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History is firmly on Manchester United’s side tonight. Lyon have visited Old Trafford on two previous occasions, and lost both times. In the Champions League groups in 2004-05, Ruud van Nistelrooy scored the winner in a 2-1 win, after Gary Neville’s opening goal had been cancelled out by Mahamadou Diarra. Three seasons later, in the 2007-08 Champions League round of 16, Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal was enough. Why not relive those matches with ye olde reports?

The first leg. Here’s a reminder of what happened this time last week, in both MBM and match-report form. Oh André.

Scientists sound the alarm over substances such as arsenic and lead contaminating soils and entering food systems

About one sixth of global cropland is contaminated by toxic heavy metals, researchers have estimated, with as many as 1.4 billion people living in high-risk areas worldwide.

Approximately 14 to 17% of cropland globally – roughly 242m hectares – is contaminated by at least one toxic metal such as arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel or lead, at levels that exceed agricultural and human health safety thresholds.

Police respond to shooter alert at Florida State University in Tallahassee as fatalities reported but not confirmed

A shooting on Thursday on the Florida State University campus sent an unknown number of people to a nearby hospital, a medical center spokesperson said, amid unconfirmed reports of several fatalities.

Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare was receiving and treating people affected by the shooting, said Sarah Cannon, a hospital spokesperson. She said the hospital could not yet confirm the number of people in care, and said the details were still unfolding.

One person seriously injured after accident at Monte Faito near Naples

Four people have died and one is seriously injured after a cable car crashed to the ground near Naples in southern Italy on Thursday, mountain rescue services and firefighters said.

The accident happened at Monte Faito, a peak 28 miles (45km) south-east of Naples.

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This is what Postecoglou had to say in the lead up to tonight’s match:

Because I don’t define my career and me as a person by what people think about me. I never have. Never will. If you don’t think I’m a good coach today, you won’t think I’m a good coach tomorrow, even if we win. One game ain’t going to make a difference to that. You either think I’m capable of doing the job now or you don’t.

That’s where I sit with these things. If people think that us winning tomorrow all of a sudden makes me a better manager than what I am today or us losing tomorrow somehow makes me a worse manager, I guess that’s their burden, not mine. I don’t think that way and I don’t think most people think that way. Or I’d like to think they don’t, in terms of their own sort of self-esteem and who they are as people. I couldn’t care less.

• Serena Williams calls out hypocrisy of Sinner ban
• Williams says ‘I would have gotten 20 years’ if caught
• World No 1 Sinner twice tested positive for clostebol

Serena Williams says she would have been hit with a 20-year ban if she had failed drug tests like men’s world No 1 Jannik Sinner, who received a three-month suspension in February.

“I love the guy, love this game,” Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam winner, told Time magazine this week after being named one of its 100 most influential people. “He’s great for the sport. I’ve been put down so much, I don’t want to bring anyone down. Men’s tennis needs him.

• F1 world champion finished sixth in last race in Bahrain
• ‘I’m happy, I’m just not very happy with our car’

Max Verstappen played down concerns that he may leave his Red Bull team after the world champion was left frustrated and disappointed at the last round in Bahrain but reiterated that he was unhappy with the car and that as things stood it will be hard to defend his title this season.

Verstappen finished sixth in Bahrain, unable to make any impression against the frontrunners McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari. The car struggles with balance problems and is proving a handful to drive, with the team identifying a disconnect between their data from the wind tunnel and its real-world performance.

Abolishing tariffs would be welcome, but not at the price of reducing high regulatory standards or a reset with the European Union

Looked at objectively, a bilateral trade agreement between Britain and the United States is of relatively small economic significance to this country. Back in 2020, Boris Johnson’s government estimated that a US deal “could increase UK GDP in the long run by around 0.07%” – a figure that is not exactly transformative. The view touted by some Brexiters that a US trade deal would fire up the entire British economy was always a fantasy, the product of deregulatory yearning for which there was little public support, even among leave voters. Any urge of that kind is clearly even more delusional now, in the wake of Donald Trump’s tariff wars.

Hopefully, the right’s across-the-board deregulatory horror is now a thing of the past. But global trade has new traumas too. Mr Trump’s protectionism and bullying of US rivals are resetting the terms. There are nevertheless specific reasons why it is in Britain’s interest to pursue freer trade talks with the US. Chief among these is the threat posed by current tariffs, especially on cars and pharmaceuticals, as well as the prospect that a 10% tariff will be reimposed on all UK exports to the US after the current pause ends in July.

