The Australian could leave after Spurs win the Europa League, while United may stick with their coach after winning nothing
Erik ten Hag has gone, but his shadow looms over English football still. The mistake was understandable enough: high on the euphoria of beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final, Manchester United renewed his contract. Three months into the new season, more than £180m spent on summer transfers, Ten Hag was dismissed with United 14th in the table on 11 points from nine games.
The sporting director, Dan Ashworth, and various members of Ten Hag’s backroom staff also left, at a total cost of £14.5m. Or, to put it another way, keeping Ten Hag cost United £200m and in effect undermined this season. Nobody wants to be caught in the Ten Hag trap.
Championship leader will start race from 10th on grid
Oscar Piastri qualfies second with George Russell third
Already struggling for confidence in his car the world championship leader, Lando Norris, suffered another serious blow to his title ambitions, crashing out in qualifying for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. His Red Bull rival Max Verstappen claimed pole position, one-hundredth of a second clear of Norris’s teammate, Oscar Piastri.
McLaren and, indeed, Norris had looked strong all weekend, but on the first of the final runs in Q3 at the Jeddah circuit he took too much kerb through turns 4-5 and 6 and it spat him out into the wall, taking a nasty hit on the front. He was unhurt but declared himself an “idiot” when speaking to his team. The session was red-flagged and Norris will start from 10th on Sunday, his title lead hanging by the slenderest of threads and his self-belief perhaps once more undermined.
Nobody seems to have told Aston Villa the season is winding down. At a boisterous, increasingly gleeful Villa Park Unai Emery’s side moved up to sixth in the Premier League with a relentless dismantling of Newcastle, who simply fell away in the second half, conceding three goals in the final 20 minutes of a chastening 4-1 defeat.
Newcastle remain in third and fought hard in the opening hour, after which life just seemed to catch up with them, Villa’s squad depth apparent as Emery shuffled his attacking substitutes with notable precision.
Twickenham finale will decide destination of title
England felled Scotland in a devastating manner to set up a grand slam decider against France in the Women’s Six Nations as they bid for their seventh successive title. The 59-7 victory was the team’s 33rd consecutive win in the tournament.
England were heavy favourites heading into the match as Scotland have never beaten the Red Roses in the tournament, with their last win across all competitions against their rivals coming in 1999.
Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.
Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.
Xiao’s fine start against Matthew Selt serves notice of China’s strong presence at the Crucible this year
There are few sports as synonymous with one place as snooker is with Sheffield. For two weeks every year, this city becomes the beating heart of the sport, with supporters from across the globe descending upon South Yorkshire – but this year there is a distinct feel of significant change on the horizon.
That is not to suggest that the future of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible is any more under threat than usual: there have been almost annual murmurings about the event being moved from its spiritual home, though there is hope a new deal can be agreed to keep it here beyond the end of the current deal in 2027. It is more on the baize this year where there is the potential for a seismic shift.
Thousands gather in Parliament Square in a show of unity after supreme court judgment
After last week’s supreme court decision, activists had been worried that trans people might become fearful of going out in public in case they were abused.
They weren’t afraid in London on Saturday. Thousands of trans and non-binary people thronged Parliament Square, alongside families and supporters, waving baby blue, white and pink flags to demonstrate their anger at the judges’ ruling.
Pete Townshend welcomes musician back into band after disagreement over his playing at Royal Albert Hall gig
Zak Starkey has been reinstated as The Who’s drummer just days after parting company with the band.
The group announced earlier this week that Starkey, the band’s drummer since 1996, was leaving over a disagreement about his playing at a Royal Albert Hall gig last month.
Former president spoke at commemoration for the 168 people who died in the 1995 attack by far-right extremist
Bill Clinton called on Americans to put aside “whose resentments matter most” and issued a defense of government employees as he returned to Oklahoma City on Saturday for a remembrance service for the 30th anniversary of the deadliest homegrown terrorist attack in US history.
