When Régis Le Bris first took charge of Sunderland last summer he was so anonymous it took a good couple of weeks before fellow guests in his hotel realised who he was.
Ten months on the lowest of low key managerial appointments is one game away from the Premier League after Dan Ballard’s headed goal from Enzo Le Fée’s corner at the end of extra time sparked a joyous pitch invasion.
Chemical plant linked to air pollution and cancer risks in majority-Black region ‘exploring all options for the future’
A controversial chemical plant in the centre of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region has indefinitely suspended all production following dire financial results, the facility’s operators announced on Tuesday.
The Denka Performance Elastomer plant in St John Parish has long been associated with chronic air pollution issues and was the subject of a years-long Guardian reporting series examining the disproportionate cancer risk rates experienced by the majority-Black fence-line communities that surround the facility.
The singer, whose 2023 lawsuit was the catalyst for the hip-hop mogul’s charges, is a key witness – here’s what to know
Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, a former girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs, is perhaps the most important witness in Combs’s high-profile federal trial.
Her explosive 2023 lawsuit against Combs, accusing him of physical and sexual abuse, was the catalyst for the charges Combs is currently facing. Despite Combs settling that lawsuit with Ventura for an undisclosed sum, it prompted a federal investigation that culminated with Combs’s arrest in September 2024.
Six-time All-Star was injured during playoff loss to Knicks
27-year-old’s 2025-26 season in doubt after injury
Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum has undergone surgery to repair a ruptured right achilles tendon that will sideline him for the remainder of the playoffs, the team announced on Tuesday.
The Celtics announced the extent of Tatum’s injury and the surgery a day after the six-time All-Star went down in the Celtics’ 121-113 Game 4 loss to the New York Knicks. Tatum was in clear pain after the injury and was later seen with his head in his hands as he was taken to the locker room in a wheelchair.
In a final interview, Mujica said: ‘We are too focused on wealth and not on happiness … Before you know it, life has passed you by’
Uruguay’s former president José Mujica, a onetime Marxist guerrilla and flower farmer whose radical brand of democracy, plain-spoken philosophy and simple lifestyle fascinated people around the world, has died. He was 89.
His death was announced by the current Uruguayan president. Yamandú Orsi. In a post on social media platform X, Orsi called Mujica a “president, activist, guide and leader”. Mujica had been under treatment for cancer of the esophagus since spring 2024, when the disease was diagnosed.
The skincare fad followed by TikTok creator Tia Zakher involves no skincare at all and dermatologists are sceptical
The latest viral skincare routine involves no skincare at all. Dubbed the “caveman method”, it involves shunning any kind of skincare products, as well as water, and letting the skin barrier “heal”.
TikTok creator Tia Zakher has become a viral sensation for her adherence to the trend. The 22-year-old sparked debate about the method after posting videos with visibly flaky skin, apparently a result of the trend. “What you’re seeing is dead skin, that’s going to flake off eventually while new healthy skin forms underneath,” she told millions of viewers.
Cannes film festival opening film Dreadful songs add no flavour to dreary tale of a big-city gourmet returning to her home-cooked roots
The opening gala of Cannes can be such a gamble: a very exposed festival slot which few films need or want, and whose occupants so often turn out to be the squawking overfed turkeys of the big screen. Such a one, sadly, is this listless and supercilious musical – ostensibly on the theme of heartwarming home town values – which flatlines like a hedgehog run over by an 18-wheeler the moment the female lead opens her mouth to sing one of the film’s many terrible songs.
Cécile (played by French singer Juliette Armanet) is about to open a restaurant in the big city having recently won a top-rated TV cooking show, and she is dating her colleague Sofiane (Tewfik Jallab). But when she hears that her adorable, exasperating old dad Gérard (François Rollin) has had a heart attack, brought on by the strain of running the family’s truck-stop cafe out in the boondocks with Cécile’s mum Fanfan (Dominique Blanc), she realises she must (naturally) put her shallow workaholic lifestyle on hold to go and see him. But of course she runs into her twinkly-eyed ex-boyfriend from the old neighbourhood; this is Raph (Bastien Bouillon), whose heart broke when she just left one day – and what makes it all complicated is that she’s pregnant.
Ukrainian president says he will travel to Turkey on Thursday whether or not Russian leader flies in for talks
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he hopes the current period of frantic diplomacy and high-stakes gambits between Russia and Ukraine will end with Donald Trump understanding that Vladimir Putin is the real obstacle to a peace deal.
