Rex Heuermann, accused Gilgo Beach serial killer, expected to plead guilty today

Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann is due in a Long Island courtroom Wednesday, where he is expected to plead guilty to murdering seven women.

Oil prices plunge 15% to below $100, stocks surge and dollar slumps after Trump announces US-Iran ceasefire – business live

Oil prices drop most since pandemic while gas prices slide 20%; government bond yields fall sharply as rate hike expectations recede

Despite the sharp drop in crude oil prices today, Mohit Kumar, chief European economist at Jefferies, does not expect oil prices to go back to pre-war levels anytime soon, and warned it could take months for energy supply to return to normal levels.

Here are his thoughts.

We would view the Iran 10 point proposal positively and do think that it could become the basis for further negotiations. The important background is that Trump really wants a deal and wants to get out of the war and hence would be open for negotiations.

The two contentious elements from the Iran proposal are 1) no mention of nuclear deal 2) the proposal to charge a fee which would be unacceptable to the US or its allies.

Potential alternative routes for the strait of Hormuz would be in focus. For Iran, sadly we fear that apart from reconstruction, it would continue its efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon as a credible deterrent.

Hence we do not see oil going back to pre-war levels anytime soon. We would also need to price a geopolitical risk premium across asset classes which would produce winners and losers.

Middle East crisis live: Israel launches massive strikes on Lebanon as Hegseth claims Iran ‘begged’ for a ceasefire

Lebanese PM says Israel is killing unarmed civilians, as US defence secretary claims Iran will hand over enriched uranium or US will ‘take it out’

• Israel hits Lebanon with massive strikes amid ceasefire uncertainty

• Hegseth claims Iran ‘begged’ for ceasefire

A genocidal threat, and then the US president, Donald Trump, blinked – without any apparently meaningful concessions from Iran. As in so much concerning the second Trump administration, the two week ceasefire “deal” that will see the strait of Hormuz reopened – if it can be described as such – is maddeningly vague and short on detail, apparently kicking the can on key issues down the road.

Iran’s nuclear issue, Trump said, would be solved “perfectly.” “It was a big day for world peace”, Trump posted on Truth Social. “Iran can start reconstruction” he added. “Big money” could be made. Yada. Yada. Yada.

Starmer arrives in Saudi Arabia for talks with Gulf leaders on resolution to Iran war - UK politics live

PM will meet leaders in the region to discuss diplomatic efforts to support the ceasefire agreed between the US and Iran

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is proposing the extension of the four-day working week, as a response to AI taking over some of the work done by humans. But for the Conservative party the four-day working week, at least in the public sector, is viewed as a menace. Officially, that’s a value-for-money position, but it also overlaps with their opposition to civil servants working from home, which has some of the traits of a culture war obsession.

Today the Conservatives have announced that, if they were in government, they would ban councils from letting staff work a four-day working week on full pay. Explaining why, the Tories say in a news release:

The four-day working week, as introduced by Liberal Democrat-run South Cambridgeshire district council, has left residents with more council tax for less public service. Bin collectors and social housing officials receive 100 per cent of their pay for around 80 per cent of their originally contracted hours.

The Labour government have failed to act. As communities secretary, Angela Rayner scrapped [Whitehall opposition to the South Cambridgeshire policy]. Labour are refusing to legislate against a four-day week, giving councils an effective green light to get away with charging more for less work. Consequentially, Labour-run Cambridge City Council has become the second council to sign up to the four-day week.

Those areas which saw a statistically significant improvement include: the percentage of calls answered by the contact centre; the average number of days taken to update housing benefit and council tax support claims; the average number of weeks for householder planning applications to be decided; the percentage of planning applications (both large and small) decided within target or agreed timescales; the percentage of council house repairs complete within 24 hours; [and] the percentage of complaints responded to on time.

If performance variations caused by Covid are discounted, every single service monitored either got better or stayed the same.

Liberal judge Chris Taylor wins election to Wisconsin supreme court – US politics live

Democratic-backed candidate’s win to Wisconsin supreme court gives liberals 5-2 edge on court

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Pete Hegseth repeated Donald Trump’s social media comments that Iran will cease uranium enrichment – a condition that Tehran has previously refused to budge on.

“Any material they should not have, will be removed right now,” Hegseth said. “The president has been clear from the beginning, there will be no Iranian nuclear weapons.”

Are OnlyFans models the best way to explain the climate crisis?

Actor Megan Prescott has joined with Adam McKay in the hope that showing bite-size web videos of women undressing will persuade us to save the world. Will it work?

The world, as we know, is in trouble. The last three years have been the hottest ever recorded. Global emissions are still at record highs. The planet is now consistently flirting with the 1.5C limit it promised not to cross. Increasingly, it feels as if we need a genuine miracle to stop us from sleepwalking into catastrophe. Could that miracle be an environmental warning from a woman in her pants?

This is the stated desire of Headline Newds, a new series of web videos by actor Megan Prescott, film-maker Bree Essrig and “climate narrative strategist” Jessica Riches. Released through the not-for-profit Yellow Dot Studios – belonging to Adam McKay, creator of movies The Big Short and Don’t Look Up – Headline Newds is made up of bite-size videos in which the climate emergency is broken down and raunchily explained to us by a variety of OnlyFans models.

Headline Newds is available via Youtube, Instagram and OnlyFans.

