US ceasefire proposal, pursued by Trump, appears to be failing to make any further progress
Back to Ukraine, Bloomberg News (£) has just reported that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed replacing the current ambassador to the US during his phone call with President Donald Trump on Friday.
Bloomberg reported that Ukraine’s prime minister Denys Shmyhal is high on the list of potential candidates, with some other senior figures such as his deputy Olha Stefanishyna and defence minister Rustem Umerov also believed to be under consideration.
Fall of 7% in premarket trading would wipe $70bn off firm’s value as market frets CEO’s foray into politics will distract from role
Shares in Tesla are heading for a sharp fall in the US as investors fear Elon Musk’s launch of a new political party will present further problems for the electric carmaker.
Tesla stock was down more than 7% in pre-market trading on Monday, threatening to wipe approximately $70bn (£51bn) off the company’s value when Wall Street opens.
I had been conditioned to be kind, agreeable and unselfish since I was a child. Pausing to consider what I really want to do has transformed my life
It was 6.18pm when the email pinged through. The lasagne smelled decidedly overcooked as I attempted to referee another squabble between my kids. The cat litter needed changing, and my cup of tea sat next to the microwave, stone cold and grey. Still, irresistibly, I was drawn to the screen. I read the subject line: “Quick favour this evening, if you have a sec?” Without thinking I started to reply: “Of course, no probl ...”
I didn’t reach the end of the sentence. The hyper-sensitive smoke alarm started blaring. I grabbed a towel and swatted at the ceiling; by the time the house fell silent, I had forgotten about the email.
Now thought to be the second most common cause of stroke in women under 40, it can also lead to difficulty swallowing, incontinence, seizures, memory problems, depression, anxiety and miscarriage. How has this extreme practice been normalised?
Now that Lucy has been in a steady relationship for a year, she finds herself looking back at previous sexual encounters through a new lens. The slaps to her face. Hands round her neck. The multiple late-night messages from one partner – nine years older and, in her words, “a Tinder situation”: “Can I come over and rape you?”
“I like to think I enjoyed my single 20s,” says Lucy, now 24. “I was an avid Hinge and Tinder user and I liked to think of myself as the ‘cool girl’. But I’ve been thinking about it so much – I’m not sure why. There was the friend of a friend who slapped me so hard in the middle of us having sex – no warning, just from nowhere. It actually made my teeth rattle. There was another guy I met at a bar. We got together that night and he started choking me so hard, I felt this sharp pressure, this pain I’d never experienced before. I was drunk but it sobered me up in one second. I still wonder what he did to me to cause that pain.”
Refugees who found sanctuary in Nairobi fear a new family protection bill could again threaten their rights
Sitting on the porch of their shared house on the outskirts of Nairobi, Entity* and Rock* are chatting amiably. Aged 27 and 33 respectively, the Ugandan housemates have much in common – both exiled to Kenya for the the violence they faced at home for being gay.
In May 2023, Uganda passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, infamously one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and life imprisonment for same-sex relationships. The law harshened the 2009 “kill the gays” bill, which had come into effect in 2014 without the death penalty.
The next in our series of writers drawing attention to their favourite comfort films looks back to a funny and touching documentary from 1999
“I was a failure and I get very sad and depressed about it. I really feel like I betrayed myself. Big time. When I was growing up, I had all the potential in the world. Now I’m back to being Mark with a beer in his hand who is thinking about the great American script and the great American movie. This time I cannot fail. I will not fail.”
As far as opening monologues go, you couldn’t have scripted a more perfect introduction to a film that captures one of the purest pursuits of the American Dream ever set to film. But these were not written for a character, but instead straight from the heart of Mark Borchardt in a 1999 documentary. It’s rare that documentaries are associated with feelgood movies, which is odd because they are remarkable vehicles for generating warmth, empathy and humor from spending time in the company of real life people who you grow to like. And I utterly adore spending time with these people.
