Unclear what US president can achieve after direct talks between Russia and Ukraine ended without conclusion
Two high-profile Catholics, Pope Leo XIV and US vice-president JD Vance, were meeting Monday ahead of a flurry of US-led diplomatic efforts to make progress on a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, AP reported.
Vance’s motorcade was seen entering Vatican City just after 7.30am Vance, a Catholic convert, had led the US delegation to the formal Mass opening the pontificate of the first American pope.
From a disobedient dishwasher to a letter from the taxman, it turns out everything is more palatable with a sprinkling of childlike wonder
Reading about ways to foster joy last week (I know, most of us would settle for waking without lingering dread, but why not dream big occasionally?), I was captivated by the memoirist and cancer survivor Suleika Jaouad’s suggestion: live each day like it’s your first. When Jaouad’s leukaemia returned last year, well-wishers urged her to live each day like it was her last, but the pressure to carpe each second of every damn diem left her feeling panicked and exhausted. Instead, she cultivated a sense of freshly hatched curiosity and playfulness, which she says helped.
I loved this, but doubted the feasibility – can you really convince your tired, cynical self to feel joyful astonishment? I tried living yesterday as if it were my first; not like an actual newborn (red-faced, frequently crying, utterly incompetent – I’m all that already), but with childlike wonder. I had some success being captivated by my breakfast banana – great design and colour – and even more with the magical elixir that makes me not hate everyone (coffee).
Veteran activist reflects on Malcolm’s legacy and decades of progress now rolled back by Trump and ‘white supremacy on steroids’
When African Americans protested police brutality in New York, they were portrayed as rioters, Malcolm Xtold an audience at the London School of Economics. When shop windows were smashed in the Black community, he said, the press gave the impression that “hoodlums, vagrants, criminals” wanted to break in and steal merchandise.
“But this is wrong,” Malcolm contended. “In America the Black community in which we live is not owned by us. The landlord is white. The merchant is white. In fact, the entire economy of the Black community in the states is controlled by someone who doesn’t even live there … And these are the people who suck the economic blood of our community.”
The right wants American women to bear more children and withdraw from full participation in society
Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congress that completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of childcare for large swaths of the American working class.
The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Start were laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the program would not be axed, but more cuts to childcare funding are likely coming: some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for daycare. The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible.
Michael Fanone slams Mike Johnson and Republicans for long delaying congressionally approved officer tribute
Donald Trump and his Republican allies are “petty bitches” for refusing to display a congressionally approved plaque honoring police officers who protected the US Capitol when the president’s supporters attacked the complex on 6 January 2021, says one of the cops in question, Michael Fanone.
Speaking recently on the show hosted by political broadcast journalist Jim Acosta, the famously candid and oft profane Fanone said he also had a suggestion about where Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson could position the commemoration. “I think that it would be … perfect … if the plaque was shoved up his ass,” said Fanone, who retired from the Washington DC police force after being wounded during the January 6th attack.
A new collective seeks to reinvigorate cinema in the mould of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 movement, with a 10-point manifesto opposed to the internet
A group of Danish and Swedish film-makers have relaunched the notorious avant garde Dogme 95 movement with a manifesto updated for the internet age, vowing to make five films between them in a year, from handwritten scripts and without using the internet or any emails in the creative process.
“In a world where film is based on algorithms and artificial visual expressions are gaining traction, it’s our mission to stand up for the flawed, distinct and human imprint,” said the five film-makers in a statement read at the Cannes film festival on Saturday.
The latest in an ongoing series of writers highlighting their go-to mood-lifting movies looks back at the 2008 Eastbourne-set teen comedy
Last year, it took me a grand total of three weeks to make the olive costume, Georgia Nicolson’s papier-mache creation from Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Night and day, I slaved away, dipping strips of newspaper into a mix of flour and water, then patting it onto a giant-sized balloon. Never have I defined myself as anything close to arty. So why did I decide to dedicate a significant portion of my life to an elaborate craft project? The answer, of course, is simple. The olive costume is iconic, as the signature feature of the greatest teen movie ever made.