“Trump needs to believe that Putin actually lies. And we should do our part. Sensibly approach this issue, to show that it’s not us that is slowing down the process,” said Zelenskyy, speaking to a small group of journalists, including the Guardian, in his office at the presidential administration in Kyiv.
R&A and USGA want ball modifications to limit distance
McIlroy drawn with Scheffler and Schauffele in US PGA
With golf still trying to extricate itself from one civil war, another looms on the horizon. The PGA of America has reiterated its stance against the rollback of the golf ball, with its chief executive stating the organisation is “vehemently against” plans put forward by the sport’s rule-makers.
The R&A and USGA announced in late 2023 that all professionals will be required to use a modified golf ball from 2028. The changes would apply to amateurs from 2030. It has long been the view of many that hitting distances for leading players have become problematic, an issue that renders many traditional courses obsolete in elite competition.
Accepting honorary Palme d’Or at opening ceremony of festival, actor rails against the US’s ‘philistine president’
The actor Robert De Niro has – after a brief period of abstention – returned to his robust public critique of Donald Trump, using his Palme d’Or acceptance speech at the Cannes film festival to newly attack the US president.
Speaking during the opening ceremony of the 78th film festival in France, De Niro said that the US’s re-elected commander-in-chief posed a global threat.
Mexico says 17 relatives traveled for Ovidio Guzmán, who was extradited to US in 2023 to face narcotics charges
Relatives of Ovidio Guzmán, a son of Sinaloa cartel co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, have gone to the United States as part of his negotiations with US authorities, according to Mexico’s security minister.
Ovidio Guzmán, known as “El Ratón” (The Mouse), pleaded not guilty in a US district court in Chicago last year but is believed to be seeking a plea deal.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have signed a $142bn arms deal touted by the White House as the “largest defence sales agreement in history” in the first stop of Donald Trump’sfour-day diplomatic tour to the Gulf states aimed at securing big deals and spotlighting the benefits of Trump’s transactional foreign policy.
During the trip, the White House also confirmed that Trump would meet with Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former rebel commander whose forces helped overthrow Bashar al-Assad in 2024. The informal meeting will be the first face-to-face meeting between a US president and a Syrian leader since 2000, when Bill Clinton met with the late leader Hafez al-Assad in Geneva.
The two greats energised each other but the struggling Serb has cut a frustrated figure in recent practice sessions
In the echoing surroundings of an empty Margaret Court Arena before the Australian Open in January, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray were working through their first training session at an official tournament together. Aside from the sweet sound of tennis balls being struck between Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz, his training partner for the day, the only audible noise was the communication between Djokovic and Murray. Their technical and tactical discussions were constant.
It was a fascinating sight. After years of playing against and trying to outsmart each other from across the net, they were now charged with understanding their distinct perspectives and figuring out the best solution to ensure that Djokovic was ready to continue competing for the biggest titles in the world. They both seemed genuinely hopeful over the opportunity to work so closely together, energised by their shared greatness.
Palestinian rights organisation Al-Haq has launched high court action over carve-out of F-35 fighter jet programme
No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
They also suggested there was no obligation placed on the UK to make other states comply with international humanitarian law but only to ensure that no breach occured within its jurisdiction.
Security service investigating if there is a link with sudden resignation of national security adviser
A senior Swedish diplomat has been arrested on suspicion of espionage, as the security services investigate a potential link to the sudden resignation last week of the government’s national security adviser, local media have reported.
Sweden’s security service (Säpo) said on Tuesday it had arrested a person, identified in media reports as a high-ranking diplomat who had been stationed at several embassies around the world, on suspicion of spying.
Image shows mallard snapped at 52km/h in same 30km/h zone as a duck on the same day seven years ago
A radar image of a speed offender caught in central Switzerland last month has revealed that the culprit was not only a duck but probably a repeat offender, local authorities have said.
Police in the town of Köniz, near Bern, were astounded when they went through radar images snapped on 13 April to discover that a mallard was among those caught in the speed trap, the municipality said on its Facebook page at the weekend.
US health secretary went for dip in Rock Creek, which officials report is toxic due to bacteria and pathogens
The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has revealed that he went swimming with his children in a Washington DC creek that authorities have said is toxic due to contamination by an upstream, ageing sewer system.
