Fuel bills will rise in April, with the energy regulator Ofgem announcing an increase to the price cap yesterday – and that creates an awkward problem for Labour, which pledged in its manifesto to "save families hundreds of pounds on their bills".

The government says Great British Energy, a new state-owned energy company, will cut fuel bills in the future, and ensure UK taxpayers "reap the benefits of clean, secure, homegrown energy". But many are questioning exactly what GB Energy will do, and how much it can achieve.

What is GB Energy?
Ed Miliband (pictured above), the UK's energy security and net zero secretary, said GB Energy will help "to make Britain a clean-energy superpower". But, rather than actually supplying power to homes, the new state-owned company will help fund new and existing clean technology, as well as small and medium-sized renewable energy projects.

There are also promises of 1,000 jobs at the company's new headquarters in Aberdeen – although GB Energy boss, Jürgen Maier, told Sky News it could take 20 years to deliver on that commitment.

How will GB Energy be funded?
The government has pledged a £8.3 billion funding package for GB Energy over the course of this parliament, funded at least in part by a levy on oil and gas firms. But "fiscal pressures have led to suggestions" that this sum "could be watered down", said The Telegraph, and Bloomberg reported that the Treasury had not yet "re-committed" to the spending plan.

Will GB Energy bring my bills down?
GB Energy "will not immediately cut bills for consumers", said the BBC, because the global energy market continues to be affected by "problems caused by the war in Ukraine".

But Miliband has stressed that the changes GB Energy will bring are "the only way to guarantee our energy security and protect billpayers" in our "unstable world".

What's the reaction been?
GB Energy was "one of Labour's most popular election manifesto pledges", said Jillian Ambrose in The Guardian.

But the company is "yet to publish a business plan" and "many of its aims seem to be in conflict" with each other, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. "When money is tight", he added, "a new corporate toy overseen by Miliband seems a bit of a luxury."

Many famous and flashy film performances were made by actors who went "method", from Joaquin Phoenix in "Joker" to Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight" to Daniel Day-Lewis in, well, everything. But the technique remains divisive, with some critics sceptical of its motivations and results.

The acting style has evolved considerably through the years, and movie stars who have recently employed it successfully include Timothée Chalamet in "A Complete Unknown" and Ariana Grande (pictured above) in "Wicked".

'Brave and raw' performances
"Method techniques prompt actors to draw on their own experiences and emotions as a way to strip their performances of artifice," said Angelica Jade Bastién at The Atlantic, with actors often changing the "external conditions of their own character, in order to behave more authentically". 

Some actors take it to extremes, starving themselves or withdrawing from cast members and loved ones to retreat further into character. The resulting experiences — Leonardo DiCaprio sleeping in animal carcasses for "The Revenant" or an already-slender Adrien Brody dropping two stone for "The Pianist" — routinely result in Academy awards, with the corresponding performances hailed as brave and raw.

'Seeking award-season glory'
Method acting is often mocked. "Laurence Olivier famously expressed his disdain" for it when filming the 1976 film "Marathon Man", said Newsweek. "Exasperated with the lengths his co-star Dustin Hoffman was going to for his role, he asked, 'My dear boy, why don't you just try acting?'"

"Some method actors see the project as all about them", Mark Young, a professor at the University of Southern California, told Newsweek, and this can make a movie set "very dysfunctional". Other actors "may feel pressured" to practise method acting to "be taken seriously in their careers," the outlet added.

While the acting technique has "fuelled many of cinema's greatest performances, and can be a useful way of approaching difficult roles," said Bastién, its prestige has dimmed in recent years, due to its "overuse by those seeking award-season glory or a reputation boost". There is a "reason why actors are doing this", Isaac Butler, the author of "The Method: How the 20th Century Learned to Act," told NPR. "Because then they can talk about the fact that they did it."

"TV shows don't get much more timely than 'Zero Day'," said Sophie Butcher in Empire.

The political thriller follows "much admired" former president George Mullen (Robert De Niro), who is brought out of retirement to find the culprits behind a massive cyberattack. The hackers cut power supplies across the US for an entire minute, causing chaos. "Cars crash, planes fall, hospital equipment fails." And, as people reel from this "attack on an unprecedented scale", an "ominous" message appears on the screen of every smartphone: "This will happen again."

Co-written by Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times journalist Michael Schmidt, the series is "packed with twists", said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Although the show was filmed before Donald Trump's second term, his "rippling, destabilising effect on society" can be felt throughout. You won't need to "engage your brain too much" but it's an "astonishing amount of fun".

If anyone is going to "muscle their way" into the "pantheon of great screen presidents", it's De Niro, said Tim Glanfield in The Times. In his first starring role on the small screen, the Hollywood legend plays a "complex hero", managing to "look as if he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders while remaining calm and statesmanlike".

It's hard work creating a show that feels "fresh" in the "crowded conspiracy thriller market", but "Zero Day" pulls it off, merging the "addictive" quality of traditional network TV with the "glossy" look and feel of a Netflix show.

As "stylish and fleet as any feature thriller", with "blockbuster production values", it's a "well-built" show that "smartly deploys its big-name actors", said Judy Berman in Time. However its "evasion of the substance of contemporary American polarisation", and "extreme efforts to avoid offence" feel, at times, like a "betrayal of its plainspoken hero".

Millennials are about to get very rich – or so we all thought
Zing Tsjeng in The i Paper
"Modern Britain" is an "inheritocracy", writes Zing Tsjeng. Whether you can afford somewhere to live is "increasingly" down to "whether your parents can throw some money at the issue", and, if their assets are already tied up in property, you're left "hoping for them to downsize" or "shuffle off this mortal coil". It's "ghoulish" to try to "figure out" how much you'll gain if they "suddenly drop dead", but this shows "how economically precarious life in the UK has become".

Why Steve Bannon's Hitler salute confuses the right
Daniel Finkelstein in The Times
That salute by Donald Trump's adviser Steve Bannon "absolutely was not", as he claimed, just "a wave to the crowd", writes Daniel Finkelstein. It was a Nazi salute and "was meant to be seen" as such. I was "indeed provoked", and I "sympathise" with other conservatives' "disorientation" as we're "forced to choose between longstanding alliances and the defence of liberty". The principles that bound us together "are now pulling apart".

Centring the voiceless: Pope Francis' enduring global impact
Stan Chu Ilo on Al Jazeera
"Even from his hospital bed", the Pope "has been checking up on the long-suffering people of Gaza", writes theologian Stan Chu Ilo. He's showing he believes that "those who inhabit the existential peripheries of life reflect the true face of God". People of goodwill are praying for his "quick recovery" because "they know our world can only overcome" the many crises it faces "under the guidance of leaders like him".