Trump challenges Putin on peace after meeting Zelensky at Pope’s funeral

Donald Trump is taking a harder line on Vladimir Putin, doubting the Russian leader’s willingness to end his war on Ukraine. The president noted that further sanctions on Russia may be needed.

Trump made the observation in a Truth Social post from aboard Air Force One as he returned to the U.S., having attended the funeral of Pope Francis at which he held a one-on-one meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the Vatican.

The president specifically called out the Russian leader for the continued bombing of civilian areas of Ukraine.

“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war,” Trump posted on his social media platform.

“He’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Putin has reiterated Russia’s readiness for talks with Ukraine without preconditions at a meeting with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, the Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

Witkoff met Putin for three hours in Moscow on Friday to discuss the U.S. plan to end the war in Ukraine, and Trump had previously said the two sides were “very close to a deal,” despite apparent differences in their positions.

Zelensky posted his account of his meeting with President Trump on Telegram, writing: “Good meeting. One-on-one, we managed to discuss a lot. We hope for a result from all the things that were spoken about.”

He said those topics included: “The protection of the lives of our people. A complete and unconditional ceasefire. A reliable and lasting peace that will prevent a recurrence of war.”

Zelensky added: “It was a very symbolic meeting that has the potential to become historic if we achieve joint results. Thank you, President Donald Trump!”

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday, after a “very positive” exchange with Zelensky at the Vatican, that Ukraine was ready for an unconditional ceasefire and that the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” led by France and Britain would continue working on achieving that, as well as a lasting peace.

“Ending the war in Ukraine. That is an objective that we share in common with President Trump,” Macron wrote in a post on the social media platform X.

“Ukraine is ready for an unconditional ceasefire. President Zelensky told me that again today. He’d like to work with the Americans and the Europeans to put it into effect.”

President Trump’s latest remarks on Putin and the Ukraine war came at the end of a grievance-filled tirade, initially attacking “The Failing New York Times” for its coverage suggesting that Ukraine should get back territory taken by Russia.

“Including, I suppose, Crimea, and other ridiculous requests, in order to stop the killing that is worse than anything since World War II,” wrote Trump.

He attacked his predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, for their handling of Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine, saying the conflict was “Sleepy Joe Biden’s War, not mine,” and calling Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea “the Obama Crimea Giveaway.”

A bipartisan bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate at the beginning of April by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal that could introduce primary and secondary sanctions against Russia and actors supporting its war on Ukraine.

“These sanctions against Russia are at the ready and will receive overwhelming bipartisan, bicameral support if presented to the Senate and House for a vote,” the senators said in a statement. “We support an immediate ceasefire to secure a lasting, honorable peace.”

Following the Pope’s funeral, the president departed Rome on Air Force One shortly after 1 p.m. local time en route to Newark Liberty International Airport, where he is expected to touch down at approximately 5 p.m. ET.

How Eubank Jr and Benn produced a melodrama worthy of their fathers

It is difficult to know where to begin, but at the end, Chris Eubank Jr sank to his knees as his father stood proudly by his side, while Conor Benn embraced his own father and closed his eyes, perhaps wishing to drift into a dreamworld away from the very real nightmare around him.

Also around him were 67,000 witnesses to his downfall after so many threats, so much snarling, so much aggression – an aggression which simply could not deliver the decisive blow he had craved for years. Yet this was not an emphatic demise; in fact, the 28-year-old had fought valiantly in a boxing match that resembled a theatrical melodrama more than a sporting contest. Instead, his demise played out over 12 rounds, with victory so often appearing within his twitchy grasp.

As violent as Benn was in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and as desperately as he pursued glory, Eubank Jr was just that bit better. At times, the 35-year-old looked gone – just as he had looked mentally absent on the scales on Friday, after a gruelling weight-cut – yet he never truly went away. He seemed spurred on by something inexplicable, something intangible, though if one were to chase a romantic answer, they might fall upon the presence of his father.

At the 11th hour, in a plot twist befitting this eccentric idol, Eubank Sr arrived at the venue with his son, despite publicly criticising this match-up and the weight disparity between Jr and Benn as recently as this week, and despite his alleged estrangement from his offspring.

Thirty-two years after Nigel and Sr rounded out their own bitter rivalry, fighting to a draw three years after Sr beat his fellow Briton, the enemies-turned-friends shared a ring again. This time, each stood behind his son, supporting.

With that final twist, drama was ensured at the end, which was fitting given it had accompanied Jr and Conor’s feud from the start. In 2022, their bout collapsed on a few days’ notice, upon the revelation that Benn had returned two adverse drug-test results. This Friday, Eubank Jr missed weight by 0.05lb and was forced to pay £375,000. A glove row even ensued the night before this contest, and Jr’s old foe Billy Joe Saunders was denied entry to Jr’s locker room as a Benn prank fell flat.

