I n the age of online hookups, signals of attraction – once felt in a significant look or a brush of the hand – are now transmitted by way of screens. Laying bare the gamification of dating, Tadeo Pestaña Caro’s probing debut follows 20-year-old slacker Santiago (Max Suen), lost in a cycle of thwarted desire in Buenos Aires. Whether at his dead-end job at a call centre or lying awake in bed, he is glued to his phone, hungrily swiping through various dating app profiles. A sea of naked torsos and bulging crotches surge across his screen, each promising a passionate encounter and perhaps something more.
Caro’s film captures this obsession with striking psychological precision. There’s a paradox to Santiago’s compulsive behaviour, which is at once all-consuming and distracting. Faced with the illusion of choice, he can’t help swiping even when he’s on a night out with his coworker Karen (Jazmín Carballo), who plays a big-sister role to the restless young man. Santiago’s real-life conversations are punctuated with the constant pings of new messages, offering dopamine rushes that leave him wanting more.
Peppered with witty dialogue, these moments of disconnect bristle with ironic humour and palpable melancholy. It is unclear, however, what Santiago is actually after. When his sexually charged online conversations translate into in-person meetups, he seems to desire genuine intimacy as much as a hookup. He is drawn to a glamorous gay club with a secret back room, but then panics when the fantasy of anonymous sex turns into actual flesh. The script, though, offers little insight into his personal life beyond his screen addiction, so Santiago’s contradictory acts of self-sabotage lack much emotional heft. But despite its weaknesses as a character piece, the film manages to impress with its account of the queer scene in Buenos Aires, packed with vivid visual details.
A Few Feet Away is on digital platforms from 25 May.
The flightless moa, an extinct bird of New Zealand, stood more than 3 metres tall, weighed over 200kg and had eggs larger than those of any bird now living. Now the de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences says it is a step closer to resurrecting the moa after creating an artificial eggshell.
Colossal hopes the artificial incubation system, which it successfully used to hatch chickens, could be scaled up to create a bird as big as the moa in future. “We’ve created a novel shell-less culture system that is fully scalable and biologically accurate,” said Prof Andrew Pask, the chief biology officer at Colossal.
The company previously provoked controversy with claims to have de-extincted the dire wolf and its ambition to bring back the woolly mammoth . The latest advance has been met with scepticism by scientists who say its scope is impossible to judge given that the company made the announcement through a press release with scarce scientific detail or data.
It is already possible to hatch chicks from artificial eggshells but the survival rate is limited because chicks may not get enough oxygen. Colossal suggests its new platform, a silicone membrane, is better than existing “ex-ovo” approaches because it allows oxygen through at the same rate as a chicken eggshell.
“It sounds impressive but then it would, because it’s a press release,” said Dr Louise Johnson, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Reading. “I look forward to reading more details when they’re published, but until there’s a peer-reviewed paper I might as well give expert commentary on a YouTube ad.”
Moa eggs are estimated to have been approximately 80 times the volume of a chicken egg and roughly eight times the volume of an emu egg, placing them beyond the capacity of any available avian surrogate.
Even if the artificial eggshell is effective and can be scaled up, Colossal will still face significant scientific challenges in its attempt to bring back the moa. The species went extinct about 600 years ago, and since DNA fragments over time it will not be possible to reproduce a complete copy of the genome.
Colossal’s approach with the dire wolf was to tweak 20 genes in the grey wolf aimed at making them closer in appearance to a dire wolf – but far from a complete genetic replication.
Others raise broader ethical questions about the company’s ultimate objectives. “It is legitimate to ask whether it makes ecological sense to genetically redesign some modern birds to superficially resemble moas, and what fate would await such animals,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox, the director of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona and a specialist in DNA recovery.
“Would we release them on New Zealand’s South Island? As with other examples publicised by the same company – one need only recall the mammoth or the giant wolf – there is a rather surprising mix of scientific advances and publicity that could be described as misleading, which transcends the scientific sphere and must always be interpreted in the context of a private company’s business interests.”
