qalaouiya.

At least 15 people were killed when a strike by Israel and the US hit a factory in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the semi-official Fars news agency said. There were workers inside the factory, which produces heaters and refrigerators, when the strike hit, Fars reported.

Iran issued an evacuation warning for three major ports in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, including the busiest in the Middle East, the Associated Press reported. Iran claims the US had used “ports, docks and hideouts” in the UAE to launch strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island. It urged people to evacuate areas where it said US forces were sheltering.

Trump renewed his call for other nations to help secure the strait of Hormuz and said the US will coordinate with them amid the US-Israeli war on Iran. “The United States of America has beaten and completely decimated Iran, both Militarily, Economically, and in every other way, but the Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage, and we will help – A LOT,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

The Trump administration rebuffed efforts by Middle Eastern allies to start diplomatic negotiations aimed at ending the Iran war that started two weeks ago with a massive US-Israeli air assault, according to reporting from Reuters.

The Israeli military says it killed two senior officials in Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Emergency Command in an airstrike on Tehran. In a post on X, army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said Abdullah Jalali-Nasab and Amir Shariat, described as senior figures in the command’s intelligence branch, were killed in the attack.

Israel informed the US this week that it is running critically low on ballistic missile interceptors as the conflict with Iran continues, Semafor reported on Saturday, citing US officials familiar with the matter.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr accused news broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” amid the war in Iran in a post on X. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote.

Formula One has cancelled the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia grands prix because of the war, underlining the disruption across the Middle East. The races were due to take place on 12 April in Bahrain and 19 April in Saudi Arabia but the sport was approaching the point at which a decision on cancellation needed to be made to prevent more freight being sent to Bahrain.

US president calls on China, France, Japan and the UK to send vessels after US strikes Kharg Island oil facilities

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Iran threatened on Saturday to further escalate the war raging in the Middle East by targeting any facility in the region with US ties, after Donald Trump predicted “many countries” would send warships to support a US bid to reopen by force the strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway closed to virtually all maritime traffic by Tehran since the beginning of the war.

Iran has responded to the joint US-Israeli offensive, which is entering its third week, with daily attacks on oil and other infrastructure around the Gulf region, as well as against Israel.

In comments to NBC News, US presidents also deflates hope of deal with Tehran, saying ‘terms aren’t good enough’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States may carry out more strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub “just for fun”, saying that while Tehran appears ready to make a deal to end the conflict, “the terms aren’t good enough yet”.

He said the US strikes had “totally demolished” most of Kharg Island, telling NBC News that “we may hit it a few more times just for fun.”

The facility was attacked on Friday night, bringing the toll of medical staff to 31 killed in past 12 days

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel killed 12 medical workers in a strike on a medical centre in south Lebanon on Friday night, bringing the toll of healthcare staff killed in the country by Israel to 31 over the past 12 days.

A primary healthcare facility in the town of Burj Qalaouiyah was hit by an Israeli strike late on Friday, setting it ablaze and causing the structure to collapse on top of the staff inside. The strike killed doctors, paramedics and nurses on duty, according to the Lebanese ministry of health, which said it “violated all international humanitarian laws” in a statement.