US president claims ‘a child would know’ what that slogan means as US Secret Service investigates now-deleted photo of seashells posted on Instagram
Also on Iran, AFP reports that Trump said earlier that Tehran should make a quick decision on an American proposal for a nuclear deal or “something bad will happen”.
Speaking in Abu Dhabi as he finished his Gulf tour, Trump said his administration had handed Iran a proposal for a agreement, adding that “they know they have to move quickly or something bad is going to happen”.
Exclusive: delegates met officials weeks before UK set out higher-than-expected cap on foreign state ownership of newspapers
A delegation from the United Arab Emirates met Downing Street officials weeks before ministers announced a law change that allows the state to take a 15% stake in the Telegraph titles, the Guardian understands.
Ministers disclosed the cap this week as part of a long-awaited clarification on the rules around state ownership of British newspapers. It is higher than the 5-10% ceiling envisaged by the previous Conservative government.
The mushroom paste was contained in a vial about 2cm wide and 5cm high, with the exhibit name EX X1 Z13.
The paste was taken from inside a beef wellington, which in turn was taken from inside a paper bag found in a wheelie bin outside Erin Patterson’s home.
Tributes paid to ‘courageous’ journalist who covered police corruption, Rosemary West trial and Hatton Garden heist
Duncan Campbell, the celebrated Guardian crime reporter, writer and broadcaster whose work highlighted corruption, the shortcomings in the justice system and miscarriages of justice, has died at the age of 80.
Campbell was one of the most respected crime correspondents of his generation, fearlessly pursuing police corruption and reporting on some of the most iconic criminal cases of recent decades, including the Rosemary West trial and the Hatton Garden heist.
Cannes film festival Hafsia Herzi manages sexuality with confidence in her first Palme d’Or competition film, featuring an affecting lead performance from newcomer Nadia Melliti
Actor turned director Hafsia Herzi presents her first feature in the Cannes competition: a coming-of-age story of queer Muslim identity, with all the painful, irreconcilable imperatives that this implies, complicating the existing insoluble agonies of just getting to be an adult. It is adapted from La Petite Dernière, or The Last One, the autofictional novel by Franco-Algerian author Fatima Daas about growing up as the kid sister, the youngest of three girls, in an Algerian family in a Paris suburb with her mum, dad and siblings.
Non-professional newcomer Nadia Melliti plays Fatima, a smart kid battling with asthma who likes books, likes football, likes freestyling, likes running – and likes girls. (This last interest is secret.) As Fatima prepares to leave school and start her first year at university (while living at home, of course) she cultivates a protective deadpan manner and wears a cap: the secular-western camouflage equivalent of a head covering. She has to negotiate her way out of what appears to be an unofficial engagement with a Muslim boy into which she has drifted. His feelings, and perhaps his sense of entitlement, will be hurt. So be it.
From wordless books to dynamic bestsellers and those that will give your kids a giggling fit, these are some of our readers favourites stories to share
New research has shown a decline in the number of parents reading aloud to young children, with only 41% of 0 to four-year-olds now being read to regularly, down from 64% in 2012. The survey, conducted by publisher HarperCollins and book data company Nielsen, also found that less than half of parents find reading to kids fun.
With this in mind, we asked parents to share recommendations of books they enjoy reading aloud. Add your own suggestions to the list in the comments below.
Hadi Matar was convicted of attempted murder for 2022 attack that left writer blind in his right eye
The man found guilty of attempted murder of Salman Rushdie has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
On Friday, the Chautauqua county court issued the sentence to Hadi Matar, 27, of New Jersey, nearly three months after he was first convicted of attempted murder in the second degree.
Film festival’s rules designed to protect ‘decency’ and seating arrangements stir controversy among those who read them
Not for the first time, organisers of the Cannes film festival, the ritziest and most photographed in the industry’s calendar, have decreed that various outfits will not be allowed on the red carpet this year.