And still the drama was not complete until a grinning Sr stepped out of a car with his son. That scene elicited a raucous response from the crowd, with chatter scattered throughout the stands for minutes thereafter. When the screens showed the Benns watching the Eubanks’s arrival, box-office value was not just achieved but surpassed.

But there was still box-office boxing to come.

In the early going, Eubank Jr – the natural middleweight, despite what his struggles on the scales suggested – looked to exploit his size advantage over Benn, who was fighting two divisions higher than usual. Benn’s movements were pronounced and exaggerated, while Eubank Jr’s were compact and tidy. As the fight wore on, however, one might briefly have read those signs not as examples of each man’s technique, but rather his physical state: Jr seemed somewhat depleted.

The first examples of Benn’s viciousness truly arose in the second round, as he put Eubank Jr off balance with a right hook and later landed a picture-perfect cross. In the third frame, a left hook had Eubank Jr on unsteady legs, before the Britons grappled each other to the canvas. In the fourth, Eubank Jr began to chirp at Benn, before jolting back the younger fighter’s head with a smart rear uppercut.

With Benn talking back in the fifth, the boxers were warned by the referee for their polite conversation. Later in the frame, Benn was down from a slip, before Eubank Jr had the crowd chanting his name after endearing them by shoulder-barging Benn to the ropes and tagging him with a hook on the rebound. The sixth brought a frantic exchange, neither the first nor last, while the seventh saw Eubank Jr snap back Benn’s head with right and left straights as the natural welterweight seemed to be fading.

But then Benn produced his best round. He started well in the eighth, and after gulping down some cold London air, he staggered Eubank Jr with a right hook. Eubank Jr continued to throw but did not have his legs under him. He somehow survived to the buzzer, throwing all the way, and it was at this moment that Sr calmly strolled to the steps and up to his son’s corner.

Whatever he said worked. While Eubank Jr was almost in trouble after sustaining a cut in the ninth, he kept trudging forward like a zombie in the 10th – with spite and in spite of the attacks coming his way – ultimately dazing Benn with an uppercut and right hook. Eubank Jr was throwing with greater and greater volume, which he sustained in the 11th.

There were also intermittent firefights in these rounds, and the final frame began with a willing touch of gloves, a very different picture from the opening of the fight, when the rivals had to be dragged away from each other. Both fighters began landing with their heads as much as their hands in the last round, then the crowd erupted as Benn swayed with his mouth agape, courtesy of the violence that Eubank Jr was conjuring.

After the final bell, Conor Benn and Eubank Sr shared respect in a touching moment, but when the scores were revealed, the only father Conor wanted was his own.

In-ring ecstasy for the Eubanks, heartache for the Benns. Perhaps that was destiny in this unique rivalry, confined to two families and spanning generations.

Driver ‘faces off’ with Just Stop Oil on ‘last day of action’ in London

A vehicle appeared to have been driven slowly towards Just Stop Oil (JSO) protesters as hundreds took to London’s streets on Saturday for what the group declared their “last day of action”.

Hundreds of demonstrators, clad in the group’s trademark orange vests, rallied through central London, occasionally blocking roads, including the Trafalgar Square roundabout.

In a march from St James’ Park to Waterloo, it follows JSO’s claimed victory regarding new oil and gas licences, prompting the group to announce they were “hanging up the hi-vis” after this final demonstration.

However, the day’s events were marked by a confrontation captured on video by the PA news agency.

Footage appears to show a white minivan, carrying a child and at least one other passenger, slowly advancing towards a group of JSO protesters.

The protesters, some holding a JSO banner, can be seen with their hands raised, and one individual is heard shouting, “Officer, I’m being pushed back.”

The minivan appeared to edge forwards until the bonnet was pressing against them.

He then exited the vehicle and could be heard shouting, “What are you doing blocking the whole road up?” and saying to police, “What about my right to get home?” as a mass of people including press photographers gathered.

Footage appears to capture the officers reminding the man that the disruption is temporary and that people had a right to protest.

Police seemed to successfully call for the crowd to move away from the vehicle.

Other similar incidents of drivers apparently becoming frustrated with people on the road were caught on camera.

Last month, JSO announced it would stop direct action after it had won its demand to end new oil and gas.

During Saturday’s rally, Keir Lane, 59, from Northamptonshire, told the PA news agency: “You learn the ropes, you learn your business, and you have to identify your strengths and your weaknesses and make changes in what you do.

“This is why JSO are hanging up the hi-vis vest.

“Effectively, what we’re saying is we are stopping one model of operating, which is the disruptive action that we’re known for, and that will then morph into other things… what happens with the Just Stop Oil name, again, I don’t think that’s decided.”

