Guardian Digest

He is one letter away from being a household name. Now Josh Wardle, the inventor of Wordle, has launched a new online game, and in doing so, provided an interesting insight into ambition. For some, creating a global smash hit puzzle so zeitgeisty and popular it becomes part of millions of strangers’ daily routines and is bought by the New York Times for seven figures would have been sufficient for a lifetime. Rather than face inevitable comparison and potential disappointment by attempting That Difficult Second Album, they would have just kicked back on their yacht and called it a day.…

A decade after he suffered life-changing injuries in the terrorist attacks that hit Brussels airport and a metro station, Walter Benjamin has been having sleepless nights. Not only because of the hellish time he lived through on 22 March 2016. Last year, he says, his monthly pension was drastically cut to recoup “overpaid” survivors’ compensation. Benjamin, now 56, was standing three metres away from the second attacker at Zaventem airport when the bomb detonated. Three suicide bombers killed 32 people that day and left more than 320 people with the kinds of injuries doctors usually find in…

In the run-up to a referendum in Italy on a government quest to overhaul the judiciary, a campaign flyer circulated online quoting Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, taking aim at judges and feminists. “Judges block the deportations of rapists. Where are the feminists? Vote yes – there will not be another opportunity,” it read. The flyer, posted on the Facebook page of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist roots, was subsequently removed. But its tone has defined a campaign dominated by inflammatory rhetoric rather than meaningful debate. At a demonstration against the…

Put down your negroni, hang up your Prada handbag and pick up a paperback. Next time someone whips out their phone to take your picture, grab your reading specs, not your lipstick. Smart is the new hot. Pop stars are launching book clubs – the 1970s had Studio 54, this decade has Dua Lipa’s online literary salon Service95 – or joining Substack, where Charli xcx recently published a 1,800-word essay interrogating why it is that as a pop star “you cannot avoid the fact that some people are simply determined to prove that you are stupid”. The supermodel Kaia Gerber (who is fashion royalty – her…

Family courts are “not good enough” and have treated women and children unfairly for decades, a government minister has said. Announcing a major overhaul of the family justice system in England and Wales that will play a central role in “rebalancing” the family courts, Alison Levitt said often brutal legal showdowns will be replaced with a “problem-solving”, child-focused model. Part of a move across the Ministry of Justice to tackle court backlogs, the department said child focused courts – which centre on child welfare and seeks out-of-court resolutions – have reduced child trauma, cut a…

Donald Trump threatened to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to US airports on Monday if congressional Democrats do not immediately agree to fund airport safety. Transportation Security Administration personnel are set to miss a second full paycheck on 27 March amid a partial government shutdown in its 36th day as lawmakers clash over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency for TSA and ICE. “I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on…