A new wave of hyper-regional hoagies, subs and pizzas are taking over Manchester’s food scene. But are they really as American as apple pie?

It’s just after midday, on a chilly, wind-whipped Friday in central Manchester, and an ever-growing crowd of people in puffer jackets is spilling out from a Chinatown service alley. A few yards away, there’s another huddle of bundled-up figures, dipping into capacious paper bags to set up an improvised picnic on the junction boxes outside a corner pub. Fistfuls of crinkle-cut chips are snaffled, cans of pop are sipped, and, despite the pervading scent of bin juice and fried chicken, enormous, truncheon-sized sandwiches are unwrapped and messily dispatched.

It looks a little like a staged re-enactment of Covid-era dining practices. Or, perhaps, a group of heavily refreshed, pub-crawling stags, fuelling up with all the restraint and decorum of town-centre pigeons. But if you are even slightly familiar with Manchester and its recent food scene, then you will know that this is a regular sight at Fat Pat’s: a takeaway operation run out of a literal hole-in-the-wall that has turned word-of-mouth, social media virality and a studiedly underground brand identity into one of the city’s biggest success stories.

What was supposed to be a quick win has become a quagmire, so it now must be reduced to a dopamine hit

The war on Iran, even as it spreads and destabilises the Middle East and the global economy, is not real. This is how it is being portrayed by the Trump administration. The war is a video game, a spectator sport, a social media festival of dunking. The architects of this war have made a virtue out of stupidity, and have been supported in that by a stupefying information ecosystem. The conflict waged by the US feels like the first of its kind in the modern age: distinctly remote and profoundly ignorant.

A week into the war, the White House uploaded a clip on its social media channels featuring montages of Top Gun, Braveheart and Breaking Bad, with the caption “Justice the American way” – itself a repurposing of a Superman motto. In another, entitled Touchdown, NFL players tackle each other and upon contact, boom, footage of a strike explosion tagged “unclassified”. SpongeBob SquarePants also makes an appearance, asking, “Wanna see me do it again?”, and then, an explosion. In another, Operation Epic Fury is rendered as a Nintendo Wii game.

Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan plans to simplify the housebuilding process to tackle shortage of 400,000 homes

Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan is on a mission. The new housing minister of the Netherlands is charged with building 100,000 homes a year and breaking through a planning deadlock to combat one of Europe’s worst housing crises.

The Irish-born 50-year-old is new to politics. Until a fortnight ago she was the country’s top female military officer, famous for getting flak jackets redesigned for women’s bodies and holding her own in a male-dominated sphere.

The great sculptor worked as a war artist in the 1940s, sketching people sheltering from bombings. Now his powerful underground drawings are opening the vast, renovated sheep barn gallery at his Arcadian home

In September 1940, Henry Moore and his wife, Irina, left London to escape wartime bombing, ending up in the bucolic hamlet of Perry Green, where Hertfordshire meets Essex. What was envisaged as a temporary refuge eventually became permanent, and the array of buildings in which Moore lived and worked is now a kind of cultural ecosystem dedicated to his genius. Part minor stately home, part sculpture park and part archive – one of the largest devoted to a single artist – it’s now overseen by his eponymous foundation, established in 1977.

Today, it comprises a constellation of studios and workspaces dispersed across an Arcadian landscape. Sheep graze in far fields and colossal sculptures loom on the horizon. Moore’s house, Hoglands, is preserved just as he left it, replete with his collections of books and artefacts – Dogon and Ashanti carvings, a narwhal tusk casually slung in a corner, a Picasso print in the kitchen – along with amply provisioned drinks trays for entertaining visitors and prospective buyers. Over the years, Moore clinked glasses with a stream of admirers, from Lauren Bacall to German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who had a large Moore situated outside his Bonn chancellery in the 1970s, remarking that it synthesised “nature with intelligence”.

Paddington 2 co-creator Simon Farnaby branches out with adaptation of children’s classic boasting lively performances and some sharp gags

The estimable Simon Farnaby got hall-of-famer status for co-creating the film Paddington 2, an achievement which by common consent is basically up there with the moon landing and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Now this screenwriting powerhouse of British movie entertainment has adapted and modernised Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree books from the late 1930s and 40s – all about a huge enchanted tree whose branches are a canopy of magical wonder.

