Keep your boss happy, develop your ‘personal boardroom’, ask for honest feedback, don’t take the notes in every meeting and remember: no one gets promoted for inbox zero

There is nothing worse than feeling stuck in a job. What are the best ways to progress without having to resort to shameless self-promotion? Here, career coaches explain how to make sure you are first in line for a promotion – and a pay rise.

He lasted just 11 days as White House communications director, before being fired from the Trump administration. The financier and broadcaster discusses working for the president – and becoming his biggest critic

‘If somebody walks into your office and says they’re friends with Donald Trump, they’re either exaggerating the relationship, or they don’t understand the relationship,” says Anthony Scaramucci. “Because nobody is friends with Donald. You’re a transaction in this guy’s field of vision.”

Scaramucci should know. He has been non-friends with Trump for more than 30 years, though these days he’s more an outright enemy. Just as the attention-devouring president once stalked Hillary Clinton on the debate stage, Trump looms large in Scaramucci’s story. The two men seem to haunt each other. When we meet in London during a stopover in his hectic schedule, the conversation rarely drifts away from Trump for more than a few minutes. Conversely, the 62-year-old financier and broadcaster has become one of Trump’s most vocal and penetrating critics. “We fight like New Yorkers,” Scaramucci says. “He doesn’t really come back at me, because he knows I’m going to come back at him.” Unlike Trump’s presumptive friends, Scaramucci does understand Trump, he claims. “There’s something called ‘Trump derangement syndrome’; I think I have ‘Trump reality syndrome’. I know what he is, I know what he does, I know what he’s capable of and I know the danger of him.”

I was a newcomer, negotiating all of usual classroom difficulties for the first time. Throwing AI into the mix felt like downing a coffee in the middle of a panic attack

Two years ago, at the age of 39, I began training to be a school teacher. I wanted to teach English – to help young people become stronger readers, writers and thinkers, with a deeper connection to literature. After 15 years of working as a freelance writer and as a novelist, I felt confident that I had something to offer. But the further I progressed in my training, the more uncertain I felt. One particular question taunted me for my lack of an answer. What to do about artificial intelligence?

The immediate dilemma: what does it mean for English instruction that all pupils now have access to free online chatbots that can produce fluid, fairly complex prose on demand? This question sits atop a teetering pile of timeless pedagogical quandaries: What are we actually trying to do in school? How should we go about doing it? How do we know if we’ve succeeded? I was a newcomer, negotiating all of this for the first time. Throwing AI into the mix felt like downing a coffee in the middle of a panic attack.

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Allen isn’t in the first act of her own show, only coming on after 45 minutes of a string ensemble to stiffly deliver her acclaimed album in full

When Lily Allen’s West End Girl was released in October 2025, it was an instant sensation. A raw document of marital betrayal and neglect, it was a new kind of divorce album for the post-tabloid celebrity, inspired by Allen’s own separation from actor David Harbour. It earned Allen rave reviews and a place alongside Miranda July’s All Fours in a contemporary canon of emancipatory, autofictional art for modern (heterosexual) women. The album’s structure as a narrative held rich potential for live staging, and Allen’s choice to play it in full on a tour of theatres – before returning for an arena run later this year – suggested she would make good on its theatrical promise.

Split into two acts, West End Girl Live certainly begins with theatrical flair. A string ensemble – named the Dallas Minor Trio after one of the album’s standout tracks – takes to the stage for a version of Allen’s 2008 hit The Fear. The crowd enthusiastically sings along to karaoke-style lyrics on a screen behind the trio. It works as a prelude: the song’s minor key paranoia translates well to the arrangement and its themes of existential crises are relevant to the album we’re here to see.

None of the prime minister’s critics engages with the hard strategic dilemmas arising from Britain’s perilous dependency on US power

It is not easy being a friend of Donald Trump, but it is a lot less dangerous than being his enemy. There isn’t a huge range of options in between. War in the Middle East is exposing how limited the choices are for a British prime minister.

The US president doesn’t see alliances as long-term relationships based on mutual advantage, but as rolling transactions on a mafia model. The boss offers protection in exchange for tribute and loyalty.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, ahead of the May elections, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour is under from both the Green party and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the party. Book tickets here

In the past three months, Donald Trump’s White House has reportedly used AI twice to effect regime change – once in its capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and more recently to help plan the strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The most recent strikes coincided with the end of the Pentagon’s relationship with the AI company Anthropic over concerns its AI tool Claude was being used for purposes the company had explicitly prohibited. The government swiftly signed a new contract with Open AI.

To find out what this means for the use of AI in forthcoming conflicts, Madeleine Finlay speaks to technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker. He explains why he thinks this moment represents a dangerous turning point.

Trump is using AI to fight his wars – this is a dangerous turning point

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Iran continues to target American bases and Hezbollah fires at Israel as conflict spreads across Middle East

• US-Israel war on Iran – live updates

Iranian drones hit the US embassy in Riyadh as Tehran continued to launch waves of retaliatory strikes at the Gulf and Israel, while Israeli soldiers began operating in southern Lebanon on the fourth day of an increasingly regional war in the Middle East.

The drone attack on the US embassy in Riyadh caused a minor fire, prompting the diplomatic mission to tell Americans to distance themselves from the compound. The attack followed an earlier Iranian drone strike on the US embassy in Kuwait, as Iran continued to target US bases, facilities and personnel in Arab Gulf states.

Minister says UK not going to be ‘involved in a wider conflict’ despite US president’s frustration

The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, and her department’s ministers are facing oral questions in the House of Commons from 11.30am today. We will bring you the key lines as they come.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is expected to claim later today that she has rebuilt the country’s public finances so they can withstand economic shocks as she delivers her spring statement.

Democrats disturbed by rationale that Trump ordered pre-emptive strikes out of concern about Tehran retaliation

• US-Israel war on Iran – live updates

Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, in a new explanation for Washington’s surprise entry into the conflict.

The rationale drew divided reviews from top members of Congress who on Monday evening received the first briefing by the Trump administration since it ordered the air campaign to begin over the weekend.

As US-Israeli airstrikes hit their cities, people tell of how the authorities are warning them off the streets

More than 700 civilians have been killed since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran last weekend, according to rights groups, as people inside Iran told the Guardian they were fearful of a rising death toll.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society said that at least 555 people had been killed across Iran. However, in its latest report, the US-based Human Rights Activist news agency, has reported at least 742 civilians have been killed, including 176 children. The near total internet blackout makes independent verification of the exact figures extremely difficult as rights group warn the numbers could rise.