Mining companies are poised to mine the deep sea – but opposition is growing. What is the environmental cost, and are these metals actually needed?

Nintendo Switch, iPhone/iPad, Mac, PC (version played); Inkle
Inkle’s latest game revels in lying, stealing and blackmail as you resort to any means necessary to avoid expulsion from a posh school

As with seemingly everything in the UK, it all comes back to the class system. Verity Amersham, a scholarship student at Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls, is accused of pushing the hockey captain out of a window, and the school’s fearsome headmistress is determined to expel her despite the flimsiest evidence. When Verity protests her innocence, Miss Mulligatawney remains unpersuaded, spelling out her reasoning in plain terms: as a northerner with working-class parents, Verity simply isn’t the “right sort”.

The injustice of it all is a potent driver, ensuring I set about my goal of preventing Verity’s expulsion with determined zeal, much like Matilda defying the hateful Miss Trunchbull. As in developer Inkle’s 2021 game Overboard!, you’re given a time limit to work within and a handful of areas to move between, from the library to the sick room (AKA the “san”, where the school’s grumpy matron lurks). Each area has characters to talk to and objects to find, and each action moves the clock forward. The game follows a rigid school timetable: at 2pm, for example, all of the students will troop up to the library for Latin.

Expelled! is out on 12 March

Adding two storeys to an existing block of flats meant an ordeal for its residents. In this age of ‘build, baby, build’, are there enough protections?

Though Wanstead is a quiet east London suburb, located just on the edge of leafy Epping Forest, things haven’t been so peaceful for the residents of Harley Court. A two-storey extension, containing 12 new units, is being built on top of their block of flats. It’s a story that reveals one of the many challenges of our housing market. In the quest to hit housing targets there will be some disruption, but how much is too much for existing residents and communities?

In the autumn of 2022, James moved into the pale-bricked postwar building. It was his first time living alone. He loved the open-plan living room and having a space to make his own. It was around this time his health began to falter and, in the new year, he was diagnosed with cancer. He increasingly spent more time at home recovering from chemotherapy treatments that left him fatigued.

Kirsty Major is a deputy Opinion editor for the Guardian

Leaving home at 16 to pursue his dream has paid off for Britain’s youngest F1 driver as he begins his first full season

There is an unmistakeable air of steely determination about Ollie Bearman; an almost disquieting sense of purpose doubtless instrumental in propelling the 19-year-old British driver into Formula One with an eye-catching opening to his career.

Bearman is about to enter his first full season with the Haas team and while tearing most teenagers away from their friends is a torturous task, since he left home in Essex at 16 to pursue the dream of reaching F1, everything has been subsumed to the cause.

Plus: high-scoring Premier League games with no English-born scorer and club crests similar to logos

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Liverpool’s 1-0 win against Paris Saint-Germain last week was the ultimate smash-and-grab victory. When was the phrase first used in a football context?” poses our very own Niall McVeigh.

Liverpool’s win in Paris was smash-and-grab bingo. They were away from home, like all burglars. They were battered and their keeper had the game of his life, which made it feel like they had stolen a result they didn’t deserve. The match was low-scoring, which meant there was a single, sudden moment of smashing and grabbing. And that moment came late on, in the 87th minute, increasing the dramatic impact to Hitchcockian levels.

SMASH AND GRAB

Audacious thief sentenced

Sentence of 20 months’ hard labour at Clerkenwell today on William Woolley (31), labourer, for breaking the window of one of Messrs Straker’s establishments in the East End.

Prisoner’s practice, it was shown, was to deliberately smash shop windows with a stone, and then bolt with whatever he could grab from the window.

Brussels countermeasures to target €26bn of US goods from April while UK takes ‘pragmatic’ approach; US tariffs cover wide range of household goods such as tin foil

• Full story: Trump tariffs on steel and aluminium come into effect amid US-Canada trade war
• EU retaliates against Trump tariffs with €26bn ‘countermeasures’

Community Union, Britain’s steelworkers’ union says the tariffs are “hugely damaging” and threaten jobs – and “self-defeating” for the United States.

Alasdair McDiarmid, Community’s assistant general secretary, said:

These US tariffs on UK steel exports are hugely damaging and they threaten jobs. For the US it’s also self-defeating, as the UK is a leading supplier of specialist steel products required by their defence and aerospace sectors.

The UK’s response must include delivering a robust Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and the strongest possible trade defence measures to shield our sector from diverted imports.

Our government must act decisively to protect the steel industry and its workers following the announcement of US tariffs.

This is a matter of national security. Steel should be immediately designated as critical national infrastructure to properly protect it.