Asked if that action had become a weakness, he said: “No, but you can’t carry on doing the same thing time and time again.”

The group has drawn attention, criticism and jail terms for protests ranging from throwing soup on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and spray-painting Charles Darwin’s grave to climbing on gantries over the M25.

In its March statement announcing the end of direct action, it said: “Just Stop Oil’s initial demand to end new oil and gas is now government policy, making us one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history.

“We’ve kept over 4.4 billion barrels of oil in the ground and the courts have ruled new oil and gas licences unlawful.”

The Labour government has said it will not issue licences for new oil and gas exploration, while a series of recent court cases have halted fossil fuel projects including oil drilling in Surrey, a coal mine in Cumbria and the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields in the North Sea, over climate pollution concerns.

But Labour has distanced itself from Just Stop Oil, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer criticising its actions and saying protesters must face the full force of the law.

The Metropolitan Police have been approached for comment.

How motherhood changes the way women listen

I mean, the sound that I found really profound was the first time I heard Delphi’s heartbeat,” Natasha Khan tells me. We’re in her kitchen in east London, seated on either side of a small wooden table. Delphi is her daughter.

Natasha is telling me about something that happened five years earlier, when she was early in her pregnancy and went to visit a midwife, Nancy, a “silver-haired, beautiful woman in her sixties who had helped to birth 1,500 babies”. She’d not expected to hear a heartbeat that day, but Nancy had the equipment and asked if she wanted to. “And then suddenly there was just, like, a magical sound.” I ask if it surprised her, what it sounded like. “It was much faster than I imagined. And because you see it all the time in movies and people talk about it so much, it’s supposed to be emotional. But I suppose until you actually hear it . . . It’s different when it’s your baby.”

Natasha is a musician, among other things. As Bat for Lashes, the alias under which she performs, Natasha has earned three Mercury Prize nominations, won two Ivor Novello awards and released top 10 albums. When we speak, she is working on a novel, has recently created a tarot deck and is weeks away from releasing her sixth album, The Dream of Delphi. This was why I was speaking to her. Natasha had published a mission statement when she announced the new album, and in it I found a kind of mirror to the year I’d been living. In the wake of having a child, she wrote, “I returned momentarily to the cycles and seasons, through naps and breastfeeds, writing this music in any spare moment I could, methodically mapping out the experience of having my mind slowly blown by something so seemingly common.”

Becoming a mother, Natasha’s statement continued, made her realise how damaged the human connection with nature was; how the increasingly urban, capitalist and digital nature of human existence had placed us “in the hands of something that’s very lifeless”. It speaks of mother archetypes – of crones and sages and witches and midwives – and how distant they feel; of a need to “heal our society” by “reconnect[ing] with our empathy, compassion, power and love, which to me is a very matriarchal energy”. The album, the statement continues, “is just my tiny way of trying to reconnect people… a small slice of music, about a very personal story, and I made it for Delphi so she can hear it when she’s grown and know how much her mum loved her.”

There are 10 tracks on The Dream of Delphi. It’s a record that feels both feather-light and plummeting at the same time, and it takes me a while to tune into it. After a few listens ahead of meeting Natasha, I stop; the stream runs out of access time and I neglect to renew it. I stay put in a life without music.

Natasha found out she was pregnant in the toilets backstage ahead of the penultimate show of her 2019 tour (“I was so out of my body; you have this special sort of twinkling secret”). Four months later the world started to lock down in response to Covid. She was living in Los Angeles and had already begun to navigate her pregnancy as a creative project on its own terms. “It was such an interesting moment, to have a baby in the middle of lockdown,” she explains. “Everything just went quiet, yet my body – tuning into internal sounds or feelings or vibrations, or just natural sounds – had the space to heighten, and was already heightening anyway because I was pregnant. The world stopped and got quieter and the animal side of me grew.” Natasha tells me that, in labour, she sounded “like a groaning cow”, a sound that “was coming from the depths of the earth, it felt like”.

Delphi was born at home, and when I ask Natasha about her sonic memories of her daughter’s arrival, it’s not the newborn noises she remembers, but the silence. She paints me a scene in the hours after birth: she’s in bed with tea and toast and tiny, newborn Delphi, looking out at glass doors that lead onto a porch. “I remember looking out and just seeing this weird twilight time. The midwives left, and [my partner] and Delphi fell asleep. I felt like it was this liminal space where everything was silent. It was this silent world between worlds: I wasn’t not a mother, and I wasn’t a mother yet.