Quarter-point cut in main rate to 2.25% aimed at tackling slowdown in eurozone growth and impact of US border taxes

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The cost of borrowing has fallen across the 20-member euro area for the third time this year after the European Central Bank cut its main interest rate to 2.25% in response to slowing growth and Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The Frankfurt-based bank cut its benchmark deposit rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Thursday, in line with economist expectations, to tackle a slowdown in the bloc and the impact from the border taxes imposed earlier this month on all EU imports into the US.

• Irish trainer set to have multiple Easter runners in UK
• Charlotte’s Web best bet on all-weather finals card

A single winner on Cheltenham’s final card of the season was enough to maintain Dan Skelton’s narrow lead in the contest for the National Hunt trainers’ championship on Thursday, ahead of a busy Easter programme weekend when Skelton and the defending champion, Willie Mullins, will send dozens of runners to tracks in all parts of the country as the title race goes into its final week.

Mullins, who was the first Irish trainer to win the British championship for 70 years when he edged out Skelton 12 months ago, equalled his own record of 10 wins at the track’s festival meeting last month.

Dressed-down pontiff visits St Peter’s Basilica, and is expected to appear at Easter Sunday mass

Lorena Araujo Piñeiro was putting the finishing touches to the restoration of the 17th-century tomb of Pope Urban VIII, a dark bronze and gold monument in St Peter’s Basilica, when she noticed a man wearing a striped poncho-like top, black trousers and no shoes, being pushed in a wheelchair towards her.

“It was around noon and the basilica was practically empty,” said Piñeiro, a restorer. “I struggled to recognise who it was … I thought he was a simple pilgrim. It was as if he’d just got out of bed.”

Missiles hit encampments for displaced Palestinians as talks on response to Israel truce offer ‘almost complete’

A wave of Israeli airstrikes on encampments for displaced Palestinians has killed at least 40 people across Gaza, as Hamas officials said consultations on response to Israel truce offer “almost complete”.

Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said two Israeli missiles hit several tents in the al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Younis, resulting in at least 16 deaths, most of them women and children, and 23 others were wounded.

Officials promise to track down and prosecute those who ‘tag’ city’s historic monuments, statues and grand buildings

In Paris’s central Place de la République, the magnificent lions at the feet of the statue of Marianne are once again covered in graffiti.

Along the nearby Boulevard Saint-Martin – part of the Grands Boulevards that bisect the north of the city – the trunk of every plane tree has been crudely sprayed with a name.

Federal judge deals blow to tech giant and paves way for government to break up company’s advertising products

Alphabet’s Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for US antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its advertising products.

The US district judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers. Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their ad inventory. Antitrust enforcers failed to prove a separate claim that the company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.

The pivotal ‘barbarian conspiracy’ of AD367 saw Picts, Scotti and Saxons inflicting crushing blows on Roman defences

A series of exceptionally dry summers that caused famine and social breakdown were behind one of the most severe threats to Roman rule of Britain, according to new academic research.

The rebellion, known as the “barbarian conspiracy”, was a pivotal moment in Roman Britain. Picts, Scotti and Saxons took advantage of Britain’s descent into anarchy to inflict crushing blows on weakened Roman defences in the spring and summer of AD367.

The president’s penchant for the gaudy has been mocked but the menace beneath was clear when he met El Salvador’s leader

The Oval Office meeting of Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele on Monday was a grotesque spectacle. Both men, elected to lead nominally democratic countries, have described themselves as dictators, and they exuded that sense of smug impunity. While reporters sought answers on the fate of Kilmar Ábrego García, a 29-year-old father of three who was wrongly deported to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot mega-prison, Trump and Bukele disclaimed responsibility, joked about further deportations, and engaged in casual slander of Ábrego García, who is not, and has never been alleged to be, a terrorist.

And then there was the gold. So much gold.

Aix-Marseille University generates interest amid a US crackdown and calls for a ‘scientific refugee’ status

Nearly 300 academics have applied to a French university’s offer to take in US-based researchers rattled by the American government’s crackdown on academia, as a former French president called for the creation of a “scientific refugee” status for academics in peril.

Earlier this year, France’s Aix-Marseille University was among the first in Europe to respond to the funding freezes, cuts and executive orders unleashed on institutions across the US by Donald Trump’s administration.

Probably illegal move against US’s richest university is latest in Trump’s attack on independence of higher education

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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status in what would be a probably illegal move amid Donald Trump’s concerted attack on the independence of US institutions of higher education.

Trump on Tuesday called for Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university and one of the most prestigious in the world, to lose its tax-exempt status, CNN first reported.

