People love to declare the death of the women’s movement, pointing to the ‘failure’ of #MeToo or the Epstein files, but don’t give up the fight just yet, writes Rebecca Solnit

Feminism is far from dead, but people love to write its obituary. I’ve lived through dozens of them over the decades, and there’s been a fresh flurry over the past few years. These death announcements are mostly based on two dubious assumptions. One is that we’re at the end of the story, the point at which a verdict can be rendered and a moral extracted. In this version, 60 years on from the great 1960s surge of feminism, the process should be over, and if feminism has not won, surely it has lost. In reality, it’s naively defeatist to assume millennia of patriarchy entrenched in law, culture, social arrangements and economics could be or should have been fully disassembled in one lifetime.

The other assumption is that one event can be a weathervane, a measuring stick, for the failure of feminism. Three popular recent candidates are the overturning of Roe v Wade in June 2022, #MeToo, and the Epstein files. Let’s first remember that the US is not the whole world. There have, for example, been countless obituary writers proclaiming that #MeToo is over or failed, and I’m not sure what that is based on – the assumption that all sexual abuse should have ended and, if not, feminism of the #MeToo subcategory did not succeed? Is any other human rights movement measured by such criteria? Did anyone think the civil rights movement should be judged by whether it terminated all racism for ever? The perfect is the enemy of the good, and it’s often both an impossible standard and a cudgel used to bash in what good has been achieved.

In 2023, what were thought to be Nazar Daletskyi’s remains were buried in his home village and his mother, Nataliia, visited the grave every week. Three years later, he spoke to her on the phone

Nazar Daletskyi was declared dead in May 2023. The DNA match left no room for doubt, officials told his mother, Nataliia. A Ukrainian soldier who volunteered for the front in the early weeks of the war, Nazar had become one more casualty of Russia’s invasion.

Nazar’s remains were laid to rest in the cemetery of his home village. In the months after the funeral, Nataliia visited the grave at least once a week, at first to cry and later to stand in quiet contemplation, remembering her only son.

Self-described UK patriots have spotted an opportunity for advancement and enrichment. That’s why so many outsource their identity to Trump

An underappreciated element of how the “special relationship” between Britain and US emerged in the aftermath of the second world war is that early on, both parties saw themselves as the senior partner. The US’s clear military and economic dominance of the postwar world gave it an obvious claim to seniority; however, there was also a strong strain within English conservatism at the time that saw itself as “Greeks in this American empire”, in the words of former Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan.

In other words, even if the Americans were to be the new Romans, extending their dominion over every corner of the globe, without the intellectual, cultural and political guidance of their wise old mother country they would quickly fall into ruin. As Christopher Hitchens would later describe, the post-imperial UK positioned itself as tutor to its young progeny and, in doing so, assumed the prefix of “Anglo” in “Anglo-American” reflected a subtle primacy of standing.

Dr Kojo Koram is professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University, and writes on issues of law, race and empire. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire

The trouble with open kitchens is that the chaos is fully visible to everyone

DakaDaka, a rowdy paean to Georgian cuisine, has arrived on Heddon Street in the West End of London. Heddon Street has always been synonymous with rowdiness, regardless of the fact that the mature, semi-elegant likes of Sabor, Piccolino and Heddon Street Kitchen are quite the opposite. But anyone who ever found themselves staggering out of Strawberry Moons in the 1990s having lost a shoe and with a love bite or from the basement club at Momo will know that this little nook tucked away behind Regent Street is where a good time is meant to be had.