When I cook pasta with a hollow (eg, orecchiette), how do I stop it sticking together? The water is always boiling and salted, sometimes with oil, but last week my granddaughter and I spent half an hour going through the damn stuff. David, Manchester “Pasta is an engaged activity, so it’s really important that you don’t just drop it [in boiling water] and walk away,” says Dara Klein, of Tiella in east London. “Like a dear friend, pay it some attention.” David mentions orecchiette, which is a particularly vulnerable shape, says the Guardian’s Italian correspondent, Rachel Roddy : “They have a habit of falling into each other,” she sympathises, and in such times it’s best to check your basic principles. “It’s always the same rules,” Roddy says. “The water should be fast boiling, add salt, then stir, so you’ve got that double movement.” She isn’t one for adding olive oil, mind. Neither is Klein: “It’s just not necessary. And even if you’ve added a healthy glug of oil to the water, you’re still going to get clumping if you don’t stir.”
This may seem obvious, but make sure your pasta hasn’t intertwined in the bag before shaking it into the rolling water, and don’t be daft and dump the lot in all at once. “As soon as the pasta is in the water, give it a stir with a wooden spoon,” says Klein, who then stirs every minute to ensure those pasta shapes float free.
Once cooked, it’s a good idea to scoop out the pasta with a slotted spoon or sieve (“a spider or a regular one,” Roddy says) and put it in a big bowl. “You want to be doing this in batches, rather than pouring the lot into a colander – that’s just another opportunity for the pasta to clag because the water goes down the sink, the steam comes up and you glue the pasta together in the colander.” If you really must drain, meanwhile, Roddy would go for the double – ie, two colanders. “If you do all of these things – make sure the water is moving, you rain in the pasta, you stir regularly and lift out once cooked – then you should have liberated orecchiette.”
Where many people have fallen foul of the clump, however, is in one-pot dishes. Again, success, Roddy says, comes down to adding the pasta gradually and keeping things moving. That said, she would be minded to change tack: “I would be wary of using shapes such as orecchiette in a one-pan dish, because they like to stick more than others.” This inclination, coupled with the starch being released into the water and functioning like glue, can only spell trouble.
When it comes to the likes of pasta salads (ie, in which it’s dressed and served at room temperature), be sure to cook the pasta only to just al dente. “Clumping can happen if you take the pasta right up to the maximum cooking time,” Roddy warns, so keeping it harder will mean it’s less sticky. Again, once it’s ready, get that pasta in a big bowl, Roddy says: “You don’t want it to be in a small, claustrophobic space, because you’re then just letting that bit of residual water and the starch on the pasta stick together.” Just like the rest of us, movement and space are key.
Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com
At the international BioVision conference in Lyon in February 2001, the geneticist Craig Venter performed a remarkable piece of scientific barnstorming. Human beings possess far fewer genes than science had ever realised, he announced. We have about 30,000, far lower than previous estimates of 100,000.
Such lack of heritable material showed people are not prisoners of their genes but are shaped primarily by environmental influences, he added. “We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right,” said Venter, who has died aged 79. “The wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code. Our environments are critical.”
The timing of Venter’s announcement was dramatic. A few days later, the journals Nature and Science were scheduled to publish details of the first draft of the human genome, and outline our species’ detailed genetic makeup – which would indeed reveal the paucity of our genes. This work had been spearheaded by the US government and the UK Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Centre, in an uneasy partnership with Venter’s own privately funded sequencing company, Celera Genomics.
BioVision 2001 had been set up to orchestrate the publication of the partnership’s results, but at the conference’s closing sessions several days later. Venter had now thrown a spanner into this carefully arranged process. Journalists in the audience, myself included, were startled. Apart from revealing our unexpected low gene count (the figure has since been reduced even further, to about 20,000), Venter had completely undermined the impact his rivals were due to make.
