Fraudsters are using the promise of fake roles to trick job-seekers out of money, personal information or both, and with the help of AI they are more convincing than ever. But there are ways to spot them

There were clues from the start that it was too good to be true. A headhunter emailed me with a job prospect – a journalist role with “a leading US technology and markets editorial team”. The opportunity, she said, was part of a confidential expansion and hadn’t been publicly posted.

My spidey-sense was tingling, but the timing was auspicious. I was on the lookout for new work as my maternity leave was coming to an end. Initially, the email seemed legitimate. When I Googled the sender, I found a headhunter with the same name and profile picture on LinkedIn, and the message was clearly tailored to me: It referenced several roles I’d previously held and identified my specific areas of expertise. “Your focus on the real-world impacts of AI, digital culture and the gig economy aligns perfectly with an internal, high-priority mandate I’m managing,” the headhunter wrote.

One way to pay for wildlife conservation is to allow the rich to bag a few animals for high prices. But critics see this approach as an exercise in neocolonialism

You can kill almost anything if you’re willing to pay. Big or small. Land, water or air. Ten a penny or one of the last of its kind. There’s nearly always a way, though it might not make you popular. The Niassa special reserve, a vast reservation larger than Switzerland, stretches for 190 miles along the northern rim of Mozambique, taking in 4.2m hectares of woodland and rivers. The reserve, one of the world’s largest protected areas, is home to elephants, leopards, hyenas, zebras and about 1,000 wild lions.

That word, however: protected. It applies to some, but not all, of its animal inhabitants. Each year, a specific number are set aside for sacrifice, for the greater good. Not long ago, I joined an expedition in Niassa, with one of Africa’s top game-hunting companies.

F1’s latest world champion speaks with deep candour about overcoming his insecurities but questions about Max Verstappen and regulations? Off limits

There are always complications and difficulties in Formula One, as there are in life and even in this interview. On a beautiful evening at a lavish golf club in Surrey, Lando Norris and I are tucked away in an anonymous yet brightly-lit room crammed with a television crew and representatives from his management team and Laureus, the global organisation driven by a belief that “sport has the power to change the world”.

At first Norris talks thoughtfully and honestly about his struggles with profound insecurity before becoming world champion last year. But we reach a low point when a young man from his management company feels sufficiently empowered to answer questions on the 26-year-old’s behalf, as a way of controlling our interview.

As he stars alongside Sheridan Smith as a casino boss on the take, the actor talks about leaving school with no qualifications, playing vile dads – and why he’s eager to circulate the This Is England reunion rumour

Michael Socha is about to jump on a train to Wales. The impressively bushy beard he’s got is for his role in The Witch House, a dramatic adaptation of an episode of the Danny Robins podcast Uncanny, about a supposed haunting in the Brecon Beacons. He plays Bill Rich, who moves his family to a spooky old farmhouse where it all goes “horribly wrong”, Socha says. “In the photos he has a beard, and I thought, ‘I’ll match that.’” The actor strokes his chin and turns his head from side to side. It looks pretty substantial to me. “You say that, but see this bit? I’m struggling. It’s a bit patchy there. I’m happy with this bit, but then this needs work.”

Socha has just left a screening of his new BBC thriller The Cage, and he has the gentle bounce of a man who struggles to stay still. As with his beard, he finds it hard not to find flaws in what he’s done. Normally, he admits, he tries to avoid watching himself on screen. “I’ll sort of nitpick away,” he shrugs, but he had such a nice time making The Cage that he was looking forward to seeing it. “But the more you watch something, the more you find bits that you’re not too happy with.”

Forty years after the 1937 masterpiece returned to Madrid from its Franco-era exile in New York, it is again embroiled in politics

Every September, Spain celebrates one of the most symbolic moments of its transition to democracy. This year will mark 45 years since an Iberia commercial flight from New York landed in Madrid with its pilot announcing to the surprised passengers that they had just travelled with one of the country’s most famous exiles: Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. After more than four decades on display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the painting could finally return home after the end of the Franco dictatorship, in accordance with the wishes of the Spanish painter.

Picasso’s most famous painting, which depicted the horrors inflicted on civilians during the bombing of the Basque town of Gernika in the Spanish civil war, was intended to be a cry for peace. “If world peace prevails, the war I painted will be a thing of the past,” Picasso told Josep Lluís Sert, his friend and the architect of the Spanish Republic’s pavilion at the 1937 Paris international exhibition.

María Ramírez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain

Earlier this month the AI company Anthropic said it had created a model so powerful that, out of a sense of responsibility, it was not going to release it to the public. Anthropic says the model, Mythos Preview, excels at spotting and exploiting vulnerabilities in software, and could pose a severe risk to economies, public safety and national security. But is this the whole story? Some experts have expressed scepticism about the extent of the model’s capabilities. Ian Sample hears from Aisha Down, a reporter covering artificial intelligence for the Guardian, to find what the decision to limit access to Mythos reveals about Anthropic’s strategy, and whether the model might finally spur more regulation of the industry.

‘Too powerful for the public’: inside Anthropic’s bid to win the AI publicity war

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PM admits he made mistake in choice of ambassador as he makes high-stakes statement to parliament over scandal

Keir Starmer has accused Olly Robbins of deliberately and repeatedly obstructing the truth about the Mandelson vetting scandal before a high-jeopardy appearance of the sacked top official before MPs on Tuesday.

Six days after the prime minister said he had learned that his pick for Washington ambassador had failed security vetting, Starmer admitted his decision to appoint him had been a fundamental mistake.

Head of UN’s humanitarian agency frustrated that $2bn weekly cost of conflict comes amid big cuts to aid budgets

The $2bn (£1.5bn) a week that Donald Trump was spending on his reckless war in Iran could have funded saving more than 87 million lives, the head of the UN’s humanitarian agency, Tom Fletcher, said on Monday.

He also warned the normalisation of violent language, such as threatening to bomb Iran back to the stone ages, was very dangerous since it encourages every “wannabe autocrat” to use similar threats and tactics, including the destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Move marks government’s most radical attempt to weaken impact of soaring wholesale gas prices on electricity costs

• Clean energy generation exceeded rise in global electricity demand in 2025

The government has confirmed plans to move older wind and solar farms which make up almost a third of Great Britain’s power market on to fixed-price contracts to help protect households and businesses from future gas market shocks.

Under the plans, first revealed by the Guardian, renewable energy projects that earn subsidies on top of the market price will be asked to sign up to contracts that pay a set price for electricity as part of the government’s plan to “delink the price of electricity from the price of gas”.

Government amendment to children’s wellbeing and schools bill to replace existing guidance with statutory ban

A ban on mobile phones in schools in England is to be introduced by the government to ensure that “critical safeguarding legislation” is passed.

The government will table an amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill in the House of Lords after the bill was held up by peers on opposition benches.