An official statement released earlier this week stated that for “decency reasons” there will be “no naked dressing” – and no oversized outfits either – “in particular those with a large train, that hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating in the theatre”.
Ice used warrant application as ‘pretext’ to try to arrest two students in order to deport them
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) effectively misled a judge in order to gain access to the homes of students it sought to arrest for their pro-Palestinian activism, attorneys say.
A recently unsealed search warrant application shows that Ice told a judge it needed a warrant because the agency was investigating Columbia University for “harboring aliens”. In reality, attorneys say, Ice used the warrant application as a “pretext” to try to arrest two students, including one green card holder, in order to deport them.
Priya Saxena was studying in South Dakota when Trump administration revoke her visa over traffic infraction
An Indian PhD graduate who was studying at a university in South Dakota, whom the Trump administration has been attempting to deport, was granted an injunction by a federal judge, allowing her to stay in the country after having received her degree.
Priya Saxena’s student visa was terminated by the Trump administration in April, which would have prevented her from completing her doctoral program and graduating on 10 May.
The new pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, doesn’t have an active medical license. But she does have ‘impeccable Maha credentials’
The US health secretary doesn’t think you should really listen to him when it comes to health issues. During an appearance before House and Senate committees this week, Robert F Kennedy Jr, famous for his unconventional views about medicine and his revelation that a parasite ate part of his brain, seemed to think it was strange that lawmakers were asking him about vaccines.
“What I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant,” Kennedy said when pressed on whether he would vaccinate his child for measles. “I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice, from me.” The US health secretary repeated his refrain about not wanting to give advice a number of other times.
UK-based members of the Scattered Spider hacking community are actively “facilitating” cyber-attacks, according to Google, as disruption to British retailers spreads to the US.
A group of hackers labelled “Scattered Spider” have been linked with attacks on UK retailers Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and Harrods, with Google cybersecurity experts warning this week that unnamed retailers across the Atlantic are being targeted as well.
The raging beauty of the ocean has clearly found its perfect embodiment. Now we need to decide who will play the other elemental forces
Some actors are lucky and manage to immediately luck into a perfect role. Others have to struggle for years, sometimes even decades, before eventually finding a part that completely encapsulates their personality. Jeremy Irons is one of them. But the good news is that his number has just come up, because Jeremy Irons has just been cast as the sea.
According to Variety, Water People: The Story of Us, the first documentary feature by acclaimed artist Maya de Almeida Araujo has just cast Irons as the voice of the ocean. Which just makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Order follows Pentagon’s announcement to remove 1,000 military members who openly identify as trans
US military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service.
A senior defense official on Thursday laid out what could be a complicated and lengthy new process aimed at fulfilling Donald Trump’s directive to remove transgender service members from the US military despite years of service alongside all the other 2 million US troops.
Aggressive, hedonistic and seductive – often in the span of the same song – the independent LA-based singer-songwriter spans shoegaze, vaporwave and capital-P pop
From Los Angeles via Virginia Recommended if you like PinkPantheress, Kylie Minogue, Daniel Lopatin’s Chuck Person alias Up next Album She Comes from Nowhere, released 20 June
Neggy Gemmy has quietly spent the past decade building one of the strongest catalogues in underground pop. Born Lindsey French – and previously known as Negative Gemini – Neggy Gemmy’s music spans coldwave, shoegaze, trance, vaporwave and capital-P pop; her records can be icily aggressive or hedonistic and seductive, often in the span of the same song. Although her work is always distinctive, she’s also canny with iconoclastic references. On 2016’s Body Work, she sampled Britney Spears’ Everytime one song before her own masterpiece of emotional desolation, the breakbeat ballad You Never Knew; the highlight from her underrated 2023 club odyssey CBD Reiki Moonbeam, titled On the Floor, sounds like – and, in a just world, would have been – a 2000s Kylie Minogue single. French’s forthcoming album She Comes from Nowhere still foregrounds her distinctive voice, which can be both breathy and appealingly harsh, but it also incorporates touches of gauzy, gallic bands such as Stereolab and Air, adding appealing new textures to her work.