Midfielder has shown with Real Sociedad and Spain that he combines calm and control with a capacity to tackle
The way Martín Zubimendi remembers it, the day he was given the chance to be a ballboy for Real Sociedad against Manchester United he was more nervous than when he had to play. Standing at the side of the pitch, he found himself transfixed, the game flying by. So transfixed, in fact, that he forgot it was his job to pass the ball to the players and at one point Claudio Bravo, in goal that night at Anoeta, had to come over and take it off him because he was standing there watching. It was the first time it had happened to him; it would also be the last.
If there is anything that defines Arsenal’s new midfielder, it is that he is so calm, so in control. “He oozes assuredness from every pore,” says the Spain coach, Luis de la Fuente. “He doesn’t get nervous walking a tightrope with no safety net.” When he’s out there, games don’t just go by; they usually go where he wants them to. And as for passes, what he forgot to do that night defines him now: there were 1,752 of them in La Liga last season. No midfielder outside Real Madrid or Barcelona played more.
An deep dive into the surprising uses and linguistic shortfalls of the ubiquitous symbols
In 2016, Apple announced that its gun emoji, previously a realistic grey-and-black revolver, would henceforth be a green water pistol. Gradually the other big tech companies followed suit, and now what is technically defined as the “pistol” emoji, supposed to represent a “handgun or revolver”, does not show either: instead you’ll get a water pistol or sci-fi raygun and be happy with it. No doubt this change contributed significantly to a suppression of gun crime around the world, and it remains only to ban the bomb, knife and sword emoji to wipe out violence altogether.
As Keith Houston’s fascinatingly geeky and witty history shows, emoji have always been political. Over the years, people have successfully lobbied the Unicode Consortium – the cabal of corporations that controls the character set, including Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple – to include different skin colours and same-sex couples. It was easy to agree to add the face with one eyebrow raised, the guide dog and the egg. But not every request is granted. One demand for a “frowning poo emoji” elicited this splendid rant from an eminent Unicode contributor, Michael Everson: “Will we have a crying pile of poo next? Pile of poo with tongue sticking out? Pile of poo with question marks for eyes? Pile of poo with karaoke mic? Will we have to encode a neutral faceless pile of poo?”
Sammy Baloji’s experimental documentary juxtaposes observations from both sides of the divide in its exploration of European exploitation of the country’s natural resources
In his first solo directorial feature, photographer and visual artist Sammy Baloji excavates the colonial legacies in the Congo basin, the second largest tropical forest in the world. Building on a decades-spanning archive from the Yangambi National Institute of Agronomic Studies and Research, the film is loosely divided into three sections, each guided by a different voice that speaks to the complicated environmental history of the area. The first segment is informed by the journal entries of Congolese agronomist Paul Panda Farnana. Working both within and outside Belgium’s colonial control during the 1910s and 1920s, Farnana wrote of his frustration with the extractive regime, as well as meteorological statistics related to rainfall and temperature, which are narrated in voiceover. This is combined with largely static shots of present-day Congo, where vestiges of colonial buildings lie next to verdant fields, a haunting reminder from a dark past.
This cinematic link through time continues with the second narration, taken from the writing of Belgian colonial official Abiron Beirnaert. A stark contrast to Farnana’s clear-eyed, political perspective, Beirnaert’s contemplations luxuriate in boredom and jadedness. The images that accompany this section are also of sparsely attended archives and abandoned factories that do little to subvert Beirnaert’s imperialist outlook. The third voice, however, grants sentience to the ancient tree of the title, bearing witness to decades of Congolese history.
We want to hear the experiences of scientists, researchers and students after hundreds of research grants have been abruptly cancelled
The Trump administration is dismantling the National Science Foundation (NSF), which critics say risks losing a generation of scientific talent and jeopardizes the future of US industries and economic growth.
The NSF, founded in 1950, is the only federal agency that funds fundamental research across all fields of science and engineering. It has contributed to major scientific breakthroughs and innovations.
Over in the men’s game, the top transfer news to come out of the weekend was Arsenal’s £50m signing of Martín Zubimendi from Real Sociedad. Sid Lowe has been on hand to explain what Arsenal fans can expect from the midfielder:
“It feels extremely bad,” groaned the Finland coach, Marko Saloranta, after he thought his team deserved more from their defeat to Norway. Attention for them turns to a date with hosts Switzerland in Geneva on Thursday. Alayah Pilgrim’s late second goal against Iceland turned the goal difference tables in Switzerland’s favour – they only need a draw to progress against Finland.