“I was in this threshold moment and everyone else had gone and I felt this existential loneliness, like I was in a spotlight standing in the world. It was a moment that was unrepeatable; it was a moment, and I was just lying. I felt like I’d been in a war, but I was also so aware of this peace after so much motion and noise and movement. It was that silent it was almost like this huge tear in the fabric of reality; I was just completely washed clean of everything for a minute. I felt the mirage of existence had fallen away, and this real sense of connection to animals and plants: that every living thing goes through this process of death and rebirth and birth and growing and dying. I was just overwhelmed with the serenity of that feeling.” Natasha says she fell asleep afterwards and awoke to the sun rising, bringing with it a sense of “pure joy: it was over”.

These hours are represented by two songs on The Dream of Delphi: “The Midwives Have Left” and “Her First Morning”. The former is spare and spectral, wordless vocal chords folded atop gently building piano keys like origami. The latter is more euphoric; Natasha’s cooing vocals sound a little more sure, they’re tentatively growing into something, reaching out into a new kind of existence. “It was really interesting trying to make music around that experience,” says Natasha. “Initially I didn’t want to do any lyrics because I couldn’t really put words to the feelings I was having; the just a fraction of my small human ability to put music to the thing.”

Matrescence changed sound for Natasha, a person who has been engaged with making noise as a musician and a vocalist for most of her life. There was “something about pregnancy that made me continuously connected to something beyond myself”. Once Delphi was born Natasha noticed that her “ears just went insane. At the slightest shifting in her cot I would sit up. What I found interesting was I was totally overtaken by this instinct that was beyond my control. Any slightest hiccup or gurgle or breath. It’s not just your ears that are hearing it, it’s your whole body that senses their whole body; there’s an interchange between our vibrational expressions.” I’m reminded, I tell her, of the raw first days after I gave birth, when I would lie awake despite bone-shattering exhaustion and listen to the strange dialogue between my husband’s sleeping breath and the baby’s fluttering exhales.

“Motherhood drags you down into a state that we would all be in if we were living in greater connection with nature and less artificial environments,” she says. “I think that’s why it’s been such a profound spiritual awakening for me, because as a child I was so naturally connected. There’s been this never-ending longing and melancholy towards wanting to keep that thread alive.”

Having been astonished by where motherhood has taken her spiritually, Natasha believes society doesn’t offer people enough space to properly occupy it: “It’s a moment to be quiet and I think that women aren’t allowed that big space around having a baby; it should be, like, a year and a half, to really marinate in that experience. We’re sort of forced back out way too quickly.”

Hours pass. I leave the intimacy of Natasha’s home – kitten playing on the floor, Polaroids on the fridge, little shoes lined up by the door – and head back across London. It feels like a lot of what I’ve been thinking about – the tussle between artificial, digital noise and the sounds of the outside, organic world; the strange metamorphosis my senses have undergone during my matrescence and how the space I occupy has changed since – has been thrown up by our conversation. I feel seen, but I’ve also had my thinking challenged. I admire the way Natasha is able to inhabit, to embrace, her matrescence and her motherhood so fully. Perhaps in three years’ time, when my son is the same age that Delphi is now, I will too.

Right now, it still feels as if I am emerging from something and the outside world is not quite ready for it; that I am not quite ready for it, that I am still made of tissue-paper layers: who I was, who I am, who I will be. That in listening to myself I must also accept who I am, who I am becoming, who I have lost. It is still easier for me to tune into the sounds of what society expects mothers to be, rather than that more vivid and vital song of what kind of mother I am.

‘Hark: How Women Listen’ will be published by Canongate in the UK on 1 May 2025

The world has become addicted to rage – and 2016 might be to blame

I am trying to imagine your mental state as you read this. Perhaps your children are screaming. Perhaps the milk you used to make your coffee was dubiously sour. Did you wake up and look at your phone, which promptly delivered you some of the worst news possible, from indiscriminate locations across the world, instantly from the palm of your hand to your retinas? Perhaps you clicked off news websites and looked at emails that you shouldn’t read until Monday morning. Perhaps you quickly opened Instagram, to look at the stories of people you don’t like, purely to scratch an itch. And then X (Twitter), where you read apoplectic or sarcastic takes about the news stories you just heard about five minutes ago. How are you feeling? Yes, bad.

Or not just bad. Pissed off, perhaps, or filled with rage. We are in the midst of a rage epidemic, after all. It doesn’t just feel like everyone is angrier than they used to be: they are. The world is a rage-fuelled and rage-filled place. Last year, polling company Gallup published the Global Emotions Report to take the temperature on the positive and negative emotional and mental health of people around the world. The picture they painted was sobering: anger around the world has been on the rise, they found, since 2016. In fact nearly a quarter of their respondents (23 per cent) reported feeling angry every day. Although anger was understandably highest in areas of war, genocide, extreme poverty and civil unrest, even in supposedly peaceful and prosperous countries, levels of rage were simmering. In the UK, 17 per cent of people reported daily anger. In the US, 18 per cent said the same.