Donald Trump has said the US will send letters to some of its trading partners to unilaterally impose new tariff rates, suggesting that Washington lacks the capacity to reach individual trade deals.
Highlighting the challenge for the White House to negotiate deals with scores of countries at once, Trump said it was “not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us”.
Tyrrell’s gonna Tyrrell at some point. And here he blows! His drive into the short par-four 14th is heading straight for the flag. A little bit to the right and it’s landing on the green and rolling out into Max Homa territory. But it’s not a little bit to the right. It takes a kick left off a bank just in front of the green and into the drink. Having taken his drop, he chips up to six feet, but pulls the attempted par saver. He taps in for bogey on a hole that Homa nearly made albatross, and all for the sake of a few feet either way in the landing zone. Hatton launches his ball into the water and exits the scene, powered solely by the steam pouring from his lugs. He’s -4.
The erstwhile PGA and Open champion Collin Morikawa has also started fast. Birdies at 10 and 12 and he’s -3. Bryson DeChambeau gets up and down from 43 yards on 10 to open with birdie; he’s -1. And JJ Spaun birdies 2, 3 and 4, though this year’s Players Championship runner-up hands one of those strokes back at 5. The 34-year-old Californian is nicely placed at -2 nonetheless.
Judge says €300m collection should remain property of state, after attempt by family of Umberto II to reclaim jewels
A court in Italy has rejected a request made by the descendants of the country’s last king to reclaim the crown jewels, with the judge ordering that the national treasures remain the property of the state.
In February 2022, the descendants of Italy’s last monarch sued the Italian state to reclaim the jewels, which for almost 78 years have been stashed in a treasure chest in a safety deposit box at the Bank of Italy – the country’s central bank – amid a long-running saga over their ownership.
US singer remanded until 13 June after appearing in UK court charged with grievous bodily harm in alleged 2023 assault
The singer Chris Brown has been remanded in custody by a court in the UK, accused of attacking a music producer with a bottle in a nightclub.
The 36-year-old American R&B singer, a former partner of Rihanna, was arrested at 2am on Thursday at the five-star Lowry hotel in Salford, after flying into the UK for a tour.
The actor who is making her directorial debut with The Chronology of Water at the Cannes film festival says ‘we should expect the worst and fight for the best’
Kristen Stewart has described President Donald Trump’s effect on the film industry as “terrifying” and said that “we should expect the worst”.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter as her feature directing debut The Chronology of Water screened at the Cannes film festival, Stewart said: “We’re living in a world that’s folding in on itself by the split second … we’re all looking over our shoulders going: ‘Holy shit.’ The slippage is just terrifying.”
As an R&B star in the 00s, the singer found herself pitted in the media against artists like Beyoncé and Rihanna. Two decades on, she’s building bonds with a new generation of stars – and going viral with a gravity-defying chair trick
Backstage at April’s Coachella festival, beyond the influencers, branded content and celebrity PDAs, a viral moment was brewing. R&B superstar Ciara was dancing on a chair – not just any dance, but a gravity-defying move that involved laying stomach-first on the chair’s back, arms locked, feet wiggling to the music. She wasn’t alone either; friends Cara Delevingne, Victoria Monét and Megan Thee Stallion were all doing the move too. The soundtrack was Ecstasy, the sultry new single from Ciara’s forthcoming eighth album, CiCi. The dance became a trend on TikTok, with even a 75-year-old grandma from Miami successfully giving it a go.