Just ask any girl who grew up in Britain in the noughties, and they’ll recognise the image: Georgia Nicholson, played by Georgia Groome, frantically running through the streets of Eastbourne dressed as a mammoth green hors d’oeuvre. Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, the film based on the first two books in Louise Rennison’s series, was studied at our teenage sleepovers. We pored over it, reciting its lines as if they were from a sacred text. Even now, I can reel off the classic quotes without thinking. “Boys don’t like girls for funniness,” if you didn’t already know.
The WNBA stars are helping drive record-setting interest in the league. But the conversation distracts from other players, and brings in unwelcome ugliness
At first, it seemed that the Indiana Fever’s home win over Chicago Sky on Saturday would be just another spicy chapter in the rivalry between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. Both players were typically excellent: Clark spurred the Fever to victory with a triple-double, while Reese grabbed 17 rebounds to go with her 12 points.
But it was a moment in the third quarter that WNBA fans will be talking about for weeks to come. Some of them may even do so without resorting to cheap bigotry. With 4:38 remaining, Clark reached for the ball over Reese’s head, made what appeared to be deliberate contact with her arm, and sent her opponent spiraling to the floor. There was a brief confrontation, Clark was hit with a flagrant foul and Reese received a technical. After the game, Clark said she didn’t have cynical intent leading up to the foul, and Reese agreed calling it “a basketball play.”
The lure of a limitless digital jukebox was great, but as the algorithm increasingly served up music I didn’t enjoy, I’ve taken back control of my listening
When most people were comparing how many times they had listened to Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx and Fontaines DC on Spotify Wrapped last December, I had to make do with Burger King Unwrapped, delivered to me via their app, which told me how many Burger Kings I’d eaten that year (a solitary Whopper meal in July). You see, I’ve stopped streaming music, which, in this modern day and age, seems frankly weird. But hear me out. I’ve gone back to buying CDs, and it’s made me fall in love with music all over again.
I listen to music all day, every day. I can’t work without music in the background, or consider doing the washing up without some tunes to groove to. Traditionally, I’d buy albums on CDs or vinyl, and listen to them over and over until I was bored to death with them, by which time I’d hopefully have bought another album. It’s apparently a very annoying habit: as a student (way before the days of Spotify), one housemate was so utterly exasperated with me blasting Urban Hymns by the Verve around the house that they barged into my room, ejected the CD and flung it out the window.
More and more people are hooked on watching animals in real time. Now researchers say it could even improve your mood, help you relax and give you better sleep
In 2012 Dianne Hoffman, a retired consultant, became a peeping Tom. For five hours a day she watched the antics of a couple, Harriet and Ozzie, who lived on Dunrovin ranch in Montana.
The pair were nesting ospreys, being streamed live as they incubated their clutch of eggs. The eggs never hatched, but the ospreys sat on them for months before finally kicking them out of the nest.
Citizen testing of rivers in England and Wales by anglers reveals that more than a third of freshwater sites breach phosphate levels for good ecological status.
Volunteers from angling groups are using the data to try to drive change in the way rivers are treated – but the task ahead is huge, according to the Angling Trust and Fish Legal.
American halfway to majors sweep after Quail Hollow
World No 1 says he is taking each tournament as it comes
Scottie Scheffler refused to identify the career grand slam as his next target after securing the US PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. The American’s five-shot win means he is halfway to a clean sweep of majors, with the US Open and Open Championship left. Rory McIlroy became just the sixth man to win the grand slam last month at Augusta National.
Scheffler, though, is anxious to stay in the present. “I don’t focus on that kind of stuff,” Scheffler insisted on the making of history. “I love coming out here and trying to compete and win golf tournaments. That is what I’m focused on.
Israeli PM says his forces will not give up in attempt to seize control of Gaza but warns Israel must not let people there reach point of famine
Former hostage Arbel Yehoud, a 29-year-old civilian from Kibbutz Nir Oz who was freed from captivity in January, has criticised the Israeli government’s plan for an expanded assault on Gaza and has urged fellow Israelis to call a general strike in response.
