Prosecutors in El Salvador have opened a mass trial of 486 alleged members of the infamous MS-13 gang. They collectively face charges of 47,000 crimes, ranging from homicide to extortion and arms trafficking.

Mass trials are a feature of President Nayib Bukele’s “iron-fist approach” to fighting organised crime, said The Associated Press. But UN experts say they “undermine the exercise of the right to defence and the presumption of innocence of detainees”.

What is MS-13?
MS-13 was formed in the 1980s “on the street corners of Los Angeles” by Salvadoran immigrants who had fled civil war, said Sky News. It only spread to Central America as members were deported from the US.

At one stage, MS-13, and its rival gang, Barrio 18, controlled up to 80% of Salvadoran territory through “extortion, drug dealing, contract killings and arms trafficking”, said The Times. Bukele’s government estimates that, “over three decades”, the gangs have killed around 200,000 people, including many listed as disappeared.

What has the reaction to the crackdown been?
Mixed. President Bukele’s stance on criminal gangs has caused murder rates to plummet and “made him the most popular elected head of state in the world”, said The Times, but it has also “drawn sharp criticism from human rights organisations”. Human Rights Watch estimates that nearly 2% of the El Salvador’s entire population are incarcerated – one of “the highest rates” globally. More than 500 people have died in state custody since Bukele’s election, and there have been reports of torture, said Agence France-Presse.

What will happen next?
The vast majority of defendants are being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center (“Cecot”) in Tecoluca, and will watch the trial proceedings on a screen. Cecot, a maximum-security prison built by Bukele in 2023, has “become a symbol of his controversial security policies”, said AP. There are 73 defendants who remain at large and will be tried in absentia.

Given the limited evidence specific to individuals, mass trials risk the conviction of innocent people. Many of the defendants have been held in custody for years, and now face blanket rulings from unknown judges.

Before 2000, a man choosing to be a single father was “virtually unheard of”, said The Atlantic. But that’s certainly not the case now.

English law changed in 2019 to give single parents the same rights over surrogate children as couples. Since then, the number of men applying to become sole parent of a surrogate baby has tripled, according to data cited in The Times. The number is still “a tiny percentage” of the total applications, but it reflects “a growing trend”.

‘On the rise’
About 15% of the UK’s single-parent households are headed by dads, according to the Office for National Statistics – although this includes widowers, and divorced or separated men. This is a “family type that does seem to be on the rise”, Catherine Jones, a family psychology expert at King’s College London, told The Telegraph.

Commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK, but single men can find surrogates in countries such as Cyprus or Belarus. This has caused concern among some campaigners. Surrogacy checks “are not remotely comparable to those we see in cases of adoption”, said Helen Gibson of Surrogacy Concern.

But some single men, both here and in the US, turn to surrogacy after being turned down by adoption agencies, said ABC News. Every agency I contacted told me I would not be considered or would be “at the bottom of the list”, Peter Gordon, now a single dad to twins, told the US news outlet.

Importance of fatherhood
For years, singlehood has been increasing “more steeply among men than women”, said The Atlantic. And the fact that some men are “paying extravagantly for egg donation and surrogacy” suggests “just how important fatherhood is”. Many single fathers by choice described the pandemic as a “turning point”: that was when they knew they wanted to “spend those moments with their loved ones before it was too late”.

In these times when “many of the traditional trappings of manhood” are no longer guaranteed, fatherhood can be “an answer” to questions of identity. For many single men, it dangles “a promise of deeper meaning in life”.

Members of the Ewell St Mary’s Morris Men celebrate St George’s Day with traditional English folk dance outside the Lamb Tavern in London’s Leadenhall Market.

Henry Nicholls / AFP / Getty Images

In many of the UK’s most well-known gardens, tulips are already in full bloom after the particularly wet and mild start to spring. Here are some of the best places to admire them.

Ham House, Richmond
This “17th-century kitchen garden”, featured in the latest season of “Bridgerton”, is not to be missed, said Lily-Rose Morris-Zumin in The Times. The grounds are filled with both “formal, historic varieties” of tulip, as well as “thousands of naturalised, wild-style” flowers, a cherry garden and fruit trees.

RHS Garden Wisley, Surrey
The garden is “sea of vibrant colour” at this time of year, said Laura Nightingale in the Daily Express. More than 100,000 tulips have been planted, carefully chosen for their “fabulous shapes and staggered flowering times”.

Tulleys Tulip Festival, West Sussex
This farm in West Sussex (pictured above) has more than 130 varieties of tulips that are “planted in long, ordered rows”, said Morris-Zumin in The Times. You can “walk directly through” them or explore the place using an “observation wheel” that’s about 100ft high and offers views out across a “lake with floating tulip beds”.

Farmer Copleys Tulip Festival, West Yorkshire
Home to “over 100 varieties and a million flowers”, Farmer Copleys offers “many photo opportunities” to its visitors, said Lauren Hughes in Country Living. There is a giant Ferris wheel on site, with “panoramic views” over the “vast tulip fields”. You can also make your own bouquet to take home.

The special relationship is now an abusive marriage
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The i Paper
“It’s time to face up to some hard truths,” writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Britain’s “special relationship” with the US “is a bad marriage” with a “coercive and controlling” partner. Although Donald Trump “is the most aggressive and brutish, none of the presidents before him treated the UK as a respected, equal partner”. Yet we feel obliged to “please” and to “adjust our behaviours like tradwives”. Such “abject self-subjugation”, politically, economically and culturally, has weakened us. Britain “needs to stand up for itself”.

Britain has become a nation of ugly, soulless town centres where migrants loiter and locals flee to the suburbs. This is who’s to blame…
Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail
The “mould of modernism and ugliness” is spreading through our country, writes Peter Hitchens. “Roadsides are full of litter”, shopfronts have “garish colours”, and young men “of foreign origin” crowd “once-handsome” city centres that look like they’ve been bombed “and rebuilt by oafs”. How to explain the “desecrating and scouring of so much loveliness”? It seems those “in charge of our heritage – councillors, planners, ministers – have come to hate the elegant, well-proportioned and pleasing past”.

The UK’s messiest election ever?
Scarlett Maguire in The Critic
The 2029 general election is likely to be the “most difficult to call” yet, writes pollster Scarlett Maguire. “You would have to be living under a rock” not to “notice the scale of the public’s rebellion against our political system”. Voters want change, but “even the Greens and Reform are struggling” to get widespread support. “With a political map this fractured”, predictions “can be a fool’s errand”; better to analyse “why voters are increasingly turning their backs on politics”.