“Did you know these results are embargoed until next week?” I asked Venter. “It might be their embargo but it wasn’t mine,” he replied. His announcement made the front pages of newspapers across the globe including my own at the time, the Observer.
Venter was a brilliant, daring entrepreneur and an unapologetic self-promoter who took pleasure in showing off his achievements as well as his private plane, yacht and flash watches. It was a tendency that made enemies. James Watson , co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, from which our genes are made, compared him to Hitler for attempting to dominate science by trying to patent human genes. Others nicknamed him “Darth” Venter, after the Star Wars villain.
Other scientists have been more forgiving. The neuroscientist Sir John Hardy of University College London (UCL), who collaborated with Venter on dementia research, acknowledged that the competition between Celera researchers and US and UK government scientists had sometimes been testosterone-driven. “On the other hand, there is no doubt that this competition speeded things up enormously and ended really in a score draw,” Hardy said.
Venter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Elisabeth (nee Wisdom) and John Venter, both parents having served in the US marines during the second world war; by then his father was studying accountancy and his mother sold real estate to help the family finances. Growing up in Millbrae, California, he had a poor academic record at Mills high school. He was offered a swimming scholarship at Arizona State University but turned it down and instead chose the beaches of southern California to follow “pursuits that involved drink, girls and bodysurfing,” he wrote in his autobiography, A Life Decoded, published in 2007. These pleasures were interrupted by the Vietnam war. Venter signed up for the Naval Hospital Corps school and became a senior corpsman in Da Nang in the naval hospital’s intensive care unit, a job he later described as M*A*S*H without the jokes and pretty women.
“I witnessed several hundred soldiers die, more often than not while I was massaging their hearts – at times with my bare hand – or attempting to breathe life into them,” he recalled. “Vietnam would teach me more than I ever wanted to know about the fragility of life.”
The war had one beneficial impact on Venter. It stimulated an interest in life sciences and he applied to study medicine at the University of California, San Diego, where he gained a PhD in physiology and pharmacology in 1975, seven years after his return from Vietnam.
He began research into genome sequencing and in 1992 co-founded the Institute for Genomics Research (later the J Craig Venter Institute) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with the biologist Claire Fraser, later his second wife. In 1995, their team generated the first genome sequence of a living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae , using a revolutionary technique he called whole genome shotgun sequencing. Random pieces of DNA are sequenced and then assembled into contiguous genome sequences using powerful computers. In 1998, Venter founded Celera Genomics, to apply this method to the human genome.
Crucially, Venter’s technique contrasted with that used by publicly funded UK and US scientists who were sequencing the genome in smaller, more organised segments. This relatively cautious approach was denounced by Venter as slow, wasteful and costly. A truce was agreed and celebrated at a White House ceremony in June 2000 before the competing draft sequences were published in February at Lyon.
Venter later revealed that much of the DNA used in Celera’s decoding efforts had come from his own cells, to the annoyance of scientists who felt he had subverted standard processes for selecting DNA donors and had behaved egotistically. “I’ve been accused of that so many times, I’ve got over it,” he responded . In any case, use of his own DNA had revealed he possessed an abnormal fat metabolism and an elevated risk of Alzheimer’s disease, so that he was now taking fat-lowering drugs to reduce its impact, he added.
Later that year, Venter was sacked as head of Celera by Tony White, the president of Applera – which owned the company – and who wanted it to move away from the business of gene sequencing and into the far more lucrative field of drug discovery. Venter was judged to be unsuitable for leading such a goal.
“I sought solace in the one thing I knew could cheer me: I headed for my boat and set sail for the turquoise seas of St Barts … in the Caribbean,” he recalled in Life Decoded. He returned to use his vast payoff to endow the J Craig Venter Institute with $100m. There he could pursue projects that included designing energy-producing microbes and synthesising bacterial genomes. He later set up two other companies, Human Longevity and Diploid Genomics, which aim to combine artificial intelligence with advances in ageing research and gene sequencing to boost human lifespans and diagnose disease.