Speaking to the Israeli parliament’s constitution committee, she said:
You should know that when Gazans who were related to those who were holding me were injured by IDF actions, I would be badly beaten and sent to solitary confinement for long days with no food fit for human consumption and with a hygiene level comparable to concentration camps in the Holocaust…
Does it seem logical that I’m the one who needs to be here to shout for the freedom of my beloved Ariel (her partner), his brother David or the rest of the hostages…
Zara Zerny’s lucid and compassionate study gathers moving, candid interviews with bereaved partners remembering their lost loves
The Marvel bromide about “What is grief, if not love persevering?” comes to mind watching this metaphysically charged Danish documentary in which nine senior citizens discuss their departed life partners. Director Zara Zerny works hard in defining the miracle of lifelong companionship, and the ineffable essence of that significant other which persists after death. So much so that, in one final, oddly encouraging section, some of the interviewees here suggest that their loved one still watches over them, Patrick Swayze-style.
Awkward beginnings and lovestruck thunderclaps: it’s all here. Finn-Erik recalls his first sighting of Kirsten as a 17-year-old with ballet-dancer grace. Ove was rescued from a hotel-room orgy with multiple Norwegians by strapping six-footer Bent, who tells him: “You’re coming home with me.” Then there’s Elly, the trauma of whose first violent marriage “vanished like the dew before the sun” when she met her new partner Aksel. In Zerny’s intimate interviewing environment, nothing is off the table: sex and infidelity, domestic bliss and disaffection, partnerships that outlast passion, the pain of outlasting your partner.
Will new technology help to make the world a better place, or is AI just another tech bubble that will benefit the few?
At the beginning of this year, Keir Starmer announced an “AI opportunities action plan”, which promises to mainline AI “into the veins of this enterprising nation”. The implication that AI is a class-A injectable substance, liable to render the user stupefied and addicted, was presumably unintentional. But then what on earth did they mean about AI’s potential, and did they have any good reason to believe it?
Not according to the authors of this book, who are refreshingly sarcastic about what they think is just another tech bubble. What is sold to us as AI, they announce, is just “a bill of goods”: “A few major well-placed players are poised to accumulate significant wealth by extracting value from other people’s creative work, personal data, or labor, and replacing quality services with artificial facsimiles.”
Economic risks are weighing on the US dollar today, reports Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown:
‘’Like a long weekend hangover, a headache of worry is seeping into sentiment today. The FTSE 100 has opened lower, as investors mull over the downgrading of the US sovereign credit rating on Friday.
Moody’s stripped the US of its triple-A rating, citing the growing US fiscal deficit, and the higher borrowing costs the administration will be forced to pay. Given the pledge by Trump to cut taxes, it’s feared the situation could deteriorate further. More of a sombre mood is expected on Wall Street when trading opens later, with futures indicating falls of around 1% for the S&P 500 and 1.3% for the Nasdaq.
Expert tells court that phone records show ‘potential’ for accused to have been in Outtrim and Loch days after reports of deadly fungi were posted online
An analysis of Erin Patterson’s mobile phone records revealed she may have visited two locations soon after death cap mushroom sightings were reported, a court has heard.
Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to the lunch she served at her house in Leongatha, Victoria, about 135km south-east of Melbourne.
It is often down to genetics, but hair loss is also affected by hormones, stress and other factors
This is partially true, says Dr Thivos Sokratous, medical doctor and hair loss expert at Ouronyx. We all have two chromosomes (essentially strings of DNA) that code our genetic makeup. Males are born with an X chromosome, with genes inherited from their mother, and a Y chromosome, from their father.
Sokratous says some studies have shown a strong link between the androgen receptor gene on the X chromosome (passed down from the mother) and male pattern hair loss, with some suggesting this gene may account for up to 70% of the risk. “But male pattern baldness is more complex than that,” he says. “It’s the combination of genes from your mum and your dad alongside other factors.”
