Exclusive: Sev.en Global Investments could turn state-owned businesses into Britain’s biggest steelmaker

• Business live – latest updates

The owner of the UK’s largest electric steelworks has said the government should find a single buyer for British Steel and Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), a move that would create the country’s biggest steelmaker.

Sev.en Global Investments, owned by the Czech billionaire Pavel Tykač, said it not only plans to invest £100m in the UK – mainly in the electric arc steelworks in Cardiff it bought last year – but also has the ability to invest “hundreds of millions of pounds” more in Britain under its 7 Steel brand.

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The creator of this singular work of art founded his own TV network to get it aired – and it’s cast is an absolute dream. Mandy Patinkin, Janet McTeer and Patti LuPone are just superb

Details about how a TV series was commissioned or why it ended up on a particular streamer are normally tedious and superfluous: once a piece of art has been made, it stands alone and our assessment of it needn’t be influenced by industry logistics. It’s impossible not to mention, however, that The Artist, a period comedy by writer/director Aram Rappaport, was shown in the US on The Network.

What is The Network? It is a streaming service set up in 2024 by writer and director Aram Rappaport. Its launch show was Rappaport’s TV debut, The Green Veil. That’s right: Rappaport founded a whole new streaming service, then released his own work on it. There’s more to The Network that is of interest, since it also imports original content but only uploads a couple of new titles per week, in the belief that users will value discernment over catalogue depth. But the point is that The Artist, Rappaport’s second series, has been made without him having to pitch it to a network, or take notes from a network, because he is The Network. It is exactly the sort of show you’d think would be made by a man who has the wherewithal, the funds and the sheer nerve to engineer a situation where he can do what he wants. This is not an insult. It might not be a compliment either. It is what it is, and The Artist is not like much else.

The Artist is on MGM+

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A revelatory Zurbarán show proves him the equal of Goya and Picasso, Angel Otero takes up a Somerset residency and Daiga Grantina brings nature to abstraction – all in your weekly dispatch

Zurbarán
A mind-bending, revelatory exhibition packed with extraordinary loans from the Prado and other top museums that prove this painter belongs with Goya and Picasso as a Spanish great. Read the review .
• National Gallery, London , 2 May to 23 August

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Labour called SNP first minister John Swinney ‘shameless’ for claiming credit when it was the result of king’s US visit

Donald Trump’s announcement that he will lift punishing US tariffs on scotch whisky has been overshadowed by a row between rival Scottish party leaders over claiming credit for the decision.

The whisky industry and business leaders were delighted by the US president’s sudden announcement on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he would end the tariffs to mark the visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.

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Watchdog says legal challenges from Consumer Voice and three lenders ‘create fresh uncertainty for millions of consumers’

• Business live – latest updates

The UK financial watchdog is facing four legal challenges against its £9.1bn compensation scheme for victims of the motor finance scandal.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that it will defend the scheme “robustly” as the “fastest, simplest route for consumers and the most efficient way for firms to put things right”.

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The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

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Judge tells 70-year-old Nancy Pexton she showed no remorse for the ferocious attack on Jennifer Abbott

A woman who murdered her sister in her London flat and stole her Rolex watch has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years.

Nancy Pexton stabbed Jennifer Abbott 10 times and left her body for three days in the property in Camden, a court heard.

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• Howe under pressure to end Magpies’ losing streak

• Manager confident he retains backing of club owners

Eddie Howe has emerged from a meeting with Newcastle’s Saudi Arabian owners confident he retains their support but also acutely aware that such backing is finite, with the manager admitting “a lot is riding” on Saturday’s visit of Brighton.

Howe will aim to end a run of five straight defeats against Fabian Hürzeler’s side at St James’ Park and is under no illusion of the significance of the task ahead. “We need a win,” admitted Newcastle’s manager. “There’s a lot riding on this weekend for us. You can talk as much as you want but the proof is in how the team performs. I’m under no illusion that needs to be positive.”

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From 1980s Cincinnati into the interstellar darkness, the stories of four women interconnect across the centuries in a gentle hymn to found families

This is the kind of book you pitch by analogy: JG Ballard meets Gabrielle Zevin; Isaac Asimov meets Stephen Chbosky; Ready Player One meets Love, Simon (replete with ferris wheel). I’ve been describing it to friends as a YA Kazuo Ishiguro set adrift in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. It turns out I have two kinds of friends: those who hear that description as praise, and those who heed it as a warning.

Novels that demand comparisons rarely survive them. This one does (though it could do without that mawkish ferris wheel). American author Portia Elan’s debut is a gentle hymn to found families – the kin we choose rather than inherit – and it’s fitting that it reads that way, assembled from allegiances. Elan knows what her characters will discover: stories are how we claim one another.

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