​Twin corruption trials cast a shadow over Spain’s main parties ahead of key elections

With former ministers and party heavyweights ​b​eing dragged into court, the country is once again confronting the unresolved legacy of political ​g​raft and ​shady backroom deals

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Easter will not have been a particularly celebratory time for Spain’s two biggest political parties. In a quirk of judicial fate, both the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) and the conservative People’s party (PP) are bracing themselves after two high-profile trials involving former senior figures from each party began in Madrid this week.

Though vastly different, both cases have the potential to seriously dent each party’s claims of having zero-tolerance for corruption as voters in Andalucía, Spain’s most populous autonomous community, prepare for next month’s regional election. That will be followed by a general election next year.

Markets shift back towards potential Fed rate cut this year with Iran ceasefire in place

Odds for a reduction jumped Wednesday morning, hitting about 43%, according to the CME Group.

EU to ‘convey concerns’ to US about Vance’s Hungary intervention – Europe live

US vice-president has praised Orbán and criticised EU and UK energy policies in speech at private school in Budapest

Oh, you can see where this is going to go.

In his second question, the moderator tries to bait JD Vance into criticising Ukraine, as the chair asks about what he says are “Ukrainian intelligence services attempting to influence” elections in the US or Hungary.

“I’ve also been told that the vice-president of the United States coming and saying that Viktor Orbán is doing a good job and is a helpful statesman to the cause of peace, that’s foreign influence.

But what’s not foreign influence is when the European Union threatens billions of dollars withheld from Hungary because you guys protect your borders; that’s apparently not foreign influence.

“We would never do that because we respect the Hungarian people enough to respect their sovereignty. The fact that so many foreign actors, whether they’re transnational organisations like the bureaucrats in Brussels or whether it’s foreign governments, are literally threatening the Hungarian people vote this way or we’re going to exact our revenge on you – that should make you very angry.”

Delta CEO says airline will 'meaningfully' cut growth plans, sees $300 million boost from its refinery

Delta is scaling back its flight plans as fuel costs grow to reduce its expenses.

Airing of Bafta racial slur breached BBC standards, corporation finds

Executive complaints unit finding relates to broadcast of N-word during awards ceremony

The BBC breached its editorial standards when it broadcast a “highly offensive” racial slur during the Baftas, which was “unintentional”, a review has found, and made a “serious mistake” in not removing it immediately from iPlayer.

The broadcast containing the N-word remained on BBC iPlayer overnight before coverage was taken down. It had been said by John Davidson, the Tourette syndrome campaigner, who shouted it as Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan, the stars of the film Sinners, were on stage presenting an award.

Alarm in health service over Palantir staff being given NHS email accounts

Exclusive: Sources believe AI tech company’s engineers have been granted access to directory of up to 1.5m staff

• UK politics live – latest updates

Health service staff have expressed alarm that engineers working for controversial tech company Palantir have been given NHS email accounts.

Employees using NHS.net email accounts have access to a directory with the contact details of up 1.5 million staff. Sources believe Palantir staff were granted the same access.

Here's how much caffeine the U.S. military consumed during the Iran war

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. military has consumed nearly 1 million gallons of coffee and an unspecified amount of nicotine.

Americans expect to work much longer than they would like. Here's why.

Many employees expect to retire later as mounting expenses strain budgets, while others hunker down at work as part of the "great stay."

Scientists develop AI tool to spot heart failure risk five years before it strikes

Oxford team’s technology picked up danger signs with 86% accuracy in study of 72,000 patients in England

Oxford scientists have developed a simple AI tool that can predict the risk of heart failure five years before it develops.

More than 60 million people worldwide have the condition in which the heart cannot pump blood around the body as well as it should. Spotting cases before they develop into heart failure would be a big step forward, experts say. Doctors could prepare better for and manage the condition at an earlier stage or even prevent it entirely.

What does the dark side of the moon sound like? Nasa’s sonifications are helping us imagine

As Artemis II returns from the dark side of the moon, Nasa’s transformations of electromagnetic energy into sound remind us that everything is vibrating – even while the astronauts are listening to Chappell Roan

Jaw-dropping dark-siding exploration aside, it’s the mundane details of the Artemis II mission that connect us with the four astronauts slingshotting their way around the moon and back. The zero-gravity hair, the playing with the microphone when they’re on a call with the President, and the wake-up music that Nasa pipes into their module every orbital morning: a cookie-cutter selection of feelgood choons from Chappell Roan to CeeLo Green.

There are no reports, so far, of Artemis hearing anything like the strange whistling and “outer-space type things” that the dark-siders of the Apollo 10 mission in 1969 documented during the hour that they were out of communication with Earth. Those three men heard an unsettling and unforeseen sound around the other side of the moon that resisted explanation – and inspired conspiracy theories, since the transcript wasn’t made public until 1973. The sound is now known to have been the call-sign of our nearest alien neighbours, the Vum-Jums of planet A4863F.

Dow soars more than 1,300 points, oil tumbles on Iran ceasefire

Investors cheered the announcement of a two-week ceasefire, which President Trump said is contingent on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s finally happened: I’m now worried about AI. And consulting ChatGPT did nothing to allay my fears | Emma Brockes

A highly alarming New Yorker feature on the machinations of Sam Altman drove me to test his AI for myself. The results were, well, highly alarming

A corollary of the truism “don’t sweat the small stuff” is, by implication, “do sweat the big stuff”, but it can be hard to pick which big stuff to sweat. For example: since the 1970s, as the world has worried about inflation and rolling geopolitics, the big stuff we should have been sweating more urgently was the climate crisis. Last year, the top trending search on Google in the US was “Charlie Kirk”, with several terms relating to the threat posed by Donald Trump also popular, when the focus should arguably have been the threat posed by AI.