The Glasgow-born artist makes huge cocoon-like sculptures out of found fabric and videotape. We meet the team who helped her become the first learning-disabled person to make the award shortlist
One day, out of the blue, everything changed for Nnena Kalu. For more than a decade, she’d been making a certain kind of drawing, in a certain kind of way – repeated shapes, clusters of colour, all organised in rows. “Then, in 2013, she just suddenly started to go whoosh,” says Charlotte Hollinshead, Kalu’s studio manager and artistic facilitator, making big, swirling, circular hand gestures. “Everybody in the studio just stopped. She was somebody who had such a set way of working, for years and years and years, repeated over and over. For this to suddenly change was really quite shocking.” It was a shock that would set Kalu on the path to becoming the first learning-disabled artist to be nominated for the Turner prize, as she was last month.
Her drawings are incredible: vast, hypnotic, swirling vortices of repeated circular marks on pale yellow paper. But it’s her sculptural installations that have garnered the most attention: huge cocoons made of found fabric and VHS tape, wrapped into massive, tight, twisting, ultra-colourful knots. It was an installation of these heady sculptures at Manifesta 15, a pan-European art biennial held in Barcelona last year, that brought her to the attention of the Turner committee.
Eberechi Eze is too good for Palace, Morgan Gibbs-White is pushing for a call-up and is 2025 the year of the underdog?
Why would your fan-favourite player, scorer of That Historic Wembley Goal, in peak form under an excellent manager want to leave? Why would anyone be OK with it? How is this logical? Crystal Palace are now good enough to have Eberechi Eze in the team. Eberechi Eze is also too good to stay at Crystal Palace. Both of these things seem to be true. Oliver Glasner-era Palace are a seriously potent, organised and attractive team. But Eze’s progress is something else. At times during his early Palace career there was a sense of a slightly loose late-developer. His skill level was always exceptional. His use of it now is next-level, his finishing cold and his physique buffed up. Eze does not really have a ceiling. He could play for any team in Europe. But he is also 26 years old with two years left on his contract, and Palace have a model based on development with the likes of Romain Esse ready for a shot. There does not always have to be downside. Selling the man who made the thing happen can still be best for everyone. Barney Ronay
Sportspeople’s reluctance to open up is understandable given the unforgiving environment but doing so could help
You see it all the time these days. Players with their hands over their mouths at the end of matches, masking even the most banal of pleasantries from prying eyes. Not wanting to say anything that could be reported. Not wanting to let anyone in.
A generation or two ago, writers such as Gay Talese would hang out with global stars such as Floyd Patterson and hear the former heavyweight champion call himself a coward, describe how it felt to be knocked out, and even accompany him to his daughter’s school to see him confront the bullies who kept lifting up her skirt. And that all happened on the same day.
Health facilities were destroyed and staff killed in record numbers in conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Myanmar and Sudan
Last year saw more than 3,600 attacks on health workers, hospitals and clinics in conflict zones, a record figure reflecting “new levels of horror”, a new report has found.
The total is 15% higher than in 2023 and includes air, missile and drone strikes on hospitals and clinics, as well as the looting and takeover of facilities and arrest and detention of health workers.
Once an indicator of wealth, but for years stuck in burger-bun purgatory, the enriched dough is being embraced by a new generation of chefs and bakers for its versatility and delicious complexity
‘You shouldn’t have to fight your sandwich,” says Sacha Yonan, his voice rising to compete with the noise of London’s Soho on a Tuesday morning. Within half an hour, queues for the sandwiches at Crunch, the cafe he co-founded earlier this year, will be snaking out of its doors. Its secret? Fresh brioche, which comes toasted and filled with ingredients that give the place its name, including southern-fried chicken, baby pickles and lettuce. “We love a sourdough,” says Joni Francisco, his Crunch co-founder. “But if you’re talking about sandwiches, then you need something with an easier mouthfeel.”