It’s not just us normies stoking the fires of fury. Last month on the Call Her Daddy podcast, mercurial and divisive pop star Chappell Roan played up to her persona of being mercurial and divisive by complaining baldly about aspects of her own life (“How can these girls tour, write, perform, interview, sleep, eat, and f***ing work out? How can they do it all and lead a team and be a boss and pay people?”), her past (“I still hate those bitches from high school”), her friends who have children (“I literally have not met anyone [with young kids] who’s happy – anyone who has like light in their eyes, anyone who has slept”) and the expectation for famous people to be political. “Why the f*** are you looking to me for some political answer?” she said. “You think I have the f***ing answer? Like, I’m a pop star. I wish I had the answers. I wish the president was a pop star, but she’s not.” Unsurprisingly, her annoyance made everyone else annoyed at her even more so. In comment sections across the internet, her fans fought it out with posters who argued she was entitled, and nobody won except perhaps Alex Cooper, who hosts the podcast in question.

But why do we let ourselves get so caught up in these kinds of arguments, which are essentially arguments over nothing? Why are we so annoyed? What are we angry about? Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s different for different demographics. And perhaps more unsurprisingly, it’s young men who are leading the charge on our rage epidemic. Ryan Martin, a researcher and author of Why We Get Mad and How to Deal with Angry People, has been charting rising male rage on his Substack and website The Anger Project for the past four years. This January, he revealed some of his findings – that men get angry much more often than women. Over half of all of the men he surveyed (60 per cent) reported getting angry at least once a day – and 40 per cent of those men said it happened multiple times over the same day – compared to just 38 per cent of women. When he delved into the reasons for it, he found it came down to three main areas: I get angry when I experience or witness injustice, I get angry when I am treated poorly, and I get angry when I can’t get something I want. It’s worth noting, by the way, that men polled higher than women in only the latter two of those provocations.

Usually the main arena where we see rage spill out and spill over is the online world. Poisonous figures in the so-called manosphere, like Andrew Tate, have made their own army, fuelled by misogyny, out of alienated and frustrated young men. Alongside the manosphere, “rage-baiting” has become a dominant feature of online life. A genre of content has emerged inspired by and defined by rage – videos and posts intended to rile up the reader or the viewer, to invoke outrage purely for traffic, engagement, revenue, and attention. Rage-baiting is increasingly a calling card of the online right, who use it to inject irony into statements that would otherwise be blatantly racist, homophobic, transphobic or classist. “You can’t get angry,” this mentality says. “I was only joking. If you get angry, you lose.” The result is that we’re all more guarded and more adversarial, online and off.

Gallup’s revelation that rage has been growing since 2016 is telling – it’s tempting to point to that particular year as the one in which we became more politically divided than ever, thanks to Trump and Brexit, and the one which saw us retreat into our own echo chambers on social media, free to speculate and fume to people who agreed with us and attack those who didn’t. Four years later the pandemic saw us further isolated. Shut inside our homes, frustrated and scared, we retreated further into our phones, feeding the algorithms with those fears and frustrations and gobbling up the explanations for our ennui that it spat back out at us.

Sometimes, the rage-baiting algorithmic machine is more bizarre and silly than flat-out violent and poisonous. The morning routine video of fitness influencer Ashton Hall – which saw him rise at around 4am, his mouth taped shut, and repeatedly dunk his face in ice water before faffing around for the next six hours – is the most recent example of viral rage-baiting, and yet most of the backlash to his video was pointing out how silly he was. The rage-bait was so obvious it made us laugh rather than descend into fury, but that’s not often the case. Often, we’re already too pissed off to find the funny in even the most obvious, ridiculous attempts at rage-bait. As one viral post puts it, it works on us because we were already angry, even before we encountered it.

Ashton Hall is the exception rather than the rule, however. Most rage-baiters want us to descend into fury, not chuckle indulgently. And occasionally the rage that’s stoked by populist rage-baiters, and those who seek to divide and incite us, spills over into real life. Anger doesn’t just stay within the confines of the internet. More and more often, videos of people having rage-fuelled meltdowns in public go viral online, from road-rage incidents to one particularly bad example of a man screaming in the face of a young woman on the London Underground for several minutes, while fellow passengers ignore them rather than intervening. And even though these kinds of videos might be posted with the intention of shaming the person having a rage meltdown, seeing them happen again and again only adds to a general sense of growing, rage-fuelled ennui, online and IRL.

Sometimes rage goes even further. Without all the answers but filled with righteous, impotent anger, people spill out into the streets to burn and attack and destroy. They target women, immigrants, anyone they believe is the enemy, the source of their rage. The police move in to subdue and arrest, politicians give statements in which they toe a careful line between condemning violence or understanding frustration, and eventually the boiling eye of the rage storm passes. Those angry people simmer down and stew and rage into their phones and laptops once again, waiting for the next time they can explode.