When I suggest trying it in our interview, Ciara’s face lights up with enthusiasm. “You can do it,” she says, her American optimism making me believe she’s right. “What kind of chair are you sitting on right now?” I show her my cheap Ikea number and her enthusiasm dips somewhat. She’s sitting in the back of a plush-looking car at a New York airport, waiting to fly to Atlanta, her phone held close to her face so she can see better. It’s not the chair I’m worried about, I tell her, but my general fitness. “You do need a little strength in your arms,” she says, sitting back as if to say: “Let’s not risk it.”
The Auschwitz Memorial has created the model ‘to provide the industry with credible resources’, but it raises ethical questions over what type of films could be set there
The Auschwitz Memorial has launched a “historically accurate” digital replica of the former concentration camp for filmmakers to set their pictures in, breaking a long-held taboo around shooting features at the grounds where an estimated 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazi regime.
At the Cannes film festival on Thursday, the organisers of the Picture from Auschwitz project said they have harnessed “cutting-edge 3D scanning technologies” to build a digital model of the concentration camp that matches the site in its current state “down to every single brick”.
Several strongly worded X posts, a bungled Albanian scheme and the ghost of Enoch Powell. Once again, he’s smashed it
On Friday morning, Keir Starmer was posting without compromise. “If you’re one of the smugglers putting people in small boats across the channel,” ran the prime minister’s communique on X, “we’re coming after you.” Imagine the fear that would have struck into the hearts of all those people smugglers who follow his account.
Alternatively, you could consider the above as a performance for the benefit of people other than those to whom it appears to be addressed – which would certainly make it of a piece with Starmer’s entire shtick for “immigration week”. Because that really has been quite a performance – and one the critics are already calling unconvincing, excruciating and wooden. On several occasions the prime minister was outperformed by his lectern.
The struggle to obtain these medications illustrates the dangerous mess the US healthcare system has become, writes the former FDA chief
The American healthcare system is broken. It is too complicated and too hard for people to get the care and medications they need. More than 70% of Americans feel it has failed them. The level of frustration and anger directed at this system is palpable. In fact, what is increasingly apparent is there is no “system” at all.
New GLP-1 drugs – a class that includes Wegovy and Ozempic – have revolutionized our understanding of weight loss, but they have also illuminated the flaws in our healthcare delivery. People who have struggled with their weight for their entire lives are rightfully frustrated when they learn there is now a medication that can help them but they cannot access it. I carry three health insurance plans and none of them would cover payment for the drug. Faced with this reality, and my increasing percentage of body fat, I decided to pay out of pocket – over $1,000 a month – for a GLP-1 to treat my prediabetes. For most people, that is not an option.
David A Kessler MD served as commissioner of the FDA under Presidents George HW Bush and Bill Clinton. He co-led Operation Warp Speed in the Biden administration and has been the dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco. His latest book is Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight.
Mark Bonnick says ‘anti-Zionist belief’ should be allowed
Club told him he showed ‘complete lack of judgment’
A former Arsenal kit manager is suing the club for unfair dismissal, alleging he was discriminated against because of his opposition to Israel. Mark Bonnick, who worked at the club from the early 2000s, alleges his dismissal was “discriminatory” owing to it being based on his “philosophical anti-Zionist belief”.
Bonnick was suspended and then sacked in December 2024 after Arsenal were alerted to a series of posts he had made on social media referring to Israel’s war in Gaza. Bonnick says that his posts were not antisemitic but motivated by legitimate anti-Zionist beliefs.
Celebrate World Whisky Day on 17 May with this sort of highball/whisky sour with an intruiging turquoise tinge
We’ve all got the odd dusty bottle of liqueur hidden away at the back of the cupboard, so let’s give them a better home in super-tasty and easy highballs, which are having a bit of a moment right now. The bright flavours and rich, silky texture of single malt make it the perfect canvas to build upon and help make the most of these forgotten half-empty bottles.
From dominatrix divas to sauna bros and the ‘Viking Jedward’ – plus maybe even Céline Dion – there’s something for everyone at this year’s Eurovision. Bring on the innuendo!