Or, per my own Googling this week after reading Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz’s highly alarming lengthy piece in the New Yorker about the rise of artificial general intelligence: “Will I be a member of the permanent underclass and how can I make that not happen?”

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Brawl breaks out in Braves-Angels game with ex-teammates ejected for fighting

• Atlanta’s Reynaldo López, LA’s Jorge Soler throw punches

• Benches and bullpens clear in fifth inning

• The two had played together on the 2024 Braves

Atlanta Braves pitcher Reynaldo López and Los Angeles Angels designated hitter Jorge Soler were ejected after getting into a brawl Tuesday night.

Soler homered off López in the first inning, then was hit by a 96-mph fastball from the right-hander his next time up. In the fifth, Soler charged the mound after López threw a high-and-inside wild pitch that tipped off catcher Jonah Heim’s mitt.

Oil prices plunge and stocks soar after U.S. and Iran agree on ceasefire

Investors around the world breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of peace — and an easing of the global energy crisis.

Carnival celebrations at a Hungarian retirement home: János Bődey’s best photograph

‘I asked them the secret to a happy life. “Good genes,” replied Magdolna, who was 87. “Avoid borrowing money,” added Irén, 86’

When I saw these two elderly ladies dressed as bride and groom in a retirement home in Páty, near Budapest, my first thought was to wonder why they had chosen those particular costumes. I took their picture in the home’s lounge and afterwards we had a long conversation. I asked them about their lives, what they believed was the secret to a long life, and how to preserve a love of life in old age. They both emphasised a long and happy marriage. Magdolna, 87, on the left, lived with her husband for more than 50 years, and 86-year-old Irén for 62, until their spouses died.

In Hungary, the average pension is the equivalent of about £500 a month. It takes the talents of a magician for a pensioner to stretch that beyond basic needs and make any room for leisure, culture or travel. The health of Hungarian pensioners also falls short of what is typical in the west. And it’s really hard to get into a retirement home in Hungary. You have to wait for years for a good place.

Roughly half of New Yorkers approve of Zohran Mamdani as he approaches 100 days as mayor – poll

Marist poll shows that 48% of city residents approve of Mamdani’s performance while 55% view him favorably

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As New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, approaches his first 100 days in office, a new survey shows that roughly half of city residents approve of his performance so far.

The poll, conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion and released on Wednesday morning, found that 48% of residents say they approve of the job Mamdani, 34, is doing, while 30% disapprove and 23% remain unsure.

Homebuyer mortgage demand drops annually for the first time in over a year, as war fuels uncertainty

Weakening consumer sentiment in the overall economy is weighing heavily on mortgage demand from both homeowners and homebuyers.

Grand National 2026: horse-by-horse guide to all the runners

The 2024 winner I Am Maximus heads to Aintree on Saturday as favourite to win again. Here is a look through the chances of all 34 contenders

One of two previous winners at the top of the weights, and he backed up his 2024 success by pressing Nick Rockett all the way to the Elbow 12 months ago before finally crying enough. He had shown precious few hints of his National-winning form in two runs prior to that exceptional performance under top weight and has more to recommend him this year, having finished second in a Grade One in December and then fifth in the Irish Gold Cup. In strict handicapping terms, he should probably find one or two too good, but Aintree aptitude is a serious weapon and another podium place is no forlorn hope.

Verdict: each-way hope on Aintree form but no top-weight winner since 70s

Medvedev smashes racket then bins it during 6-0, 6-0 loss in Monte Carlo

• World No 10 suffers heavy loss to Matteo Berrettini

• Russian committed 27 unforced errors

Daniil Medvedev smashed his racket several times and placed the remnants in a courtside dustbin during his humbling 6-0, 6-0 loss to the Italian wildcard Matteo Berrettini at the Monte Carlo Masters on Wednesday. It was the world No 10’s first tour-level defeat without winning a game and he capitulated in 49 minutes, failing to earn a game point on his own serve and committing 27 unforced errors.

It was the first time Berrettini had won a tour-level match 6-0 6-0 and his first win over a top-10 opponent since defeating Alexander Zverev in Monte Carlo last season. “It was one of the best performances of my life,” he said. “I think I missed three shots in the entire match and it is not easy against a tricky player like Daniil. The gameplan was perfect and my weapons were working.”

Pete Hegseth says "we'll be hanging around" after Iran ceasefire announcement

Wednesday's briefing came after President Trump announced late Tuesday that he had agreed to "suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks."

Daughter of missing American in Bahamas says she's questioning how her mom fell off boat

A Michigan woman remains missing after she was last seen on a small boat with her husband on Saturday in the Bahamas. Lynette Hooker's husband says she fell overboard and was swept out to sea. Hooker's daughter is now raising questions about her stepfather's story. Cristian Benavides reports.

Londoners may regret protest votes for Reform or Greens in local elections, says Sadiq Khan

Exclusive: Capital’s mayor warns people not to use next month’s elections as a referendum on Labour’s progress

• UK politics live – latest updates

Sadiq Khan has said he can understand why some former Labour voters are “flirting” with other parties in the run-up to May’s elections, but said that they may regret seeing a Green or Reform-led council in their areas.