As to Venter’s claims in Lyon about the overriding power of the environment in determining human behaviour revealed in our low gene count, these have since been questioned rigorously by scientists. Just because humans have a lot of different traits, does not mean we have to possess a lot of genes, they point out.
Nature has simply found a way to make our genes do increasingly sophisticated management work, said Sir John Sulston , one of the leaders of the UK’s public genome effort, in response to Venter’s claims. As we move up the ladder of complexity, we are simply increasing the variety and subtlety of genes, Sulston told the Guardian at the end of the Lyon conference.
Venter was married three times and had a son, Christopher, from his first marriage, to Barbara Rae, in 1968; they divorced in 1980. His marriage to Fraser in 1981 ended in divorce in 2005. Three years later he married Heather Kowalski, who had been his press officer at Celera. She survives him, along with Christopher and three siblings, Keith, Gary and Suzanne.
John Craig Venter, geneticist and business entrepreneur, born 14 October 1946; died 29 April 2026
This article was amended on 15 May 2026 because a picture caption incorrectly referred to the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae as “flu-causing”.
“Did you know that horses’ legs are their fingers?” This is just one question asked in a fun podcast by broadcasting favourites and longtime besties Alice Levine and Greg James. The format is finding its feet, but so far it’s the standard chatty pod fare: no topic is off limits as they invite listeners to share their gripes, crises and any inane thoughts they can’t shake off. And in episode one, Alice reveals her War Horse acting debut … Hollie Richardson Widely available, episodes weekly
Lemme Say This
After a short hiatus, Hunter Harris and Peyton Dix’s culture podcast has been resurrected by the Obamas’ production outfit Higher Ground. For takes that are extremely pertinent and often very funny, the Brooklynites are rarely bested; a recent episode offered insightful chat on Lena Dunham’s memoir and the total nonsense that is Euphoria. Hannah J Davies Widely available, episodes weekly
Uncover: The Expert Witness
If nine episodes feels like a lot for a limited series, this new one from Canada’s CBC has a bit to dig into. Namely, how did a strangely secretive AI policing tool used in Akron, Ohio, turn out to be a total dud? Tech and true crime are expertly fused in a series hosted by Sam Mullins (Sea of Lies). HJD Widely available, episodes weekly
Stories from a Stranger
Nurse turned content creator Hunter Prosper first interviewed strangers in the US during the Covid pandemic, going viral on TikTok. This podcast is a decidedly earnest brand extension, featuring polished chats with unusually candid folk. Despite the schmaltz, it is rather touching: his first episode centres on three love stories, including one from sprightly 96-year-old Sally. HJD Widely available, episodes weekly
A History of the United States in 100 Objects
Roman Mars leads a who’s who of podcasters – from Radiolab’s Latif Nasser to Song Exploder’s Hrishikesh Hirway – in this new take on A History of the World in 100 Objects. In a fascinatingly meta first episode, Pulitzer-winning writer Jill Lepore considers what a time capsule from 1876 teaches us about curation. HJD Widely available, from Tuesday 19 May
A new report from leading wildlife and conservation organizations has revealed a sharp rise in the online sale of primates across major social media platforms in the US, raising concerns about wildlife trafficking, public safety and animal welfare.
The report, titled Primates for Purchase: The Surge in Sales on Social Media in the US, was released Tuesday by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Researchers monitored activity over a six-week period in mid-2025 and identified more than 1,600 primates listed for sale on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Many listings were easily found through searches using terms such as “monkey rehoming” or “adoption”, despite platform restrictions on wildlife sales .
Sellers frequently disguised commercial transactions as rescue or rehoming efforts, allowing listings to remain publicly visible while avoiding detection, according to the report.
The study documented 1,131 online posts from 122 social media users advertising 1,614 live primates for sale. Twelve primate taxa were identified, including macaques, capuchins, marmosets, spider monkeys, tamarins, squirrel monkeys, vervets, lemurs, bush babies, chimpanzees, howler monkeys and owl monkeys.
