US and Ukraine sign minerals deal that solidifies investment in Kyiv’s defense against Russia

Move seals a deal to create a fund the Trump administration says will begin to repay roughly $175bn provided to Ukraine

The US and Kyiv have signed an agreement to share profits and royalties from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths, sealing a deal that Donald Trump has said will provide an economic incentive for the US to continue to invest in Ukraine’s defense and its reconstruction after he brokers a peace deal with Russia.

The minerals deal, which has been the subject of tense negotiations for months and nearly fell through hours before it was signed, will establish a US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund that the Trump administration has said will begin to repay an estimated $175bn in aid provided to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:35 pm

Apple referred to federal prosecutors after judge rules it violated court order

Judge says executive told ‘outright lies’ when he gave testimony in antitrust case from Fortnite maker Epic Games

Apple violated a United States court order that required the iPhone maker to allow greater competition for app downloads and payment methods in its lucrative App Store and will be referred to federal prosecutors, a federal judge in California ruled on Wednesday.

The US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland said in an 80-page ruling that Apple failed to comply with her prior injunction order, which was imposed in an antitrust lawsuit brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games.

Published: May 1, 2025, 1:59 am

Trump officials contacted El Salvador president about Kilmar Ábrego García, sources say

Administration in touch with Nayib Bukele over detention of wrongly deported man, according to two people

The Trump administration has been in touch directly with the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele in recent days about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The nature of the discussion and its purpose was not clear because multiple Trump officials have said the administration was not interested in his coming back to the US despite the US supreme court ordering it to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s release.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:52 pm

Kamala Harris to step back into spotlight to give sharp critique of Trump

Democratic presidential candidate to speak in San Francisco after keeping low profile since election defeat

Kamala Harris will step back into the political spotlight on Wednesday night to deliver a sharp critique of Donald Trump, warning that his presidency has put the US at risk of a constitutional crisis.

The former vice-president has mostly kept a low profile since leaving the White House in January following her bitter defeat to Trump. Now, a day after Trump celebrated 100 days in office with a rally in Michigan, she is expected to deliver a forceful renunciation of the president’s stunning power grabs that have prompted warnings of creeping authoritarianism.

Published: May 1, 2025, 1:58 am

John Elway’s longtime business partner dies after golf cart incident

Former NFL star ‘absolutely devastated’ by death of Jeff Sperbeck, 62, who suffered injury at California golf resort

Jeff Sperbeck, a business partner and former agent for NFL Hall of Famer John Elway, died Wednesday after suffering an injury last weekend at a southern California golf resort community. He was 62.

No cause of death was released, but the Riverside county coroner’s office said Sperbeck was injured on Saturday and the address listed for the incident belongs to the Madison Club in La Quinta.

Published: May 1, 2025, 1:57 am

Powerful earthquake could raise Pacific north-west sea levels ‘dramatically’ – study

Likelihood of potentially devastating quake above 8.0 magnitude in next 50 years is 15%, study states

A massive earthquake in the Pacific north-west could rapidly transform areas of the coast from northern California to Washington, causing swaths of land to quickly sink, “dramatically” raising sea level and increasing the flood risk to communities.

That’s according to a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examining the potential impact of the “big one”, a powerful quake along the Cascadia fault that stretches from Canada to California.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:00 pm

US supreme court seems open to religious public charter schools

Oklahoma case is part of a broader push to erode separation of church and state, and a test of role of religion in schools

The US supreme court’s conservative majority seemed open to establishing the country’s first public religious charter school as they weighed a case Wednesday that could have significant ramifications on the separation of church and state.

The Oklahoma state charter school board approved the application for St Isidore, a Catholic virtual charter school. The ACLU and other groups filed suit, as did Republican attorney general Gentner Drummond. The state supreme court sided with Drummond, ruling that the US and Oklahoma constitutions “prohibit the state from using public money for the establishment of a religious institution”.

Published: April 30, 2025, 7:25 pm

Israel facing ‘national emergency’ as it battles worst fires in a decade, says Netanyahu

Firefighters have rushed to control wildfires that have injured several people and prompted the military to deploy troops to help

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned that rapidly spreading wildfires near Jerusalem could reach the city, as he declared the situation a “national emergency”.

Thick smoke billowed above highways near Jerusalem on Wednesday as firefighters rushed to control wildfires that have injured several people and prompted the military to deploy troops to help.

Published: May 1, 2025, 2:22 am

Trump campaign chief claims he visited Australia to advise Liberals at start of election campaign

Exclusive: Chris LaCivita, Trump’s presidential campaign co-manager, tells undercover reporters he advised on ‘structural issues’ related to Peter Dutton; the Coalition denies LaCivita was involved in campaign in any way

• See all our Australia 2025 election coverage

One of the architects of Donald Trump’s 2024 victory claims he made an unpublicised visit to Australia to advise the Liberal party about “structural issues” related to Peter Dutton ahead of the federal election.

The veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita told undercover reporters posing as prospective clients for political consulting work he was working as a private consultant on the visit to Australia, not in an official capacity or as an adviser to the US president.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:43 pm

Erin Patterson trial live updates: mushroom cook’s murder trial continues in Victoria’s supreme court

Australian woman has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in South Gippsland in 2023. Follow live updates

• Who are Erin Patterson and the other key figures in Australia’s mushroom murders trial?

After this, Patterson pushed for the pair to equally split the costs of their children’s school fees.

Simon says he had been advised by the “child support people” not to do this because these fees would be covered in his payments to Patterson.

Published: May 1, 2025, 2:46 am

Martin Scorsese announces film that will feature Pope Francis’s ‘final interview’

Aldeas – A New Story documentary to examine work of organisation pontiff founded to connect young people around the world

Martin Scorsese has made a documentary with the late Pope Francis that will feature conversations between the pontiff and Scorsese, including what the film-makers say was the pope’s final in-depth on-camera interview.

Aldeas – A New Story will detail the work of Scholas Occurrentes, a non-profit, international organisation founded by the pope in 2013 to promote what it termed “Culture of Encounter” among youth.

Published: May 1, 2025, 1:09 am

Trump news at a glance: US and Ukraine sign long-awaited minerals deal; Noem doubles down on deportation threat

Accord establishes joint investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction; homeland security secretary issues fresh threat to Salvadorian Kilmar Ábrego García – key US politics stories from Wednesday 30 April

Ukraine and the US have signed a deal pushed by President Donald Trump that will give the US preferential access to Ukrainian mineral resources and fund investment in Ukraine’s reconstruction.

The accord establishes a joint investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction as Trump tries to secure a peace settlement in Russia’s three-year-old war in Ukraine.

Published: May 1, 2025, 12:55 am

Democrats rally at US Capitol to decry ‘failure’ of Trump’s first 100 days

Lawmakers including Chuck Schumer denounce ‘failure’ on economy, costs, foreign policy, democracy and middle class

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers gathered on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday to accuse Donald Trump of spending his first 100 days damaging the US economy and democracy with the help of “complicit” congressional Republicans.