Liberals in the US make up about 15% of the prepping scene and their numbers are growing. Their fears differ from their better-known rightwing counterparts – as do their methods

One afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics.

Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcast in cold laptop light. There were dozens of us on the call, including a geophysicist, an actor, a retired financial adviser and a civil engineer. We all looked worried, and rightly so. The issue formerly known as climate change was now a polycrisis called climate collapse. H1N1 was busily jumping from birds to cows to people. And with each passing day, as Donald Trump went about gleefully dismantling state capacity, the promise of a competent government response to the next hurricane, wildfire, flood, pandemic, drought, mudslide, heatwave, financial meltdown, hailstorm or other calamity receded further from view.

As the first climate summit in the Amazon approaches, a gulf is opening between what the area’s farming lobby wants, and what the world needs

• Revealed: world’s largest meat company may break Amazon deforestation pledges again
• The life and death of a ‘laundered’ cow in the Amazon rainforest

Yellowstone in Montana may have the most romanticised cowboy culture in the world thanks to the TV drama series of the same name starring Kevin Costner. But the true home of the 21st-century cowboy is about 7,500 miles south, in what used to be the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, where the reality of raising cattle and producing beef is better characterised by depression, market pressure and vexed efforts to prevent the destruction of the land and its people.

The toll was apparent along the rutted PA 279 road in Pará state. Signs of human and environmental stress were not hard to find during the last dry season. Record drought had dried up irrigation ponds and burned pasture grass down to the roots, leaving emaciated cattle behind the fences. Exposed red soil was whipped up into dust devils as SUVs and cattle trucks sped past on their way between Xinguara and São Félix do Xingu, which is home to both the biggest herd on the planet and the fastest erasure of forest in the Amazon.

Salmon is often marketed as the sustainable, healthy and eco-friendly protein choice. But what you may not realise is that most of the salmon you buy is farmed, especially if you live in the UK, because Scottish salmon producers are no longer required to tell you.

Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out why it is important for consumers to know where their salmon comes from, and examines the gap between the marketing of farmed salmon and the reality for our health, the environmental and animal welfare

• Scottish government must do more to control salmon farming, inquiry finds

• Scottish salmon producers allowed to remove ‘farmed’ from front of packaging

• Norway rules out fish farm ban despite ‘existential threat’ to wild salmon

Equalities watchdog chair says code of practice will give clarity and adds trans people’s rights ‘must be respected’

Updated guidance for public bodies after the UK supreme court’s ruling that a woman is defined in law by biological sex is expected to be issued by the summer, the head of the equalities regulator said on Thursday.

Lady Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, described the ruling as “enormously consequential”, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are going to have a new statutory code of practice, statutory meaning it will be the law of the land, it will be interpreted by courts as the law of the land. We’re hoping we’re going to have that by the summer.”

Actor to follow Oscar-nominated role in Emilia Pérez with Italian drama described as ‘perturbing, livid and hypnotic’, co-starring Vincent Gallo

Karla Sofía Gascón, the actor who made history earlier this year as the first trans performer to be nominated for an acting Oscar, has signalled her next project.

Gascón, whose hopes of securing the leading actress award (which eventually went to Anora’s Mikey Madison) were dashed after offensive social media posts were unearthed, will star as a psychiatrist who “embodies God and the devil” in Italian drama The Life Lift, reports Variety.

From bloomer-adjacent designs to full-on flounce, you’ll find ​this subversive undergarment everywhere this spring

We’ve had exposed thongs, pants as pants and boxer shorts as shorts. But now there is a new, arguably even more unexpected underwear as outerwear trend. Welcome to the spring of big, frilly bloomers.

The 19th century undergarment has been thrust into the 21st century spotlight with a string of celebrities and influencers channelling their inner Folie Bergere dancer - including the actor Lily James, Alexa Chung and Camille Charrière. Social media is peppered with gen Z and millennials styling Victorian bloomers, found on vintage sites or on the high street with band T-shirts, crop tops and cardigans. Free People’s £88 “forever young pants”, which come in six different colours and are bedecked in a dramatic lace trim, are proving particularly popular.

French weekly published pictures of Pelicot with a man, described as her ‘companion’, walking in the street

Gisèle Pelicot, who survived nearly a decade of rapes by dozens of men, will sue Paris Match magazine for invasion of privacy, her lawyers said on Thursday.

In its latest edition, Paris Match published seven pictures of Pelicot accompanied by a man described as her companion walking in the streets in her new home town.

