• WCL semi-final updates from the 12.30pm BST kick-off
• Live scores | Barcelona v Chelsea preview | Mail Xaymaca

Arsenal: Zinsberger, Fox, Williamson, Catley, McCabe, Little, Caldentey, Maanum, Mead, Russo, Foord. Substitutes: Williams, Ilestedt, Reid, Nighswonger, Walti, Cooney-Cross, Pelova, Kafaji, Kelly, Blackstenius.

Lyon: Endler, Carpenter, Gilles, Sombath, Bacha, Horan,Egurrola, Van de Donk, Diani, Dumornay, Chawinga. Substitutes: Benkarth, Huerta, Renard, Junttila-Nelhage, Majri, Dabritz, Le Sommer, Marozsan, Hegerberg, Svava, Becho, Tarciane Karen.

Peer-reviewed study’s findings raises fresh question on the toxic substances’ impact on fertility

Microplastics have been found for the first time in human ovary follicular fluid, raising a new round of questions about the ubiquitous and toxic substances’ potential impact on women’s fertility.

The new peer-reviewed research published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety checked for microplastics in the follicular fluid of 18 women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment at a fertility clinic in Salerno, Italy, and detected them in 14.

The Convenience Store Woman author is renowned for challenging social norms in darkly weird near-future fiction. She discusses sex, feminism and her struggles to be an ‘ordinary earthling’

“I have had relationships with humans, but I’ve also loved a lot of people in stories,” Sayaka Murata, the Japanese author of the bestseller Convenience Store Woman, confides a few minutes into our interview. “I’ve been told by my doctor not to talk about this too much, but ever since I was a child, I’ve had 30 or 40 imaginary friends who live on a different star or planet with whom I have shared love and sexual experiences.”

It is 7pm in Tokyo, mid-morning in London. Sitting upright at a desk in an empty publisher’s office, the 45-year-old author – wearing a cream silk blouse and with a neatly curled bob – might be reading the news rather than discussing imaginary friends. For context, her latest novel to be translated into English, Vanishing World, depicts a future in which people no longer have sex and the main character carries 40 “lovers” – plastic anime key rings – in her black Prada pouch. Our conversation is made possible thanks to the skilful translation of Bethan Jones, who relates Murata’s long, thoughtful and utterly unpredictable answers. As video calls go, the experience is so otherworldly the three of us might be beaming in from different planets.

Price of cocoa – chocolate’s key ingredient – has climbed over past year and tariffs on imports will keep prices high

For many Americans celebrating Easter, the holiday is incomplete without chocolate: chocolate bunnies and eggs, bars tucked into Easter baskets, candy hidden in plastic eggs for Easter egg hunts.

But the rocketing cocoa costs will mean higher prices for chocolate candy this year, and Donald Trump’s tariffs on all imports will likely keep prices high for the foreseeable future.

A chocolatey after-dinner Easter treat that treads the line between a cake and a mousse

​Rich, dark and squidgy, this cake is very much an after-dinner, rather than an afternoon-tea affair – something you’ll need a fork for, and quite possibly a spoon, too. Somewhere between a cake and a mousse, it’s the perfect end to an Easter celebration (serve with creme fraiche and chilled sliced blood oranges) and a great make-ahead dessert at any time of year.

Prep 35 min
Cook 40 min
Serves 8-10

After the famous physicist fled Germany in 1933, his cousin Robert moved his family to Italy, where they thought they had found safety. Then, the day before liberation, Nazis smashed down their front door …

Early on the morning of 3 August 1944, a unit of heavily armed German soldiers arrived at the Villa Il Focardo outside Florence.

They didn’t knock. They didn’t ring the bell. They simply smashed through the front door, marched in and started shouting for the villa’s owner, Robert Einstein, cousin of the world-famous scientist Albert Einstein.

Twenty-one humanoid robots joined thousands of runners at the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing

Twenty-one humanoid robots joined thousands of runners at the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing on Saturday, the first time these machines have raced alongside humans over a 21-kilometre (13-mile) course.

The robots from Chinese manufacturers such as DroidVP and Noetix Robotics came in all shapes and sizes, some shorter than 120cm (3ft 9in), others as tall as 1.8m (5ft 9in). One company boasted that its robot looked almost human, with feminine features and the ability to wink and smile. Some firms tested their robots for weeks before the race. Beijing officials have described the event as more akin to a race car competition, given the need for engineering and navigation teams.

