A group of US senators wants Congress’ watchdog agency to investigate whether controls on humanitarian aid deliveries by Israel and other foreign governments violate US law, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
The six senators – Chris Van Hollen, Dick Durbin, Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Peter Welch – wrote to Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general, asking him to launch an investigation by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office into the US government’s implementation of laws regarding the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
Investigation under way in what is believed to be the first fatal mauling of a human by a bear in the state
Wildlife officials in Florida are investigating what is believed to be the first fatal mauling of a human by a bear in the state.
The body of the black bear suspected in the death of 89-year-old Robert Markel was removed from woodland near the unincorporated community of Jerome, close to Florida’s Big Cypress wildlife management area, on Monday night, according to the Naples Daily News.
White House axed grants even as college agreed to demands including ceding control of Middle East studies department
New York’s Columbia University is slated to cut 180 staffers whose work was supported by federal grants that have now been revoked by the Trump administration, the college’s acting president, Claire Shipman, announced on Tuesday.
“We have had to make difficult choices and unfortunately, today, nearly 180 of our colleagues who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants, will receive notices of non-renewal or termination,” Shipman said in a lengthy notice posted on Columbia’s website.
Citroën owner Stellantis and Renault have warned they may be forced into “painful decisions” over the future of their factories in Europe, as they urged the EU to adopt more favourable rules for small cars.
The chief executives of the carmakers said there needed to be more focus on smaller, affordable cars in Europe as SUVs continue to gain popularity.
Many cancer patients suffer sexual health problems but this important quality of life indicator is woefully ignored
It is not often that a cancer patient promises to regale her oncologist with “wild stories about my sexual adventures”, but this might just be my favourite promise of late, both for the exuberant proclamation and the prolonged heartache that preceded it.
Starring Kevin Costner as a young naval officer caught in a web of intrigue, this political potboiler hits almost too close to the bone today
In 1987 – right before he became the biggest movie star in the world with a five-year hot streak that included Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves and The Bodyguard – Kevin Costner headlined two films that offered very different visions of America. The Untouchables assembles a group of plucky misfits to dole out frontier justice against those who would seek to extort the American dream – it’s brash, gung ho and morally transparent. A guaranteed classic.
Far more interesting, though, is No Way Out, Roger Donaldson’s 1987 political potboiler that’s equal parts pulpy spectacle and damning critique of the US project. Functioning as a bridge between the conspiracy flicks of the 70s and the erotic thrillers of the 90s, the film starts with a sex scene in the back of a limo (complete with a perfectly timed cutaway to the Washington Monument) and ends with an unforgettable flourish.
Queer Australians are axing travel plans to Washington DC’s World Pride festival, as Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ rights leads to fears of discrimination at the US border and potential attacks.
People skipping the international event join other Australians and travellers from around the world who are avoiding the US after Trump’s inauguration and a string of controversial policies enacted in the early months of his second term as president.
Author claims she neither wishes to, nor is capable of preventing the actor from playing Severus Snape in the upcoming HBO adaptation, following his signing of an open letter
JK Rowling has said she will not fire actor Paapa Essiedu from the forthcoming Harry Potter TV series over his support for transgender rights.
Essiedu has been cast as key character Severus Snape in the HBO drama, which is designed to run for more than a decade and will be one of the most expensively produced television shows of all time.
Iran claims attacks in Yemen are attempt to disrupt negotiations with US over Tehran’s nuclear programme
Iran has urged the US to end its support for Israel’s continuing strikes on Yemen, claiming Israel is trying to use its conflict with the Houthi-led government to drive a wedge between Iran and the US in the negotiations over the future of Tehran’s civil nuclear programme.
The strikes have been criticised by the UN-recognised Yemen government based in Aden , which said it had not been consulted and airstrikes alone were not an integrated plan to remove the Houthis from power. Yemen has been divided between the Houthis and the official government since the Houthis captured the capital, Sana’a, in 2015.