“If our lives are going to be dominated by efforts to dominate people we disagree with, we’re going to put the 250-year-old march toward a more perfect union at risk,” he said. “None of us would ever get much done. Believe me, we’ve all got something to be mad about.”
The American author on the follow-up to her bestselling debut Such a Fun Age, why she loves characters you want to shake, and reading 160 novels for the Booker prize
When Arizona-raised novelist Kiley Reid, 37, debuted five years ago with Such a Fun Age, she attained the kind of commercial and critical success that can jinx a second book, even landing a spot on the 2020 Booker longlist. Instead, Come and Get It – which is published in paperback next month – fulfils the promise, pursuing some of the themes of that first work while also daring to be boldly different.
The story unfolds at the University of Arkansas, where wealth, class and race shape the yearnings and anxieties of a group of students and one equally flawed visiting professor. Reid, who has been teaching at the University of Michigan, is currently preparing to move to the Netherlands with her husband and young daughter. She is also on the judging panel for this year’s Booker prize.
Palestinians pushed into new misery as supplies of food, fuel and medicine run out in seven-week siege
Gaza has been pushed to new depths of despair, civilians, medics and humanitarian workers say, by the unprecedented seven-week-long Israeli military blockade that has cut off all aid to the strip.
The siege has left the Palestinian territory facing conditions unmatched in severity since the beginning of the war as residents grapple with sweeping new evacuation orders, the renewed bombing of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, and the exhaustion of food, fuel for generators and medical supplies.
McTominay strikes as Napoli keep pressure on Inter
Barcelona fought back from 3-1 down to beat Celta Vigo 4-3 in a rollercoaster encounter, with a stoppage-time penalty by Raphinha extending their lead over Real Madrid at the top of La Liga to seven points.
Barcelona took the lead in the 12th minute through Ferran Torres but conceded an equaliser three minutes later when Wojciech Szczesny misread a cross and allowed Borja Iglesias to score. The Spanish forward then stunned the home fans when he scored two more goals in the second half, twice racing through to beat the keeper on his way to a hat-trick.
If green policy is going to survive the culture wars, it needs a new pitch – cleaner air, cheaper bills and healthier cities
For a decade, green activists in Britain have been congratulating themselves on their luck. Unlike in many countries in Europe, where motorists, farmers and rightwing groups have been driving anti-climate action, the UK has long enjoyed a comfortable political consensus on the subject. But conditions for a greenlash are assembling.
Most Britons still say they support climate efforts, but the price of decarbonising may at last be about to hit our wallets. Meanwhile, the Conservative party has come a long way since it sported a little green oak tree as its logo. Last month, Kemi Badenoch declared a full culture war against net zero, which she said couldn’t be achieved “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.
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The Premier League trophy Manchester City have proudly held for the past four years will be soon heading to one side of Stanley Park, but having exploded to life late against Everton they seized control of their Champions League destiny on the other. Nico O’Reilly and Mateo Kovacic sealed a win that even Pep Guardiola may not have seen coming to keep City on course for a 15th successive season among the European elite.
A goalless draw appeared the most likely outcome for much of a pedestrian contest, but a late surge, shaped by the contrasting impact of substitutes, allowed City to dominate and secure a ninth consecutive win here. Aston Villa’s visit to the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday represents a hugely significant moment in a troubled season for Guardiola and his team.
English-speaking minority refugees caught up in clashes between the military and separatists are stranded in neighbouring country
Amid the sound of children excitedly practising a drama for a forthcoming performance, a yam seller calls to passers by with discounts for their wares. Outside a closed graphic design shop overlooking them from a small hill, Solange Ndonga Tibesa tells the story of being uprooted from her homeland in north-west Cameroon.
In June 2019 she and other travellers were abducted with her three-month-old baby by secessionists, who accused them of supporting the military. Their captors repeatedly hit them with butts of their guns, keeping them in a forest without food or water.