Elected leaders from across Europe should join us on the streets. It is critical to democracy – in Hungary, and the EU as a whole

Hungary’s parliament has given Viktor Orbán the tools to do what he has long threatened: ban Pride, silence dissent and strip political critics of their citizenship. A constitutional amendment passed on 14 April allows the government to label LGBTQ+ gatherings a threat to children and to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals deemed a risk to “national sovereignty”.

This is a purge disguised as law – another step in Orbán’s dismantling of democracy, where the constitution is degraded to a propaganda instrument. He calls it a “spring clean-up” to root out “bugs”, targeting LGBTQ+ people, journalists, critics, civil society and now, dual nationals. As one myself, I could be among the targets.

Katalin Cseh is a member of the Hungarian national assembly for the Momentum Movement and a former MEP

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Democrats press Trump administration to follow supreme court order to bring back Kilmar Ábrego García

• Who is Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador?

Cory Booker plans to travel to El Salvador, a source familiar with the New Jersey senator’s itinerary said, as Democrats seek to pressure the Trump administration to return a wrongly deported Maryland resident.

Booker’s trip to the Central American country would come after the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen traveled there this week to meet with his constituent Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian national deported last month in what the Trump administration acknowledged was an “administrative error”. Despite a supreme court ruling saying his administration must “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return, Trump has refused to take steps to do so, and El Salvador’s government on Wednesday denied Van Hollen a meeting with the deportee.

Why is the great performance artist making pianist Levit play a Satie piece 840 times? And does he really have a screen to go behind should nature call? We enter another level of time and consciousness

Amid the experiments and cross-genre collaborations in this year’s Multitudes festival is one event that will challenge its performer as much as its audience – and the only one where specially appointed brow-moppers will be on hand. At 10am on 24 April in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, pianist Igor Levit will begin a performance of a single piece, Erik Satie’s Vexations, in a concert that will last at least 16 hours.

A few tickets (for the full duration or one-hour slots) are still available for this extreme pianist endurance event. What should the audience expect to get out of it? “I’d never tell an audience what they should experience,” says Levit. “But I would encourage people to just literally let it go. There is no agenda in this piece. There is no meaning to it. It’s just empty space, so just dive into that and let go. That would be the dream.”

Move paves the way for Moscow to normalise ties with leadership of Afghanistan

Russia has suspended its ban on the Taliban, which it had designated for more than two decades as a terrorist organisation, in a move that paves the way for Moscow to normalise ties with the leadership of Afghanistan.

No country currently recognises the Taliban government that seized power in August 2021 as US-led forces staged a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. But Russia has been gradually building ties with the movement, which Vladimir Putin said last year was now an ally in fighting terrorism.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura criticizes DHS’s attempt to smear her wrongly deported husband over 2021 civil protective order

• Who is Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador?

The wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, has strongly criticized the Trump administration’s attempt to smear his character, saying a temporary restraining order against him was “out of caution” and that “he is a loving partner and father” who is being denied justice.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she “acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar” when she got the civil protective order in 2021, according to a statement emailed to the Baltimore Sun.

Many of the sister relationships I have witnessed balance extreme loyalty and care with a unique ability to press each other’s buttons

One thing about living this crazy little thing we call life is that even though you might be a haggard lesbian in her 40s, you can still learn things about yourself. I was recently having a conversation with friends about the family dynamics of people we’ve dated, and all of a sudden a very clear pattern emerged that I’d never noticed before. Every single person I have ever dated, casually or seriously, has had one sister and no other siblings.

Even though I’m aware this could sound like some strange special interest of mine, it’s not deliberate. I’ve actually never narrowed down prospective romantic interests based on siblings, but I did find this sister realisation notable. Is there something about me that queer people with sisters are attracted to? Is there something about having one sister that informs the kind of personalities I am drawn to? Did our separate placements in our families become part of our identity, as some people claim can happen, causing us to be compatible?

Justin Kurzel’s adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s novel eschews battleground spectacle for a rich meditation on trauma that unfolds in three timelines

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Many great directors have been attracted to war movies – or, as is the case with Australian auteur Justin Kurzel, a war-themed series, adapting Richard Flanagan’s novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Film-makers of a certain calibre seem to view this genre as a rite of passage. Some productions – including the recent Apple TV+ series Masters of the Air – have a retrograde flavour, painting war (perhaps problematically) as a great big adventure. Many lean into spectacle, attempting to recreate the smoke and fury of battle, but in the process running the risk of celebrating or ennobling war. “Every film about war,” declared François Truffaut, “ends up being pro-war.”