Majority of leading names selected by Andy Farrell for Canberra game
First-choice pairing of Finn Russell and Jamison Gibson-Park reunited
Andy Farrell has picked his strongest British & Irish Lions combination so far for his squad’s penultimate fixture before they take on Australia in Brisbane next week. The majority of the Lions’ leading names have been selected to start against the ACT Brumbies in what is clearly being seen as a dress rehearsal ahead of the first Test.
The first-choice pairing of Finn Russell and Jamison Gibson-Park are reunited at half back inside an all-Irish centre pairing of Bundee Aki and Gary Ringrose, with Scotland’s Blair Kinghorn at full-back and the Anglo-Irish combination of Tommy Freeman and James Lowe on the wings.
Anyone can ask any question of the players, leading to absurd inquiries, but it can sometimes serve a useful purpose
To spend even a little time at Wimbledon is to drown in the sheer scale of things. This is a place of mind-boggling numbers: the 40 miles of racket string, the 55,000 balls, the 300,000 glasses of Pimm’s, the 2.5m strawberries. But Wimbledon’s true staple good is none of these. The most abundant product every Wimbledon fortnight is the word. And even on a rain-affected, slow news day, the words must keep coming.
As with everything else, Wimbledon procures its words with a suitable reverence. Post-match interviews, in contrast to the more informal on-court setup at Melbourne and New York, are conducted at a respectful distance in front of a microphone stand, as if Jannik Sinner were actually a high-school student about to spell a very difficult word. But of course the majority of Wimbledon’s bluff and bluster takes place in a small windowless upstairs chamber that most tennis fans have never even seen.
From her groundbreaking debut Thirteen to forthcoming teen drama Street Smart – ‘a homeless Breakfast Club’ – the film-maker explains how she’s made her way in a job still largely made for men
Film-makers have long used their movies as Trojan horses to express their political beliefs and values and Catherine Hardwicke is no different. In her 2003 debut feature, Thirteen, and her 2008 teen vampire hit Twilight, the writer-director bolstered the stories with environmentally and socially conscious messaging to inspire people to “save the planet”. And with her latest film, Street Smart, which she describes as “a kind of homeless The Breakfast Club”, she is still “sneaking in” her “good values”.
Street Smart, now in post-production, is a low-budget ensemble drama, executive-produced by Gerard Butler and partnered with charities Covenant House and Safe Place for Youth, that centres on a group of unhoused teens bonding through music, trauma and humour while fending for themselves on the margins of LA society. It stars Yara Shahidi (Grown-ish), Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan) and Michael Cimino (Never Have I Ever), as well as a group of unknown actors whom Hardwicke describes as having “big hearts and compassion for others; otherwise, they would be trying to work on a superhero film”.
Eight were held for weeks at a US military base in Djibouti while their legal challenge played out in court
Eight men deported from the US in May and held under guard for weeks at an American military base in the African nation of Djibouti while their legal challenges played out in court have reached the Trump administration’s intended destination, war-torn South Sudan, a country the state department advises against travel to due to “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”.
The men from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan arrived in South Sudan on Friday after a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to relocate them in a case that had gone to the supreme court, which had permitted their removal from the US. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the US.
This brilliant short-story collection confronts the knotty truths of Northern Ireland’s bloody past
The literature of the Troubles is a rich one, from Seamus Heaney’s North (1975), Jennifer Johnston’s Shadows on Our Skin (1977) and Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal (1983), to Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man (1994), Anna Burns’s Booker-winning Milkman (2018), and Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses (2022). The latest addition to the corpus, a slim debut story collection by nonbinary Northern Irish writer Liadan Ní Chuinn, shares the brilliance and burning energy of those other books, but there is a fundamental distinction. Ní Chuinn was born in the year of the Good Friday agreement, the 1998 power-sharing deal that delivered peace and brought an end to the Troubles; why, then, should their writing be so obsessed with them?
“I believe, these things, they’re the making of us,” a character says at one point. He’s talking about a dead friend, but his words might apply to Northern Ireland’s past 50 or so years. Throughout the book the violence of that period is shown to persist, the past proving powerfully, inconveniently alive. Tensions flare between those who attempt to ignore that fact and others who insist on it.