Public toilets are rarely thought of fondly – that is unless you’re talking about those in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. Commissioned in 2019, creatives including renowned architects Shigeru Ban and the late Fumihiko Maki designed 17 beautiful, functional, meticulously clean public toilets, some of which featured in Wim Wenders’s 2023 film Perfect Days. Hong Kong-based photographer Ulana Switucha came across the toilets, each unique, while working on a project about Japanese architecture in 2023, and went back to photograph them the following year. “These structures are works of art,” she says. “They shine as beacons in their urban setting and demonstrate that public design can go beyond functionality to represent cultural and artistic value.”
High-end bar with Middle East-style nut filling is rationed in shops as price of raw kernels surges
Product promotion on TikTok is now powerful enough to influence the vast agricultural economies of the US and Iran – at least when it comes to the consumption of high-end confectionery.
A chocolate bar stuffed with a creamy green pistachio filling has become incredibly popular after a series of video clips shared on the social media site. The first bit of footage praising the taste of the expensive so-called “Dubai chocolate” was posted at the end of 2023 and has now been viewed more than 120m times, to say nothing of the many follow-up videos.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russian artillery fire is continuing in Ukraine despite the Kremlin’s proclamation of an Easter ceasefire.
“As of now, according to the commander-in-chief reports, Russian assault operations continue on several frontline sectors, and Russian artillery fire has not subsided,” the Ukrainian president posted on X. “Therefore, there is no trust in words coming from Moscow.”
The Catholic church has taken the first steps to canonise the architect of Barcelona’s extraordinary Sagrada Família
I don’t understand the processes by which people become saints, but the case for the canonisation of the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, now progressing with the blessing of the pope, seems strong. He was devout – he tried to go without food for 40 days in emulation of Jesus Christ, until a bishop friend talked him out of likely death. The unprecedented phantasmagoria that he designed in stone, iron and ceramic could be called miracles. He even suffered a form of martyrdom, being hit by a tram while apparently deep in thought about his most famous work, the church of Sagrada Família. It’s not quite the same as a burning at the stake or a fusillade of arrows or the other grisly ends of ancient saints, but has its own significance. Gaudí’s mission was to find spiritual meaning in a world transformed by industry and machines, of which the fatal tram might be considered a representative.
Neverending calls to automated customer service lines aren’t just frustrating – new research suggests they may be quietly radicalising as well
Question: what are the eight most annoying words in the English language? Answer: “Your call is important to us … please hold.” But when you have turned into a gibbering wreck after 10 minutes of your valuable time have ticked away – intermittently punctuated by assurances that, while your tormentor is “experiencing high call volumes at the moment”, nevertheless your call is still important to him/her/it – you can take comfort in the thought that you are not alone. In fact, you belong to the majority of sentient beings in an industrial society like ours.
Thanks to a useful piece of market research, we now have an idea of the numbers of victims of this industrial practice – at least in the UK. A survey commissioned by the New Britain Project thinktank found that the average Briton spends between 28 and 41 minutes every week coping with inefficient customer service systems, and that nearly four-fifths of them are frustrated by “the wasted time, the unnecessary friction, and the quiet resignation that has become part of daily interactions with both public and private services”.
A 1960s house has been brought back to its former glory, with a contemporary twist
It feels as if time has stopped, frozen in the swinging 1960s, as you pass through the pristine gate that opens on to this enchanting lakefront building. The lake in question is the magical and wild Mergozzo, tiny, utterly charming and yet still rarely visited by tourists.
The house was built in 1963. Its equally fascinating current owner, Hilary Belle Walker, has American roots – San Francisco is her hometown, but she moved to Italy at the age of 23.
Agencies protecting coal miners from hazards such as ‘black lung’ among those gutted by government cuts
The Trump administration’s efforts to expand coal mining while simultaneously imposing deep cuts to agencies tasked with ensuring miner health and safety has left some advocates “dumbfounded”.