No matter how many system updates the Meta boss runs, there will always be something about him that screams ‘creepy automaton’. And the $270m apocalypse shelter doesn’t help
Over the past few years Mark Zuckerberg has been conducting a very expensive experiment. If he grows his hair and revamps his wardrobe, will it make him seem more relatable? If he takes up mixed martial arts, goes wild boar hunting, and tells manosphere-adjacent podcasters such as Joe Rogan that companies need more “masculine energy”, will red-blooded American males respect him? With the help of a small army of stylists, personal trainers and PR gurus, could Zuck transform himself from an unlikable dork into an alpha bro?
For a brief moment, the answer to all that seemed to be a tentative “yes”. Zuck’s shock of shaggy new hair made the billionaire seem less like three Lego figures in a trenchcoat and more like an adult human male. His gold chains and jazzy new outfits sparked excited chatter of a “Zucknaissance”. The Meta billionaire also had a lucky break, PR-wise, in 2023 when Elon Musk, the world’s least self-aware man, challenged him to a cage brawl. Cue a flurry of articles about how Zuck was actually a skilled athlete who would annihilate Musk in a fight, leaving approximately 950 children without their father.
On this week’s Guardian Women’s Football Weekly: Chelsea are crowned WSL champions for a record sixth season in a row. With games to spare, can Sonia Bompastor’s side complete an unbeaten domestic campaign?
Elsewhere, Arsenal’s back-to-back defeats against Aston Villa and Brighton raise questions about their defensive frailties, while Manchester United and Manchester City play out a dramatic derby with European football on the line. Meanwhile, Everton shine in the Merseyside derby, and Crystal Palace leave it late to deny Leicester.
The actor was once one of the most commanding men in Hollywood – yet he has now teamed up with the president to help ruin the industry
It’s a plain-sight not-quite-twist that was sitting in front of us this whole time. Following Donald Trump’s selection of the hilariously cursed trio of Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight for a made-up ambassadorship to Hollywood back in January, it was revealed that the position may not be ceremonial after all; it was actually Voight himself who helped goad Trump into making that bizarre statement about placing a 100% tariff on foreign-made films.
The president has since clarified that he was “exploring all options” for revitalizing the US film industry; hopefully that includes some sample plans from Gibson and Stallone, too. (We can assume Stallone’s involves a 44-page treatment for a movie where Rocky Balboa returns to the ring and becomes the main character in Creed IV.) For his part, Voight said he that he and his partner submitted a “comprehensive plan” including federal incentives for film productions, production “treaties” with other countries, and “limited” tariffs. Naturally, Trump glommed on to any proposal with even a glancing mention of tariffs, with the added bonus of being authored by an 86-year-old man.
She managed tours for Queen and Led Zeppelin and was at George Harrison’s house when the Beatles split – but O’Dell is most proud of her legacy as a woman in a macho industry
‘When you start with the Beatles, your résumé looks pretty good,” Chris O’Dell says. A new documentary charts the extent of that CV, as a music manager with bands including Fleetwood Mac, Genesis and Santana, but it all began with a chance encounter in Los Angeles in 1968.
Derek Taylor was heading publicity at the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, and O’Dell was a low-level assistant in radio promotion. When Taylor suggested she come work at the Apple office in London, she dropped everything and moved halfway across the world. “Paul [McCartney] was there every day organising everything,” she says, on the phone from her home in Arizona. “One day he came into my office and said, ‘Chris, should we use paper towels or cloth towels in the bathroom?’ That’s how detailed he was.”
The rise of a resurgent American white supremacism is reaching around the globe, often with deadly consequences
By many accounts, Hilliard, a leafy suburb west of downtown Columbus, is a midwestern success story: its progressive school district gives a vacation day for all students to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr – the first in Ohio to do so – and its homes are highly sought-after by a growing number of diverse families where locals enjoy shopping at the oldest Asian grocery in the state.
But it is also where Christopher Brenner Cook, a convicted terrorist, grew up. In April 2023, Cook and two others were sentenced for conspiring to attack America’s electrical grid, and he was given a 92-month prison term.
