A vegan version of the teatime classic, and no less tasty for it

Like most parents of young children, I fell into a pattern of making mac and cheese regularly for my children, and then, unexpectedly, I fell in love with it myself. I made so many versions of it – Nigella’s , Felicity Cloake’s and Kenji López-Alt’s – and decided that the one I loved best (again, unexpectedly) was a glossy, out-of-a-box artificially cheesy-tasting type dressed with a garlic oil reminiscent of the supermarket garlic bread I used to eat as a kid. Let’s call it nostalgia? I’ve spiked the oil with lime and chipotle here, just for fun, but you could always keep things traditional, if you prefer.

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Ahead of a new exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, writers make a case for each of Renaissance art’s big three, from the secretive genius of Leonardo and Raphael’s beguiling brilliance, to the space-filling majesty of Michelangelo

By Charles Nicholl, biographer of Leonardo da Vinci

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Former Tory defence minister says leadership of Sunak era is lacking and bureaucracy is holding up equipment

Momentum on Ukraine has “dropped back” since Labour took office, according to the ex-Tory defence minister and former army officer Sir Ben Wallace.

Responding to recent comments by Kyiv officials that Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since Keir Starmer was elected prime minister, Wallace said that was because “the leadership that Britain showed right from the start has started to drop back into the pack”.

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Gulf state under pressure after militant Islamist group rejects latest hostage release proposal

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Hamas may be forced to close its offices in Qatar, after the US told the tiny Gulf state that allowing the militant Islamist group to have a base there is no longer acceptable.

Qatar, a key US partner in the Middle East, has hosted the political office of Hamas for more than a decade and allowed many senior leaders of the organisation to live there.

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Gabriel Kay hopes his design can help tackle the problems caused by discarded electrical goods

Gabriel Kay really understands his target audience. As a student of industrial and product design at De Montfort University, he focused on the kettle.

“Everyone can relate to a kettle, right?” says the 22-year-old graduate. “It’s easy to understand and associated with comfort. It’s a friendly introduction to design.”

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Charlotte Easton says she was told that as she had been able to travel to her assessment, she must be able to work

A blind woman with complex disabilities was refused benefits because she managed to travel to the interview with her mother’s help, she has told The Observer .

Charlotte Easton was assessed for another benefits claim in a phone call, and the Department for Work and Pensions then gave its decision by sending her a printed letter that she could not read.

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Americans voted for the far right without necessarily wanting to endorse a far-right mandate. Trump will claim one anyway

The blame game’s in full swing. Armchair campaign strategists just know that Kamala Harris should have thrown Joe Biden under the bus, or gone on Joe Rogan, or – the perennial favorite among self-declared centrists – trashed identity politics . Of course, it matters a great deal to find out why people who voted for Democrats in 2020 failed to turn out; of course, there needs to be an explanation (not freewheeling speculation) about Trump’s gains among Latino men in particular.

Yet one larger question deserves at least as much attention: why does anything recognizable to international observers as a center-right option seem to have disappeared from our politics? Why was the only 2024 choice between the far right and a vaguely progressive (not progressive enough for progressives, to be sure) center party?

Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist

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Second cities can be more welcoming and fun than capitals, perhaps nowhere more so than Porto, with its less manicured charm

If you walk along the south banks of the Douro River in Vila Nova de Gaia, opposite Porto city, towards the sea, the scene will be classic Portugal for a while: a lot of waterside restaurants, a lot of grilled chicken, some stalls selling unlikely items made of cork (aprons?). A little further back are the showcase port houses: Sandeman, Fonseca, Taylor’s – we’ll come back to those.

Keep on walking westwards along the river, away from the pretty Dom Luís I Bridge and towards the sea, and you reach Afurada, a fishing village. It’s famous for people grilling fish in the street and because it’s apparently not possible to eat badly there, the fish being so fresh and all the restaurants so close together, they’re in a race to the top. Or do we just call that a race? A Margem restaurant has a funny, boxy front like an Amazon drop-point and serves incredible polvo à lagareiro (octopus, olive oil, potatoes and garlic).

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Incoming manager likes a 3-4-3 formation but the players he will have available do not look obviously suited to it

Rúben Amorim has already flagged his greatest challenge when taking over Manchester United on Monday: to make the club of Billy Meredith, George Best, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo play again in the tradition of these irresistible attacking forces.

The “wow” factor has been missing from those donning United colours for most of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era. Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s off-the-cuff counterattack play apart, the teams of David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho and Erik ten Hag lacked the dizzying fizz of United’s finest vintages.

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