Mary Annette Pember’s expansive and shocking book Medicine River looks at the many ways that the US has tried to dehumanise and eradicate Native families

Mary Annette Pember will publish her first book, Medicine River, on Tuesday. She signed to write it in 2022 but feels she really started work more than 50 years ago, “before I could even write, when I was under the table as a kid, making these symbols that were sort of my own”.

A citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, Pember is a national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today. In Medicine River, she tells two stories: of the Indian boarding schools, which operated in the US between the 1860s and the 1960s, and of her mother, her time in such a school and the toll it took.

Chancellor supports economic ties with Beijing as she prepares to fly to US next week for trade deal talks

Rachel Reeves has dismissed the idea of economically disengaging from China, amid concerns the US may put pressure on the UK to limit its deals with Beijing.

The chancellor, who will discuss a trade deal with the US on a trip to Washington next week, said it would be “very foolish” for Britain to have less involvement with Xi Jinping’s administration.

The Indian photographer captures his neighbour breathing fire at the finale of a major Hindu festival

In a narrow lane in Kolkata, West Bengal, Ankit Ghosh paused for a moment to take this photo. Ghosh was among crowds attending Vijaya Dashami, the last day of the Durga Puja, a festival he describes as “cultural potpourri”. He says, “It’s celebrated all across India, but there is no other place to experience it better than West Bengal. As this was the grand finale, the atmosphere was one of joy, pride and celebration.”

The man in the photo is Ghosh’s neighbour. “He’s a fine performer of this trick, which you don’t see very often; it is generally saved up for special festivals and celebrations,” Ghosh says. “The liquid in the air is kerosene [paraffin], which is spat upwards through a lit matchstick to create these cloudy flames.

The singer on a precious photograph of his mother, losing his brother and the wonders of cooking with butter

Born in California, Gregory Porter, 53, released his Grammy-nominated debut album, Water, in 2010. He went on to receive best jazz vocal album Grammys for Liquid Spirit in 2014 and Take Me to the Alley in 2017. He sang for Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee and was the first celebrity to sing a lullaby on CBeebies Bedtime Stories. Next week, he begins a UK tour. He is married with two children and lives in California.

What is your greatest fear?
Immunity to cruelty.

Our writers made their predictions with the NBA postseason tipping off in proper on Saturday afternoon

Absolutely not. Could it stand to be a little shorter? Sure. Do the referees need to be more judicious with when they intervene? I’d argue they do. But the real problem the NBA faces is, in my opinion, a PR one. Its loudest voices should spend less time pearl-clutching and more time celebrating. Claire de Lune

Ukraine says five regions damaged overnight after wave of drone and missile attacks by Russia

• Analysis: Trump team reveals lack of expertise – and patience – as it threatens to abandon peace talks

Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:

Russian troops recaptured the village of Oleshnya in Russia’s western Kursk region from Ukrainian forces, the RIA state news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Saturday.

News outlets pull articles featuring ‘psychologist and sex adviser’ Barbara Santini amid doubts over her credentials

Over the past couple of years, the Oxford-educated psychologist Barbara Santini has been widely quoted as an expert. She has contributed thoughts on everything from the psychological impact of the Covid pandemic to the importance of vitamin D and how playing darts can improve your health.

However, her pronouncements have begun to disappear from articles after concerns that Santini may not be all that she appears. Major news outlets have removed entire articles featuring Santini, or comments made by her, after a series of questions were raised over her qualifications – and even whether her entire identity could be an elaborate hoax.

The writer’s previously unpublished notes from her sessions with a psychiatrist offer an incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression and creativity

Last month, the New York Public Library opened the doors on one of its most thrilling acquisitions of recent times: the archive of Joan Didion and her husband and collaborator John Gregory Dunne. After two years of preparation, both scholars and anyone with a library card can arrange a visit to pore over the material contained in a total of 336 boxes of correspondence, photographs and screenplays from the couple’s joint projects, which included the 1976 version of A Star Is Born and the film that in 1971 provided Al Pacino with his first leading role, The Panic in Needle Park.

Alongside material evidence of two long writing careers, there is much that is deeply personal: paperwork recording the naming of orchids in honour of Didion, Dunne and their adopted daughter Quintana, the couple’s only child; kitchen notebooks and lists of party guests; the handmade cards and pressed flowers that the young Quintana made for “the best mom ever”. But it is infinitely more troubled times that are the subject of a new book drawn from the archive, Notes to John – accounts of Didion’s sessions with psychiatrist Roger MacKinnon at the turn of the century, in which she discussed her daughter’s struggles with alcohol addiction and depression and the writer’s attempts to excavate the roots of their relationship in her own formative years.