The “Make America healthy again” crusader attracted attention for the Mother’s Day dip in Dumbarton Oaks Park with his grandchildren Bobcat and Cassius, which he posted about on X. He was also accompanied by relatives Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick and Jackson.
Donald Trump is all too comfortable brushing aside criticism from Democrats and the “fake news media”, but when the flak over his decision to accept a $400m luxury jet from the Qatari government comes from his most devoted supporters it might behoove the US president to listen.
Stars of Trump’s Make America great again (Maga) firmament are speaking out in unambiguous terms against the plan for him to be donated a jet described as a “palace in the sky” and convert it into Air Force One. They are damning the idea in Trump’s own language – telling him this is not “draining the swamp” as he promised to do during his first presidency, and nor does it conform to the theme of his second Oval Office term: “America First.”
6 mins: Van Ewijk slips in the box, allowing Enzo Le Fee to chest down and shoot – but his effort flies over the bar.
5 mins: Marginal gains dept: it seems Sunderland have moved their advertising boards to stymie Coventry’s long throw weaponry – and the visitors also found the heating turned up in their dressing room earlier.
League playoffs clash with international assignment
Buttler, Bethell, Jacks could have allegiances tested
England expect most of the five Indian Premier League players picked for their one-day international series against West Indies to report for international duty rather than complete the rescheduled tournament.
The IPL’s league phase will now conclude on 27 May, two days before England play their opening game against West Indies at Edgbaston, meaning that Jofra Archer and Jamie Overton, whose teams have already been eliminated from playoff contention, will certainly be free to play for their country.
The White House says it is borrowing from Bernie Sanders and adopts rhetoric once dismissed as dangerous to lift its flagging poll ratings
It’s striking to see Donald Trump, who built his re-election campaign around attacking the “radical left”, now borrowing some of its economic policies. In just months, he has shifted from denouncing “communist” price controls to saying he would implement them, and from defending tax breaks for the wealthy to proposing tax increases on those earning more than $2.5m a year if it benefits poorer Americans. These moves echo longstanding proposals from progressives like Bernie Sanders – despite Mr Trump’s past efforts to portray such ideas as “lunatic”. The irony is hard to miss.
Consider recent policy announcements that mirror a liberal-left agenda. Capping credit card interest rates was a Sanders campaign promise before it was a Trump one. And it may happen – courtesy of an unlikely alliance between Mr Sanders and the Republican senator Josh Hawley. Slashing drug prices by executive fiat? Absolutely, says Robert F Kennedy Jr, Mr Trump’s secretary of health, crediting Mr Sanders for the idea. The Vermont senator shot back, saying the administration’s plan would be “thrown out” by judges – and that meaningful reform required legislation.
In a letter, Milieudefensie says it wants to stop firm developing new oil and gas projects ‘to curb crisis’
Climate campaigners in the Netherlands have promised to take Shell to court for a second time to force the energy company to stop developing new oil and gas projects.
In a letter to Shell, the Dutch climate non-profit Milieudefensie vowed to take legal action because the company has 700 oil and gas projects in development that will continue to drive up carbon emissions despite efforts to slow global heating.
Picnic PostNL rider claims maiden grand tour stage win
Mads Pedersen finishes fourth and retains maglia rosa
Casper van Uden claimed his maiden grand tour victory in a sprint finish on stage four of the Giro d’Italia to top an all-Dutch podium in Lecce. The Picnic PostNL rider Van Uden powered ahead of his compatriot Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Maikel Zijlaard (Tudor) in a bunch dash for the line. Mads Pedersen finished fourth to retain the maglia rosa.
After the first three stages in Albania and a subsequent rest day, the Giro returned to Italy in Puglia, with a mostly-flat 189-kilometre run from Alberobello to Lecce.
It’s a little bit rich to talk about food insecurity in the US when your last name is Trump. But after stints as a feminist influencer and political adviser, the president’s favourite daughter has found a new path
Ivanka Trump has had her manicured fingers in many pies. She’s designed jewellery and shoes. She’s written a book called Women Who Work, marketed at women who work, full of inspirational quotes and touching anecdotes about how she, a woman, has sometimes worked so hard that she has had to sacrifice massages.
That was Early Influencer Ivanka, anyway. Then came Ivanka’s political era. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, she appointed herself Daddy’s special adviser and did a lot of very special advising. In that capacity she gallivanted around the globe, dropping in on the G20 and hobnobbed with world leaders, all while insisting: “I try to stay out of politics.” And, of course, the president’s eldest daughter, who very nearly became the head of the World Bank, tirelessly advocated for women’s economic empowerment.