Agencies that protect coal miners from serious occupational hazards, including the condition best known as “black lung”, have been among those affected by major government cuts imposed by the White House and the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) run by the billionaire Elon Musk.
More and more men are being sucked into parts of the internet that circulate misogynist content, leaving their families to deal with the wreckage
Samantha thought of her partner as the most progressive man she had ever had a relationship with. Her Swedish boyfriend seemed, to her, more feminist than many British men she had dated.
“I never had to ask him to clear up,” she says. “All our labour was shared. He had done therapy. He was happy to talk about his emotions.”
US vice-president, who is a Catholic convert, discusses immigration and international wars with secretary of state
The US vice-president, JD Vance, had “an exchange of opinions” with the Vatican’s secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.
The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia.
Alla Shyrshonkova was on a bus when Russian missiles hit the city. Now a toy bear and hippo mark the spot where 35 people, including two children, were killed
Last weekend, Alla Shyrshonkova got on the 62 bus on a journey to her cottage near the Ukrainian city of Sumy. It was a warm spring day. “I thought I’d sit with friends, have some tea. Birds were singing. The weather was beautiful. It was so nice,” she recalled.
“The bus was packed. There wasn’t a single free seat. People were standing. Some were going to church for Palm Sunday. There were families with children.”
The progressive Democrat from Queens is the son of a famous film-maker and poised to take on frontrunner Andrew Cuomo
Can a 33-year-old cricket-playing socialist, who wants to freeze rent, make city transport free and once aspired to be a rapper win an already turbulent election to become the next mayor of New York?
Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assembly member in Queens, has been the surprise package in the Democratic primary and is now poised to take on the frontrunner in the race, ex-state governor Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting a political comeback after being forced from office in the face of a series of sexual harassment claims.
Analysts trace a link between financial security and a troubling, increasingly devil-may-care, attitude to political risk
Steve Coogan wants people to see his new film, The Penguin Lessons, and think about how they might be living in a wealthy cocoon, disengaged from the world.
The film’s central character – a Briton teaching expat children in Argentina – rescues a penguin and tries to help local people persecuted by the rightwing government. Re-enacting a true story, Coogan is showing how it’s possible to be involved in local communities even when the protagonist is an outsider.
Brothers had hoped resentencing hearing would pave way for immediate release – but judge orders pause until May
The Menendez brothers have spent years waiting for another day in court and a chance to prove that they should be freed after serving over three decades in prison for the 1989 slayings of their parents.
This week it appeared their time was perhaps finally coming – a judge was set to review their request for a resentencing and determine whether they have been rehabilitated. Their attorney, Mark Geragos, planned to ask the Los Angeles county judge Michael Jesic to reduce Erik and Lyle Menendez’s charges to manslaughter, which would allow them to be released from prison immediately.
Michael B Jordan stars as twin 1930s mobsters in the Black Panther director’s phenomenal-looking, blues-infused supernatural tale
In Black Panther (2018) and its sequel, Wakanda Forever (2022), Ryan Coogler directed two of Marvel’s most satisfying and textured recent movies. His 2015 Rocky spin-off Creed represents the gold standard when it comes to franchise-wrangling, honouring the original series yet standing up and fighting its own corner as a distinct movie. If anyone has earned the chance to make a passion project, it’s Coogler. But who knew that this would result in something as wild, untrammelled and thrillingly unpredictable as Sinners? Starring Michael B Jordan in the dual role of 1930s gangster twins Smoke (surly, threatening) and Stack (charming, reckless), it’s a sweltering, sexy southern gothic horror, a blues-infused vampire flick in which the music flows as freely as the blood.
The brothers leave Chicago with the kind of cash that usually comes with a body count. Back in their Mississippi homeland, they team up with a young cousin, aspiring bluesman Sammie (Miles Caton, an impressive newcomer with deep, rich bourbon-soaked voice). The plan: to open a Black-owned juke joint under the noses of the Ku Klux Klan. But it turns out that an even greater evil awaits them.