People from across the UK discuss why the government is struggling to win the approval of a deeply divided public
For Aiden Robertson, a 35-year-old consultant from Burnley, Labour’s first year back in government can only be summed up as “incredibly disappointing”.
The year had been marked, he felt, by “dreadful communication, a lack of clear purpose, zero vision”, while Labour had been “pandering to Reform voters who will never back them”.
Experts raise alarm over ‘commodification’ of vulnerable children as independent fostering agencies make millions in profit
Experts have raised alarm over the “commodification” of vulnerable foster children as analysis reveals almost a quarter of all foster places in England are now provided by private equity-backed companies making millions of pounds in profits.
Analysis for the Guardian by thinktank Common Wealth found independent fostering agencies (IFAs) are making millions via public funding from councils to provide placements for foster children, while foster carers struggle to pay bills.
Hundreds of thousands of hospital appointments could be cancelled if BMA members vote for series of stoppages
Hospitals are bracing for a fresh round of strikes by resident doctors seeking a 29% pay rise, amid warnings that stoppages could lead to hundreds of thousands of appointments and operations being cancelled.
NHS leaders fear that a ballot of resident doctors, formerly junior doctors in England, which closes on Monday will produce a majority backing renewed industrial action.
‘So-called sidechicks’ are celebrated in the presenter’s new show with a TikTok historian. Plus, a shocking investigation into gangs profiting from inheritance scams
Jameela Jamil and Dr Kate Lister host this podcast dedicated to the untold tales behind “history’s so-called sidechicks”, with interludes from TikTok’s History Gossip, AKA Katie Kennedy. If you prefer a more strait-laced approach then this isn’t the show for you: it’s a tongue-in-cheek riot, kicking off with Louis XIV’s paramour Madame de Montespan, and her fall from grace via a poisoning scandal. Hannah J Davies Audible, all episodes out now
North Korea has opened a massive resort area on its east coast. The tourism pet project of the leader, Kim Jong-un, is reportedly due to welcome Russian guests later this month. Labelled ‘North Korea’s Waikiki’ by South Korean media, Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area can accommodate nearly 20,000 people, according to Pyongyang, which has described it as ‘a world-class cultural resort’
Smallest and most affordable Framework still has brilliant modular ports, is upgradable and designed to last
The modular and repairable PC maker Framework’s latest machine moves into the notoriously difficult to fix 2-in-1 category with a fun 12in laptop with a touchscreen and a 360-degree hinge.
The new machine still supports the company’s innovative expansion cards for swapping the different ports in the side, which are cross-compatible with the Framework 13 and 16 among others. And you can still open it up to replace the memory, storage and internal components with a few simple screws.
On retiring at 56, Michelle Jackson needed a big new challenge. So she picked up her first proper camera and was soon spending 20 hours a week in the field, and winning awards
A few weeks ago, Michelle Jackson was in the Peak District, hiding beneath a camouflage net with her camera, waiting for badgers to emerge at sunset. For more than two hours she watched the skylarks and curlews, her hopes intensifying during the 45-minute window in which the light was perfect.
At last the heather moved. A badger’s head appeared. “Their eyesight is poor, but they can smell you,” Jackson says. At 66, she has won national and international awards as a wildlife photographer. Although the desire to get the shot “drives” her, for a while she simply watched. “You want to embrace what’s there. It’s so special to see wildlife up close.”
The 80-year-old, two-time Oscar winner said he had been ‘working pretty hard for almost 60 years’ – and is ‘quite happy’ watching his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones work
Two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas has revealed he may be finished with acting, saying he has “no real intentions” to return to the industry.
Speaking at the Karlovy Vary international film festival in the Czech Republic for the 50th anniversary of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – which Douglas co-produced – the 80-year-old actor and producer told a press conference that unless “something special came up” for him, he would not act again.
All England Club’s official TikTok account hit 200m views by Wednesday as it aims to connect with young people
Whether it is a clip of Novak Djokovic hitting a winning backhand volley before taking a tumble or an American influencer presenting fashion tips, Wimbledon’s social media posts are vying for the same thing: a new generation of tennis fans.