Speaking to the Guardian at a youth centre, where he was announcing new funding for facilities for young people, the London mayor also cautioned Labour MPs against considering a challenge to Keir Starmer, saying such “navel gazing” would be punished by the electorate.

Chile’s far-right government rips up plan for memorial at Pinochet torture site

New administration reverses expropriation of property founded by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer, leaving victims in limbo

With its Germanic crosses and colourful toy-town facades, the village square of the tiny Chilean settlement of Villa Baviera gives little indication of the horrors of its past.

Until 1991, this cattle town of a few hundred people was a compound known as Colonia Dignidad. Its leader, Paul Schäfer, a former Nazi and weapons smuggler, bought a swathe of land in the valley in 1961, eventually holding as many as 300 people in a fenced enclave with minimal contact with the outside world. He sexually abused and even tortured the children in the camp.

Israel hits Lebanon with massive wave of airstrikes

Israeli military announces ‘largest coordinated strike’ against Hezbollah since war began on 2 March

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel carried out its largest attack on Lebanon since its war with Hezbollah began, carrying out a wave of airstrikes without warning on Beirut and across the country on more than 100 targets.

Warplanes levelled several buildings in the centre of the capital city without warning, filling the skies with smoke and the sounds of sirens as ambulances headed to impact sites.

Sánchez to Trump: Spain won’t ‘applaud those who set the world on fire just because they then show up with a bucket’

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has emerged as one of the European Union's leading critics of U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran.

What has conflict in Iran revealed about UK’s geopolitical standing and military readiness?

Whatever happens next as US and Iran agree to a temporary ceasefire, some important lessons have been learned

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The world breathed a sigh of relief as the US and Iran agreed at the 11th hour to a two-week ceasefire after a diplomatic intervention from Iran. Hours after Donald Trump had threatened widespread bombing of Iran’s power plants and bridges, warning that “a whole civilisation will die tonight”, both countries agreed to a temporary ceasefire and Iran agreed to a temporary reopening of the strait of Hormuz.

For the British government, whatever happens next, the conflict has revealed some important – and sometimes painful – lessons about the UK’s geopolitical standing and military readiness.

Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect expected to change plea to guilty

Rex Heuermann, the suspect in the notorious Gilgo Beach killings, is expected to change his plea to guilty on Wednesday. He previously pleaded not guilty to murdering seven women over 17 years. Tom Hanson reports.

The Writer and the Traitor by Robert Verkaik review – the strange case of Graham Greene and Kim Philby

Sex, booze and subterfuge in the story of an extraordinary friendship at the heart of MI6

At the Café Royal in Regent Street in 1944 three intelligence officers bent over their plates while Europe held its breath. Outside, London braced for D-day. Inside, Graham Greene announced that he was resigning from MI6.

Kim Philby, his chief in Section V, MI6’s counterespionage arm, blinked. Educated at Westminster, converted to communism at Cambridge and by then securely installed as Moscow’s man at the heart of the British establishment, he had helped orchestrate the deception on which Operation Overlord depended, persuading Hitler that the allies would land at Calais rather than Normandy. Greene had played his part in tending the illusion. Yet here he was, strolling off-stage before the curtain rose.

What the U.S.-Iran ceasefire could mean for a peace deal and what to expect next

CBS News national security contributor Samantha Vinograd breaks down the temporary ceasefire in Iran, what it could mean for a future peace deal in the conflict and what needs to happen next.

Trump announces 2-week ceasefire with Iran

President Trump on Tuesday announced a two-week ceasefire in the Iran war with Iran temporarily agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as part of the deal. Nancy Cordes reports.

‘This is my world’: Cornish director Mark Jenkin brings new film to home town

Exclusive: Director says authenticity is key as time travel movie Rose of Nevada gets first UK screening in fishing town of Newlyn

The audience that turned out for the first preview showing of Mark Jenkin’s ghostly time travel film Rose of Nevada in the Cornish fishing town of Newlyn could hardly have been more supportive and attentive. But Jenkin admitted showing his work to a home-town crowd and taking part in a Q&A in front of people he knew so well made him a little uneasy.

“This is the greatest town in the world,” said Jenkin, who is from Newlyn. “I see Cornwall as being at the centre of the world. But the Cornish screenings are the ones I get most nervous about. I can’t control what people think of the film but I do have a certain amount of control over the authenticity of my work. If a local audience tells me a film doesn’t feel authentic, that would hurt. The Cornish audience is the most important.”

Vance calls Iran ceasefire a "fragile truce," says some inside Iran are "lying"

Vice President JD Vance made the remarks in Hungary, where he is supporting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán Tuesday ahead of Orbán's reelection bid.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins sent Easter email to staff touting 'Jesus' and 'God'

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday compared the rescue of a downed U.S. airman in Iran to the story of Jesus's resurrection.

Maritime and port workers: how is the Middle East conflict affecting you?

With shipping routes disrupted and tensions rising across the region we want to hear from maritime workers, sailors and port workers and others working at sea who are affected

The conflict in the Middle East continues to disrupt shipping across the region, including in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes.

The US and Iran have agreed to a provisional two-week ceasefire, which includes a temporary reopening of the strait. But maritime traffic through the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman remains affected, with vessels still facing delays, diversions and heightened security risks as the situation evolves.