The result is a thoroughly likable and sweet-natured family fantasy film for the Easter holidays, with acres of innocent jollity and eccentric quirkiness.

How have the rich and powerful convinced so many voters that the reason they are struggling is the poor and powerless? The American historian talks about the weaponising of divisiveness

‘I think I’ve had at least seven books that have been banned in the United States,” says Ibram X Kendi, in a tone that carries no bitterness but stops just short of pride. It’s proof, he says, that his works on racism, which extend from deep, scholarly histories to a biography of Malcolm X for children, are getting through to the right people – and annoying the right people. According to the writers’ advocacy group PEN America, his books have been banned at least 50 times by multiple US school districts during the tumultuous “anti-woke” backlash of the past five years. He’s not happy about that, but nor was he discouraged. “I understood that the major reason why people were singling me out and demonising me was because they did not want people reading my books,” he says. “And when the character assassinations did not work to the scale that they wanted them to, then they started banning my books, and the books of many others.”

Kendi’s work is divisive almost by design. He has a way of framing his ideas in radically stark terms. In his 2016 breakthrough book Stamped from the Beginning, a history of racist ideas in the US, he argued that racist policies lead to racist ideas, not the other way round. His bestselling follow-up, 2019’s How to Be an Antiracist, introduced an equally contentious proposition: there was no such thing as “not racist”; you were either racist or anti-racist. There was no in-between: inaction or neutrality about racist issues was effectively complicity. By extension, he argued that all racial disparities in outcome for Black people were the result of racist policies – not just some, all.

US president says he has instructed his defence department against strikes following ‘productive conversations’

• Iran vows to destroy Middle East water and energy facilities if US attacks power plants

British prime minister Keir Starmer is set to chair an emergency meeting on the economic fallout from the war in Iran on Monday, with chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey also attending, the UK government has said.

Financial markets face another turbulent week after Iran said it would strike its Gulf neighbours’ energy and water systems if Donald Trump followed through on his threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t fully open up the crucial strait of Hormuz.

Topics expected to be covered are the economic impact of the crisis on families and businesses, energy security and the resilience of industry and supply chains alongside the international response.

Residents reported headaches, eye and skin irritation and breathing difficulties as Israeli bombings blanketed Tehran with pollutants

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Satellite images of Tehran show toxic fires caused by Israeli bombings on oil depots were still burning days after the strikes, which have caused fears of serious health complications for millions of residents in the Iranian capital.

Clouds of smoke from bombings on 7 March on multiple facilities blanketed the city with pollutants ranging from soot to oil particles to sulphur dioxide. Hours later, a passing storm showered Tehran with poisonous, oil-filled rain.

Investors are piling back into shares after US president announces ‘very good and productive’ conversations with Iran, sending oil price down

• Middle East crisis live: Starmer calls emergency meeting on UK economy; IEA open to releasing more oil stocks

• Starmer adviser urges ministers to look at profits cap for energy and petrol firms

Wholesale gas prices in Europe have jumped in early trading.

The UK month-ahead gas prices is up 3.1% at 155p per therm, nearly double their levels before the Iran conflict began.

CCTV showed three people setting light to an ambulance in Golders Green in the early hours of Monday morning

The London Fire Brigade received 56 calls about the fire attack on four Jewish community ambulances, which involved the explosion of several cylinders stored in the vehicles, a senior figure from the fire service said.

Giving a statement at the scene in Golders Green, Paul Askew, deputy assistant commissioner for the London Fire Brigade, said:

Early this morning, London Fire Brigade control room took the first of 56 calls reporting a fire on Highfield Road in Golders Green.

Upon arrival, crews were met with a well-developed fire involving four ambulances. Several cylinders stored within the vehicles exploded because of the heat, causing damage to the windows of a nearby residential block.

We have already spoken to local community and faith leaders and will continue that work today. A specific policing plan focused on key community locations across the area is under way and will continue beyond the coming days as we move towards Passover in early April.

This attack comes at a time when fears are already heightened given global events and recent attacks targeting Jewish communities in other parts of Europe.