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Cuts follow push to slim management ranks, despite headcount still being up year-on-year in March
Microsoft says it is laying off nearly 3% of its entire workforce.
The tech giant didn’t disclose the total amount of lost jobs, but it will amount to about 6,000 people. Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers as of last June, the last time it reported its annual headcount. About 55% of those workers were in the US.
The leftwing, pro-Palestine streamer’s interrogation by airport officials on his return to the US shows a chilling escalation of the war on free speech
Where are all the free speech warriors on the right now? Hasan Piker, a popular streamer with 4.5 million followers across YouTube and Twitch, who has been hailed by mainstream publications such as the New Yorker and New York Times as the left’s answer to the deluge of rightwing internet influencers, says he was detained and questioned for hours by border control agents as he re-entered the US (Piker is a US citizen). It is an instructive moment. Countries that behave like this towards political commentators and dissenting voices who are their own citizens are either nakedly authoritarian, or well on the way.
Piker was reportedly interrogated at length not just about Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, but his views on Donald Trump. The 33-year-old pundit – an unapologetic champion of the Palestinian cause – stuck to a message of opposing “endless bloodshed” and siding with civilians. That the biggest progressive streamer in the US was subjected to this experience is emblematic of a phenomenon that requires an accurate and insistent description: it is the biggest assault on free speech in the west since the height of McCarthyism seven decades ago.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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The wooden statues commemorate the author’s time in the area while recuperating after the first world war and a moment that inspired a tale of star-crossed love in Middle-earth
Wooden carved statues of JRR Tolkien and his wife, Edith, will be unveiled in an East Yorkshire village next month, celebrating the area’s influence on the writer.
Tolkien spent nearly 18 months in Hull and East Yorkshire while recovering from trench fever during the first world war, and the area’s landscape is believed to have inspired his works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
PM, who led Liberals to re-election, replaces Mélanie Joly – who becomes industry minister – with Anita Anand
Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, has announced a major cabinet shake-up, including a new foreign minister, as he shapes a newly re-elected Liberal government.
Carney, who replaced Justin Trudeau earlier this year and won the election last month, named Anita Anand as foreign minister, replacing Mélanie Joly, who becomes the minister of industry. Anand previously served in roles including defense minister.
Big tech companies have exploited human language for AI gain. Now they want us to see their products as trustworthy collaborators
After publishing my third book in early April, I kept encountering headlines that made me feel like the protagonist of some Black Mirrorepisode. “Vauhini Vara consulted ChatGPT to help craft her new book ‘Searches,’” one of them read. “To tell her own story, this acclaimed novelist turned to ChatGPT,” said another. “Vauhini Vara examines selfhood with assistance from ChatGPT,” went a third.
The publications describing Searches this way were reputable and fact-based. But their descriptions of my book – and of ChatGPT’s role in it – didn’t match my own reading. It was true that I had put my ChatGPT conversations in the book, but my goal had been critique, not collaboration. In interviews and public events, I had repeatedly cautioned against using large language models such as the ones behind ChatGPT for help with self-expression. Had these headline writers misunderstood what I’d written? Had I?
The president’s migrant crackdown has fueled an increasingly angry atmosphere – and some border agents are praising ‘Daddy Trump’
Osvaldo Ruiz and a friend were hiking through an isolated stretch of mountains, just a few miles from the sprawling US-Mexico border wall that fringes San Diego, when the federal agent stopped them in their tracks.
It was late March, mid-morning, and Ruiz, who works for a local non-profit called Border Angels, was busy. That day he was scouting a new route where his group could leave life-saving water and food for the sporadic waves of migrants who still cross through these desolate borderlands. Ruiz and his friend, a fellow Border Angels member, already knew they were being watched. A helicopter had been buzzing overhead for the past several hours, tracking them.
With pollen season in full swing, here is what to know about allergy treatments and when to seek medical help
Allergy season is always rough, and it has only been getting worse.
Warming global temperatures and an increasing number of extreme weather events have made the pollen season in North America 20 days longer than it was in 1990, according to one 2021 study.
The jubilantly gory horror franchise returns with a hugely entertaining sixth installment which sets up an entire family tree for the slaughter
Final Destination, the giddy and splatterific franchise where the grim reaper finds increasingly cartoonish and comical ways to get back at those who think they’ve cheated death, has been sitting things out for more than a decade. Maybe that’s telling.