‘Masquerading as a university’: inside the brazen rightwing plan to conquer American schools

As teachers eagerly adopt its free lesson plans and the White House boosts its videos, PragerU is intent on one goal: attracting young people to conservatism

In the fall of 2013, a silver-haired conservative radio host named Dennis Prager flew to Texas to woo a pair of rightwing billionaires. A few years earlier, Prager had co-founded a digital education non-profit, Prager University, which created snappy five-minute videos that promoted capitalism and “Judeo-Christian values”. The billionaires, fracking tycoons Dan and Farris Wilks, were big fans.

Inside Farris Wilks’ home theater, the brothers and more than 20 members of their family sat transfixed as Prager outlined a plan to transform PragerU from a niche internet oddity into a mainstream media empire. He just needed a lot more cash.

‘We can’t increase prices any more’: UK hospitality firms hit by cost triple blow

Struggling pubs reel from rising business rates, wages and energy bills, with customers at limit of what they will pay

Nick Evans is staring in vain at columns of numbers, trying to make them add up to a profit. He is a co-owner of the Old Crown Coaching Inn in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, a pub and hotel whose rich history is etched into its crooked wooden beams and cosy snugs.

Oliver Cromwell stayed here in 1645. A room believed to have been used by the notoriously severe “hanging judge” Lord Jeffreys to condemn rebels now stages happier encounters: it is the honeymoon suite.

U.S., Iran agree to 2-week ceasefire. And, Trump-backed Clay Fuller wins House race

The U.S. reached a last-minute ceasefire with Iran just before Trump's deadline for the country to meet his demands. And, Trump-backed Clay Fuller wins the U.S. House race in Georgia.

How games capture the awe and terror of cosmic isolation

As real astronauts vanish behind the moon, games have long tried to evoke the fragile quiet of drifting through space

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Last week’s launch of the Artemis II space mission was a stunning spectacle, the 17-storey-high rockets erupting into cacophonous life before wrenching the craft through the Earth’s atmosphere. But the images that have come since hold just as much impact: the tiny Orion craft and its four-person crew drifting silently through space, further and further from home.

In his autobiography, the Apollo astronaut Michael Collins described this feeling perfectly. Left in the command module as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface, he wrote: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.”

Tehran rallies and a Dutch digital detox: photos of the day – Wednesday

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

What’s behind the worrying rise in anti-LGBTQ+ laws across Africa?

Rooted in colonialism, legislation backed by governments eager for popularity is obstructing real progress for queer minorities

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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. It’s Morgan here, covering for Nesrine this week. There has been a recent rise in anti-LGBTQ legislation across a number of African countries that already have strict sexuality laws.

I spoke with LGBTQ+ people and activists fighting against the narrative that their identities are an imported “western” creation to better understand the impact of these new laws, why they are happening, and how foreign lobbying groups are pushing for more draconian laws.

Britons warned about Russian hackers targeting internet routers for espionage

Expert stresses importance of staying alert for unusual activity, as hackers could ‘take you to fake sites’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Russian hackers are exploiting commonly sold internet routers to harvest information for espionage purposes, the UK’s cybersecurity agency has said.

The hack could allow attackers to obtain users’ credentials, redirect them to fake sites, and potentially access other devices on their home network such as phones and PCs, said Alan Woodward, a professor at the University of Surrey.

Rebecca Hendin on Artemis II and Donald Trump – cartoon

Continue reading...

Bible stories might be made required reading for Texas public school students

A proposal to make Bible stories required reading in Texas public schools is putting the state at the center of another contentious battle over the role of religion in classrooms.

A new generation of politicians of colour is emerging in France. The backlash speaks volumes

Local elections have led to a surge of racism in a country that still struggles to see itself as anything other than white

Saint-Denis is just over 9km from the centre of Paris but is in the poorest department in all of metropolitan France, a region marked by unemployment, low incomes and social disadvantage. But Saint Denis’s town hall was the backdrop to memorably joyous celebrations on the evening of 15 March. A delirious crowd carried the new mayor shoulder high, chanting his name over and over. Bally Bagayoko who led a leftwing list uniting the radical left party, La France Insoumise (LFI), and the Communist party pulled off a remarkable feat, decisively winning the second biggest city in the Paris (Île-de-France) region in the first of two rounds. He was the only French mayoral candidate representing a population of more than 150,000 not to require a runoff contest.

For the first time, Saint-Denis, which is home to 130 nationalities, has a mayor who reflects its community – a child of the city and the son of Malian immigrants.

Rokhaya Diallo is a writer, journalist, film director, activist and Guardian Europe columnist.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

‘Ketamine Queen’ who pleaded guilty to selling Matthew Perry fatal dose to be sentenced

Prosecutors have argued Jasveen Sangha should receive a 15-year sentence for her role in the actor’s death

Jasveen Sangha, who pleaded guilty last year to selling a fatal dose of ketamine to actor Matthew Perry, is expected to be sentenced on Wednesday.

Known as the “Ketamine Queen”, Sangha is the fifth defendant to take a plea deal and admit guilt in the case. Federal prosecutors say she should receive a 15-year sentence for her role in Perry’s death and that of another individual, citing the “far-reaching scope of defendant’s illegality [and] her callous response to the deaths she helped cause”.