The speeches by party leaders served as a counterpoint to Trump’s insistence at a rally in Michigan the night before that he has “delivered the most profound change in Washington in nearly 100 years” with an administration focused on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, the dismantling of parts of the federal government and the levying of tariffs on major US trading partners.

Published: April 30, 2025, 8:57 pm

Trump administration to cancel $1bn in Biden-era school mental health grants

Funding will not be continued next year after bill signed in 2022 helped schools hire more mental health workers

The Trump administration is moving to cancel $1bn in school mental health grants, saying they reflect the priorities of the previous administration.

Grant recipients were notified on Tuesday that the funding will not be continued after this year. A gun violence bill signed by Joe Biden in 2022 sent $1bn to the grant programs to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.

Published: April 30, 2025, 8:13 pm

US economy shrinks in first quarter of Trump 2.0 amid sweeping tariffs

Drop comes amid a huge fall in consumer sentiment, which in April dropped 32% to lowest level since 1990 recession

The US economy shrank in the first three months of the year, according to official data, triggering fears of an American recession and a global economic slowdown.

Donald Trump, who returned to the White House promising to “make America great again”, sought to blame Joe Biden for the figure.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:24 pm

Trump’s loyal footsoldiers doff their Maga caps at cabinet love-in

Red and navy hats were strategically placed as Trump’s cabinet gushed over 100 presidential days like no other

There were navy blue and red baseball caps up and down the table, strategically placed in front of every cabinet member, and each bearing the message “Gulf of America”.

Yet the unorthodox collection of headwear, embroidered with Donald Trump’s forced new name for the centuries-old Gulf of Mexico, was far from the most bizarre aspect of an extraordinary White House gathering hosted by the president on Wednesday.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:55 pm

‘He’s just a kid’: the Maryland teenager swept into Trump immigration dragnet

A last-minute supreme court intervention prevented Javier Salazar from getting deported, but the battle is far from over

When 19-year-old Javier Salazar was loaded on to a bus from an immigrant detention center in northern Texas, he had no idea where he was being taken.

He wondered if he was being transferred to another facility or maybe deported back to his native Venezuela. He and the other passengers, their hands and feet shackled, settled into a tense silence. Then a terrifying possibility crept into Salazar’s mind.

Published: April 30, 2025, 3:00 pm

‘No one knew what to do’: power cuts bring chaos, connection and revaluation of digital dependency

People share their experiences of Monday’s massive power outage across Spain, Portugal and parts of France that upended modern life

“It felt like chaos,” said Iñigo, a doctor at a hospital in northern Spain.

With no electricity from noon on Monday, the building’s emergency generators were kept for the critical areas, leaving staff without access to patient data, broken communications due to no telephone signal or email, and colleagues unable to carry out some of their duties, he said.

Published: April 30, 2025, 3:15 pm

‘Still an open wound’: damning docuseries revisits Vietnam war 50 years on

Netflix series Turning Point: The Vietnam War goes back to retrace a devastating history from multiple perspectives

This Wednesday, 30 April, marks a full half century since the fall of Saigon. The takeover of the South Vietnamese capital, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, by North Vietnamese forces reunited a country riven by a decades-long civil war that killed more than 3 million civilians – a triumph of one vision of Vietnam’s future at the violent expense of another, with many caught perilously in between.

For the US, the fall of Saigon was an indisputable humiliation and the end to what was then its longest war, one that killed more than 58,000 servicemen, divided a nation and has only grown more ignominious with time. Fifty years on, the picture is clear: the Americanization of the Vietnam war was an unfathomably costly, poorly run, incomprehensibly horrific folly based on political lies and dubious intelligence. It is taught as a brief but upsetting chapter in American schools – if it’s taught at all.

Published: April 30, 2025, 5:30 pm

Lack of access to antibiotics is driving spread of superbugs, finds research

Focus on overuse contributes to antibiotics reaching less than 7% of people with drug-resistant infections in poorer countries, say researchers

Less than 7% of people with severe drug-resistant infections in poorer countries get the antibiotics they need, a new study suggests, with researchers warning that not only is this causing suffering and deaths, but is also likely to be driving antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

With AMR forecast to cause 1.9m deaths a year by 2050, they are calling for urgent action, akin to the fight earlier this century to get HIV drugs to Africa’s virus hotspots.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:30 pm

‘Radical joy’: Cambodians in California celebrate Khmer culture 50 years after Killing Fields

In Long Beach, city with the largest diaspora of Cambodians in the US, people dance, eat and reflect on the 1975 killings

“Sousdey chnam thmey!” a rider shouted in Khmer into a megaphone while sitting atop a float swaddled in US and Cambodian flags. “Happy new year!” parade-goers yelled back from the street.

Thousands of Cambodian Americans gathered to celebrate the Khmer New Year in Long Beach’s Cambodia Town district – the heart of the largest diaspora of Cambodians in the United States.

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:44 pm

Kendrick Lamar and SZA review – powerhouse duo make their mark in Atlanta

Mercedes-Benz stadium, Atlanta

The record-breaking Grand National tour brings together two stylistically opposed stars and continues an internet-breaking feud

Just when it seemed as if Kendrick Lamar had dropped his grudge against Drake, it turns out his “game over” coda to the Super Bowl half-time show was just the end of regulation. On the Grand National tour, a four-month stadium circuit for the Grammy-sweeping album GNX and SZA’s reissue album Lana, Lamar takes the music industry’s most bitter rivalry match into overtime.

The score-keeping has not stopped. The Grand National tour’s opening date in Minneapolis last week totaled more than $9m from more than 47,000 spectators, giving Lamar claim to the highest-grossing hip-hop concert of all time – surpassing the record Eminem set after playing Melbourne, Australia, in 2019. That’s what you get when you pair the hottest rapper in the game with an R&B queen who is coming off the critical and commercial success of the buddy comedy One of Them Days, SZA’s film acting debut.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:50 pm

Are microplastics really in everything – even my brain?

The plastic particles are everywhere – here’s what to know about what to avoid, whether they ever leave the body and what to do about plastic pollution

Microplastics are tiny particles of plastic.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:00 pm

Is Doctor Who doomed?

With record low ratings and Ncuti Gatwa rumoured to be departing, the Time Lord faces an uncertain future. Could this be it for good?

The Doctor has fought enemies like the Daleks and Cybermen all through time and space, but the Time Lord may now be facing their greatest threat: viewer apathy in a time of television industry upheaval, as rumours of cancellation and the departure of its leading actor swirl.

With this year’s series of Doctor Who approaching its midpoint and seeing record low ratings, there is still no sign from the BBC or streaming partner Disney+ if the show has a future beyond May.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:41 am

‘Ugly, old-fashioned, weird’: the baby names that set grandparents’ teeth on edge

One in five grandparents has struggled to come to terms with a grandchild’s name, according to a survey from Gransnet. Poor old Aurora, Tabitha, Elijah and Finn

Name: The baby name generation gap.