And now there’s DakaDaka, which certainly does not market itself as a nightclub, because, well, virtually nowhere does any more. What DakaDaka does do, though, is play Georgian dance music very loudly and with endless enthusiasm right through your badrijani (grilled aubergines), imeruli (cheese-filled flatbread) and kababi (lamb skewers). Helpfully, the brick walls have been painted pitch-black to give these dark, candle-lit, metal-clad premises a real sense that you’ve somehow stumbled into a 2am lock-in on a back street in Tbilisi, complete with pottery, folklore and blackboards on the walls, though this place also happens to serve grape salads and nakhvatsa (corn crisps). Some potential customers will no doubt read that and think: “Yippee! I love a restaurant where talking to my friends is no longer part of the arduous invisible labour of leaving the house.” Well, those people will adore DakaDaka, and should take up one of the tables in the heart of the melee. Otherwise, there’s also a sit-up counter behind which the open kitchen is in full swing, and where you can sit shoulder to shoulder with a total stranger. If you do, however, please dress in removable layers, because you will be directly next to the open fire used for “live fire cooking”, that hospitality phrase du jour that has caused me so much merriment in recent years because it proves that if you put enough male chefs in one room for long enough, they will literally believe they invented fire.

Daily Mail owner could take long-term hit after being gazumped at the 11th hour by Germany’s Axel Springer

The day after Lord Rothermere was gazumped in his pursuit of the Telegraph by Axel Springer’s £575m knockout offer, the Daily Mail owner was pictured beaming at Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday party in New York.

As guests at the star-studded black tie celebration at The Grill in Manhattan listened to Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman sing numbers such as Fly Me to the Moon, the 58-year-old media mogul may have been wondering how his almost three-decade dream to unite the titles within one right-leaning stable had fallen at the final hurdle.

It’s OK to be angry at your husband – the shame isn’t yours to carry

I have been married for 30 years. Until recently, we were the best of friends. Then he began being distant, though he remained kind. I thought this was a passing phase, a midlife crisis of some sort. But one day I found out by chance that he had been engaged in a year-long affair with another woman. Life as I knew it collapsed.

It was not so much that my world was turned upside down, as it lost its cohesion. I was instantly reduced to pieces. No matter how much I try to make sense of it all, I cannot. I am (was?) a super-active person with many interests, and this betrayal has splintered me and narrowed everything down to this single event.

IDF says it has begun wide-scale strikes in western Iran; US president says he is ‘surprised’ Tehran has targeted Gulf countries

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

Iraq’s football team will travel to Mexico for a 2026 World Cup playoff match despite calls for it to be postponed due to the Middle East war, the country’s football association has announced.

“The national team will depart at the end of the week to Mexico via a private plane,” said Iraq football association president Adnan Dirjal in a statement, adding they had contacted Fifa to help facilitate the trip during the conflict in the region that has hampered flights.

Oil could pass 2008 record of $147.50 a barrel as damage and closures risk compounding supply shock caused by Iran war

The world’s largest offshore oilfield stretches more than 40 miles from Saudi Arabia’s eastern province into the depths of the Persian Gulf. For almost 70 years the Safaniya field has produced millions of barrels of Arabian heavy crude to be sold by the biggest oil-producing country. This week, the field was shut.

The war in Iran has effectively blocked the Gulf states from exporting a fifth of the world’s oil supply to the international buyers through the strait of Hormuz. Iran’s attacks on tankers trapped in the vital trade route have erased an estimated 15m barrels of oil from the global market.

In comments to NBC News, US president 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 vital Kharg Island oil export hub “just for fun”, rejecting the prospect of a swift peace deal with Tehran.

“The terms aren’t good enough yet,” the US president told NBC News. The Iranian regime wants to make an agreement, he claimed.

The war is deeply unpopular, and the spike in oil prices will mean long-term high prices across the board for Americans

Donald Trump is still high on the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The easy abduction of the Venezuelan president didn’t just grant Trump control of the nation’s oil and critical minerals resources. It allowed him to throttle the government of Cuba by denying it access to energy, raising the tantalizing prospect that he might bring down a communist regime that has annoyed Washington since 1959.

Trump is confident that his joint venture with Israel in Iran will do just as well. The barrage of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors has done nothing to change Trump’s mind that he can win, regardless of how he defines “winning”.