Macaques accounted for the largest number of listings, with 839 individuals identified, followed by marmosets at 293 and capuchins at 275. Prices ranged from $250 to $6,500 depending on species, age and rarity.
Researchers said many of the animals advertised online were infants and juveniles. The report notes that infant primates are often taken from their mothers in the wild because buyers are led to believe younger animals will bond more easily with humans. Many animals suffer severe trauma or die during smuggling operations before reaching buyers.
About 60% of the world’s primate species are threatened with extinction , and roughly 75% have declining populations largely from habitat loss driven by human activities such as industrial agriculture, logging and hunting.
“The ease with which primates are being bought and sold online should be a wake-up call,” Sara Walker, senior adviser on wildlife trafficking at AZA said in a statement. “These are complex, long-lived wild animals – not pets – and this growing digital marketplace is fueling demand, causing animals to suffer. This also increases pressure on zoos and sanctuaries that must care for confiscated wildlife – often for the rest of their lives, since most confiscated primates cannot be returned to the wild.”
Wildlife trafficking is estimated to be part of a global illicit trade worth about $23bn annually and is considered one of the world’s largest hidden markets alongside drugs, firearms and human trafficking. According to the report, primates are increasingly being smuggled into the US, including across the Mexican border, while inconsistent laws continue to make trafficking a “low-risk, high-reward” criminal enterprise.
Ed Newcomer, former special agent for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement: “Wild primates are just the latest wild animal put at risk by a combination of ignorant desire and calculated greed. This report highlights the growing problem of primate trafficking in the United States. Now is the time for action to prevent the demise of iconic wild species and to keep the public safe from the diseases and injuries primates can cause.”
Experts warn that growing visibility and accessibility of primates online could continue to drive demand unless stronger enforcement and policy measures are introduced, such as strengthening federal laws and improving reporting tools for wildlife sales on social media platforms.
Surrey police have launched a criminal investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse after two women came forward to say they were the victims of attacks in Britain detailed in the Epstein files.
The force said the claims dated back to the 1980s and 1990s, with one in Surrey and allegations concerning Berkshire understood to relate to the Windsor estate.
The Surrey investigation is the first by British police relating to Epstein examining alleged harm against females.
The force was understood to be searching for evidence to prove or disprove the claims and has interviewed the alleged victims.
In a statement the Surrey force, which covers an area south of London, said: “Following the release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein by the US Department of Justice, we are investigating two separate allegations of non-recent child sexual abuse.
“One report relates to locations in Surrey and Berkshire in the mid-1990s to 2000. The other relates to the mid- tolate-1980s in west Surrey.”
It was understood that no potential suspects have yet been interviewed, and there have been no arrests.
The force had been considering whether a full criminal investigation was needed for several months after material was published in the Epstein files in December 2025.
In February the force appealed for witnesses, and said: “Following the US Department of Justice Epstein file release in December 2025, Surrey police became aware of a redacted report alleging non-recent human trafficking and sexual assaults on a minor in Virginia Water, Surrey, between 1994 and 1996.
“After reviewing our systems using the limited information available to us, we found no evidence of the Surrey-related allegations being reported to Surrey police.”
Publicity about the allegations led people to come forward and claim to have information. In February Surrey police said: “We have received several reports as a result [of the appeal for witnesses], which we are in the process of reviewing.”
The Guardian understands that two of those reports were from women who said they were the victims mentioned in the Epstein files. After statements were taken Surrey police announced their criminal investigation.
Child abuse specialists in the force’s public protection team are leading the investigation.
Documents relating to Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender, and his associates have been published on the US Department of Justice (DoJ) website.
Surrey are the third British police force criminally investigating after revelations in the Epstein files.
It is the first British police criminal investigation into claims of sexual harm against females relating to Epstein, who is alleged to have trafficked women and girls to his powerful associates.