Social media is turning the spring festival into yet another opportunity for lavish spending. What’s in your #EasterBasket?

As a child, I was keenly aware of the inequitable practices of the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the so-called Easter Bunny. How could it be that my teeth were less valuable than Abbie Smith-Arthur’s? Why was my stocking sock-sized, and the Walter boys next door had novelty sacks the size of their sofa? For what reason did I get but one big Easter egg, and Bethany down the road got 11?

If I was a child today, I would be even more confused (and radicalised), thanks to the relentless rise of “Eastermas”. More than quarter of British adults now buy Easter presents, giving their loved ones not only chocolate but flowers, toys and clothes. On TikTok, videos tagged #EasterBasket show the headphones, trainers, face creams, keyrings, hoodies, teddies and concert tickets that parents bestow upon their children – in short, more gifts than most people receive at Christmas. I won’t deny that it is nice to give each other nice things, but I fear the trend puts pressure on parents, and normalises a level of consumption that would perhaps have been unthinkable even a decade ago.

A poet’s memoir of family, trauma, and Virginia Woolf pulses with feeling and intelligence

Like most kids, Heather Christle was drilled about “stranger danger”. Like some, she had a family codeword designed to show that an adult picking them up from school when her mother was busy could be trusted. But, in her American home town in the 1980s, no other kid’s word was a bygone British sweet. And so “Dolly Mixture” joins the growing list of things learned from her English mother that Christle, looking back, finds out of place. Things such as dining etiquette, cardigans, M&S outfits, margarine. But also bigger stuff: beliefs and behaviours. Assumptions. Silence. Shame.

With her mother in her 70s and their relationship strained, Christle, a poet and academic, embarks on a quest for new understanding – of her mother, of “Englishness”, and of herself. In a memoir that pulses with feeling and intelligence, she excavates the past to expose difficult truths. As she proved with her acclaimed 2019 cultural history of tears, The Crying Book, she excels at facing the unfaceable, weaving her personal experience into the wider tapestry of science, history, politics and other people’s lives.

Statistics can help assess a potential recruit’s emotional control and leadership, while highlighting red flags

“The players didn’t show enough fight.” Listen to any pundit’s post-match reaction and you will hear variations of that soundbite. But can you analyse an athlete’s state of mind, based on their on-pitch body language?

In an era when football is increasingly leaning on data to demonstrate physical attributes, statistics offering an accurate indication of a player’s psychological qualities, such as emotional control and leadership, are harder to come by. But Premier League clubs including Brighton are using a technique intended to help in that regard with selection and recruitment.

Nayib Bukele has shown how brutal control can be sustained not just through force, but by raising the cost of speaking out

The Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) maximum security prison in El Salvador is the crown jewel of President Nayib Bukele’s efforts to quash not only criminal gangs, but also criticism and political opposition to his government. The “mega-prison” is also one of the more visible destinations in the emerging map of American deportations – a sprawling archipelago that includes conservative US districts, the Guantánamo military base and Central American waypoints connected by a tangle of military and charter flights.

That the two states have connected their penal architecture is no coincidence. Donald Trump’s aggressive policies towards foreigners build on Bukele’s infamous iron fist crackdown against criminal gangs: it’s a political toolkit that leverages anti-establishment anger to justify an authoritarian slide. In deploying strongman tactics to address social concerns, both leaders also cultivate a chilling culture of fear.

Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She edits the Latin America Daily Briefing

Coconut yoghurt basmati with a lemony finish, served with fried spiced potatoes

These “pickled” potatoes are for anyone whose mouth waters at the idea of dousing chips in salt and vinegar, as mine does. They’re not actually pickled, but cooked in a similar way to the Indian achar style of cooking that uses particular spices alongside an acidic ingredient, such as lemon juice. They go really well with a typical south Indian curd (yoghurt) rice and a fiery little shop-bought pickle.

Chicken chain has been buying up art since 2004, which it displays on walls of its restaurants

On a weekday lunchtime the Nando’s restaurant in Maponya Mall in Soweto, the sprawling former Black township on Johannesburg’s outskirts, was busy with couples, white-collar workers and older women dining alone. Behind them, a vivid graffiti portrait of a young Black woman filled the wall.

The mural, by the Cape Town artist Kilmany-Jo Liversage, is part of one of the largest private art collections in the world and, its curators believe, potentially the largest on public display.

City residents are working out how to fill their streets with trees as evidence grows of their benefits

“I wanted to do something that would benefit as many people from the community as possible,” says Chloe Straw, pointing at a small but promising sapling visible through the window of her local cafe.

