Guardian Digest

In the many bizarre exchanges that occurred in the run-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps the most unexpected was an invitation by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to join him and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. The idea that Araghchi would leave talks in Oman about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme to tour a ship sent to the Gulf in an effort to dislodge his government seemed idiosyncratic at best. But it was symptomatic of the unorthodox way in which…

Stroll through almost any town in Slovenia – or simply drive along its regional roads – and you can’t miss them. Posters cling to lamp-posts, bus stops and construction fences, proclaiming the triumphs of one political party or another. It is the unmistakable visual language of campaign season: Slovenia is heading to the polls. On 22 March, the country will hold parliamentary elections. That the outgoing coalition, led by the centre-left prime minister, Robert Golob, will have served a full term is, by Slovenian standards, almost miraculous. It was formed ahead of the 2022 election by Golob’s…

Women who have been arrested, investigated and convicted under abortion legislation in England and Wales “must not be left behind” if the law is changed to prevent women being criminalised in future, campaigners have said. Last summer, the House of Commons voted to end the criminalisation of women who terminate their pregnancies outside the legal framework, through a new clause in the crime and policing bill. The House of Lords will consider its own series of amendments to the legislation on Wednesday, including two that would end active police investigations into suspected illegal abortions…

Deep down, Ali Larijani always believed that the western powers were bent on destroying Iran’s revolutionary regime, for which he had fought on the battlefield. The prescience of that inner conviction has now been vindicated in lethal fashion as Larijani has become the latest establishment figure to die at the hands of Israel, killed in an apparently targeted airstrike, according to reports. It came frothing to the surface when the Guardian interviewed him in June 2006, when he was in the thick of tense and protracted cat-and-mouse negotiations with the west over Iran’s nuclear programme. As…

Rachel Reeves has announced that the Treasury will draw up proposals to hand England’s mayors a share of national tax revenues as part of a radical plan to rebalance the economy. The chancellor promised “a genuine break with the past” that would shift spending power away from Westminster, as she promised to create investment-led growth across the UK. Reeves was delivering the Mais lecture – the second time she has given the high-profile annual address at Bayes Business School in London. Related: Rachel Reeves pushing plans for fiscal devolution in ‘a break with the past’ – business live …

A senior Democrat has called on Joe Kent, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center and a far-right political figure, to testify to Congress about why he resigned from his job over the war on Iran. California representative Ro Khanna’s call came after Kent, a supporter of Trump, wrote on X that “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation” before blaming Israel. “The American people deserve to know why this Administration dragged us into war in Iran,” Khanna wrote on social media. “Joe Kent should come before Congress. If…