Pomp and pageantry. People from different nations wearing camp costumes. A tense buildup before the winner is announced. But enough of the papal conclave. It’s time for May’s other main event: the Eurovision song contest.
The eccentric extravaganza’s 69th edition – expect that number to be the subject of cheap innuendo – is being held in Basel, Switzerland. An audience of 160 million is expected to tune in for the usual heady mix of geopolitical point-scoring, cheesy sentiment and surreal performances.
Donald Trump has said people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes overnight.
On the final day of his Gulf tour, the US president told reporters in Abu Dhabi: “We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.”
The Crystal Palace manager cut his teeth in the Austrian and German Bundesligas, while a health scare helped form his approach to life
Siegmund Gruber didn’t take long to decide Oliver Glasner was his man. “We were convinced from the moment we met him,” says the chief executive of the Austrian club Lask. “Oliver started his presentation and it was like that scene in Jerry Maguire: ‘You had me at hello.’”
It was the summer of 2015 and the future Crystal Palace manager had been persuaded to leave SV Ried, where he had made more than 500 appearances and been named player of the century before taking over as manager the previous year, for their main rivals. What made things worse was that Lask, after going bankrupt under the previous owners and losing their stadium, had just been promoted from the third division, while Ried had finished mid-table in the Austrian Bundesliga.
More than a dozen bishops and other senior Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith leaders have written to the prime minister after his “island of strangers” speech, urging him to use a more “compassionate narrative” about migrants.
The letter was sent to Keir Starmer after his speech on Monday, which preceded the publication of the government’s immigration white paper that has been widely criticised by migrant rights organisations and civil society groups.
Despite the food and scenery, on a visit home this year I was struck by the many drawbacks, from housing to transport
Whenever a Brit learns that I’m a New Zealander – grew up there, got the passport, only moved to the UK in 2017 – often their faces scrunch up with confusion: “Why would you live here when you could be living there?”
It doesn’t seem to matter if they’ve been to New Zealand themselves or not. The implication is that I have known the Garden of Eden, even been granted a key, and responded by saying: “Actually, you know what? I’ll take Norwich instead.”
Struggling label produces upbeat parade of greatest hits on home turf while Demna completes stint at Balenciaga
If rebirth is what you want then Florence, home of the Renaissance, is a good place to start.
Gucci, which has just switched designers after a period of plunging sales – 24% down in the last quarter of 2024, and 25% down in the first of 2025 – showed its latest collection in a catwalk pageant that began in the 15th-century Palazzo Settimanni, where the actors Paul Mescal, Viola Davis and Jeff Goldblum, a Florentine resident, had front-row seats, and continued outside to where Gucci employees and local fashion fans, seated in bars and cafes, watched an alfresco lap of the show. If you hit the factory-reset button in Florence, and make it glamorous, can you call it a renaissance button?
When Callum McGregor lifts the Premiership trophy on Saturday, it will be four decades since a team other than Celtic or Rangers won the top flight
This Scottish football season featured a debate surrounding the possibility of reconstruction. Would 10, 14 or 16 be the ideal number of Premiership sides, as opposed to the present dozen? There was, however, a tartan elephant in the room. Scotland has been operating a one, one-and-a-half or two-team league for far longer than is healthy. There is no indication that can change. Distress signals should have been raised long ago.
Celtic’s match against St Mirren on Saturday will precede receipt of the Premiership trophy. For Celtic, this is a 12th title in 13 seasons. The likely defeat of Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final on Saturday week will secure a sixth domestic treble since 2016. Cliche suggests Celtic and Rangers joust for honours, and occasionally they do. This, however, is an unprecedented spell of Celtic dominance.