“Demographic wise, I think it’s no secret that Wimbledon is an event that’s trying to attract younger audiences. I want to find a way to engage people who might not be on tennis pages,” said Will Giles, the managing editor of digital content for the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC).
Young people living in the most deprived stretches of England’s coastline are three times more likely to be living with an undiagnosed mental health condition than their peers inland, according to new research.
This “coastal mental health gap” means that young people in these towns, which include areas of Tendring on the east coast and Blackpool and Liverpool to the west, are suffering disproportionately, often alone and with no help, said the researchers who conducted the study.
One is rich, smoky and red, the other bright green with minty undertones – and both are packed with punchy flavour and light on stove time
When hot summer days roll around, midweek dinners that require minimal cooking really come into their own. I love making pesto on such evenings, and not just the classic basil-and-pine-nut situation. Jazzing things up with braised greens or a red pesto made from lots of jarred goods are just two directions in which I like to take things for a big hit of flavour. Both of today’s pestos freeze well, too.
Swissport staff at seven airports in UK and Channel Islands eligible for £1.20-a-bag payment through incentive scheme
Airport staff are earning cash bonuses for every easyJet passenger they spot travelling with an oversized bag, according to a leaked email.
Staff at Swissport, an aviation company that operates passenger gates at airports, are “eligible to receive £1.20 (£1 after tax) for every gate bag taken”, according to the message sent to staff at sevenairports in the UK and the Channel Islands, including Birmingham, Glasgow, Jersey and Newcastle.
A jury has found Erin Patterson guilty of murdering three relatives and attempting to murder a fourth with a deadly beef wellington lunch almost two years ago.
As the trial entered its 11th week, a Victorian supreme court jury convicted Patterson of murdering her estranged husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt, Heather Wilkinson. The 12-person jury also found Patterson guilty of attempting to murder Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, who survived the lunch after spending weeks in hospital.
They had portholes, cutting edge mod cons – and the ultra luxurious models even came with a free calculator. As Japan’s beloved Nakagin Capsule Tower resurfaces, we celebrate an architectural marvel
Looking like a teetering stack of washing machines perched on the edge of an elevated highway, the Nakagin Capsule Tower was an astonishing arrival on the Tokyo skyline in 1972. It was the heady vision of Kisho Kurokawa, a radical Japanese architect who imagined a high-rise world of compact capsules, where people could cocoon themselves away from the information overload of the modern age. These tiny pods would be “a place of rest to recover”, he wrote, as well as “an information base to develop ideas, and a home for urban dwellers”. Residents could peer out at the city from their cosy built-in beds through a single porthole window, or shut it all out by unfurling an elegant circular fan-like blind, all while remaining connected with the latest technology at all times.
Launched to critical acclaim, the Nakagin tower’s 140 capsules quickly sold out, and became highly sought after by well-heeled salarymen looking for a place to crash when they missed the last train home. Never intended to be full-time housing, the pods came stuffed with mod cons: en suite bathroom, foldout desk, telephone and Sony colour TV. But, 50 years on, after a prolonged lack of maintenance and repairs, and disagreements among owners about its future, the asbestos-riddled building was finally disassembled in 2022. The creaking steel capsules of Kurokawa’s space-age fantasy were unbolted and removed from the lift and stair towers, pod by pod.
Participants in the Matadero’s inaugural Senior Audience School discover that theatre ‘takes the sting out of the nonsense in life’
The 25 people who have gathered in a small Madrid theatre over the past few months to consider identity, relationships, gender-based violence and inclusion aren’t exactly the crowd you’d normally expect to haunt a cutting-edge drama space housed in a former slaughterhouse. And that is precisely the point.
The men and women, aged between 65 and 84, are the first cohort of an initiative that aims to introduce those who live around the Matadero arts centre in the south of the Spanish capital to the joys and challenges of contemporary theatre. Last year, mindful of the fact that many of the older residents of the barrios of Usera and Arganzuela rarely attended contemporary theatre and would be unlikely to darken the doors of the new Nave 10 space, the Matadero and the city council came up with a plan.