Age: Hopefully it wears off by three or four.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:22 pm

Readers give their verdict on Trump’s 100 days: ‘Extraordinary destruction’

The president promised an ‘extraordinary’ first 100 days in office but for many that has been true in all the wrong ways

The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term have polarized the United States and the world.

Public opinion polls show the president’s approval rating is around 40% – having flipped from positive to negative since his inauguration. A vast majority of Americans are worried about a recession and how his trade war will affect the economy.

Published: April 30, 2025, 8:00 am

If leaders stay silent, the US won’t survive Trump’s next 100 days | Robert Reich

We are tottering on the edge of dictatorship. Powerful voices across institutions, from politics to academia and religion, must speak out

We have witnessed the first 100 days of the odious Trump regime.

The US constitution is in peril. Civil and human rights are being trampled upon. The economy is in disarray.

If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:07 pm

We are witnessing slow constitutional collapse in the US | Moira Donegan

The vestiges of the US’s democracy are crumpling to the ground. We don’t yet know what will be erected in its place

It’s possible that later, when we know more about how the Trump regime reshapes the US and about how it ultimately comes to an end, we will look back at this moment in 2025 and conclude that we were already living under an autocracy. Checks on executive power seem to have all but vanished; the Trump administration is not acting like either the courts, the judiciary or the people have any prerogatives that they must respect.

Science is suffering: massive cuts to federal funding of research into medicine, climate change or anything that might include a word on a long list of banned ones – like “transition” – has decimated research, made the US a global laughingstock, and set the cause of human thriving back by years. The economy is in chaos, and the bribery is all but out in the open; it no longer seems to occur to many Americans that their politicians should not be on the take.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:00 pm

Canada narrowly missed a far-right prime minister. But we’re not in the clear yet | Tayo Bero

Mark Carney’s win isn’t as comforting as it should be, especially when we look at all the events leading up to it

After a snap election, weeks of breathless campaigning and a surprisingly close race, Mark Carney has been elected prime minister of Canada. It’s a win for Liberals, who were rightly nervous that former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s poor performance and late-stage missteps might cost them this election. But Carney’s win isn’t as comforting as it should be, especially when we look at all the events leading up to it.

It’s no secret that over the last decade, Canada’s image as a welcoming, pacifist, melting pot has completely unravelled, revealing a rightwing underbelly that has seen the rise of the “manosphere” and a deepening of its influences on young people, as well as a sharp increase in anti-immigrant sentiment and hate crimes. When it came down to this election, it was Trudeau’s forced resignation and people’s ability to credibly accuse the Liberal party of spending a decade basically twiddling their thumbs while the cost of living soared, that pushed Canadians to the right and helped the Conservative party coast to a near win.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:00 pm

The US left Vietnam 50 years ago today. The media hasn’t learned its lesson | Norman Solomon

The myth that news coverage turned Americans against the war persists. In fact, it was largely complicit in perpetuating the conflict

The last helicopter liftoff from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon on 30 April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam war. Fifty years later, mythology about US media coverage of the war is locked into the faulty premise that news outlets were pivotal in causing Americans to turn against it. Some say that mainstream media undermined a noble war effort, while others say that coverage alerted the public to realities of an unjust war. Both assertions are wrong.

Scapegoating the media fits neatly into “stab in the back” theories of Americans who can’t stand the fact that their country lost a war to impoverished Vietnamese fighters. And praising the media as catalysts for the nation’s roused conscience gives undue credit while fostering illusions about mainstream news coverage of America’s wars.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:00 pm

After 100 days, Trump has destroyed Trumpism | Sidney Blumenthal

The president’s approach: tackle problems that don’t exist via policies that won’t work

In the 2024 election, Donald Trump eked out a narrow victory, by 1.5 percentage points nationally, the lowest popular vote margin in 56 years, since Richard Nixon’s wafer-thin win by 0.7 points in 1968. Trump claimed he had won an enormous historic mandate to impose a counterrevolution. “The American people have given us a mandate, a mandate like few people thought possible,” Trump boasted on 6 March in his address to the Congress.

His election rested on two principal issues, immigration and inflation. He demonized immigrants (“poisoning the blood” of the country), raised the bogeyman of transgender people, and racialized the Democratic candidate, Vice-President Kamala Harris, whom he claimed had decided herself she was Black. In the minds of the marginal voters who swung to him, however, immigration and inflation were conflated, factors impinging on their standard of living and economic security. Trump stigmatized migrants as the source of crime and cultural impurity, but swing voters mainly (and falsely) regarded them as economic competitors for jobs and government resources.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:00 am

Lamine Yamal dazzles as Barcelona and Inter trade stunning goals in 3-3 thriller

Lamine Yamal had said that he left fear behind in the park in Mataró when he was little and there was no sign of it here as Barcelona and Inter produced an astonishing night at Montjuïc. As the final whistle went at the end of a noisy and hugely enjoyable semi-final with the score at 3-3, there was a feeling of missed opportunity for Barcelona, of what might have been, yet having been a goal down after 30 seconds and trailed 2-0 and 3-2, it might also have been worse. And it was actually pretty special, an exhilarating occasion that resolved nothing but won’t be easily forgotten.

The same could be said of Denzel Dumfries, scorer of two goals and forever tearing into Barcelona, and of Lamine Yamal. They were the most outstanding of many outstanding players on a wild and wonderful occasion in which Barcelona twice came from behind to equalise but couldn’t turn it around entirely, left lamenting their vulnerability at the back. Inter, meanwhile, left satisfied and very much alive, their first task completed. This was a revival they needed, the greatest prize of all still within their reach.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:04 pm

Bill Belichick defends girlfriend Hudson as ‘doing her job’ in viral CBS interview

• Belichick says girlfriend wasn’t out to control interview
• Hudson, 24, interjected during question on relationship

North Carolina football coach Bill Belichick defended his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, for interjecting during a CBS interviewer’s questions about their relationship and said she was “simply doing her job”.

The six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach and first-time college coach at UNC issued a statement through the school Wednesday, which followed an appearance on CBS News Sunday Morning to promote his upcoming book. In the interview, Hudson objected to a question about how the two had met while Tony Dokoupil referred to her during the segment as being a “constant presence” in the interview.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:16 pm

NFL fines Falcons’ Jeff Ulbrich $100,000 over son’s prank call to Shedeur Sanders

• Jax Ulbrich found QB’s number on father’s iPad
• Atlanta Falcons fined $250,000 over incident

The NFL has handed out heavy fines to the Atlanta Falcons and their defensive coordinator, Jeff Ulbrich, over a prank call to Shedeur Sanders during last week’s draft.

The league fined Ulbrich $100,000 and the Falcons $250,000 for “failing to prevent the disclosure of confidential information distributed to the club in advance of the NFL draft”.