For centuries, the academy was exclusive to the Christian elite. When that began to change, an onslaught began
In 2021, JD Vance, then a candidate for Ohio senate, gave a provocative keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference. Vance’s lecture was an indictment of American higher education: a “hostile institution” that “gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in this country”. The aspiring politician did not mince words before his receptive rightwing audience: “If any of us wants to do the things we want to do … We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities.” The title of Vance’s keynote was inspired by a quote from Richard Nixon: “The universities are the enemy.”
The Maga movement, of which Vance, the vice-president, is now at the forefront, has been unabashedly on the attack against campuses, professors and students. Donald Trumpcharacterizes colleges as “dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics”, and student protesters as “radicals”, “savages” and “jihadists” who have been indoctrinated by faculty “communists and terrorists”. He has already delivered swift vengeance against campus protesters and non-protesters alike with visa terminations and deportations. This administration has gleefully withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to force colleges to crack down on student dissent.
Sprinter won five Tour de France stages in top career
Messy exit from JaycoAlUla team took ‘significant toll’
Caleb Ewan, at his peak one of Australian cycling’s greatest talents, has stunned the sport by announcing his immediate retirement.
Ewan delivered his bombshell decision on social media, saying events of the last two years – especially around his messy exit from top Australian team Jayco AlUla – have “taken a significant toll on my relationship with the sport”.
Britain and India have agreed a long-desired trade deal that ministers said would add £4.8bn a year to the UK economy by 2040.
The agreement, which was finalised on Tuesday after more than three years of negotiations under successive governments, has long been touted as one of the biggest prizes of Brexit.
One of the prince’s well-heeled friends should give our foremost podcaster a lesson on when to keep schtum
Prince Harry wanted a completely new life and he has got one. He is no longer a working royal, but a rich person. His Rich Highness. This involves a change of mindset in a mind that is somewhat hard to describe as quick on the uptake.
Being rich is all well and good, of course, and the duke certainly moaned enough about money when he was still within the confines of royal duty, to hear insiders tell it. But the reason you don’t see Beyoncé out there on the talkshow circuit whining about how much money she has to spend on security – easily eight figures a year – is that she, a very rich person, seems to understand that regrettably it goes with the territory, and that you have to pay for it out of your riches.
I thought the two sides of me – the one who wants children and the one who doesn’t – would duke it out till death
The light in the bookstore bathroom was dim. Even so, I could see the blood on the toilet paper. I wiped some more to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things, and then I stood up, grabbing on to the porcelain sink so I wouldn’t fall.
Suddenly, I understood. I didn’t want to lose my baby. I wanted to be this baby’s mother more than anything I’d ever wanted in the world. I would do anything in my power to keep it alive. The trouble: there wasn’t much I could do.
WPBSA chair: ‘Someone has to say this is snooker’s time’
Zhao Xintong’s world title win could aid prospects
The head of snooker’s governing body believes Zhao Xintong’s coronation as world champion could prove to be one of the most significant moments in the sport’s history as the game now targets entry into the Olympic Games in 2032.
Zhao became the first Chinese winner of the World Snooker Championship on Monday, defeating Mark Williams to cap a remarkable comeback, nine months after returning to the sport from a 20-month suspension for his involvement in a match-fixing scandal.
The Welsh first minister and leader of the Welsh Labour party has said she is “losing patience” with UK Labour and made it clear she was “tacking to the left” as she tries to counter a growing threat from Reform UK and Plaid Cymru.
Eluned Morgan told the Guardian she wanted Keir Starmer to rethink policy changes on welfare and the winter fuel allowance, and described the Labour party as a “messy family”.
Kamala Harris snuck in back door leaving fashion icons at forefront as New York’s party of the year ran with the theme ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’
The party of the year had the potential to be a political firecracker. New York’s ultimate see-and-be-seen event, the Met Gala, was also the launch of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, a fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum honouring the subversive power of black style and the role of dandyism in expanding ideals of masculinity. In other words, the A-list were showing up to raise a toast to diversity under the watchful eye of an administration bent on reversing it.