He was sentenced to death despite not pulling the trigger. An unlikely coalition saved his life

In an act transcending politics, tens of thousands successfully banded together to make the case against executing Charles ‘Sonny’ Burton in Alabama

With all of his appeals exhausted, Charles “Sonny” Burton had already chosen the last meal he would have before being put to death by nitrogen gas at Alabama’s Holman correctional facility: barbecue chicken, banana cake with ice cream, and sweet tea – all things he hadn’t been able to enjoy in years with his diabetes.

The writing seemed to be on the wall. His fate was in the hands of Kay Ivey, Alabama’s governor and a staunch supporter of capital punishment who has presided over more than 25 executions – more than any other Alabama governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Her office had been repeating the same line for weeks: “Governor Ivey has no plans to grant clemency.” But on the morning of 10 March, just two days before Sonny was to be put to death, Ivey commuted his sentence to life without parole.

Say no to pesticides, mix up your lawn – and six more ways to help bees to thrive

Like so many flying insects, these essential pollinators are suffering because of habitat loss and the overuse of chemicals. Here’s how to give them a healthier, happier home

We know about honeybees and bumblebees, but most of the UK’s bees are neither: they’re solitary bees, loners who come in a dizzying range of sizes, colours and varieties – more than 240 species. Have you heard, for instance, of the hairy-footed flower bee? “They’re one of the first bees to emerge each year,” says Laura Larkin, the chief conservation officer at Buglife. “The males have got fantastic little fluffy bits on their feet.”

How about leaf-cutter bees, which chomp “a perfectly circular hole” out of leaves to build their nests? Or bright-orange tawny mining bees, wool-carder bees, ivy bees? “There are so many of them and I’m still learning,” says Kate Bradbury, a wildlife gardener, writer, bee lover and the author of One Garden Against the World. “They’re just great – there’s a solitary bee for every occasion.”

The tiny Queensland town of Cooladdi, population two, has a pub and a post office. It could be yours for $400,000

The new owner will serve as the Australian town’s postie, publican, cook and shopkeeper

In the heart of outback Queensland, more than 800km west of Brisbane, sits a town with its own postcode and exactly two residents. Now, the entire population of Cooladdi is packing up – and the town is officially on the market.

For $400,000, buyers will get the Foxtrap Roadhouse, a four-bedroom home, and the keys to the town. It’s a far cry from the $935,000 median price for a cramped Sydney unit.

‘We wanted to put a mark on the world’: the sweaty, singular indie music scene of early-00s Brighton

From Bat for Lashes to Brakes and the Pipettes, misfits on the south coast made fearless music amid cheap rents and salty air. Could this ever happen again?

It’s any given night in 2002. We’re at the Free Butt in Brighton, a small pub with a stage and an anything-goes spirit that serves as an extended living room and rite-of-passage workplace for aspiring musicians. Natasha Khan – not yet Bat for Lashes, still a Brighton University art student – is dancing on top of the bar while Yeah Yeah Yeahs are tearing through their first UK tour. Guy McKnight, the lead singer of the brutally underrated Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, has just finished pulling pints, his day job when he’s not the city’s greatest frontman. Steve Ansell of Cat on Form, soon to form Blood Red Shoes, is the in-house sound engineer. Joe Mount from Metronomy is watching this week’s buzziest local support band. The atmosphere is charged with the feeling that anyone in the room might be about to become someone known beyond our city’s limits. Often, they did.

In the early 2000s, music scenes tended to have stories that bands and media could rally around: a shared silhouette, a signature sound, a shaped mythology. New York City gave us the Strokes and Interpol with their tight black denim and wiry riffs; Libertines-era London had its own sticky churn of style, press and parties. Yet Brighton was rarely described as a scene, despite being home to Nick Cave and Paul McCartney and hothousing a surge of remarkable young talent that’s still thriving more than 20 years later. In this seaside enclave, rock bands sounded and looked so unlike each other, they never needed to jostle for a single narrow lane.

‘His last gift’: father dies saving two of his children from drowning off Florida coast

Maine family was on vacation when Ryan Jennings died saving his son and daughter from rip current off Juno Beach

A Maine family is grieving after a father died recently saving his son and one of his daughters from drowning off the coast of Florida, where they were on vacation.

The selfless nature of Ryan Jennings’ actions has gained widespread attention online – and inspired his widow, Emily, to write a heartbreaking social media post which read: “His last gift to me was returning my children alive.”

‘The water is no longer our friend’: how dredging is pushing Lagos Lagoon towards ecosystem collapse – photo essay

Taking sand from the Nigerian city’s lagoon to supply a building boom harms more than fish – it affects the entire food chain, erodes coastlines and is depriving fishing communities of their livelihoods

Before dawn, when the noise of Lagos’s danfo buses fills the air and generators rumble to life, the city’s lagoon is already stirring. Not from fish splashing or canoes gliding, but from the long suction pipes of the dredging machines, pulling up the lagoon bed and spitting out wet sand that will be used in the construction of high-rise blocks, housing estates and flyovers.

Sand dredging is regulated by the Lagos state government and the waterways authority but in a city of more than 20 million people, where sharp sand has never been in higher demand, not all dredging is being done by the book.

Dredging leaves its mark on the landscape along the shores of the Lagos Lagoon in Epe

Charli xcx’s Brat movie marks the moment the mockumentary died | Zach Schonfeld

Spoof documentaries once skewered subjects by dialling comic ingenuity up to 11, but the genre has stagnated – replaced by showbiz puff pieces and right-wing provocations. Has their time passed?

