In a special episode, Jonathan Freedland and Annie Karni of the New York Times look at what seems to be a long-term question for US politics. With Republicans fighting each other in the House and Senate, and Democrats struggling to command the room, is Congress broken?

Annie’s new book with Luke Broadwater is called Mad House: How Donald Trump, Maga Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man With Rats in His Walls Broke Congress

Archive: PBS Newshour, NBC News, WISH-TV, KPRC 2 Click2Houston, Face the Nation, CNN, CBS News, ABC7, ABC News

Campaigners claim NI is being used as a ‘whipping boy’ to feed Irish republic’s energy-hungry datacentres

An ambitious €350m (£300m) plan to connect electricity grids across the island of Ireland is heading for the high court after a challenge brought by campaigners claiming Northern Ireland was being used as a “whipping boy” to feed the republic’s energy-hungry datacentres.

An estimated 150 landowners representing 6,500 residents have called on the Northern Ireland minister for infrastructure, Liz Kimmins, to suspend the construction of more than 100 towering pylons in Armagh and Tyrone until a judicial review, due to start on 9 April, has been completed.

In Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, coal fires heat almost every home. But as extreme weather drives families off the steppes into the city the air is becoming more deadly

• Steppes and the city: how smog has become part of Mongolians’ way of life – in pictures

The eldest child was away training for the army when his family died in their sleep. All six of them, two adults and four children, were poisoned by carbon monoxide gas seeping out from their coal-fired stove into their home in Ulaanbaatar in January, the coldest month in the world’s coldest capital city.

Mongolians were touched by the tragedy but there was anger a month later when, during a two-day parliamentary hearing forced by a public petition against pollution levels, the government released figures showing there had been 779 deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning in the country in the past seven years. By 19 February, when a couple in their 40s were found lifeless in their bed, that number had risen to 811.

Quilt, made in 1980s to raise awareness, to be shown as US cuts raise fears of Aids resurgence in some countries

A giant quilt made to remember people who died of Aids in Britain is to be publicly displayed later this year at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London.

The UK Aids Memorial Quilt was created in the 1980s at the height of the epidemic to raise awareness of the disease and humanise the people who died from it. By the end of 2011, 20,335 people diagnosed with HIV had died in the UK.

Contracts show fictional country created by fugitive Indian guru would control vast swathes ‘with full sovereignty’

Followers of a fugitive Indian Hindu guru on a mission to establish his own state are popping up across Latin America, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy land in Ecuador, Paraguay and now Bolivia.

At the end of last year, a representative of the Baure Indigenous people in the Bolivian Amazon signed a “perpetual” contract leasing 60,000 hectares (148,260 acres) of their vast rainforest for $108,000 (£81,910) a year.

Adam Gabbatt reports on the visa and green card-holders being held in US detention centres

“Border Patrol always had the right to grill people trying to enter the US, right,” Guardian US reporter Adam Gabbatt tells Michael Safi . “But from what we can tell now, Border Patrol agents are now much more likely to basically get into people’s business, so to search people’s devices, particularly mobile phones, and there seems to have been a real spike in the number of people being questioned and now detained. We’ve seen that with tourists, but also people on green cards and working visas.”

One of those people was Jasmine Mooney , a Canadian entrepreneur who had travelled to the US on a work visa many times.

Ukraine president makes first explicit mention of ‘active operations’ on ground in Russian border region close to Kursk. What we know on day 1,140

• See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverage

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said for the first time Monday that Ukrainian forces were operating in Russia’s Belgorod region , where Moscow reported attacks in March. Belgorod is regularly the target of Ukrainian air attacks and is close to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been desperately trying to hang on to territory since launching a surprise incursion last year. Zelenskyy said in his daily address that General Oleksandr Syrsky had reported on “our presence in Kursk region and our presence in Belgorod region”. He added: “We continue to conduct active operations in the border areas on the enemy’s territory, and this is absolutely right – the war must return to where it came from.” It is the first time since the full-scale invasion began that Zelenskyy has explicitly mentioned a Ukrainian presence in Belgorod, a border region with a population of about 1.5 million people. The Russian military acknowledged facing Ukrainian land attacks in the region in March. According to the DeepState military blog, which is considered close to Ukraine’s army, Ukrainian troops have occupied a 13 sq km (five square mile) area in the Russian region , near the border village of Demidovka. Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have said the incursion into Kursk and other Russian territory is to divert Russian forces attacking the Ukrainian regions of Sumy and Kharkiv.

Anger and outrage gripped Zelenskyy’s home town on Monday as it held funerals for some of the 20 people, including nine children, killed by a Russian missile that struck apartment buildings and a playground. More than 70 were wounded in the attack on Kryvyi Rih last Friday evening. The children were playing on swings and in a sandbox in a tree-lined park at the time. Bodies were strewn across the grass. “We are not asking for pity,” Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city administration, wrote on Telegram as Kryvyi Rih mourned. “We demand the world’s outrage.” The UN Human Rights Office in Ukraine said it was the deadliest single verified strike harming children since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It was also one of the deadliest attacks so far this year.

Teacher Iryna Kholod remembered Arina and Radyslav, both 7 years old and killed in Friday’s strike, as being “like little suns in the classroom” . Radyslav, she said, was proud to be part of a school campaign collecting pet food for stray animals. “He held the bag like it was treasure. He wanted to help,” she told the Associated Press. After Friday evening, “two desks in my classroom were empty forever,” Kholod said, adding that she still has unopened birthday gifts for them.
“How do I tell parents to return their textbooks? How do I teach without them?” she asked.

Donald Trump has accused Russia of “bombing like crazy right now” even as the US president claimed the parties were “sort of close” on a deal. On Monday he reiterated his opposition to Russia’s bombing of Ukraine as his administration participates in talks seeking an end to the fighting. “I’m not happy about what’s going on”, he told reporters in the White House. “So we’re meeting with Russia, we’re meeting with Ukraine, and we’re getting sort of close, but I’m not happy with all the bombing that’s going in the last week or so,” he said. “It’s a horrible thing.”

Trump’s Monday remarks came hours after the Kremlin said it supported the idea of a truce in Ukraine but had many “questions” about how such a deal would work, pushing back at US and European suggestions that it was playing for time. Russia has kept up its strikes on Ukraine unabated despite the US president’s promise to bring peace within “24 hours” of returning to the White House in January.

Prince Laurent had argued that his work entitled him to the same benefits as independent entrepreneurs but a court in Brussels disagreed

A Belgian prince has lost a legal battle to claim social security benefits on top of his royal allowance, with a court ruling his claim – the first of its kind in the country’s nearly 200-year history – “unfounded”.

Prince Laurent, the youngest of three children of the former king and queen, had argued that his work entitled him to the coverage granted to independent entrepreneurs – and that he was acting out of “principle” rather than for money.

Beijing vows to safeguard its interests after Trump promises steeper tariffs if China doesn’t retract planned countermeasures, as markets brace for further volatility

• Trump threatens additional 50% tariffs on China over retaliatory levies

Japan’s Nikkei share average is up 1.9% after the Tokyo stock market’s opening this morning, Reuters is reporting.

The European Union said on Monday it had offered “zero-for-zero” tariffs to the US weeks before Trump’s tariff announcement and was in negotiations with the administration.

They’re going to have to buy their energy from us, because they need it and they’re going to have to buy it from us. They can buy it – we can knock off $350 billion in one week.