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You have every right to be upset, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but you should start by finding out why he felt the need to hide this

• Read more Leading questions

My husband completely covered up the fact that he retired two years ago and has been pretending to go to work ever since. He made up stories about work events. I only found out by seeing the pension payments into our joint account. He is 68 and has reapplied on spec to his old company. He hasn’t had any response but continues to wait for one.

When asked about what he does, he says he sits in cafes and does crossword puzzles. He is always on his phone. He delays and denies talking about being on the pension and any activities such as volunteering, doing courses etc. How can I reboot open communication?

Eleanor says: Oh this makes me sad for you both. It reminds me of people in the Depression who got laid off and didn’t tell their families, just took their lunch in the paper bag and sat on a park bench.

Event was meant to kick off 30 May to follow failed 2017 event that led to Billy McFarland’s wire fraud conviction

Fyre festival 2 has been “postponed”, according to messages sent to ticket holders, just weeks before it was scheduled to start.

The event, advertised as a luxury music festival, was supposed to take place in Mexico from 30 May to 2 June. It was intended as an improved followup to the failed Fyre festival in 2017, which experienced problems with security, food, accommodation, medical services and artist relations, resulting in the festival being indefinitely postponed and eventually cancelled.

Actions by state department to terminate students’ legal status place them at risk of deportation and detention

• US politics live – latest updates

Several international students who have had their visas revoked in recent weeks have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, arguing the government denied them due process when it suddenly took away their permission to be in the US.

The actions by the federal government to terminate students’ legal status have left hundreds of scholars at risk of detention and deportation. Their schools range from private universities such as Harvard and Stanford to large public institutions such as the University of Maryland and Ohio State University and to some small liberal arts colleges.

Carlo Ancelotti’s pleas went unanswered with his side’s limp exit a damning indictment of collective failings this season

Jude Bellingham saw the videos, listened to the stories and heard the word remontada “a million times”, but it was easier said than done. “There is no magic,” Carlo Ancelotti warned. In the end there was nothing really, just another glimpse of reality, the true story of their season: a chronicle of a death foretold. No epic, no comeback, not even much mystique, and certainly not much football. This time, Real Madrid could not escape themselves.

“This is the other side of football,” Ancelotti said after the match. “There’s a happy part, which we have experienced many times, and a sad part which is today. We have to accept it, and the ‘sticks’, the criticisms, that will come. Over the two games Arsenal were better than us.”

The son of Coach Prime has the production, pedigree and poise to lead a franchise. But he challenges the prototype of what an NFL quarterback is supposed to look and act like

NFL scouting is broken, and Shedeur Sanders is the proof. Everything about him screams future star quarterback, and yet teams would sooner assume the worst.

Make no mistake: there is no prospect in this year’s draft who is better equipped to turn around a struggling franchise than the 23-year-old Texan, a savior to not one but two college fanbases. The last four years saw him restore the proud football tradition at Jackson State and put Colorado back on the college football map. Sanders did this despite skeptics casting doubt on his ability to make the jump up from competing against small historically Black schools to playing against major college powers in the Pac 12 and Big 12 conferences. Last year he led a 9-4 turnaround at Colorado, the school’s first winning season in seven years, while snapping a four-year drought of postseason bowl appearances.

President, whose tariff policy has caused turmoil, said Jerome Powell is ‘always too late and wrong’ with rate policy

Donald Trump early on Thursday blasted the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for not lowering US interest rates and expressed a wish for him to be gone from his role.

The US president lambasted Powell as “always too late and wrong” in a post on his Truth Social platform. Trump noted that the European Central Bank (ECB) was poised on Thursday to lower interest rates again, without mentioning that the body has been responding to the chaos caused by Trump’s initiatives on tariffs.

Cattle moved between ranches, allowing meat from farms linked to deforestation to end up on supermarket shelves

• Revealed: world’s largest meat company may break Amazon deforestation pledges again
• Bibles, bullets and beef: Amazon cowboy culture at odds with Brazil’s climate goals

Brazil is the biggest exporter of beef in the world, and more than 40% of its vast 240m-cattle herd is raised in the Amazon region. As a result, swathes of the nature-rich rainforest are being cleared and burned to create pasture.

This is pushing Amazon destruction close to a point of no return, prompting environmentalists and consumer groups to demand deforestation-free meat products. Governments, meat suppliers and retailers have promised to clean up their act, but one of the biggest hurdles is a complex and obscure supply chain that can hide the origins of meat products.