On the night, the resistance came to party, not to protest. Glamour was the guest of honour, with politics very much the plus-one. The tempered tone of the night was typified by Kamala Harris, the most high-profile political guest, slipping in a side entrance to avoid the photographers. The night was a joyful and thoughtful celebration of black heritage and creativity, but it was not a forthright statement about politics in 2025.
Arcade Crew/Sleepy Mill Studio; PC Build a card deck of landscape features; organise your territory on a Tetris-like playfield; battle enemies and bosses to progress. It might sound complicated, but this is an ingenious experiment in game design by combination
The indie video game scene is currently dominated by two unassailable genre titans: the rogue-like and the deck-builder. The first is a type of action adventure in which players explore procedurally generated landscapes, where they battle enemies, level up and then die – whereupon they start all over again from scratch. The latter is about building decks of collectible cards (think Pokémon or Magic: The Gathering, but digital) and fighting with them. Titles that combine both in interesting ways – such as Balatro and Slay the Spire – can become huge crossover hits. But the market is getting saturated and so developers are having to find new genres to mix into this potent game design cocktail.
Hence Drop Duchy, a game that attempts to combine the rogue-like deck-builder with … Tetris. Yes, the action takes place on a playfield in which differently shaped objects drop from the top of the screen to the bottom – except here, each object is either a landscape-type or a building, and the player isn’t only trying to create unbroken lines, they’re trying to place these units effectively to generate resources. Place a farm near a grassy plain block, for example, and it will produce wheat. Put a wooden fortress near a forest and it will generate farmland and swordsmen. When you complete a line, it doesn’t disappear: instead, it multiplies the resources you’re gathering. Why do you need the aforementioned soldiers? Well, alongside placing your own military bases, you also have to find space for random enemy bases, too, and at the end of the round, when all the blocks have been placed, you enter a combat sequence in which you align your military units to take on your foe.
The delicate flavour of this fleeting seasonal treat means it requires a deft touch in the kitchen, says our panel of stalk-fanciers
What unexpected things can I make with asparagus?
“The goal is to do as little as possible to it,” says Ben Lippett, author of How I Cook (published in September). “If you start dressing up asparagus with fancy cooking techniques, you lose its magic.” That’s not to say you should just boil the spears and be done with it, mind: “Try pairing them with relatively high-impact flavours, but nothing that will steal the show,” Lippett says. “Much as with a salad dressing, you want something with richness, fragrance, acidity and salinity.” Instead of a gribiche-style sauce, for example, sub in Kewpie (Japanese mayo), pickled ginger, chives, sesame seeds and frozen peas “to make a spoonable condiment”. Or cook asparagus chunks with lots of butter and a shot of water, then “finish with lemon and grapefruit segments, cracked hazelnuts and sheets of comté”.
Asparagus recipes often lean towards salads, which is all well and good until the weather misses the spring memo. And, in that scenario, Sophie Wyburd, author of Tucking In, has your back with a warm, in-between-seasons side. “Make a salsa verde with loads of mint, basil, parsley, capers and dijon mustard, then blister chopped asparagus in a very hot frying pan with a little water to get that steam going.” Once tender, toss with plump chickpeas: “That goes particularly well with roast lamb or chicken,” she says. Ramuel Scully, executive chef and co-owner of Scullyin central London, meanwhile, steams his spears to “keep them super-sweet”, then adds some tea – “Try oolong” – to the boiling water to “infuse the asparagus with extra flavour”. Finish off with salt and a squeeze of lemon, then top with crispy chilli oil and tahini: “Both work great with asparagus.”