Perhaps the best way to look at rage is not as an epidemic but as a cultural addiction. And like all addictions, unless we find a way to manage it, it will eat away at us, leaving less and less of ourselves behind a growing societal red mist. The only problem with the “boil over to simmer” cycle is that it leaves us with nowhere to go. If everyone is already angry, all the time, every day, forever, then what comes after the rage? “Gentle outrage” is one potential answer. That’s marketing speak for a move away from outright rage-baiting. Instead it’s all about creating enough annoyance for a click, a reaction, a response, but not enough for an explosion, or getting you cancelled. If that’s not enough to replace your latent feelings of rage with overwhelming feelings of ennui, I don’t know what is.

How online schools can help children form friendships as they learn

When thinking about the best education for your child, it’s naturally not just academic success that comes to mind. A good quality school experience is made up of many parts and one key element is the socialising opportunities that school can provide. Socialisation is crucial for building social skills, growing emotional intelligence and helping children form their own individual identity, as well as giving them an additional incentive to attend a place where they have fun and feel part of a community.

While it might be assumed that the social options are reduced when children attend online school, this is not the case. In fact, there are a number of advantages in terms of the structures, support and diverse social opportunities offered to children who join online schools.

Online schools give students the opportunity to form connections with a much more diverse community of students. The online model allows schools to welcome young people from around the world and this gives pupils a chance to make friends with students from differing backgrounds and cultures. Furthermore, this means they can meet more like-minded individuals and form stronger bonds and more meaningful friendships. This access to such a big and vibrant community also ensures that students can really find ‘their people’ and avoids situations where students are stuck in small circles or forced to engage with classmates that don’t share the same interests or passions.

This is something that Grace, who is now in year 13, has experienced since moving to online school. At her previous school, she was struggling with socialisation and felt that she didn’t really have a self-identity. At an online school, she has found she can be more herself. “A lot of people think that online school is about being alone, but I’ve found that without the physical element, I can express myself better,” Grace explains.  Subsequently, the majority of her closest friends are from her online school and many she has met offline too. “I feel like I’ve met my people,” she says.

Isabella, who is in year 10, has also found that her experience of socialising at an online school has suited her much more than previous bricks and mortar schools. With her father’s job meaning the family moves country every three years, she has always previously struggled forming new friendships at the schools she joins. “I’m always the ‘new’ student, and it’s tough,” she says. After experiences with bullying, she found that online school is an environment she can thrive in. “You don’t have to turn on your camera or use your microphones if you’re not feeling comfortable. I’m not really a ‘social’ person, but I have made some friends here because we have these breakout rooms where we can talk to each other,” she adds.

While young people might not be meeting their fellow students physically every day, online schools put in place extensive measures to ensure that socialising is available for those who want to. This can be seen clearly at King’s InterHigh, the UK’s leading global online school which welcomes children aged 7 to 19 from across the world. Here, students join a warm and welcoming community with a huge range of opportunities for socialising. There’s dozens of clubs and societies for students across all year groups, representing a vast range of interests from chess to technology, sculpture to debate. Throughout the yearly student calendar, there are a number of events, showcases, and competitions of all kinds that provide a chance to socialise in different settings. Some happen internally, like the King’s InterHigh Arts Festival, while others allow students to interact with peers from outside their school when attending events like the International Robotics Competition.

Assemblies bring students together on a weekly basis and give them the chance to celebrate each other’s achievements, hear from their Student Council representatives, and find out what’s coming up at school. Each student is also assigned to one of the school’s eight houses and these smaller, tight-knit communities bring students a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Additionally, inter-house competitions are a fun and friendly way for students to engage and bond.

Although much socialising can come as a result of activities organised by the school, students at King’s InterHigh who are aged over 13 can continue building these relationships in a more informal setting thanks to the in-house, monitored, social media platform. Restricted solely to school students, the platform is safe, secure, and monitored to ensure a positive socialising environment for all those who choose to use it.

Online schools don’t just offer opportunities to socialise online but also offer ample opportunities to cement these connections in offline settings. At King’s InterHigh, there are global meet-ups throughout the year which bring together families allowing both children and parents and guardians to connect in real life. Regular educational school trips, from Geography excursions to science practical exams at other Inspired schools (the group of premium schools of which King’s InterHigh is part of) also allow children to socialise and have fun together in different settings.

Meanwhile, the annual summer camps, themed around a variety of interests and passions, including adventure sports, fashion, football, and tennis, are open to students across all Inspired schools and are held at spectacular Inspired campuses worldwide. Furthermore, the Inspired Global Exchange Programme offers a range of school exchange opportunities, lasting from one week to a full academic year.

