She wasn’t a great one for dispensing wisdom. Instead, she fought for me whenever I most needed it

Mum was a brilliant non-giver of advice. Now Dad, he had his pearls. “If you do something, do it with a good heart.” It sounded platitudinous to me, but he had a point. And then there was his favourite: “If you think something bad about someone, say it up there [pointing to his head] but not out loud.” Dad was a good man, but that infuriated me.

Mum played a bigger part in my life. She often had to fight like crazy for me – to keep me in school when I’d told the dinner lady to fuck off at the age of five (no, I don’t know where it came from); to take on the doctors who labelled me a malingerer when I had encephalitis; to allow me back into mainstream education after I’d had three years off, and finally to persuade the University of Leeds to let me in after I’d messed up my A-levels.

Iran’s is trying to create wedges between Gulf states and the US, but Trump is very comfortable on the ‘escalatory ladder’

In its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proving ground for two competing concepts of military escalation, each of which threatens to become a trap.

On one side, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have failed thus far in their ill-defined and shifting strategic aims. Despite killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the clerical regime remains and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is unsecured. Airstrikes are intensifying and hitting a greater number of targets.

It’s only the first episode, but alongside Jeff Goldblum’s non-anecdotes about pencils the guests are reduced to discussing the colour of the sofa

Now look. Let’s make a few things clear before we begin.

We love Claudia Winkleman, absolutely, yes.

A National Rally victory in France’s second city in municipal elections that start on Sunday would be hailed by the party as a step towards taking the presidency next year

Nathalie, a market trader in her 40s, had woken early to prepare a pan of paella rice. She was spooning it into tubs at a market in southern Marseille last week when a crowd of far-right canvassers approached, promising cleaner and safer streets if she voted for them in the local elections.

“Our cash tin was stolen right here at Christmas time,” Nathalie said. “I’ve had a bag stolen too. It tends to happen at the end of the day, around 7pm. I worry for the elderly grandmas. I had a necklace ripped off me in the city centre once.”

Two weeks in, it’s increasingly clear that the US-led war has taken every problem it aimed to solve – and made it worse

It’s not easy, but let’s try to look at this war in the best, most charitable light. Let’s try to see the US-Israel conflict with Iran as its prosecutors and advocates would want us to see it.

They would say that it has two aims, both legitimate. The first is to weaken if not remove a regime that has done terrible evil to its own people. Who could mourn the supreme leader of a government that, according to one report, gunned down 30,000 of its citizens on the streets in just two days on 8 and 9 January? Listen to those Iranians who long ago reached the glum conclusion that the only way they could be rid of their tormentors was through external military action. As one exiled Iranian put it to me this week: “The Iranian people have been begging the world for help for so many years. They tried voting for change in 2009; they were killed. They tried protesting in 2019, 2022 and this year; they were massacred in the tens of thousands … They were out of all other options.”

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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As it searches for a new editor and presenter, programme is facing questions over its direction and status

With well over 5 million listeners a week tuning in to hear whether another tongue-tied minister will fall foul of its legendary 8.10am interview slot, Radio 4’s Today programme continues to be one of the BBC’s flagship news shows.

It has also traditionally been the pinnacle for broadcasters, producers and editors alike, keen to be associated with a show that has strived to set the daily news agenda since the 1950s.

Trump also threatens to hit island’s oil infrastructure if Tehran does not allow passage for ships via Strait of Hormuz

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

Details are still emerging about the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad, with some conflicting reports about what struck the embassy.

Two security officials told AFP the embassy complex was hit in the attack, though the exact cause was not clear. One security source said a drone had hit the embassy, while another said a projectile, believed to be a rocket had fallen on the diplomatic complex.

On one side, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have failed thus far in their ill-defined and shifting strategic aims. Despite killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the clerical regime remains and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is unsecured. Airstrikes are intensifying and hitting a greater number of targets.

Tehran’s counter is a “horizontal escalation”, one long prepared by the regime, that is intended to widen the conflict geographically, with strikes on the Gulf states, and also in terms of the costs to Washington and the global economy, not least in energy supplies.

US defense head is eager to frame operation as a success – and slam journalists for not portraying it in a positive light

• Has the pro-Maga media turned on the Pentagon over Iran?

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox

Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield.

Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.

Israel has issued a new displacement order for southern Lebanon, instructing residents within 25 miles of the border between the two countries to head north. The order covers major Lebanese cities and dozens of villages. Israel’s military is considering an escalated campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah after the pro-Iran group launched its most intense attacks yet on Wednesday night. Guardian journalist William Christou reports from Nabatieh, a city in south Lebanon hit by Israeli strikes

• Israel strikes Beirut and orders south Lebanon evacuation as conflict mounts

Longer sentences, overcrowding and inexperienced staff cited as factors in ‘rising tensions’ in prisons

Notorious prisoners such as the Soham killer Ian Huntley are facing increasingly violent attacks from inmates with “nothing to lose”, the head of the Prison Governors’ Association has said.

Tom Wheatley, the president of the PGA, which represents governors in England and Wales, said those serving lengthy sentences or whole-life tariffs in high-security institutions had “no fear” of being given additional time in prison, and could earn status by singling out famous child murderers and paedophiles.

Last week, a 20-year-old sex offender who had recently moved to my son’s prison was ‘kettled’. In prison, that means boiling water, mixed with a bit of sugar, was thrown into his face. He has been scarred for life.

This is the kind of threat that my son and every sex offender has to live with every day when they are in prison.