An agent hosts a fancy soiree in the Hollywood Hills in this gently incisive drama about the privileged class, written and directed by Nadia Conners
As the sun goes down in the Hollywood Hills, talent agent Sammy (Walton Goggins) and his actor wife Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) prepare for a house party they are throwing. It’s pretty quickly apparent that, despite Sammy’s sudden lustful lunges at his wife and her tinkling laughter, there is plenty of backstory to be revealed behind the landscaped garden succulents. Sammy’s career is in trouble and he is worried about retaining his star client, megalomaniac director Gerald (Rufus Sewell). Rose is not getting cast much these days, and while she dotes on their only child Wilder (Roland Rubio), she misses her career. Up-and-coming star Delia (Eva De Dominici) is coming by for the evening, as is big-time movie star Lucien (Pedro Pascal), who just happens to be Rose’s old flame from back in the days when they were struggling theatre actors together.
As an ensemble of extras graze on the finger-food buffet and a “spirit photographer” snaps portraits of people and their supposed auras, Rose deals with a mysterious guest. Elderly Helen (Lois Smith, profoundly touching) has rocked up in the driveway in her Prius and insists this is her house. Rose juggles trying to find someone to collect Helen and getting Wilder to go to sleep while the party rumbles on.
Lewis Hamilton took a swipe at Ferrari in Miami showing again how broadcasting team chats enlivens races
“Have a tea break while you’re at it” was Lewis Hamilton’s sarcasm-drenched reply to his Ferrari team as they dallied over making a strategy call at the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday. It was the stuff of soap opera, enlivening what was in racing terms a McLaren walkover at the Hard Rock Stadium.
Broadcasting team radio is one of the best innovations in the modern era of F1 and for all that it is considered a serious tool by drivers and teams, it is always at its best when vituperative or funny. Better still, both at once.
Premier League agress to bring game forward to 16 May
Spurs need to beat Bodø/Glimt to reach final on 21 May
Tottenham’s Premier League visit to Aston Villa has been brought forward by 48 hours in order to help them prepare for a Europa League final they have not reached yet.
Ange Postecoglou’s side were originally scheduled to visit Villa on the afternoon of Sunday 18 May but the encounter will now take place on the evening of Friday 16 May after the Premier League accepted a rescheduling request from the London club.
When the Sainsbury Wing opened, it was called ‘vulgar pastiche’. Now, after an £85m revamp, it has become the famous gallery’s main entrance. But have its spiky complexities been tamed? And why all the empty space?
Few parts of any city have seen so many style wars waged over their future as the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square. Nelson may be safely ensconced on his column, but another Battle of Trafalgar has been rumbling for decades beneath his feet, seeing architectural grenades hurled to and fro at the western end of the National Gallery.
A 1950s competition first produced a bold brutalist plan to extend the gallery, formed of crisscrossing cantilevered planes jutting out into the square, but it was deemed too daring. The 1980s saw a glassy, hi-tech proposal, crowned with futuristic pylons, but it was famously dismissed by the then Prince Charles as a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. Finally, emerging victorious in the 1990s were the US pioneers of postmodernism Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Their high mannerist mashup combined corinthian pilasters and big tinted windows with witty abandon. “Palladio and modernism fight it out on the main facade,” declared the architects, as they immortalised the battle of taste in stone and glass. The Sainsbury Wing was Grade-I listed in 2018, one of the youngest ever buildings to receive such protection.
Amid outrage over ‘far-fetched’ plans to revive Alcatraz, Trump is pushing to expand Ice detention to other closed lockups marked by scandals
Donald Trump’s proposal to reopen Alcatraz, the infamous prison shuttered more than 60 years ago, sparked global headlines over the weekend. But it isn’t the only notorious closed-down jail or prison the administration has sought to repurpose for mass detentions.
The US government has in recent months pushed to reopen at least five other shuttered detention facilities and prisons, some closed amid concerns over safety and mistreatment of detainees. While California lawmakers swiftly dismissed the Alcatraz announcement as “not serious” and a distraction, the Trump administration’s efforts to reopen other scandal-plagued facilities are well under way or already complete, in partnership with for-profit prison corporations.