The German scientist on her new book arguing that inequality, wealth and sexism are making the climate crisis worse – and what we need to do about it
Friederike Otto is a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London. She is also the co-founder of the World Weather Attribution initiative, which seeks to determine the influence of global warming on intensity and likelihood of an extreme weather event. The project also examines how factors such as ill-suited architecture and poverty exacerbate heatwaves, hurricanes, floods and wildfires. This is the theme of her second book, Climate Injustice: Why We Need to Fight Global Inequality to Combat Climate Change.
The thesis of your book is that the climate crisis is a symptom of global inequality and injustice. That will be quite topsy-turvy to some people, who think global heating is caused by the amount of carbon that we are putting into the atmosphere. Yes, of course, if you just stick to the physics, then the warming is caused by the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. And it is also the case that those who benefit from the burning of fossil fuels are the few already wealthy people who have stakes in or own the companies themselves. The vast majority of people do not benefit. The American dream is social mobility, not burning fossil fuels.
Native seed demand far outpaces supply for the state’s ambitious conservation plan. This group combs the landscape to address the deficit
Deep in California’s agricultural heartland, Haleigh Holgate marched through the expansive wildflower-dotted plains of the San Luis national wildlife refuge complex in search of something precious.
She surveyed the native grasses and flowering plants that painted the Central valley landscape in almost blinding swaths of yellow. Her objective on that sweltering spring day was to gather materials pivotal to California’s ambitious environmental agenda – seeds.
But the future of main line steam operations could be under threat unless the traditional fire-breathing machines can be fitted with pioneering modern technology.
It was an afternoon of missed opportunities for Arsenal as they fell to defeat in the first leg of their Women’s Champions League semi-final. Melchie Dumornay’s late winner silenced the 40,000-strong crowd after Mariona Caldentey’s penalty had cancelled out Kadidiatou Diani’s opener for the visitors.
Arsenal’s manager, Renee Slegers, maintained belief in her side’s ability to turn the tie around after they recovered from an impressive first-half performance from the visitors.
Issues around basic services, corruption and class trouble vibrant Johannesburg, which this year hosts the G20 summit
Bethabile Mavis Manqele mops the veranda of the house she has lived in for most of the last 40 years. The ceiling above her is full of holes, blackened by years of cooking fires. Manqele, 64, isn’t sure how many people live in the house’s seven rooms. There are no utilities, the landlord is absent and she hasn’t paid rent in years, she says through a translator. The occupants share a portable toilet provided and cleaned by an NGO, plus one outdoor tap with the house next door, which has no roof.
Manqele’s home in the inner city district of Berea is emblematic of Johannesburg’s downtown, which was progressively abandoned by wealthy people, businesses and government from the 1980s. Hundreds of buildings left empty by landlords are now overcrowded, and the area is notorious for crime.
The pressure’s off when we’re not staring at each other, we can relax and have a nice chat
On the day after Boxing Day last year, my dad and I went to buy some cabbage. My aunt and cousins were joining us for dinner that evening and we had a meal to prepare. The local supermarket was closed and the cabbage, sourced from an Italian deli around the corner, was obscenely overpriced. In a bind, we bought some anyway and headed back home to begin cooking. Standing around the kitchen island chopping and peeling vegetables, preparing a rib of beef and assembling a side dish of dauphinoise potatoes, we listened to music and chatted. The meal was a success and the cabbage – lightly browned and decorated with caraway seeds – tasty. But most important was that, for the time we had spent cooking, I felt closer to my dad.