Published: April 30, 2025, 3:33 pm

‘One big dream’: Bodø/Glimt’s modern miracle built on history and humility

Family club, known as a symbol of northern Norwegian self-esteem, prepare to face Tottenham in Europa League semis

No one is sure precisely when the “coffee table” tradition began, but consensus traces it back about 60 years. It would take a lot for one of the regulars not to show up. The time is almost 11am and cups are being laid out in the Aspmyra Stadion canteen for the Bodø/Glimt old boys’ daily catchup. In walks Ivar Bakke, who can count himself as the group’s elder statesman at 94. “One of the oldest people in Norway!” he laughs before sitting down. Tall tales are retold, memories sharpened in delighting over past and more recent glories; however far those stretch, everyone here knows what it has taken to bring their club to the barely fathomable territory of a Europa League semi-final.

The raconteur in chief is Jacob Klette, a sharp figure in his late 70s who made almost 400 appearances for a team that broke boundaries. “The northern part of Norway has always had to fight for its rights,” Klette says. “I played for Lyn, the best team in Oslo, in the late 1960s. You would open the newspaper and see adverts: ‘We have an apartment for rent, but not for people from the north.’ You felt disgusted to see it.”

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:44 pm

Vancouver Whitecaps stun Lionel Messi, Inter Miami in Concacaf semi-final

• The Canadian side won 3-1 in the second leg
• Whitecaps will face Tigres or Cruz Azul in final

Brian White and Pedro Vite scored two minutes apart and the Vancouver Whitecaps stunned Inter Miami 3-1 in the second leg of their CONCACAF Champions Cup semi-final on Wednesday night, spoiling Lionel Messi’s squad’s hopes of making the tournament’s final.

Sebastian Berhalter also scored for Vancouver, which advanced with a 5-1 aggregate to face either Cruz Azul or Tigres UNAL in the Champions Cup final on 1 June.

Published: May 1, 2025, 2:36 am

NBA playoffs: Haliburton’s ‘disrespectful’ father sparks fracas as Pacers seal Bucks’ fate

• John Haliburton apparently swore and waved towel
• Pacers seal beat Bucks in OT to seal playoff series

Giannis Antetokounmpo has criticized Tyrese Haliburton’s father as the aftermath of Bucks-Pacers playoff series descended into a heated confrontation.

Haliburton sealed the Pacers’ 4-1 series victory with a lay-up in overtime that gave them a 119-118 victory on Tuesday night. In the ensuing celebrations, Antetokounmpo says Haliburton’s father, John, approached him and waved a towel while shouting “this is what we fucking do.”

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:39 am

How Wrexham and Birmingham City’s US owners got one step from the Premier League

Tom Brady, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s celebrity status isn’t the only thing that led their clubs to the Championship

It’s been over four decades since Wrexham were last in the second tier of English football and a lot has changed in that time. (A lot has changed in four years, never mind four decades.) Four years ago, Wales’ oldest soccer club were at a non-league nadir. Now, they are preparing for life in the Championship, propelled to three straight promotions by the stardust (and money) of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Birmingham City’s second tier exile was much shorter – just a single season – but like Wrexham their promotion had the spotlight of celebrity on it. While Wrexham have Reynolds and McElhenney, Birmingham have Tom Brady (albeit it in a far smaller profile). The English lower leagues have never been so glamorous, what with Wrexham players appearing in Marvel movies and David Beckham attending matches.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:41 am

Outrage in Brazil over reports of new red national football jersey

CBF reportedly considering red jersey ahead of World Cup but rightwingers consider the colour anti-patriotic

“Our flag will never be red!” rightwing Brazilians took to chanting during the heyday of the left-bashing former president Jair Bolsonaro.

But their football shirts soon might be, amid incendiary reports that the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) is considering introducing a crimson jersey for the national team ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

Published: April 30, 2025, 3:48 pm

Equinor considers suing Trump administration over halted US windfarm

Norway’s state energy company’s $2.5bn project off coast of New York was almost a third finished

Norway’s state energy company may take Donald Trump’s administration to court after it ordered an “unprecedented” halt to a $2.5bn (£1.87bn) windfarm project off the coast of New York.

Equinor is considering its legal options after the US interior secretary, Doug Burgum, ordered the company to “immediately halt all construction activities” on an offshore windfarm last month.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:46 am

Climate experts and politicians round on Tony Blair for ‘wrong message’

Former Labour PM accused of ‘handing talking points’ to Tories and Reform after saying net zero strategy faltering

Climate experts and politicians have criticised Tony Blair for claiming any strategy that relied on rapidly phasing out fossil fuels was “doomed to fail”.

The former prime minister’s comments, published in a report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), prompted an internal row within Labour, with some accusing him of playing into the hands of a narrative used by rightwing parties to delay climate action.

Published: April 30, 2025, 1:03 pm

Trump 100 days: tariffs, egg prices, Ice arrests and approval rating – in charts

The first few months have seen record-breaking use of executive powers – here are some of the outlying trends

• Trump 100 days: inside Trump’s whirlwind start to his second presidency

When reading a chart, an outlier is often the first thing you notice. The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term has been full of them: immigration arrests spiking. Markets falling. Emission trends reversing. Hundreds of day one pardons to insurrectionists. Record-breaking use of executive powers.

Published: April 30, 2025, 3:00 pm

Venezuelan detainees at Texas center spell out SOS with their bodies

Men at Bluebonnet fear deportation to El Salvador under wartime law despite maintaining they do not have gang ties

Detainees at the Bluebonnet immigrant detention center in the small city of Anson, Texas, sent the outside world a message this week: SOS.

With a Reuters drone flying nearby, 31 men formed the letters in the dirt yard of the facility on Monday.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:23 pm

UPS cites Trump tariffs as it announces expected layoffs of 20,000 workers

Company cites ‘current macro-economic uncertainty’ as sweeping tariffs discourage customers from shipping

• Business live – latest updates

The United Parcel Service (UPS) is expected to cut about 20,000 jobs in 2025 as a part of a larger plan to reduce costs and increase profit, citing “changes in the global trade policy and new or increased tariffs”.

UPS announced the layoffs on Tuesday in its first quarter earnings report. The parcel delivery service said it made consolidated revenues of $21.5bn, compared with $21.7bn about the same time a year ago. Additionally, the company said it would be shuttering 73 leased and owned buildings by the end of June of this year.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:44 pm

Microsoft beats Wall Street expectations for fourth quarter in a row amid AI boom

Tech giant has committed to investing $80bn in artificial intelligence this fiscal year as it reveals revenue of $70.07bn

Microsoft released its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday after the New York stock market closed, beating Wall Street’s expectations for the fourth quarter in a row amid a financial boom for artificial intelligence businesses.

The company revealed revenue of $70.07bn and earnings of $3.46 per share. The result exceeded analyst predictions that revenue would grow to $68.42bn, or 10.6% year-over-year, and that earnings-per-share would come in at $3.22.

Published: April 30, 2025, 8:27 pm

Trump pressures journalist to accept doctored photo as real: ‘Why don’t you just say yes?’

President lashed out at Terry Moran in tense TV interview, which included questions about deportations and tariffs

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump lashed out at an ABC journalist in a tense TV interview to mark 100 days of his second term in office, in which among other confrontations he angrily pushed correspondent Terry Moran to agree with him that a doctored photo was actually real, telling him: “Why don’t you just say yes.”

The 40-minute interview in the Oval Office veered off course when Moran pressed Trump on the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian man living in Maryland who was deported despite a protective court order. When Moran pointed out that the supreme court had ordered García’s return to the US, and suggested Trump had the power to comply by making a single phone call, the president bristled.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:17 pm

Meta’s quarterly earnings beat Wall Street expectations as its AI investments rise by billions

‘We’ve had a strong start to an important year’, Zuckerberg said as company posts $42.35bn in revenue for first quarter

Meta reported earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street’s expectations for yet another quarter even as it lavishes billions on artificial intelligence.

Meta posted $42.32bn in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, beating both its own quarterly revenue goals of $41.8bn at the higher end and Wall Street expectations of $41.38bn.

Published: April 30, 2025, 8:50 pm

US ex-ambassadors warn of slide into authoritarianism amid ‘climate of fear’

Four ex-heads of US embassies in nations that swung from democracies to dictatorships say landscape eerily familiar

The US is treading the path followed by democracies that descended into authoritarianism and dictatorship, former ambassadors to countries that underwent autocratic takeovers have warned.

At a panel discussion held to mark Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, four ex-heads of American embassies in countries that had experienced swings away from democracy said the current domestic political landscape felt eerily familiar and was pervaded by a “climate of fear” deliberately created to make opponents “back off”.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:25 pm

Harvard taskforces on anti-Muslim bias and antisemitism find widespread hostility on campus

Harvard’s president noted ‘searing personal accounts’ from listening sessions with about 500 students and employees

Muslim and Jewish students at Harvard University experienced bigotry and abuse as the Massachusetts campus was roiled by protests last year, according to two reports released on Tuesday that found many felt shunned by peers and professors for expressing political beliefs.

Harvard and other universities face extraordinary pressure from Donald Trump’s administration over allegations of antisemitism and leftist bias. The reports, jointly amounting to more than 500 pages, were the result of two taskforces Harvard set up a year before Trump took office, one on combating antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, the other on combating anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:30 pm

Florida to become second state to ban fluoride in water, alarming experts

Following Utah, Florida passes DeSantis-backed bill to block flouride use, ignoring CDC guidance on child health risks

Florida is poised to become the second state to ban fluoride in public drinking water despite concerns of dentists and public health advocates who say the mineral is a safe, effective way to protect people of all ages from developing cavities.

Florida lawmakers approved the bill Tuesday after Utah became the first state to pass a ban last month. The Republican-led states are following a push led by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has railed against the mineral and set the gears of government in motion to stop community water fluoridation.

Published: April 30, 2025, 1:40 pm

Starbucks says cutting shop staff in favour of automation has failed

Chief executive Brian Nicoll vows to ‘fundamentally change’ strategy in face of worse-than-expected results

Starbucks is planning to hire more baristas, get them to work more hours at its coffee shops and roll back its embrace of automation, as the company’s new leadership battles to turn the chain around.

Brian Niccol, who joined Starbucks as chief executive last September, has vowed to “fundamentally change” the company’s strategy in order to win back customers.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:52 am

More than 400 actors and industry figures sign open letter backing trans rights

Eddie Redmayne, Katie Leung and Nicola Coughlan among those expressing solidarity after supreme court ruling

More than 400 actors and film industry professionals have signed an open letter pledging “solidarity” with the trans, non-binary and intersex communities who have been affected by the recent supreme court ruling.

Eddie Redmayne, Katie Leung, Nicola Coughlan, Charlotte Ritchie and Paapa Essiedu are among those to have signed the letter addressing the film and television industry as well as cultural bodies.

Bella Ramsey, James Norton, Joe Alwyn, Himesh Patel, Harris Dickinson and the director Ken Loach are also signatories.

In mid-April, supreme court judges unanimously ruled the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

This means a gender recognition certificate (GRC) does not change a person’s legal sex for the purposes of the Equality Act.

The ruling has been interpreted to mean that trans women can be excluded from women-only spaces like toilets and changing rooms.

The open letter said: “We believe the ruling undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary, and intersex people living in the UK.”

It added the film and television community had previously come together in response to the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements by “reflecting” upon working practices and “uplifting” a broad spectrum of voices.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:59 pm

South Africa to review claims past ANC governments impeded apartheid crimes investigations

Cyril Ramaphosa sets up inquiry as victims’ families allege interference from ‘highest levels of government’

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, is setting up an inquiry into whether past ANC governments interfered with the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes, amid criticism from the families of victims.

A group of 25 relatives and survivors of apartheid-era deaths and violence sued the government in January, claiming that interference from “the highest levels of government” blocked investigations into cases referred to the National Prosecuting Authority by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Published: April 30, 2025, 8:02 pm

Kardashian jewel heist: ‘Grandpa robber’ partly driven by taste for easy money, court hears

Aomar Aït Khedache, 68, has admitted involvement in armed robbery of reality TV star but denies being ringleader

A retired restaurant owner alleged to have been the ringleader of an armed robbery of American reality TV star Kim Kardashian in Paris, has told a court he was in part driven by a taste for easy money.

Aomar Aït Khedache, 68, known as “Old Omar”, has admitted to police that he took part in the robbery in which Kardashian was tied up and held hostage at gunpoint in her Paris hotel bedroom during Paris fashion week in 2016. But he has denied the prosecution’s accusation that he was the organiser or ringleader of the jewel heist in the early hours of 3 October 2016, which was the biggest robbery of an individual in France in 20 years.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:56 pm

Israel has no duty to allow UN aid agency into Gaza, says US state department lawyer

Joshua Simmons tells international court of justice that Israel’s concerns about Unwra are ‘credible’

Israel’s urgent security needs override its obligations to provide aid to Palestinians in Gaza, a US state department lawyer has told the international court of justice (ICJ).

Joshua Simmons spoke as the United Nations’ top court hears a case on Israel’s ban on cooperation with Unwra, the UN’s main agency for Palestinians.

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:06 pm

Deadly Syria clashes continue for second day outside Damascus

At least 16 civilians and security officials killed in Druze-majority areas around capital on Wednesday

• Middle East crisis – live updates

At least 16 civilians and security officials have been killed in clashes in a town near Damascus, Syria’s interior ministry reported, the second consecutive day of fighting in Druze-majority areas around Syria’s capital.

Reports on Wednesday said fighting had started overnight in the town of Ashrafiah Sahnaya, south-west of Damascus, after unknown gunmen attacked a security checkpoint. An attack on the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana a day earlier left at least 10 people dead, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Published: April 30, 2025, 1:48 pm

King Charles says cancer diagnosis made him ‘one of the statistics’

Charles reveals his experience has deepened his admiration for charities supporting the 390,000 cancer cases each year

King Charles has reflected on his experience with cancer, saying it brought into “sharp focus the very best of humanity”, while acknowledging that each new case is “a daunting and at times frightening experience” for those receiving a diagnosis and for their loved ones.

In a personal written message, released to coincide with a Buckingham Palace reception celebrating organisations that help people with the disease, he described himself as one of the “statistics” among the 390,000 who “sadly” receive a cancer diagnosis in the UK each year.

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:09 pm

People with endometriosis more likely to experience early menopause, study finds

Surgical menopause occurs on average 19 months earlier, while natural menopause happens five months earlier, new global research shows

Women with endometriosis face a higher risk of premature and early menopause and are seven times more likely to experience surgical menopause, a study has found.

Surgical menopause occurs when a woman has both ovaries removed before reaching natural menopause, and may be done to treat endometriosis if other treatments fail.

Published: April 30, 2025, 7:00 pm

Swedish journalist sentenced in Turkey for ‘insulting Erdoğan’

Joakim Medin given suspended sentence over photos on his articles, but remains in jail awaiting trial on terror charge

A Turkish court has handed a Swedish journalist an 11-month suspended sentence for insulting the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but he remains behind bars awaiting trial on a second more serious charge.

Joakim Medin, who works for the Swedish newspaper Dagens ETC, was detained at Istanbul airport on 27 March when he flew in to cover the mass protests gripping Turkey.

Published: April 30, 2025, 5:06 pm

Iran executes man accused of helping Israel kill Revolutionary Guards colonel

Mohsen Langarneshin is accused of being ‘senior spy’ for Mossad, but human rights groups say he was innocent

Iran has executed a 36-year-old man it accused of helping the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, kill a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Tehran in 2022.

Iranian state media said Mohsen Langarneshin was hanged, the usual method of execution in Iran, at Ghezel Hesar prison early on Wednesday morning.

Langarneshin’s family and human rights groups insisted the former IT consultant was innocent of the charges against him and that any reported confessions were obtained by torture or blackmail.

Published: April 30, 2025, 1:52 pm

The attack on Zamzam refugee camp and what it means for the Sudan war - podcast

Guardian journalist Kaamil Ahmed reports on the devastating assault by the Rapid Support Forces on the camp in Darfur and what it tells us about the group’s plans in Sudan’s civil war

Zamzam, in Darfur, has been a place of refuge for decades. A sprawling camp in western Sudan, some have estimated that it houses up to 700,000 people – a place of relative safety from the violence that has engulfed the region over the last 20 years.

It was also one of the last holdouts in Darfur, one of the few places in the region not yet under the control of the Rapid Support Forces. The paramilitary group has fought a devastating civil war with the Sudanese army since April 2023.

Published: May 1, 2025, 2:00 am

‘Reform all the way’: on the road in Doncaster – Politics Weekly UK

Before this week’s local elections, John Harris is on the road in Doncaster – which could prove to be a canary in the coalmine for the government. Labour has been in power here for decades but this time Nigel Farage’s Reform UK fancies its chances. So why are people turning away from Labour? Why are they so disillusioned with politics in general? And what would a Reform-run city actually be like?

Please support The Guardian at http://theguardian.com/politicspod

The full list of candidates for Doncaster mayor are:

David Bettney, Social Democratic party

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:43 pm

Advantage PSG after first leg at Arsenal – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Philippe Auclair and Nicky Bandini as Arsenal try and lick their wounds after they failed to gain an edge at home against PSG in the first leg of their semi-final clash in the Champions League

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: Paris Saint-Germain win 1-0 at the Emirates Stadium. The French champions stunned Arsenal early on with the midfield three of João Neves, Fabián Ruiz and Vitinha dominating and Ousmane Dembélé scoring. You wondered if this was a step too far for Mikel Arteta’s men.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:15 pm

From the archive: The last phone boxes: broken glass, cider cans and – amazingly – a dial tone – podcast

We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2022: Five million payphone calls are still made each year in the UK. Who is making them – and why?

By Sophie Elmhirst. Read by Emma Powell

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:00 am

Mehdi Hasan on Trump’s first 100 days – podcast

Guardian US columnist Mehdi Hasan on the start of Donald Trump’s second term as president and the threat to democracy in the US

“So many things have shocked me about the past 100 days,” says the Guardian US columnist and author of Win Every Argument, Mehdi Hasan.

“Even for me, even the person who was saying it’s going to be so bad, it’s much worse than even I thought.”

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:00 am

Jimmy Kimmel on grade for Trump’s first 100 days: ‘Somewhere between F and U’

Late-night hosts discuss Trump’s chaotic first 100 days in office, his low approval ratings and Canada’s election results

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump reaching 100 days in office and the results of the Canadian election.

Published: April 30, 2025, 3:06 pm

‘A human piñata’: Katy Perry reflects on online abuse following Blue Origin flight and latest tour

Pop singer’s tour has been mocked online and she was criticised for taking commercial spaceflight, but she tells fans ‘please know I am OK’

Following criticism of her latest tour, new music and her trip to the edge of space on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin craft, Katy Perry has written an emotional message explaining how the public opprobrium has affected her.

Perry wrote the message under an Instagram post by a fan group, who booked a billboard in Times Square to congratulate her on the opening week of her Lifetimes tour.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:34 am

Skin Deep review – kitty rescue immersive-sim is slapstick fun in a cartoony playground

Blendo Games/Annapurna Interactive, PC
This attempt to cosy-fi an immersive sim game is full of ‘zany’ gags as you rescue cats from a spaceship, but it gets a bit too saccharine

When it comes to gamer-gatekeeping, there are few genres as snootily guarded as the immersive sim. From PC classic System Shock to the Dickensian Dishonored 2, these system-heavy sandboxes are video gaming’s equivalent to avant garde electronica or the films of Darren Aronofsky, adored by critics and genreheads but largely baffling to everyone else. Much like those elitist fandoms, the im-sim’s loudest cheerleaders often look down on linear blockbusters with similar sneer. No, Assassin’s Creed player, you cannot sit with us.

While massive games such as Tears of the Kingdom have recently flirted with elements of the genre, there’s still a surprising lack of breezier, beginner-friendly immersive sims. Enter Blendo Games’ Skin Deep – an attempt to cosy-fi the genre. Doing away with the sour-faced sci-fi of Deus Ex, Skin Deep sends you hurtling into space with a premise ripped straight out of a noughties web comic. You play Nina Pasadena, an insurance commando sworn to rescue feline fleets from raiding pirates. As you answer each well-insured tabby’s urgent distress call, Nina quietly sneaks across the raided ship, using whatever tools she can cobble together to rescue her kitty clientele.

Published: April 30, 2025, 12:00 pm

I had a passionate crush on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Could it still thrill me 19 years later?

When Bethesda surprise-released a remake last week, I revisited its world with my son to see if the magic was still there

For a 10-day period the summer of 2006, in between handing in my resignation at my first job on a games magazine and returning to Scotland to start university, I did almost nothing except eat, sleep and play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on my Xbox 360. I hauled my TV from the living room of my small, unpleasantly warm flatshare into my bedroom so I could play uninterrupted; it was all I could think about. My character was a Khajiit thief, a kind of manky lion in black-leather armour with excellent pickpocketing skills. One afternoon, I decided to see whether I could steal every single object in the smallish town of Bravil, and got caught by the guards a couple of hours in. I did a runner, dropping a trail of random plates, cheese wheels and doublets in my wake, and the guards pursued me all the way to the other side of the map, where they finally got entangled with a bear who helpfully killed them for me.

I bet a lot of you will have had a similar experience with a Bethesda game – if not Oblivion, then Skyrim or perhaps Fallout 3. There’s something intoxicating about these role-playing games, the way they lay out their worlds for you like a buffet, inviting you to gorge. Go where you like! Learn some weird spells and try them out on bandits! Nip into a cave to fight a necromancer and end up getting ambushed by vampires! Open-world games such as this are exhaustingly common now but Oblivion was the first one I ever played. Lately I’ve been devouring it all again, after Bethesda surprise-released a remake last Friday.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:01 pm

Cheat: Unfinished Business review – the single worst show that has ever been created

Eight ex-couples who split up due to infidelity are sent to a luxury villa together. It’s a grim cross between Love Island and Jeremy Kyle – and somehow also unforgivably boring

First, an important point of order. The new Netflix television series Cheat: Unfinished Business should not be confused with the Netflix television series Cheat. The latter was a 2023 gameshow hosted by Danny Dyer, notable for being forgettably bad. The former is a 2025 reality show hosted by Amanda Holden, notable for being the single worst thing that has ever been created in the history of humankind.

You might think this is an exaggeration, but that’s only because you haven’t just watched four episodes of Cheat: Unfinished Business in a row, and haven’t found yourself involuntarily clawing at your eyes in a doomed bid to injure any part of your brain that might remember watching it. I have. Quite frankly it’s a wonder I can still type.

Published: April 30, 2025, 7:00 am

Carême review – a sexy French romp about a chef who’s too spicy to handle

It’s hard to resist this moreish story about Napoleon’s renegade pastry chef (who is also a spy). Orgies, opium and tantalising fun with whipped cream are all on the menu

Much like the desserts whipped up by its titular cook, Carême is a rich, moreish and knowingly indulgent treat. This swashbuckling French period drama follows the “world’s first celebrity chef” Antonin Carême as he cavorts around Paris in the early 1800s under the watchful eye of first consul Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he has sworn to hate as he holds him responsible for the death of his adopted sister. It is about as understated as a 12-course tasting menu. But as it scoffs and seduces its way through the Napoleonic era, it’s hard not to fall for the extravagant charms of the Bake Off: extra spice.

Carême (a twinkly-eyed Benjamin Voisin, in full rock-star mode) is a principled young renegade and preternaturally talented pastry chef who makes his disdain for Napoleon clear from the beginning. Despite being midway through a steamy, whipped cream-based encounter with his sometime girlfriend Henriette (Lyna Khoudri), he is called away from his, ahem, tasting session and asked to cook for the troops. “Should I poison them?” he asks, cheekily, before setting to work. He does not choose to commit mass murder, but does reluctantly end up saving Napoleon’s life, leaving Carême in a bind. Should he work for the man he despises? Does he have a choice?

Published: April 30, 2025, 5:00 am

‘An incredibly political moment’ – why fashion and the Met Gala are celebrating Black dandyism

This year’s Met theme is ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ and focuses on Black men’s strategic use of fashion. Author of the text the show is inspired by, Monica L. Miller talks about why it’s being celebrated at this year’s show and gala

After three decades as a jobbing actor, Colman Domingo finally ascended to the Hollywood A-list in 2023 off the back of Rustin, a biopic of Bayard Rustin, an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr and civil rights icon. But while his performance was brilliant, Domingo’s meteoric rise was also down to something else: his masterful embrace of Black dandyism.

Having honed his trademark tight trousers and unbuttoned shirts waiting tables in San Francisco, on the red carpet he set himself apart in suits with Nehru collars, bow ties, dramatic cloaks and sparkling brooches. “I don’t just wear clothes, I wear stories,” Domingo told GQ ahead of his appearance at the Golden Globes in January, before stepping out in a black Valentino mohair wool tuxedo paired with a polka-dot silk shirt and a peacock plume brooch, all chosen to evoke “being at the centre of a three-ring circus” – a playful nod to the performative nature of awards season.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:01 am

A moment that changed me: I went into the wilderness with my family – and lost my inhibitions

We took a wrong turn on vacation and ended up on a six-hour trek into the rainforest. After my mom flung off her top, my brother was attacked by fire ants and I developed a fiery hot rash, everything began to seem strangely zen …

It was the summer of 2001 and I was on the brink of adolescence, embarking on my first journey outside the United States to the tropically convenient American territory of Puerto Rico. I was 11, and already the goofball in my group of friends – but, away from those with whom I was familiar, I was painfully shy. Until a family vacation from hell rid me of all my inhibitions.

The chaos began when my well-intentioned parents decided to take my brother and me to see the beautiful rainforest. My mom had her heart set on going to the El Portal de El Yunque National Forest visitor centre; a friend had told her it was “perfect for kids”, with guided, paved pathways, a cafe, and even a gift shop. But when my flustered, monolingual father got lost on the Puerto Rican freeway, he panicked, as my mother flipped through the map trying to direct him. “What’s a salida?!” he cried, sailing past the “exit” signs.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:00 am

‘When she first gave me her paw, my heart melted’: here’s what I’ve learned about taking on a rescue dog

For the first six months after arriving in the UK from Romania, Sophie never strayed from behind Rory Cellan-Jones’s sofa – but with patience and love she slowly emerged back into the world

When a trembling dog was placed in my arms in the early hours of a December Saturday I was not too concerned by her terrified state. After all, I knew about rescue dogs. Cabbage, our lovely collie cross who had died at the beginning of the year, had come from a Dogs Trust rescue centre 15 years earlier, and had also been pretty nervous at first. I was confident that Sophie, a one-year-old of indeterminate breed (but with a lot of German shepherd), brought to us on a van from Romania, would, like Cabbage, quickly settle down in her new home. How wrong I was.

Our new dog seemed frightened of my wife and I, and our house, and desperately searched for the smallest space she could find, eventually settling behind a sofa. The next morning, I was keen to restart the early dog walks which had been a key feature of my exercise regime since I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2019. But Sophie was going nowhere.

Published: April 30, 2025, 12:00 pm

People in the US: share your recent experiences of receiving Social Security benefits

We would like to hear from US Social Security benefit recipients and agency workers about their experiences under the Trump administration

The Social Security Administration (SSA) plans to cut 7000 jobs, about 12% of its workforce as part of the Department of Government Efficiency review of the federal work force.

Nearly 69 million Americans on average per month are set to receive Social Security benefits in 2025, consisting of retired workers, disabled workers, survivors and dependents. These benefits represent 31 percent of income for people over the age of 65 in the US.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:25 pm

Parents: what are the best books to read aloud to children?

We would like to hear what you think is the best book to read aloud with young children and why

New research has shown a steep decline in the number of parents reading aloud to young children, with 41% of 0- to four-year-olds now being read to frequently, down from 64% in 2012.

The survey, conducted by book data company Nielsen and publisher HarperCollins, also found that less than half of parents find it fun to read aloud to their children.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:58 am

The fly-tipped sofa: how an abandoned couch changed a small village – in pictures

Why did an unloved two-seater become both an art project and a tourist attraction? Photographer Alex Elton-Wall explains all

A sofa was dumped in the middle of Lydbrook, a village in Gloucestershire, and every time Alex Elton-Wall walked past it he found himself smiling. While he’s clear he doesn’t condone fly-tipping, the cream-coloured two-seater looked “really funny,” he says, perched on a patch of waste ground, next to a road, the woods as a scenic backdrop. As an amateur photographer, he spotted an opportunity.

At the start of April, a few weeks after the sofa first appeared, the 49-year-old office worker posted a message in the village Facebook group asking for people to come and pose on the sofa so he could take their portraits. That day, he says, “I ended up taking pictures from 10 in the morning until eight o’clock that night. People were just having so much fun, and it was so bizarre what we were doing.”

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:25 pm

Inside Taganrog: beatings, electrocution and starvation at prison where Ukrainians were tortured

Russia is holding an estimated 16,000 civilians in arbitrary detention at 180 separate facilities. Taganrog was the most notorious.

Some weeks after being detained as she attempted to leave a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine in January 2023, Yelyzaveta Shylyk was given a polygraph test. As her interrogators attached the lie detector’s wires to her, they calmly issued a threat about what would happen if she failed the test: “You’ll go to a place where you’ll regret being born.”

That place, she would later find out, had a name: Sizo number 2, a pre-trial detention centre in the southern Russian city of Taganrog.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:00 am

Before and after: images by Sudan’s accidental war photographer show loss of everyday life

Mosab Abushama’s work is an attempt to spotlight what the destruction has meant for ordinary people

When Mosab Abushama returned to his house in eastern Omdurman a year into the war in Sudan it was unrecognisable. Like the other buildings in his neighbourhood, the three-storey property he had shared with his extended family was pitted with bullet holes. Some of the walls had been blown through and the charred shells of burnt-out vehicles were scattered along the street. There was debris everywhere, and no water or electricity.

“When we came back, everything had been stolen. There was nothing left – no furniture, no belongings, not even our clothes,” he says.

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:49 am

Cocaine, corruption and bribes: the German port under siege by Europe’s criminal drug gangs

After seizure in Hamburg of 16 tonnes of high-purity powder, state attorney is accused of being on payroll of gang he was supposed to be prosecuting

In Hamburg’s spring sunshine, 200,000-tonne cargo ships almost a quarter of a mile long, piled high with the same weight in shipping containers, are docked quayside along the Elbe River. Cranes slowly offload the metal boxes packed with everything from raw materials to food and electronics, and, in some, cocaine.

Between 2018 and 2023 cocaine seizures rose by 750%, marking out Germany as another major European hub in the ever-expanding global trade. But the influx is not just ramping up addiction, it is also fuelling corruption in a country perceived as being one of the least corrupt in the world.

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:00 am

The El Salvador mega-prison at the dark heart of Trump immigration crackdown

Cecot, a secretive 40,000-capacity facility built to house alleged gang members, ‘is meant for permanent exile, permanent punishment’

“Don’t stop,” said the local in the backseat. “Just slow down and you’ll see it.”

Soldiers watched the vehicle as it passed the turn-off and the checkpoint. Then a white building flashed through a gap in the trees, a few kilometres from the road.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:00 am

Trump officials increasingly recruit local police for immigration enforcement despite ‘red flags’

Agreements with agencies in 38 states resurrect aggressive tactics shelved more than a decade ago amid alarm about civil rights abuses

The first few months of 2025 have been tumultuous for Sheriff Bill Rogers, the chief law officer of Columbus county in North Carolina.

In February, his department settled a lawsuit accusing Columbus jail deputies of neglecting the care of a county inmate who was almost beaten to death in 2023. Then in March, a group of Roger’s deputies were accused of assault during the arrest of a 57-year-old who claimed he was punched in the back of the head and left bloody after allegedly running a stop sign.

Those episodes follow years of scandal.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:00 am

Donald Trump wants to crack down on ‘sanctuary cities’. What does that mean?

On Monday, the US president took another swing at cities that protect immigrants and limit Ice cooperation

Since his first day in office, Donald Trump has zeroed in on so-called “sanctuary cities”, pledging to withhold federal funding and ensure they are eliminated as part of his administration’s massive crackdown on immigrants.

On Monday, he took yet another swing, directing his administration to publish a list of state and local jurisdictions that “obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws”. The order also calls on the government to identify federal funds that can be terminated as a consequence for cities that identify as sanctuary jurisdictions.

Published: April 30, 2025, 12:31 pm

The experts: neurologists on 17 simple ways to look after your brain

Sleep well, swap butter for olive oil, learn a musical instrument – or embrace some other ‘magnificent obsession’. Here is what doctors do themselves to delay the onset of cognitive decline

As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:00 am

‘I don’t date at all now’: one woman’s journey into the darkest corners of the manosphere

When Jess Davies was 15, a boy leaked pictures she’d shared with him. At 18, she was a glamour model. A few years later, another man violated her trust. Then she fought back

Jess Davies was a 15-year-old schoolgirl, sitting in an art lesson, absorbed in her fairytale project about a princess and a postman, when her Nokia phone began to vibrate with messages. “Nice pictures,” read one. “I didn’t think you were that type of girl,” said another.

To this day, she remembers the racing thoughts, the instant nausea, the hairs prickling up on her legs, the sweaty palms. She had shared a photograph of herself in her underwear with a boy she trusted and, very soon, it had been sent around the school and across her small home town, Aberystwyth, Wales. She became a local celebrity for all the wrong reasons. Younger kids would approach her laughing and ask for a hug. Members of the men’s football team saw it – and one showed someone who knew Davies’s nan, so that’s how her family found out.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:00 am

Denied, detained, deported: the faces of Trump’s immigration crackdown

The administration has torn up the rule book as it seeks to implement a hardline agenda to expel people from the US

Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.

Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:01 pm

Spring weather and Trump protests: Wednesday’s photos of the day

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Published: April 30, 2025, 1:35 pm