In the satirical mockumentary The Moment, Charli xcx fears (and eventually embraces) the death of Brat summer, the cultural sensation that made her sixth album a phenomenon. But the film – which stars the singer as a fictionalised version of herself – strains to land jokes out of Charli’s identity crisis and lacks the giddily intoxicating rush of that 2024 album. Watching The Moment shortly after its lukewarm reception at Sundance, I sensed something dying, but it wasn’t Brat – it was the mockumentary style itself.

How did mockumentaries grow so … tiresome? Once a novel narrative format brilliantly deployed by directors such as Christopher Guest and the late Rob Reiner, the mockumentary now feels nearly as stale as the formulaic films it aims to lampoon. It’s a sad state of affairs. For much of the last half-century, faux-documentary film-making flourished under the perverse minds of countless comedy greats, from Monty Python’s Eric Idle, who lampooned Beatlemania with 1978’s wackily irreverent mock-doc The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, to Albert Brooks, who made his directorial debut with 1979’s proto-reality television spoof Real Life.

Ceasefire wins Trump instant gratification but Iran can enter talks with stronger hand

US is in weaker position than before war as Tehran has shown capacity to inflict pain on Trump administration

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The announcement of a two-week ceasefire has allowed Donald Trump to hail the reopening of the Hormuz strait as a victorious dawn of a new golden age, but it is Iran that enters peace talks with the stronger hand.

The Tehran regime goes to the negotiations planned for Friday in Pakistan bloodied but intact. It still holds a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) – the original crux of the conflict with the US, Israel and allies – and it now claims at least part-control of the strait, having demonstrated its power to close the narrow waterway and hold the world to ransom.

Countries around the world are considering teen social media bans – why experts warn it’s a ‘lazy’ fix

"I think the argument for a ban is an admission of failure that we cannot regulate companies, so we can only restrict children," one expert told CNBC.

‘We’d all be in the destruction zone!’ Can anything stop today’s nuclear free-for-all?

The Lib Dems’ Sue Miller has spent most of her life trying to reduce the risk of nuclear war. And it’s not going well. Why are so few people talking about non-proliferation, let alone disarmament?

Almost the mildest remark that Sue Miller makes about nuclear weapons is also the scariest: “The last people to take a big interest in any of this were Gordon Brown and Margaret Beckett.” Those people seem such a long way away – Brown, of course, still campaigns valiantly against poverty, and Beckett is a working baroness, but as voices against the global buildup of nuclear arms, theirs are so historical as to be almost nostalgic.

Yet the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ symbolic representation of how near the world is to destroying itself, has never been closer to midnight than it is now: 85 seconds (and this was prior to the current war in Iran). Russia has been making thinly veiled threats of “tactical” use since its invasion of Ukraine, while its drone incursions into Nato nations have “heightened European threat perceptions” (as the bulletin puts it), without those perceptions driving anyone’s thoughts towards nuclear de-escalation, let alone disarmament. Meanwhile, non-nuclear European nations are talking about developing “nuclear latency” – building the ability to develop nuclear capacity at speed.

Sali Hughes on beauty: delicious designer scents without the exorbitant price tag

At last … creative perfumes at half the cost of most niche fragrances, with a wide range of beautifully balanced options

The business of modern perfumery can stink. While I accept that the cost of everything is now troubling, large sections of the niche fragrance sector seemingly pluck their prices from the sky. It’s not unusual for a bottle costing £300-odd to launch without any accompanying explanation as to why. An unknown name, a needlessly quirky bottle, an egregious price tag – all serve to underline the assertion that this is a “niche” fragrance for people who take their scents seriously, who should be too in the know to question its calibre.

And so when I see a brand doing things honestly, authentically and with great care, I must give due credit. Essential Parfums is new to John Lewis (and available directly from the brand online) and its aim is to democratise creative perfumery. What this means in practice is an open brief to perfumers, who include such big hitters as Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo; their total creative freedom; sustainable and mostly natural ingredient sourcing, development and manufacturing processes (using biotech, simple refillable bottles and cardboard packaging containing no glue or plastic); and a fair price – around £86 for a whopping 100ml, which, millilitre for millilitre, is less than half the cost of a pretty average designer fragrance enjoying little of the same treatment, and about a quarter of some of the nonsense I’m pitched regularly.

‘Coming out in the 90s? You might as well say ‘I love cock!’’ Nathan Lane on gay life, Broadway and defying stereotypes

The brassy actor’s performance in Death of a Salesman is the crown jewel in a life spent on stage. He says it could be his last Broadway role

“It’s, like, 10 minutes. I pee, I have a cup of tea, I put the jacket back on and I go out and fight my way to the death.”

The way Nathan Lane describes spending the intermission of Death of a Salesman – the nearly three-hour play in which his character flails and ultimately fails through an epic depression – reflects the actor’s own spirit: practical, lightly fatalistic, artfully hyperbolic and very, very funny. Today he is in fine form, nestled into a corner table in New York’s classic Upper West Side haunt Cafe Luxembourg. When I ask him if Salesman marks his first time performing at the Winter Garden Theatre, he responds without missing a beat: “Yes, except when I took over in Mame.”

Your sarcasm is showing — and its history is surprisingly violent

Some people use sarcasm jokingly. But funnily enough, we tend not to find it witty when we're on the receiving end.