This kind of intimacy almost always occurs for me while I’m cooking with someone. When I was 14, I was paired with a classmate in food technology where we were tasked with making a meal from scratch. We decided on a menu of jerk chicken, rice and peas. For practice, we gathered a group of friends at my house and, after procuring our ingredients, got to work. The results of our efforts were average, but that joint experience of clumsily blitzing fiery scotch bonnet peppers, onions, garlic and various sauces into a clumpy and barely edible mess cemented our friendship.
The actor, 49, talks about his royal heritage, earliest memory, hard times in a hostel, four gifted kids and what happened when he met Sidney Poitier
David, you are going to walk among kings.” This was my mum’s prophecy when I was small. My father is from a royal family in Nigeria, so I interpreted it that way. Remarkably, she was right: I went on to play King Pelasgus, Henry VI, Martin Luther King and Seretse Khama.
My earliest memory is sitting on my dad’s shoulders as he walked down Balham High Street in London. I was eating a cream puff, watching the sugar fall into his hair. I can still smell and taste the cream. It felt magical, both the longest and the shortest walk imaginable.
We moved from the UK to Nigeria, where I attended a military-style boarding school for three years. There were lashings and I was made to cut an entire field with a cutlass. Those formative years were character-building and made me value the wisdom of elders, but the idea of subjecting my own children to that is inconceivable.
When we returned to the UK, we lived in a hostel for a time. Mum was coping with a lot of challenges, but she was a joyful person and always made our environment feel like we were kings again.
My wife [actor Jessica Oyelowo] was told her IQ is off the charts during an assessment for ADHD. Now, she’s a member of Mensa. Our four children are neurodiverse, too. They have incredibly special attributes that they wear as superpowers. I’m in awe that I get to be their father.
Any lasting relationship needs non-negotiables. We made the decision early on never to be apart for longer than two weeks: 26 years married and we’ve only broken that rule once, by 11 hours, when my wife was in Sleepy Hollow. If I ever meet [director] Tim Burton, I’ll be having words.
Never let the sun go down on your wrath. We won’t go to bed if a disagreement isn’t resolved – sleep makes it grow like cancer. Before you know it, you don’t remember why you were fighting, ego and pride becomes a factor, and then it starts to fall apart.
God has never let me down. He’s a key factor in guiding my decisions and feeling safe within them. My wife and I suffered three miscarriages, one of them quite late in the pregnancy. Without faith, we would have retreated into our own corners to lick our wounds, but our love increased.
Sidney Poitier, a hero of mine, was full of compliments and respect when we met. I mustered up the courage to say hello and to tell him what he means to me, but instead he started talking about my work. I still doubt myself that it happened, but I have the photograph.
Oprah Winfrey played my mother in The Butler. In one scene, she slaps me across the face, which was nerve-racking, because with each take she was gaining in confidence. Oprah taught me that the intention with which you do something manifests in the thing itself. If your intentions are pure, the chances are that it will be edifying both for you and the people you’re doing it for.
Success is subjective. It can sometimes mean coming away from something that failed, knowing you gave your best. That has been a guiding and guarding principle for me and has stood me in very good stead.
A Wall Street Journal article offered disturbing details about the billionaire’s behavior. Imagine the backlash if he were a woman
I regret to inform you that, once again, we are all being forced to think about Elon Musk’s gonads. Musk, who has had at least 14 children with four women, hasn’t officially launched a new mini-Musk for a while, but the Wall Street Journal has just dropped some disturbing details about the billionaire’s well-publicized breeding fetish.
The swift rebuke on Monday came after weeks of mounting pressure from Harvard faculty, students, alumni, and the city of Cambridge, all urging the university to defend itself, and higher education as a whole, against what they saw as an unprecedented attack from Washington.
Graeme Winn, 65, and Elaine Winn, 58, were among four people who died in incident on Thursday
The UK Foreign Office has said it is supporting the family of a couple who were killed in a cable car crash in Naples.
Graeme Winn, 65, and Elaine Winn, 58, were among four people who died on Thursday at Monte Faito in the town of Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples in southern Italy.
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