Bitter rows had damaged trust and dialogue but UK-French relations have thawed amid new geopolitical landscape
When Emmanuel Macron rides in a horse-drawn carriage to Windsor Castle this week, it will be to celebrate the return of close political relations between London and Paris, drawing a line under the damaging spats of the Brexit years.
The French president’s office said the “shared interests” of the two countries were what mattered now, hailing France and the UK’s “essential” close relationship on the international stage. This reinvigorated cross-Channel bond was “vital”, a UK official said.
PM says ‘those who tried to divide us failed’ while monarch says victims and stories of courage should be remembered
Keir Starmer, King Charles and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, have marked the 20th anniversary of the 7 July attacks in London in which Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured more than 770.
The prime minister said: “Today the whole country will unite to remember the lives lost in the 7/7 attacks, and all those whose lives were changed for ever. We honour the courage shown that day – the bravery of the emergency services, the strength of survivors and the unity of Londoners in the face of terror.
In her 20s, the actor says, casting directors didn’t rate her. In her 60s, she got her big break. She discusses fun, family, optimism, regrets – and wild sex on screen with Daniel Craig
Anne Reid wants to get one thing straight from the off. She adores working with the director Dominic Dromgoole. “He treats actors like grownups. Some directors feel as if they’ve got to play games and teach you how to act. But a conductor doesn’t teach a viola player how to play the blooming instrument, does he?” She talks about directors who get actors to throw bean bags at each other and go round the room making them recite each other’s names. “Blimey! I want to be an adult. I think I’ve earned it now.” She pauses. Reid has always been a master of the timely pause. “You can’t get more adult than me and be alive really, can you, darling?”
Reid turned 90 in May. She celebrated by going on a national tour with Daisy Goodwin’s new play, By Royal Appointment. I catch up with the show at Cheltenham’s Everyman theatre. She’s already done Bath. Then there’s Malvern, Southampton, Richmond, Guildford and Salford. I feel knackered just thinking about it, I say. She gives me a look. “Oh, they send me in cars. I don’t have to toil much!”
We’ve been living in a great experiment: can finance provide basic human rights such as housing? The answer is increasingly no
“The housing crisis is now as big a threat to the EU as Russia,” Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, recently declared. “We’re running the risk of having the working and middle classes conclude that their democracies are incapable of solving their biggest problem.”
It is not hard to see where Collboni is coming from. From Dublin to Milan, residents routinely find half of their incomes swallowed up by rent, and home ownership is unthinkable for most. Major cities are witnessing spiralling house prices and some have jaw-dropping year-on-year median rent increases of more than 10%. People are being pushed into ever more precarious and cramped conditions and homelessness is rapidly rising.
Joint attack on Iran puts Israeli PM in powerful position as he dangles prospect of Trump-brokered ceasefire deal
Donald Trump will host Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC on Monday as the US president seeks again to broker a peace deal in Gaza and the Israeli prime minister takes a victory lap through the Oval Office after a joint military campaign against Iran and a series of successful strikes against Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East.
Netanyahu and Trump have a complex personal relationship – and Trump openly vented frustration at him last month during efforts to negotiate a truce with Iran – but the two have appeared in lockstep since the US launched a bombing run against Iran’s nuclear programme, fulfilling a key goal for Israeli war planners.
Thousands of lone women forced to return face extreme repression and destitution under Taliban laws that forbid them to work or travel without a male guardian
Women forced back to living under the Taliban’s increasingly repressive regime have spoken of their desperation as Iran accelerates the deportation of an estimated 4 million Afghans who had fled to the country.
Residents observe day of prayer after 82 people killed and 10 girls and one camp counselor still unaccounted for
Residents in central Texas were observing a day of prayer on Sunday for at least 82 people killed and dozens missing in Friday’s devastating flash flooding, as a search and rescue operation for survivors began to morph into a grim exercise of recovering bodies.
Relatives continued an anxious wait for news of 10 girls and one camp counselor still unaccounted for from a riverside summer camp that was overwhelmed by flash flooding from the Guadalupe River, which rose 26ft (8 meters) in 45 minutes on Friday morning after torrential pre-dawn rain north of San Antonio.