I found solace in looking through my father’s slides after he died. They made me gasp – and my childhood turned from monotonous monochrome to glorious Technicolor

When my sister handed me a box of old Kodachrome slides last summer, I almost didn’t bother looking through them. Unusually for pre-smartphone times, my camera-crazy father had extensively documented our lives, filling dozens of photo albums. What could the transparencies possibly reveal that we hadn’t already seen countless times? I dimly remembered him ambushing us to watch slideshows, until we were old enough to rebel.

My father died in 2012. Not long before, I had developed an interest in photography myself and, after he was gone, I found solace in my viewfinder. It was, and still is, a way of feeling connected to him. What prompted me to set up my iPad as a makeshift lightbox to view the slides was technical interest.

At home, the machinery of government creaks badly – abroad, a leaden UK lags far behind dynamic competitors. A radical overhaul is needed

Governments come into office brimming with confidence. They say their election win is a mandate for change, and that work on its manifesto pledges will start immediately. Invariably, there is talk of sleeves being rolled up.

Sooner or later, there is a rude awakening. Ministers push buttons and pull levers expecting things to happen instantly, and are shocked to find that they don’t. The reason for that is simple: the British state is big – and getting bigger – but as an agent of change it is not up to the job.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

The Venezuelan oil industry is ‘a total bust’ according to Donald Trump, something he has promised to ‘fix’ after attacking Caracas and seizing the country’s leader. But with analysts estimating it could take up to 14 years and billions to fix, what is in it for the US president? Jillian Ambrose, the Guardian’s energy correspondent, explains why Venezuela’s dense, sticky oil is so valuable to Trump

State residents worth more than $1bn could face one-off, 5% tax to help fund education, food assistance and healthcare

A battle is brewing in California over a plan to tax billionaires – with tech titans divided over whether they should pay up, or flee the state.

Under a tax proposal that could be put to voters this November, any California resident worth more than $1bn would have to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state.

Supporters serenaded Solskjær, Carrick and Fletcher among others at Burnley and staged a brief anti-Ratcliffe protest

“Jim can’t fix this,” the sign said. Bright red letters nestled on a white background, a stark contrast in an away end at Turf Moor full of dark-coated figures in front of which they were held aloft. It was small, a couple of square metres of material, maybe. But the message to Sir Jim Ratcliffe was powerful. Remember your lane, Jim? Yeah, stick in it, pal.

As Darren Fletcher, in Manchester United blazer and red tie, strolled along the touchline, flanked by tracksuited his former teammate and friend Jonny Evans, the flag flew. And then it was gone. The protest was done.

Zara believes only slippers should be worn in the house, but Maya is against ‘barefoot living’. You decide who is putting their foot in it

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Maya covers our floors in dirt, germs and scuff marks. To me, it’s gross

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Governor Tim Walz said he was prepared to deploy the National Guard and expressed outrage over the shooting

If it’s not threats of military action against Colombia and Cuba, or talk of taking Greenland from Denmark, it’s seizing oil tankers in European and Caribbean waters.

All of it has world leaders scrambling to figure out how to handle Donald Trump’s revived form of US imperialism.

Article by former British ambassador to US is likely to be seen as criticism of Keir Starmer

Peter Mandelson has accused European leaders including Keir Starmer of a “histrionic” reaction to Donald Trump’s plan to take over Greenland, arguing that without “hard power and hard cash” they will continue to slide into unimportance in the “age of Trump”.

In his first political comments since being sacked as Britain’s ambassador to Washington last year, Lord Mandelson said Trump had achieved “more in a day than orthodox diplomacy was able to achieve in the past decade” when he captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.

Coote, 43, had previously pleaded guilty to making an indecent moving image of a child

The former Premier League referee David Coote has been given a suspended sentence after he was found to have a sexual video of a 15-year-old boy in school uniform on his laptop.

Judge Shant said Coote, 43, had a “spectacular fall from grace” after police charged him with making a category A video, the most serious kind, of a 15-year-old schoolboy. The charge refers to activities such as downloading, sharing or saving photos or videos containing abuse.

US president says Delcy Rodríguez’s interim administration is doing ‘everything that we feel is necessary’

The US is receiving full cooperation from Venezuela’s regime and will control the country and its vast oil reserves for years, Donald Trump has claimed.

Caracas was giving Washington “everything that we feel is necessary” and the US would remain a political overlord there for an indefinite period, the US president said.