Never Flinch by Stephen King; The Sunshine Man by Emma Stonex; Heartwood by Amity Gaige; The Mourning Necklace by Kate Foster; The Search for Othella Savage by Foday Mannah
Never Flinch by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton, £25)
King’s latest brings back private detective Holly Gibney, who is consulted when the Ohio police department receives an anonymous letter stating that the writer is proposing to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty” as an act of atonement for the death of an innocent. It soon becomes clear that the death is that of Alan Duffrey who, wrongly convicted of possessing child pornography, was murdered in prison. Slips of paper with names in the corpses’ hands suggest that each one represents a member of the jury responsible for Duffrey’s incarceration. Meanwhile, women’s rights campaigner Kate McKay finds herself targeted by religious extremists while on a speaking tour, and calls on Holly’s services as a bodyguard. Intelligent, courageous and modest to a fault, Holly is one of the most appealing investigators in contemporary crime fiction. Despite some longueurs, Never Flinch contains plenty of King’s trademark chilling moments, with the two storylines expertly entwined.
The Sunshine Man by Emma Stonex (Picador, £18.99)
Stonex’s second novel is an ambitious revenge thriller that takes the reader on a journey from London to Devon, both geographically, and via flashbacks to the early years of the two main characters, who share the narration. Jimmy Maguire, scion of the local “bad family”, was 19 when he killed 15-year-old Providence. When he is released from prison in 1989, her older sister Birdie tracks him, illicitly purchased gun at the ready. Although the mystifyingly redacted swearwords are an irritant, and seasoned crime readers will realise early on that one aspect of Jimmy’s past is not what it seems, what makes this thought-provoking book well worth the read is the delicate and perceptive chronicling of how good intentions, childhood misunderstandings, throwaway comments and split-second decisions can pave the way for disaster.
Leroy Stelly Jr shot Richie Smith dead in 2023 but was never charged. Now Smith’s mother and father have unearthed Stelly’s brutal past and are asking police for justice
Over a roughly 14-year period beginning in 2009, Leroy Stelly Jr faced accusations of pepper-spraying two women whom he encountered on a sidewalk and insulted as “bitches”, slapping his future wife at a bar, and threatening to shoot a construction worker while pretending to be a cop.
He also called emergency operators and declared that he was “going to put a fucking .45”-caliber bullet in the head of someone who had banged on his door. He allegedly punched a guest he had over on Christmas Eve. He reportedly challenged people at a healthcare clinic with which he shares a fence “to meet [him] out on the street”.
Goal of Christian nationalist and director of OMB to dismantle federal workforce may be coming to fruition
Russ Vought’s years-long quest to dismantle the federal workforce and consolidate power for the president is coming to fruition, and he may be given a major boost when he reportedly takes on Elon Musk’s cost-cutting efforts as the billionaire bows out of the federal government.
The director of the office of management and budget has worked alongside Musk’s “department of government efficiency” to slash through the federal government since Trump took office. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Vought would take on an increased public role in Washington as Musk transitions out and the president’s budget process advances. The outlet reported that Vought could use the budget process to make some of Doge’s cuts permanent.
Collapse of their league title defence and an early European exit mean Manchester City’s season rests on beating Palace
The measure of Manchester City’s class is that they have a chance of claiming the FA Cup in Saturday’s Wembley showpiece despite a troubled campaign featuring serial injury, an insipid title defence, Champions League playoff-stage elimination by Real Madrid and the mid-season departure of the captain, Kyle Walker, on loan.
Oliver Glasner’s in-form Crystal Palace, who have lost two of their past 14 games, are in their way but Pep Guardiola’s garlanded team are favourites; the wounded, deposed champions intent on not ending a season empty-handed for the first time since his opening 2016-17 term.
Researchers call for investment in ‘circular solutions’ as consumption rises faster than growth in population
Global recycling rates are failing to keep pace with a culture focused on infinite economic growth and consumerism, with the proportion of recycled materials re-entering supply chains falling for the eighth year running, according to a new report.
Only 6.9% of the 106bn tonnes of materials used annually by the global economy came from recycled sources, a 2.2 percentage point drop since 2015, researchers from the Circle Economy thinktank found.
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