Choosing where to educate your children is a big decision for any parent or guardian that involves many factors. However, when it comes to the social benefits, for the right child, online schools offer something truly transformative. To find out more about King’s InterHigh and whether it might be the right learning choice for your family, visit King’s InterHigh

From fry-ups to Michelin stars – Tenerife is now a foodie paradise

Tenerife now boasts more Michelin-starred restaurants than the whole of Wales. This is no mean feat for an island with a reputation built on package holidays, fry-ups and pubs owned by retired British footballers. To someone who hasn’t visited for a couple of decades, this dramatic change may seem like a scarcely believable metamorphosis. And yet the accolades keep coming.

“Tenerife has become a top gastronomic destination, driven by a shift in mindset among chefs, producers, and investors,” beams Erlantz Gorostiza, executive chef of Tenerife’s two Michelin-starred M.B restaurant, which has become a microcosm for the island’s dramatic change.

Today, this Macaronesian isle boasts a whopping 10 Michelin stars, with one hotel alone boasting more Michelin stars than any other in Spain.

“When I arrived on the island 16 years ago, the first signs of transformation were visible,” Gorostiza continues. “[Businesses have been] supported by both public and private investment. The Ritz-Carlton Tenerife, Abama, has long championed local produce and the island’s circular economy. Thanks to this and similar projects, haute cuisine has advanced rapidly, turning Tenerife into a culinary hotspot.”

Having visited Tenerife as a journalist every year since 1998, the Michelin mushrooming hasn’t taken me totally by surprise. I’ve long extolled the delights of boat-fresh local fish like cherne and vieja, and the bountiful fruit and vegetables the eternal spring climate serves up. There is delicious palm honey too, remarkable cheese and the lip-smacking mojo sauces. I’ve witnessed the wine industry refine itself into small producers focused on quality over quantity.

“At the heart of this gastronomic evolution is a deep commitment to local products,” says Gorostiza. “The recognition and elevation of exceptional ingredients – many of them endemic – have played a crucial role in establishing Tenerife’s unique position.”

Tenerife has always had fantastic traditional restaurants beyond the resort towns. Take Restaurante Los Abrigos, where I’ve returned on most of my visits to Tenerife. The fresh seafood heaves from a display alive with shellfish and white fish plucked from the waters just outside the doors.

Order bocinegro if they have it (a fish so delicious it doesn’t need garlic), spice those wrinkly potatoes (the dinky black ones) with that irresistible mojo rojo sauce and wash it down with a glass of bone-dry bodegas tajinaste blanco seco – now you have a sublime, thoroughly local, life-affirming treat.

The raw materials have always been there, but has the appetite been lacking? Literally. It is only over the last couple of decades that Tenerife has started to move away from focusing on a mass market that is content with two-star hotels with dodgy buffets rather than foodie accolades.

Most startling has been the expansion of luxury hotels from Costa Adeje spreading through La Caleta. Today, there is demand from discerning diners who know chorizo should never be anywhere near paella (sorry, Jamie Oliver) and that the best bit is found at the bottom of the pan – what the uninitiated sometimes complain is burnt to exasperated waiters – the caramelised socarrat.

As tourist tastes have expanded beyond simple and traditional, or the blandness of international comfort food, so has the dining. The pace of change has been impressive: it was only 15 years ago that M.B put the island on the foodie map by snaring the first Michelin star.

To see just how far the island has come, we travel along the cobalt ocean to another luxury oasis, the Royal Hideaway, Corales. A decade ago, the island had just three Michelin-starred restaurants, yet this hotel alone sports a trio of its own. In 2015, Il Bocconcino joined the hotel’s one-star San Ho and two-star El Rincon de Juan Carlos to take the hotel’s total star count to four. No single hotel in Spain boasts more.

Read more: Why the Canary Islands should be your next holiday destination

Dining on the sun-dappled terrace at Il Bocconcino is an utter joy, with the Atlantic gently rumbling in the background. Chef Niki Pavanelli’s tasting menu features local tuna and creamy salmorejo, a gazpacho-style tomato and bread soup. There’s a nod to Italian tradition by way of a perfectly al dente carbonara, and aged balsamic swirled into melted parmigiano. The wine pairing kicks off with an excellent Italian champagne doppelganger and soars with a sublime 2018 Amarone Riserva. Two stars here would not be a surprise.

“Our style of cooking at Il Bocconcino is focused on blending Italian cuisine, where I’m from, with locally sourced ingredients,” Pavanelli tells me. “Tenerife is rich in local produce thanks to the volcanic soil, warm temperatures, and the incredible variety of seafood. [The island’s] food scene is really transforming, and we are excited to be part of this evolution, creating dishes that celebrate innovation and rich culinary traditions.”