In 2023, Chloe began chatting to her neighbours in Haringey, north London, about trees. “I thought it’d be really nice to raise some money for trees on the main road. Everyone uses West Green Road, regardless of whether you have a lot of money or not, regardless of your background.”

Most working people can be put into one of three categories, from idealistic yet unambitious to greedy and immoral. But there is another option …

Of all the things wasted in our throwaway times, the greatest is wasted talent. There are millions of people around the world who could help make the world a better place, but don’t. I’m talking about the ones who have got the power to shape their own careers, though you would never know it from their utterly unsurprising résumés. About the talented folks with the world at their feet who nonetheless get stuck in mind-numbing, pointless or just plain harmful jobs.

There’s an antidote to that kind of waste, and it’s called moral ambition. Moral ambition is the will to make the world a wildly better place. To devote your working life to the great challenges of our time, whether that’s the climate crisis or corruption, gross inequality or the next pandemic. It’s a longing to make a difference – and to build a legacy that truly matters.

Sonia Bompastor has her shot at ending the European champions’ reign and moving Blues step closer to history

As Chelsea’s quest for a quadruple enters its final month, there is no more imposing obstacle to navigate than this. Barcelona, the European champions in three of the past four campaigns, are once again standing in the way of the English champions as Chelsea strive to lift the only major trophy that has eluded them, and there could be no more worthy adversary.

There is more than a hint of deja vu about this semi-final. Not only because the first and second legs are taking place on the same dates, 20 April and 27 April, as they did last season, but also because it is the third straight year in which they have gone head-to-head at this stage, which both clubs can feel a touch unfortunate about. Once was tantalising. The rematch was welcome. The trilogy sounds enthralling but comes with a lingering sense that it might have been the final.

The mysterious death of an artist causes havoc among siblings in a novel that astutely observes family dynamics

What would writers do without problematic patriarchs? From King Lear to Logan Roy, they are the linchpins of countless family dramas: adored fathers who dominate and damage their children in equal measure.

The new novel from Rachel Joyce, bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Miss Benson’s Beetle and others, revolves around one such man: Vic Kemp, a successful artist with four grown-up children. Vic is a widower who raised his offspring alone, and the story begins with him summoning them to a noodle bar to announce that he’s in love with a twentysomething called Bella-Mae he met online. He’s also the proud owner of a goatee, a surefire sign of an identity crisis. The offspring are aghast. “If he’s so lonely, he could get a cat,” says one.

The order is the latest example of how the courts are challenging the Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration system

The US supreme court has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the deportation of Venezuelan men in immigration custody, after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices.

“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the justices said early on Saturday.

Survey finds social media main cause of poor behaviour, with pupils mimicking Donald Trump and Andrew Tate

A rise in misogyny and racism is flooding UK schools as pupils ape the behaviour of figures such as Donald Trump and Andrew Tate after exposure through social media and online gaming, teachers have warned.

A survey by the NASUWT union found most teachers identified social media as “the number one cause” of pupil misbehaviour, with female staff bearing the brunt. Teachers also raised concerns about parents who refuse to accept school rules or take responsibility for their children’s behaviour.

• Striker left out of squad for win against West Ham
• Coach confirms Núñez will be back for visit to Leicester

Arne Slot has denied Darwin Núñez was dropped from Liverpool’s win against West Ham because of a training-ground row with a member of his coaching staff.

The Liverpool head coach said on Sunday that Núñez was absent from the 2-1 victory at Anfield having felt unwell during training the day before, although the striker sat behind the substitutes throughout the game. Speculation has been rife that the Uruguay international, whom Slot criticised for his work rate against Wolves and Aston Villa in February, was left out for disciplinary reasons.

As a film of Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir The Salt Path is released, we follow in her footsteps along the Cornish section

‘I want to tell you something. I have a stage 4 brain tumour, and I don’t know how long I have left.” When fellow walker Peter utters these words to me at the Minack theatre in Porthcurno on Cornwall’s south coast, I half think he might be reading lines for a new play. Behind him, the waves are dancing, while mist swirls on the wind as though spooling from a smoke machine.

It had only been an hour since I first met him and his wife, Michelle, as we all took shelter from the freezing wind in a hut at nearby Gwennap Head. I had asked why they were walking the South West Coast Path – the 630-mile (1,014km) trail that weaves its way from the seaside town of Minehead in Somerset around to Poole harbour in Dorset, via the windswept headlands, secluded coves and beaches of Devon and Cornwall.