Could brioche be the new sourdough? Insofar as anything can be, sourdough being to bread what black is to fashion. In 2023, the humble white sliced loaf was hailed as a better sandwich bread than sourdough, the sourfaux scandal continues to rumble and, while we’re not baking sourdough at home with quite the same zeal as we were during lockdown, our lust for the real deal is still very much around.
Older relatives might roll their eyes at this generation’s approach, but it is overdue in a country where smacking is still legal
A new trend is circulating on social media where adults ask their children to complete some of the toxic parenting phrases they remember from their own childhoods. Sayings such as “I’ll give you something to ... [cry about]”; “children are to be … [seen and not heard]”, and “I brought you into this world … [and I can take you out of it]” are reconfigured by a new generation of little kids who have been raised in more loving and respectful ways.
“I’ll give you something to …” one parent asks, as their child replies “help you with”. “Children are to be … children” and “I brought you into this world and … made you happy”. It’s powerfully moving, seeing how this generation of parents are trying their best to break the cycle of abuse that has frequently masqueraded as discipline over previous decades.
The adventures of great voyagers echo across centuries as a father and daughter flee from flooding in near-future China
The sea takes many forms in fiction. It was an adventure playground in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and a rowdy neighbour in Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn. It played the wine-dark seducer in Homer’s Odyssey and the snot-green tormentor in Joyce’s Ulysses. But while its colour can change and its humour may vary, its fictional properties remain reassuringly stable. The sea is our unconscious, a repository of memory, the beginning and end of all things. It’s what Jules Verne described as the “Living Infinite”.
In Madeleine Thien’s rapturous fourth novel, The Book of Records, “the Sea” is the name given to a gargantuan migrant compound, sprawled on the shoreline a decade or two in the future. Lina and her ailing father, Wui Shin, occupy an apartment on the labyrinthine 12th floor, from where they can watch the refugee boats pull in and depart. The pair have fled the flooded Pearl River Delta, leaving behind Lina’s mother, brother and aunt but carrying three volumes from an epic biographical series entitled The Great Lives of Voyagers. These tattered instalments cover the respective histories of the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, the Chinese poet Du Fu and the Portuguese-Jewish scholar Baruch Spinoza. They provide both a link to the past and a sextant to navigate by. The world exists in endless flux, Lina is told, and yet here in the Sea nothing ever goes missing. Its chambers fill and empty like locks on a canal. Different portions of the compound appear to correspond with different decades. “The buildings of the Sea are made of time,” Wui Shin explains.
With a stunning coastline, brilliant surfing and a B&B in the forest, this quiet corner north of the Algarve makes for an idyllic break
‘I declare this the best beach in the world,” my youngest son shouts, leaping from a three-metre-high dune on to the soft, golden sand. We’ve come to Praia de Monte Clérigo to watch the sun sink into the sea, and stumble upon a bay ripe for play with a babbling brook, rock pools, gentle swell, towering cliffs and rolling dunes. As I gaze across to colourful fishers’ cottages circling a simple beach bar, I can’t help but agree; this could indeed be the world’s best beach.
“Why’s it so empty?” my son asks. It’s a good question, given the beauty of our surroundings, but we soon realise that having the place to ourselves is a common occurance on our slow adventure exploring Portugal’s least-populated coastline.
Shakespeare sexts! Being dumped by a robot! The Britain’s Got Talent winners’ new series is chaotic fun. Plus: the ultimate girl talk with Vicky Pattison and Angela Scanlon
Dancers turned “media personalities” Ashley and Jordan Banjo team up with sibling Perri Kiely for this podcast, which is like dropping into a group chat with some silly (but well-intentioned) pals. If you’ve ever wondered how William Shakespeare might sext, whether it’s better to get dumped for a person or a robot, or whether Kiely is still thinking about the time he took a tumble at Downing Street (he is), then let them entertain you. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly
Dean Chalkley amassed a vast archive of images at the turn of the millennium when Ibiza clubbers would lose themselves for days on the Spanish party island
Exclusive: Survey commissioned by children’s charities shows UK voters want to see families prioritised
Charities and a Labour-aligned pressure group are ramping up calls on Keir Starmer to scrap the two-child limit on benefits, as polling shows support for action on youth poverty remains high, and is equally solid among Labour voters tempted by Reform.