Read more: Best budget-friendly hotels in Tenerife for families, solo travellers and couples

The upward trajectory looks set to continue. Donaire was awarded its first star in 2025, joining existing one-star Haydee, Taste 1973 and Nub. Others wait in the wings. The Ritz-Carlton, Abama, may have closed its other star eatery, Kabuki, but new Japanese fusion restaurant Akira Back is reaching for a star with its sublime tasting menu that weaves an expertly curated list of Canarian wines around delightful Japanese fusion dishes. A highlight is cod-like local cherne fish served with a beurre blanc spiked with soy. An unlikely yet brilliant combination. A dish of Canarian potatoes served with palm honey has a similarly thrilling effect on the tastebuds.

In Madrid, Gofio restaurant is gloriously symbolic of how Tenerife has changed. Chefs Safe Cruz and partner Aida Gonzalez are proud Tinerfeños and have wowed locals in Madrid with their Michelin-star menu, showcasing traditional Canarian dishes and flavours. Today, Tenerife boasts more Michelin stars per capita than Madrid and is bucking the trend of parachuting in mainland chefs to run its restaurants.

Read more: Best luxury hotels in Tenerife for sophisticated retreats and adults-only spa escapes

The last word goes to the restaurant that started it all, M.B. Gorostiza, reclining in the Macaronesian sun, looks back at his two-Michelin-star gastronomic temple and smiles broadly. “Tenerife has made remarkable progress in recent years, and the best is yet to come.”

How to do it

The Ritz-Carlton, Abama, remains Tenerife’s finest hotel, enjoying its own barranco (gorge) among the banana plantations; its own stretch of beach too. Doubles from £214, including breakfast.

EasyJet flies to Tenerife from a number of UK airports, with flights from London Gatwick starting at £65.98 return.

Robin McKelvie was hosted by Ritz-Carlton, Abama

A protest vote is a democratic safety valve: but use it with care

If you live in one of the parts of England that is voting on Thursday, we encourage you, above all, to vote. The Independent does not tell its readers how to vote but, like a benign constitutional monarch, it sometimes encourages and warns. Turnout is usually low for local elections, but voting is important and however you intend to cast your vote we urge you to take part in the democratic process.

The opinion polls suggest that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK will do well. It is poised to win the Runcorn and Helmsby parliamentary by-election, which is also being held on Thursday, and to win the mayoralties of Lincolnshire, Hull and East Yorkshire, and Doncaster. The party is likely to win hundreds of local council seats and may end up in control of some authorities, either by itself or in power-sharing arrangements with others.

Reform’s success will be dismissed by the Labour and Conservative parties as “a protest vote”. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, was dismissive before a single vote had been cast, saying: “Protest is in the air; protest parties are doing well at the moment.”

Unfortunately for her, if a governing party is unpopular, and the Labour Party undoubtedly is, you would normally expect the official opposition to give voice to that discontent and to benefit accordingly in mid-term elections.

What is unusual is that both the two main traditional parties are unpopular at the same time. The Conservatives have only just been rejected by the voters in the most emphatic terms, and it will take some time before they will be allowed a hearing. What was more surprising, perhaps, was the speed and extent of the disillusionment with the Labour government. Never before has a “landslide” general election victory been obtained on such a low share of the vote; and never before has such a triumph turned so quickly into disappointment.

It is no wonder therefore that Reform will do well, and well enough possibly to eclipse the success of other “protest parties”. The Liberal Democrats, well established in local government and long experienced in harvesting defectors from other parties, are also likely to do well on Thursday. The Green Party and pro-Palestinian independents may also pick up support from disillusioned Labour voters.

None of these should be dismissed as mere “protest” votes, as if they were a temporary, misguided and unserious diversion. Purists will say that it is a mistake to use a vote for a local councillor or regional mayor to express dissatisfaction with government policy on immigration, the cost of living or the NHS. This is to overlook the right of voters to use the system in whatever way they see fit. A so-called protest vote is an important democratic safety valve, a way for citizens to use the electoral machinery to send a message.

But – and this is where The Independent issues a warning – elections are about who holds power. Protest is democratic and necessary, but if it gives you a council run by incompetents, ideologues and conspiracy theorists, you are unlikely to benefit as a resident. Mr Farage’s party ought to be given the chance to prove that its representatives are none of these things, but the record of his previous political vehicles is not promising.

These local elections are about who can be trusted to empty the bins – and it is fortunate indeed for the Labour Party that there are no elections in Birmingham this year – but they are also part of the national political story. Two stories in particular. One is whether Labour can recover from the mess it has made of its first nine months in government. The other is the struggle for the leadership of the opposition, not just the one between Ms Badenoch and Mr Farage, but that between Ms Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, the rival she defeated last year.

Whether you disparage them as protest votes or not, they are votes, and they will help determine our future, locally and nationally. Use them carefully.