In the time since, we saw the rise of so-called “elevated horror”, a trend that arguably began with 2014’s The Babadook and enjoyed its biggest success with last fall’s Longlegs. Those earnestly artful films tend to shrug off the horror genre’s baser pleasures to instead mine drama, trauma and influences such as Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and Nicolas Roeg. For those feeling a bit trauma-fatigued, I’m happy to say Final Destination is not only back but better than ever.
Eight federal agencies will terminate a further $450m in grants to Harvard University, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday, escalating its antagonization of the elite institution over what officials frame as inadequate responses to antisemitism on campus.
The latest funding cuts come after the administration cancelled $2.2bn in federal funding to the university, bringing the total financial penalty to approximately $2.65bn.
The father of the Norwegian track and field superstar Jakob Ingebrigtsen should go to prison for two and a half years for “a regime of repeated abuse” that spanned a decade, prosecutors have told a court in Norway.
Summing up the state’s case, the prosecutor Angjerd Kvernenes said that Jakob and his sister, Ingrid, had suffered physical and mental abuse at the hands of their father and former coach, Gjert, which began when Jakob was seven years old.
Gyökeres has been heavily linked with a return to England in recent transfer windows. Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have all been credited with an interest in the Swedish striker, who has scored 38 goals in the Portuguese top flight this season – 20 more than his nearest challenger. Sporting will be reluctant to lose their star but the former Brighton and Coventry player seems perfectly suited to the rigours of Premier League football. This summer might be the one when he leaves Lisbon.
Ukrainian president says if Russian leader does not arrive it will indicate ‘that he does not want to end the war’
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has doubled down on his promise to wait in Turkey on Thursday for face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin, calling it a test of Russia’s willingness to pursue peace.
Speaking to journalists in Kyiv on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said he planned to wait for Putin in Ankara alongside the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, adding that he would travel to Istanbul if Putin opted to hold the meeting there.
The US president has the leverage to force through a ceasefire. If he does not, he will implicitly signal approval of what looks like a plan of total destruction
Donald Trump would like a big foreign policy win as he embarks on his tour of the Middle East this week. He could secure one – and save lives – by demanding that Israel agree to a lasting ceasefire in exchange for the release of all hostages held in Gaza. He might prefer to avoid the issue, but no other leader has the leverage to force its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to end this war. If Mr Trump instead backs Israel’s current proposals, he will put the US imprimatur on what looks like a plan of total destruction.
Israel’s attacks have already killed more than 52,000 people in Gaza, according to local health authorities – the vast majority of them civilians, many of them children. Bakeries, hospitals and schools have been obliterated. Aid has been blocked for two months. Gaza faces famine. Last week, Israeli officials briefed that if no deal to free the hostages seized in the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023 is reached, its forces would flatten Gaza, forcing Palestinians to crush into a single “humanitarian area” or flee abroad. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said that Gaza would be “entirely destroyed”, and “totally despairing” Palestinians would realise “there is no hope”. He has said that freeing hostages is “not the most important thing”.
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He is a transfixing screen presence – but he lives for the raw thrill of the stage. As he takes over the Venice theatre biennale, the star lets us know what to expect: cut-up plays and a Pinocchio unlike any other
Sitting in his house in Rome, an overstuffed bookcase and a distressed wooden door behind him, Willem Dafoe scrunches his hair as though kneading the thoughts in his head. The 69-year-old, Wisconsin-born actor could pass today for any genial, bristle-moustached handyman in checked shirt and horn-rimmed specs. (Perhaps he even built the bookcase and distressed the door himself.) But it’s that hand that is the giveaway: it keeps scrunching as he talks until the hair is standing in jagged forks. As a visualisation of what is happening in his brain, it is second to none.
We are speaking in April on the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth (and death), which feels apt given that it is Dafoe’s two-year appointment as artistic director of the international theatre festival at the Venice Biennale that has occasioned our video call today. He looks sheepish when I point out the significance of the date, then reverts to his usual wolfish expression. “Ah, Shakespeare doesn’t care,” he says with a wave of the hand. Dafoe has never had much of a relationship with those plays. “There’s a lot of pointing and indicating when people perform them. A lot of leading the audience. Those are things I don’t think are very vital. But it’s such beautiful writing, and I’ve become interested in doing Shakespeare in my dotage.” Could there be a Lear on the horizon? “Why not?” he says with a goofy wobble of the head.
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