The two criminal investigations so far have related to alleged offences against the state.
The former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson have been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office for allegedly handing Epstein sensitive information gathered as part of their official roles.
Both deny any wrongdoing.
King Charles’s brother is under investigation by Thames Valley police, and the former cabinet minister and former ambassador to Washington is under investigation by the Metropolitan police .
Six forces are examining whether criminal investigations should be launched into flights coming into the UK, allegedly at the behest of Epstein, carrying trafficked women.
British police fear that prosecutors will be reluctant to bring charges unless the Trump administration agrees to hand over original documents from the Epstein files.
So far, redacted documents relating to Epstein and his associates have been published on the DoJ website.
The DoJ, considered to be under Trump’s control, has told British police it would not consider handing over the original documents without a formal request . That is a bureaucratic and lengthy process.
A national gold group hosted by the National Police Chiefs’ Council is coordinating British police efforts to investigate allegations in the Epstein files.
People could see their travel plans upended as airlines cancel or consolidate flights to conserve jet fuel as the war in the Middle East disrupts supplies.
Airlines are reviewing their timetables to see which flights can be cancelled in advance and cause the least delays.
We would like to hear from people who have been affected by cancellations of, or changes to, their flights. What happened? How has this affected your travels? If your flight has been cancelled or changed, have you made alternative plans? Did you receive compensation?
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Victor Wembanyama had 41 points and 24 rebounds, Dylan Harper finished with 24 points and a team playoff-record seven steals, and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 122-115 in a double-overtime classic to open the Western Conference finals.
Wembanyama sealed Monday night’s game with a pair of dunks in the final minute, one of them leading to a three-point play as the Spurs stole home-court advantage and beat the Thunder for the fifth time in six meetings this season.
Stephon Castle had 17 points, Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson each scored 13 and Julian Champagnie added 11 for the Spurs, who were without De’Aaron Fox because of ankle stiffness.
“A great effort from everybody,” said Wembanyama, who, at 22 years and 134 days, became the youngest player with at least 40 points and 20 rebounds in a playoff game.
“The best player in the … world,” Castle told NBC after the game when asked about Wembanyama.
The Frenchman was asked if he agrees with Castle’s assessment. “The world is 8 billion people,” Wembanyama said. “That’s 8 billion opinions.”
Alex Caruso scored 31 points, the second-highest scoring game of his career, off the bench for the Thunder – whose nine-game playoff winning streak dating to Game 7 of last season’s NBA finals was snapped.
Jalen Williams returned from a six-game absence caused by a hamstring strain and scored 26 points for the Thunder, while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – on the night he received his second straight Most Valuable Player trophy – had 24 points and 12 assists but shot 7 for 23 but struggled for long stretches and admitted after the game that he “had to be better”. Asked whether watching Gilgeous-Alexander win the award served as motivation, Wembanyama said, “Yeah, for sure.“
It was the sixth Game 1 in NBA playoff history to go into double overtime – the first since a Spurs-Warriors game in 2013.
“It was a war of wills,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “The levels of mental toughness exuded by both teams … we needed every second from everybody that played.”
Wembanyama’s final line was 14 for 25 from the field, 12 for 13 from the free throw line, and his lone three-pointer came late in the first overtime, tying the game from well beyond the arc . Without that shot, there probably would have been no second overtime.
“Confidence through the roof,” Harper said of the importance of Wembanyama’s long three. “I was kind of stunned a little bit. But once the ball went up, I’m like, ’Oh, it’s going in.’ It’s kind of just who he is.“
Wembanyama blocked three shots and changed countless others. He dunked on the Thunder and flexed, more than once. The Spurs outrebounded the Thunder 61-40. Wembanyama even smiled and posed for the cameras at times. This was his first conference finals game, on the road no less, and he was as comfortable as could be.
“I think he’s a great player with high impact obviously, and when you play against those players it’s kind of an acquired thing,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “You’re learning as you go. We’ve gone through that with other great players.”