A British company is producing mosquitoes that carry a ‘self-limiting’ gene that kills off female offspring, limiting the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever
In an unassuming building on an industrial estate outside Oxford, Michal Bilski sits in a windowless room with electric fly swatters and sticky tape on the wall, peering down a microscope. On the slide before him is a line of mosquito eggs that he collected less than an hour previously and put into position with a brush.
Bilski manoeuvres a small needle filled with a DNA concoction and uses it to pierce each egg and inject a tiny amount.
‘Wagatha Christie’ battle inches towards end, but judge told Vardy is still resisting payment of £300,000
The long-running legal feud between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy has inched closer to its end, with Vardy agreeing to pay almost £1.2m of Rooney’s legal costs.
But the high-profile Wagatha Christie libel battle is not yet finished, a judge has been told, with Vardy still resisting payment of a further £300,000.
California governor Gavin Newsom announces a $7.5bn tax incentive scheme as Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on films ‘produced in foreign lands’ is mocked by Jimmy Kimmel and Fallon
Donald Trump appears to be softening his tone after widespread dismay in Hollywood and further afield at his bombshell announcement of 100% tariffs on films “produced in foreign lands”, saying he was “not looking to hurt the industry”.
In remarks reported by CNBC, Trump said he was planning to discuss the plan with film industry leaders. “I’m not looking to hurt the industry, I want to help the industry.”
Nigerians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans applying to work or study in the UK face Home Office restrictions over suspicions that they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum, Whitehall officials have claimed.
The government is working with the National Crime Agency to build models to profile applicants from these countries who are likely to go on to claim asylum.
The Trump administration’s funding cuts to the NIH could destroy a wave of approaching research breakthroughs
Since Robert F Kennedy Jr assumed control of the US health department in February, with a mandate to “[lower] chronic disease rates and [end] childhood chronic disease”, he has moved quickly to remake the US’s federal health infrastructure. But the Trump administration’s actions on medical research are already threatening that goal – and could end medical progress in this country for good.
Kennedy’s office oversees the National Institutes of Health, the control center of disease research in the United States. Kennedy’s agency has killed almost 800 active projects, according to Nature, affecting medical research into HIV/Aids, diabetes, women’s health, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and more. The administration wants to cut the NIH’s budget up to 40% while consolidating its 27 agencies – separated by disease area – into just eight. Elon Musk’s Doge has been reviewing previously awarded grant funding, reportedly requiring researchers to explain how they are using their grants to advance the Trump administration’s political goals. (Audio obtained by the Washington Post suggests this “Defend the Spend” initiative may be a smokescreen, with one NIH official admitting: “All funding is on hold.”) Separately, Donald Trump has aggressively targeted universities such as Harvard and Columbia over alleged antisemitism and diversity initiatives, using federal contracts that fund research as leverage. And just recently, the NIH passed a new rule banning any university from receiving future federal grants if the universities use DEI programs or boycott Israeli firms.
With tipping reported at self-checkouts, drive-throughs and even vending machines, some consumers are pushing back
When Garrett Petters, a 29-year-old architect in Dallas, and his girlfriend travelled to Paris last year, one of their favourite parts was eating out. They enjoyed French duck, andouillette, plenty of bread, cheese and coffee and even escargot.
But it wasn’t just Paris’s cuisine they admired. It was also the different tipping culture. “We were talking about how nice it is in Europe that they pay their waiters and waitresses and we don’t have to tip because of it, and isn’t that cool,” Petters said. It felt very different from back in the US, where tipping culture felt “out of control”.
After two performances were cancelled over threats linked to protests against Israel, the duo said the actions were ‘self-evidently a method of censorship’
After the cancellation of two UK performances with the Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has said that they “dread the weaponisation of this cancellation by reactionary figures as much as we lament its celebration by some progressives”.
In a statement, Greenwood and Tassa said that venues in London and Bristol as well as “their blameless staff” had received enough credible threats to conclude that it was not safe to proceed with the gigs.
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