As discussions continue in government ahead of the forthcoming child poverty strategy, a survey commissioned by a coalition of charities suggests voters want to see families prioritised.
Labour, Green and Lib Dem voters fare best overall and users rarely date on the other side of the political spectrum
Dating app users are more likely to be interested in a Reform voter than a Conservative, new research suggests.
Voters were unlikely to swipe right, or like, a profile of someone from the other side of the political spectrum – meaning that centre-right voters are more likely to pick a Reform supporter than someone who supports a leftwing party, analysis from the University of Southampton and Harvard University found.
Crunch summit in London to begin after last-minute talks agreed deal to reset relations between UK and EU
Q: Will the UK now be subject to EU rules?
Reynolds says he would push back against that. He says UK and EU rules are currently aligned. If EU rules were to change, the UK would want a say in shaping them.
The US president’s deference to his Middle Eastern allies is hollow if they cannot affect what happens in their own back yard
Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East last week was an exercise in disorientation. Both in terms of rebalancing the relationship between the US and the region, and in scrambling perceptions. In Riyadh, he told the Saudi royals there would be no more “lectures on how to live”. He lifted sanctions on Syria so that the country may have a “fresh start”, and he fawned over the camels and lavish architecture (“as a construction guy,” he said at one Qatari palace, “this is perfect marble”). Never has Trump appeared more in his element, surrounded by the wealth of sovereigns, the marshalling power of absolute monarchies, and their calculated self-orientalisation and over-the-top flattery.
The same man who enacted the Muslim ban in his first term was strolling around mosques and shrugging off the radical path to power of the Syrian president: “Handsome guy … Tough past, but are you gonna put a choir boy in that position?” His call for recognising the new role of Gulf states both as political and economic powerhouses, and matter-of-factly taking their lead on what Syria needs right now, whatever the history, is excruciating. Because it reveals how painfully sclerotic and inconsistent previous administrations were. Joe Biden promised to take a hard line with the Saudi government for its role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and in the Yemen war, and then seemed to forget about it, or realised he couldn’t follow through. From Trump, there is no such mixed signalling: you are rich, we need you. You do you.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
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Brian Roberts’s plan was to use Sky to build an international powerhouse outside the US – after being beaten by Disney in the battle to acquire his prime target, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox – but some analysts and industry figures wonder if he has been taken for a very expensive ride.
Who knows where you are right now? Your friends, your boss? Maybe your parents? How about your partner? According to recent research by the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, “nearly 1 in 5 young people believe it’s OK to track their partner whenever they want”.
As a long-term and stubbornly-vocal privacy advocate, I find this alarming. It’s hard to imagine a bigger red flag than someone wanting to keep tabs on my daily movements. It’s not that I’m doing anything remotely secretive: my days are most often spent working from home, punctuated by trips to the bakery – scandalous! But it’s not about whether I have anything to hide from my partner. Everyone ought to have the right to keep things to themselves, and choose when they do or don’t share.
Attempts to bring down the price of the Japanese staple have had little effect amid a cost-of-living crisis
Japan’s government is battling record-low approval ratings as consumers voice anger at soaring rice prices just weeks before key national elections.
Attempts to bring down the price of the Japanese staple have had little effect, prompting calls for a reduction in the consumption (sales) tax to ease the cost-of-living crisis.
The star had just finished shooting Poison, about parents torn apart by grief, when his own son died. He remembers their last days together – and what truths he learned from the darkly moving film
Tim Roth reclines in his chair and exudes an unexpected lightness, as if the Atlantic Ocean is casting a summer spray over this corner of Galway. He is upbeat about life, film and even acting, which he once called a nightmare profession he would not recommend to anyone.
“Oh, did I say that?” he asks, surprised. “I don’t feel that way at all, actually. I must have been having a bad one, but that’s OK.” He shrugs and smiles. “I actually love it more and more at the moment.”
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