After two decades of video sensations, here’s a reminder of the streaming platform’s most unforgettable clips – year by year

From weird elephant videos to revolutionising TV: 20 years of YouTube

YouTube is 20 years old. Although video had existed online before, YouTube’s ease of use – for the first time sites could easily embed video into their content – made it revolutionary. As such, we now live in a world where people watch more YouTube than anything else. But how did we get here? Perhaps the best way to find out is to trace the most significant videos produced in each of its 20 years.

From grunge anthems and deodorant to weasel and woodpecker, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which trend started on a bridge in Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia?
2 Which grunge anthem was inspired by a deodorant?
3 Where is the Roodee, the world’s oldest working racecourse?
4 Who was the legendary ninth-century female pope?
5 What Chinese book of divination contains 64 hexagrams?
6 Which two countries are named after the line of zero degrees latitude?
7 What fabric is made with the help of bombyx larvae?
8 Who is the only writer to win the Booker and Baillie Gifford prizes?
What links:
9 Pudong; Lantau Island; Urayasu; Marne-la-Vallée; Lake Buena Vista; Anaheim?
10 Dachshund; African kigelia tree; bad actor; angry Brexiteer?
11 Atomic; Bullet; Crazyhouse; Dunsany’s; Entangled?
12 Vaalbara; Ur; Kenorland; Columbia; Rodinia; Pannotia; Pangea?
13 Évariste Galois; Alexander Hamilton; Mikhail Lermontov; Alexander Pushkin?
14 Colossae; Corinth; Ephesus; Galatia; Philippi; Rome; Thessaloniki?
15 Cane toad and python; octopus and mako shark; weasel and green woodpecker?

Think you look better with a suntan? Worried you don’t have a 12-step routine? Dermatologists cut through the noise to reveal the products they swear by – and those they’d run a mile from

• Anti-ageing products that actually work: Sali Hughes on the 30 best creams and treatments

Looking after your skin used to seem so simple: for decades, a basic “cleanse, tone, moisturise” routine was seen as the gold standard. But the skincare industry has recently exploded with thousands of new products, while skincare influencers have been racking up millions of views with often bewildering (and conflicting) advice.

So, should you be putting snail slime or beef tallow on your face, like that video you saw on TikTok? And which products are safe for your teenager to use, if any? We spoke to eight dermatologists to find out their own skincare routines – and which mistakes they see most often. Spoiler: none of them use snail slime.

Kat, 30, who works in the music industry, meets Matt, 30, a civil servant

What were you hoping for?
Great food, a fun story and hopefully someone to explore London with.

Regular parks are out of the question – there are just too many other dogs. And besides, lonely routes are better for hiding my embarrassment

It is mid-afternoon – post-lunch but safely before the schools let out – and I am walking the dog in the direction of what my wife and I now call the Triangle parks. The Triangle parks are the result of a long road cutting diagonally across the regular grid of suburban streets, leaving two small, three-sided communal gardens. They are close but hard to get to – a lot of roads round here come to unceremonious dead-ends – and it was only during my long lockdown walks that I eventually discovered a route to them.

Recently, however, they have proved useful: they’re both fenced and likely to be deserted mid-afternoon. When your dog is on heat, regular parks are out of the question.

Expectations of inflation, and recent waves of price rises, could be self-fulfilling and fuel ‘greedflation’ – and it may not only apply to US consumers

Over the past few years consumers have grown used to seeing prices rise at an exorbitant rate. The cost of everything – from used cars to utility bills and the humble loaf of bread – has rocketed in the worst inflation shock across advanced economies since the 1980s.

While inflation has cooled in the past year, talk of fast-rising prices is back on the agenda from Donald Trump’s escalating trade war.

Here’s a fun way to turn an excess of egg whites into a tray of moreish bouncy sweets

Marshmallows are a magical sweet, with vivid, popping colours and an unbelievably soft, squishy texture. Even after 25 years as a chef, I still love making them and, like most things, they taste better homemade.

If you’ve cooked something like a creme brulee, mayo or carbonara, and have a few egg whites spare, today’s recipe is a fun and delicious way to turn waste into taste.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will resume talks in Rome on Saturday

Iran’s top negotiator believes reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme with the US is possible as long as Washington is realistic, as the two sides prepare to resume talks in Rome on Saturday.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and the US Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, will begin indirect negotiations through mediators from Oman, after their first round in Muscat, which both sides described as constructive.

The companies are believed to have helped produce Iskander missiles used by Russia in the conflict; Trump says he could soon ‘pass’ on peace talks. What we know on day 1,151

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates