Trump says he does not know if El Salvador would return Kilmar Ábrego García and hasn’t asked – live

Trump said he hasn’t spoken to Bukele about mistakenly deported man – despite supreme court order requiring administration to facilitate return

• Kristi Noem says Ábrego García would be deported immediately if sent back to US
• Trump pressures journalist to accept doctored photo as real

Donald Trump promptly claimed this morning that the contraction in the US economy had nothing to do with his tariff wars, repeated his habitual claim that this is all somehow his predecessor Joe Biden’s fault, and predicted the economy would boom when tariffs kicked in. He wrote on his Truth Social platform:

This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden “Overhang.” This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!

Published: April 30, 2025, 7:15 pm

Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi freed after federal judge orders release

Palestinian, a lawful permanent US resident, was detained and ordered deported despite not being charged with crime

• US politics live – latest updates

Mohsen Mahdawi has walked out of immigration detention after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release. The Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University had been detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.

“The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” said Geoffrey Crawford, a US district judge, at a hearing on Wednesday, according to ABC News. “Mr Mahdawi, I will order you released.”

Published: April 30, 2025, 5:14 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

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

US says it is ‘ready to sign’ minerals deal if Ukraine scraps ‘last-minute changes’ – Europe live

US treasury secretary says he expects Ukraine to ‘reconsider’ changes it made to agreement as deputy PM Yulia Svyrydenko will reportedly be in Washington to sign agreement today

In Spain, harrowing stories have continued to emerge after much of the Iberian Peninsula was plunged into an hours-long blackout earlier this week.

Jonathan Bernal, a window washer in Madrid, has detailed how he and a co-worker were cleaning the outside windows of a skyscraper when the power went out. For four hours they ended up stranded on hanging scaffolding, some 240 metres above the city.

Published: April 30, 2025, 7:15 pm

Barcelona v Inter: Champions League semi-final, first leg – live

• Champions League updates from the 8pm BST kick-off
• Read today’s Football Daily | And you can email Scott

Inter get the ball rolling. They’re playing in white this evening. And they’re immediately on the attack …

Here come the teams … and Lamine Yamal, who felt a twinge upon slipping while taking a shot in the warm-up, is still in the Barcelona line-up. He doesn’t look particularly concerned as the Champions League anthem is blasted out, nor when he slaps hands with the Inter players. No Ronaldo-at-the-Stade-de-France-style drama to see here. We’ll be off in a minute, once everyone pays their respects to Pope Francis.

Published: April 30, 2025, 7:38 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

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

• Get our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcast

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

Harvard anti-Muslim and antisemitism taskforces 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

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

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

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

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

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

‘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

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

‘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

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

‘Radical joy’: Cambodians gather to celebrate Khmer New Year on the 50th Killing Fields anniversary

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

Shoes on at home or shoes off? If you care about your health, it’s a no-brainer | Polly Hudson

One study reported that 96% of shoes carry coliform bacteria, commonly found in faecal matter. So why is it so uncool to ask visitors to take them off?

It is a truth almost universally unacknowledged in the UK that wearing shoes in the home is gross. More than gross, actually – there’s scientific evidence it could have serious health consequences and even, if you want to come over all dramatic about it, be life-threatening. And yet I can count on the fingers of no hands the people I know who ask me to remove my shoes when I visit.

Until now this has been an uncomplicatedly divisive subject: you were either a Shoes Off household, or you weren’t. But a secret underground movement is gathering pace – the Shoes On households who wish they were Shoes Off, but are worried about the uptight implications of rolling out that policy. Can you be a Shoes Off household while avoiding Shoes Off household energy?

Polly Hudson is a freelance writer

Published: April 30, 2025, 2:52 pm

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

‘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

‘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

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

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

The Guardian view on Argentina’s bailout: when Trump’s ally calls, the IMF obeys – at a cost | Editorial

The deal with Javier Milei shows how America-first dealmaking is bending global finance to serve authoritarian and extractive ends

It is famed for hard-nosed bargaining with crisis-hit countries, so why did the International Monetary Fund throw a $20bn lifeline to the serial defaulter Argentina – despite alarm on its board? The answer is that the country’s rightwing leader, Javier Milei, is Donald Trump’s “favourite president”. Amid unease over handing a third of the IMF’s global lending to its largest debtor, the deal passed with $12bn upfront. The IMF has long been intellectually compromised – promoting stability while enforcing neoliberal orthodoxy. Under Mr Trump, it is ethically compromised too.

Mr Milei’s bailout marks the second Trump-era rescue for Argentina. In 2018, the fund handed Buenos Aires a record $57bn – but cut it off when its then president, Mauricio Macri, a Trump family friend, was not re-elected. That deal now looks nakedly political. With the US holding an effective board veto, the fund’s independence was always fragile. It’s now completely subordinated. A US takeover of the IMF threatens deeper instability than any Argentinian default.

Published: April 30, 2025, 5:44 pm

I live in the US and have a green card. If I leave the country, will I be allowed back in? | Arwa Mahdawi

Even a summer holiday isn’t straightforward any more - and all across the US, millions of people are having to make calculations like mine

Let me start with a message to my wife. SORRY!!! I apologise in advance for everything you are about to read.

My more sensible half, you see, is a US citizen, who keeps telling me (a green card holder) that I should stop making jokes about getting sent to a detention centre or deported.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Published: April 30, 2025, 10:00 am

Russia has offered a short ceasefire in Ukraine – but here’s what Putin really wants | Andriy Yermak

As part of the price for peace, Moscow would like sanctions on Russian airlines lifted. That’s no surprise: they’re vital to the Kremlin’s war machine

• Andriy Yermak is head of the Ukrainian presidential office

On Monday, the Kremlin offered a three-day pause in hostilities against Ukraine in May, to coincide with Moscow’s celebrations of the end of the second world war. In a context where Ukraine is calling for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, and the US a permanent one, Russia wants concessions before a lasting pause or permanent peace can even be discussed. Central to the Kremlin’s demands is the removal of sanctions – especially those restricting its aviation sector.

We must be cautious not to make concessions prematurely, under the guise of quick progress. The short pause offered would not make a meaningful difference to the war, and accepting it would enable a regime that has repeatedly shown intent to prolong its war of aggression and undermine this chance for a just, fair and lasting peace.

Andriy Yermak is head of the Ukrainian presidential office

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:00 am

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

Nobody 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

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

Jannik Sinner considered quitting tennis during fallout from doping case

• World No 1 is set for Rome return after three-month ban
• ‘For a moment, I thought about giving up everything’

Jannik Sinner had admitted he considered giving up on tennis earlier this year in the aftermath of his anti-doping case as he struggled to handle the criticism and doubts from his colleagues on the ATP tour.

“When I arrived in Australia in January I was uncomfortable, also because it seemed to me that the other players looked at me differently. For a moment, I even thought about giving up everything,” Sinner told the Italian TV station RA.

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:22 pm

Luka Dončić pays entire cost to restore vandalized Kobe Bryant mural

• Lakers star makes $5,000 donation to GoFundMe page
• Kobe and Gigi Bryant died in January 2020

Luka Dončić has stepped up to pay the entire expected cost of restoring a vandalized mural depicting Kobe and Gigi Bryant in downtown Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ new guard made a $5,000 donation on Tuesday to cover the entire goal of a GoFundMe page created by artist Louie Palsino. He wants to restore the mural, titled Mambas Forever, at 14th and Main Streets.

Published: April 29, 2025, 9:54 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

UN climate talks will be ‘uphill battle’ amid Trump rollbacks, says Cop30 chair

Tariffs and environmental cuts will make meeting challenging, says summit president André Corrêa do Lago

Crucial United Nations climate talks this year will be a “slightly uphill battle” due to economic turmoil and Donald Trump’s removal of the US from the effort to tackle global heating, the chair of the upcoming summit has admitted.

Governments from around the world will gather in Belem, Brazil, in November for the Cop30 meeting, where they will be expected to announce new plans to deal with the climate crisis and slash greenhouse gas emissions. Very few countries have done so yet, however, and the world remains well off track to remain within agreed temperature limits designed to avert the worst consequences of climate breakdown.

Published: April 29, 2025, 6:59 pm

Trump dismisses contributors to key US report on climate crisis preparedness

The assessment, mandated by Congress, is used by federal and local governments to prep for climate disasters

Donald Trump’s administration has dismissed all contributors to the US government’s flagship study on how to prepare for climate change impacts, prompting strong criticism from experts over a “senseless” move.

The climate assessment is used by federal and local governments to understand how to prepare for climate crisis impacts including from extreme heat, hurricanes, flooding and drought.

Published: April 29, 2025, 4:06 pm

Trump 100 days: after tepid start, protest movements – and Democrats – find footing

Although the resistance at the start of Trump’s second term was wobbly, ‘ordinary people’ are pushing the movement forward

Those opposed to Donald Trump’s agenda started his second term on a worse footing than the beginning of his first term.

This time, the social media platform owners who previously tried to tamp down on false claims stood with him at his inauguration. Some major media outlets attempted to stay in Trump’s good graces. Democrats were wrecked by a popular vote loss, believing they lacked the backing to lead an opposition. The courts were stacked in Trump’s favor and had ruled the president had absolute immunity from criminal punishment for “official acts”.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:00 am

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

Meta to report quarterly earnings amid tariff uncertainty and AI investment

Wall Street is projecting the company will post $41.36bn in revenue on $5.21 in earnings per share

Meta is set to report its first quarter earnings on Wednesday after the bell, and investors will be looking for news on whether the company met its quarterly revenue goals of somewhere between $39.5bn and $41.8bn.

Wall Street is projecting the company will post $41.36bn in revenue on $5.21 in earnings per share.

Published: April 30, 2025, 6:00 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

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

Man charged with attempted rape of person who died on New York subway

Felix Rojas, 44, arraigned after video showed him performing sexual acts on unresponsive passenger

Authorities in New York have charged a man with attempted rape after surveillance video taken showed him performing sexual acts on an unresponsive passenger who was later determined to have died.

Police have been looking for suspects in the case for weeks, after footage captured two different people robbing the corpse of a man on a train traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan, one of whom allegedly sexually violated him.

Published: April 30, 2025, 1:05 am

Trump border pick accused of ‘cover-up’ over death of man beaten by US agents

Former top official calls for Rodney Scott to be blocked from CBP role over handling of investigation into Anastasio Hernández Rojas’s death

Rodney Scott, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has been accused by a former top official of orchestrating a “cover-up” over the death of a man detained while trying to enter the country from Mexico, according to a letter obtained by the Guardian.

Scott is a former US border patrol chief who has supported the president’s vow to build a wall along the border with Mexico and criticized Joe Biden’s handling of immigration policy. As commissioner of CBP, Scott would lead one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, which encompasses the border patrol and staffs ports of entry across the United States.

Published: April 30, 2025, 12:41 am

Runaway kangaroo on the loose named Sheila shuts down Alabama interstate

Marsupial spotted hopping along side of interstate before police surrounded area and owner used dart to tranquilize it

A runaway kangaroo named Sheila shut down a stretch of interstate in Alabama on Tuesday before state troopers and the animal’s owner wrangled the wayward marsupial.

The Alabama law enforcement agency said the kangaroo was spotted on Tuesday hopping along the side of Interstate 85 in Macon county, which is between Montgomery and Auburn.

Published: April 29, 2025, 10:25 pm

Trump warns ‘nothing will stop me’ at rally to celebrate 100 days in office

President holds campaign-style event in Michigan, attacks Democrats and ‘communist’ judges, and repeats 2020 election lie

Donald Trump has celebrated his 100th day in office with a campaign-style rally in Michigan and an attack on “communist radical-left judges” for trying to curb his power, warning: “Nothing will stop me.”

The president also served up the chilling spectacle of a video of Venezuelan immigrants sent from the US to a notorious prison in El Salvador, accompanied by Hollywood-style music and roars of approval from the crowd.

Published: April 30, 2025, 4:13 pm

More than 50,000 Los Angeles county workers strike disrupting key services

Two-day walkout begins after contract negotiations fail amid ‘unprecedented stresses’ on county budget

More than 50,000 Los Angeles county workers were on strike again on Tuesday, closing libraries and disrupting administrative operations across the nation’s most populous county.

The two-day walkout that began on Monday followed failed negotiations with the county for a new contract after the last one expired in March, according to the Service Employees International Union Local 721.

Published: April 29, 2025, 5:16 pm

Scientists use live human brain tissue to speed up hunt for dementia cure

Exclusive: British team exposed live cells to toxic proteins to gather rare insight into how dementia develops

Scientists have used living human brain tissue to mimic the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, in a breakthrough that will accelerate the hunt for a cure.

In a world first, a British team successfully exposed healthy brain tissue from living NHS patients to a toxic form of a protein linked to Alzheimer’s – taken from patients who died from the disease – to show how it damages connections between brain cells in real time.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:00 am

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 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

The king has reflected on his experience with cancer, saying has 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

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

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

Man ‘decapitated and dismembered’ west London couple, court hears

Yostin Andres Mosquera is on trial for murder of Albert Alfonso, 62, and Paul Longworth, 71

A man “decapitated and dismembered” a couple, froze parts of their remains and brought the rest in suitcases to the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, a court has heard.

Yostin Andres Mosquera faces trial for the murders of Albert Alfonso, 62, and Paul Longworth, 71, on 8 July last year in the flat the two shared on Scotts Road in Shepherd’s Bush, west London.

Published: April 30, 2025, 1:48 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

Barclays says bank will bar trans women from using female bathrooms

Boss confirms policy change as businesses move to comply with recent supreme court ruling

The boss of Barclays has said the bank will prohibit trans women from using female bathrooms in its buildings in the wake of the recent supreme court ruling.

The bank’s chief executive, CS Venkatakrishnan, told reporters that the group would not allow trans women to use female bathrooms, to ensure that it complies with the law.

Published: April 30, 2025, 12:56 pm

Finland restricts use of mobile phones during school day

Nordic country is latest to act amid evidence of impact on young people, including attention and self-esteem

Finland has passed legislation to restrict the use of phones and other mobile devices during the school day amid fears over their impact on student wellbeing and learning.

Under the changes, which were approved by the Finnish parliament on Tuesday and will come into effect on 1 August, mobile devices will be heavily restricted during lesson times. Pupils will be allowed to use them only with the teacher’s permission for healthcare or learning purposes.

Published: April 30, 2025, 11:21 am

UK launches Yemen airstrikes, joining US campaign against Houthi rebels

RAF jets target buildings used to make drones, officials say, in Britain’s first involvement since Trump took office

• Middle East crisis – live updates

British fighter jets joined their US counterparts in airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels overnight, the first military action authorised by the Labour government and the first UK participation in an aggressive American bombing campaign against the group.

RAF Typhoons, refuelled by Voyager air tankers, targeted a cluster of buildings 15 miles south of the capital, Sana’a, which the UK said were used by the Houthis to manufacture drones that had targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Published: April 30, 2025, 9:00 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

Arsenal book their spot in the Champions League final – Women’s Football Weekly

Faye Carruthers is joined by Sophie Downey, Ameé Ruszkai and Marva Kreel to discuss Arsenal’s win, Chelsea’s loss and latest action across the WSL and the Championship

On this week’s Guardian Women’s Football Weekly, Faye is joined by Sophie Downey, Ameé Ruszkai and Marva Kreel. The panel discuss Arsenal’s 4-1 second-leg victory over Lyon, the north London side knocking out the eight-time European champions and securing their place in the final. However, it won’t be a full English affair after Chelsea’s dreams were dashed by a rampant Barcelona.

The panel review the latest action across the Women’s Super League and the Championship as the season nears its conclusion and relegation spots are confirmed.

Published: April 29, 2025, 2:15 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

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

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

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

‘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

‘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

Is muscle soreness after a workout good or bad?

When it comes to workouts, how much pain – specifically, how much post-workout soreness – is actually a good thing? The answer: it depends

Humans have long glamorized suffering, hailing it as an essential ingredient of growth. In the ancient Greek tragedy Elektra, Sophocles wrote: “Nothing truly succeeds without pain.” In the 1980s, the actor and aerobics instructor Jane Fonda told people: “No pain, no gain.”

But when it comes to workouts, how much pain – specifically, how much post-workout soreness – is actually a good thing? The answer: it depends.

Published: April 29, 2025, 4:00 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

Share your stories and pictures of kitchen heirlooms

We would like to hear the story behind a cooking utensil passed down through generations of your family

As Bee Wilson writes in her Guardian long read, people can invest objects in their kitchens with strong meanings or emotions:

Many people told me that they could still feel the presence of a lost parent or partner in their china cupboard. I met someone who said that the one object belonging to his mother that he and his siblings all wanted when they cleared her house was a glass salad-dressing maker. His mother never rinsed out the garlic at the bottom, just adding fresh garlic before pouring in the oil and vinegar, meaning that this vessel carried the garlicky essence of decades of shared meals.

Published: April 29, 2025, 12:26 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

‘Bombs and bullets were like rain’: 50 years on from the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam war

Xuan Phuong, a war correspondent who is now 96, recalls her entry into the city after South Vietnam’s surrender

The day that Saigon fell, Xuan Phuong, a war correspondent, could only hear shouting and commotion. It was 30 April 1975, and helicopters were frantically lifting personnel and civilians from the US embassy.

Phuong, who had travelled down from the north, was initially held back by troops who said fighting was still continuing. When she was finally able to reach the centre of the city the following day, 1 May, she found chaos. Clothes and luggage were scattered and discarded along the streets. Buildings were being looted.

Published: April 29, 2025, 5:39 pm

‘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

Trump 100 days: delusions of monarchy coupled with fundamental ineptitude

Trump has wasted no time in trying to remake the US in his image – with results that are sweeping, vengeful and chaotic

• 100 days of Trump

He has blinged it with gold cherubim, gold eagles, gold medallions, gold figurines and gilded rococo mirrors. He has crammed its walls with gold-framed paintings of great men from US history. In 100 days Donald Trump has turned the Oval Office into a gilded cage.

The portraits of Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan and other past presidents gaze down from a past that the 47th seems determined to erase. Trump is seeking to remake the US in his image at frightening speed. The shock and awe of his second term has challenged many Americans’ understanding of who they are.

Published: April 29, 2025, 8:00 am

Carney gave a eulogy for Canada’s old relationship with the US. Now he must redefine it

Prime minister pledges to reduce country’s reliance on US trade – but must navigate competing visions for the future

In his victory speech early on Tuesday, Mark Carney wasted little time calling for a dramatic reshaping of his government’s relationship with the United States, arguing that threats from Donald Trump cast doubt Canada’s ability to function as a “free, sovereign, and ambitious” nation.

The former central banker and investment executive had for months focused his electoral campaign on the threats from Canada’s largest trading partner and longtime political ally.

Published: April 29, 2025, 4:20 pm

‘Numerous signs of torture’: a Ukrainian journalist’s detention and death in Russian prison

The Guardian, working with media partners, has tracked down first-hand accounts to reconstruct Viktoriia Roshchyna’s final months

The exchange took place on a lonely forest road in February. Moving along a line of refrigerated lorries, the teams in hazmat suits went about their grim work: preparing the remains of 757 Ukrainian military casualties handed over by Russia for the journey back to Kyiv.

Clipboards in hand, intermediaries from the Red Cross checked their lists. For each body shrouded in white plastic, the Russians had provided a number, a name, a location, sometimes a cause of death. And then, at the very bottom of the last page, a mystery entry: “NM SPAS 757.” The letters were abbreviations, taken to mean “unidentified man” and “extensive damage to the coronary arteries”.

Published: April 29, 2025, 10:00 am

‘They disappear them’: families of the detained see grim echo of Latin American dictatorships in Trump’s US

Mounting stories of ‘forced disappearances’ of Venezuelans in the US have left their loved ones distraught and disbelieving

Neiyerver Rengel’s captors came one sunny spring morning, lurking outside the apartment he shared with his girlfriend and pouncing as soon as he emerged.

The three government agents announced the young Venezuelan man had “charges to answer” and was being detained.

Published: April 29, 2025, 11:00 am

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

‘A form of meditation’: a photographic haiku to Japan – in pictures

A poetic new exhibition of dreamlike black and white images captures the country’s contemplative beauty, from lonely Torii gates to sprawling temple trees

Published: April 29, 2025, 6:00 am

Lawnmowers, desserts and mix zones: FA Cup semi-final weekend

Playing host to two FA Cup semi-finals less than 24 hours apart, as well as more than 150,000 fans, means a busy time for staff at Wembley. We take a look at the preparations

It takes a great deal of organisation and a lot of staff, working in a variety of roles, to facilitate these two huge fixtures. More than 12,000 worked at Wembley over the two days. Many worked both days and through the night to ensure everything was in place.

Matchday mascots wait to greet the players as they arrive at Wembley for the first of the weekend’s FA Cup semi-finals.

Published: April 29, 2025, 6:01 am