Abortion clinics are closing nationwide. Could urgent care help fill the gap?

When the only clinic that offered abortions in Michigan's rural Upper Peninsula closed, an urgent care decided to step in to fill the gap. Now, others are considering similar moves as brick-and-mortar clinics close in blue states.

Morning news brief

U.S. and Iran agree to two week ceasefire, how Iranians are responding to the ceasefire, the effects of the war in Iran give investors around the world whiplash.

Family pay tribute to British teenager killed in motorcycle crash in Vietnam

Orla Wates, 19, who died after incident on popular Ha Giang loop, described as ‘beautiful, independent and very funny’

The family of a British teenager have paid tribute to their daughter who died after a motorcycle crash on a popular route in Vietnam.

The incident occurred on the Ha Giang loop in the country’s north, and Orla Wates, 19, died at the Viet Duc university hospital in Hanoi, according to Viet Nam News.

My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum review – as fierce and strange as anything you’ll read this year

With echoes of Balzac and Proust, this tale of obsessive love evokes the dangers and delights of forbidden desire

Wayne Koestenbaum has built himself a slow-burn reputation as one of America’s sharpest queer iconoclasts, but the title of his latest novel suggests Netflix-ready realism. Will My Lover, the Rabbi be a sober yet uplifting account of the conflict between religious orthodoxy and forbidden desire? Not a bit of it. The book’s central and anchoring fact – the overwhelming desire of a man who works as an antique furniture restorer for a man who works in a synagogue – is accepted as a given by every single character. The writing, meanwhile, treats all realist convention with a kind of exalted scorn, conjuring the dangers and delights of obsession in prose that is itself unashamedly obsessive – and wonderfully frank when it gets down to the physical details. The result is as fierce and strange as anything you’re going to read this year.

The fierceness begins immediately. All the book’s 188 chapters are short, but the first one comes in at only four lines. Putting both punctuation and vocabulary to tactically unexpected use, it plunges the reader straight into a world of carnality, confusion and bizarrely specific detail. Like all but a handful of the chapters, it also includes the title of the book itself. And as the book proceeds, this reiteration of the title begins to toll like a bell through the architecture of its prose, becoming almost a mantra. Far from being style-for-style’s sake, this insistent and anxious formality is at the heart of the book’s uncanny life; a quite brilliant matching of style to subject.

‘I want to make myself obsolete’: the MP fighting for Greenland’s self-governance

Qarsoq Høegh-Dam aims to use his seat in Danish parliament to shift power from Copenhagen to Nuuk

It’s not the standard motto for a newly elected parliamentarian, but Qarsoq Høegh-Dam is adamant: if he does his job properly, there will soon be no need for it. “I want to make myself as obsolete as possible,” he said.

Last month, Høegh-Dam, a Greenlandic politician, became the first member of the pro-independence Naleraq to be elected to the Danish parliament. The new MP is clear that if all goes to plan, the largely autonomous Arctic territory will be the sole responsibility of the parliament in Nuuk, the island’s capital. And there will no longer be any need for two seats representing Greenland in Copenhagen, its former colonial ruler.

Stand By Me review – Rob Reiner’s nostalgic look at friendship and the loss of innocence still grips tight

The 40th anniversary re-release of the coming-of-age drama about four boys on a quest to see a dead body is a masterclass in directing, storytelling and acting

Rob Reiner’s film, adapted by screenwriters Raynold Gideon and Bruce Evans from Stephen King’s novella The Body, transformed King’s story into a glorious, mainstream American classic like something by Mark Twain. The film was released in 1986; since 1993 its added poignancy had resided in the fact that one of its actors, River Phoenix, died of a drug overdose. But now there is a terrible new layer of sadness superimposed on the film’s themes of innocence and death: the murder in 2025 of Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner.

One hot summer day in the late 50s, remembered in flashback with narrative voiceover, four boys go on what amounts to a secret, secular pilgrimage in search of the corpse of a missing kid their own age rumoured to lie next to some distant railway tracks, having been hit by a train. The resulting adventure – bizarre, mysterious and moving – is about lost youth and the recovery of innocence through writing and memory. It is also one of those vanishingly rare films where child actors have to carry almost the entire drama.

The U.S. and Iran agree to a 2-week ceasefire but some attacks continue

Iran and the U.S. and Israel said they would suspend strikes but countries in the region continued to report attacks and Israel said it would not stop its assault in Lebanon.

‘A full-on embrace’: how the EU’s largest news publisher fell in love with the US

After recent purchase of UK’s Daily Telegraph, Axel Springer and its ‘guru-like’ CEO, Mathias Döpfner, have sights on transatlantic expansion

In Mathias Döpfner’s 2023 book Dealing with Dictators, the chief executive of the German media company Axel Springer SE proposed a fix for western democracy: states that respect the rule of law should stick together and prioritise trading with each other. Better that, he declared, than indulging the illusion that doing business will tame “self-styled strongman leaders”.

So it came as quite the surprise when last month Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was given a prominent opinion article in Welt am Sonntag, less than four weeks before the riskiest elections of the rightwing populist’s career. “It caused a lot of strong irritation,” said a former editor at the Springer-owned broadsheet.

Which team has gone furthest in Europe while being relegated in the same season? | The Knowledge

Plus: teams who went out of Europe without losing a game, and rare competitive meetings

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“What’s the furthest a team has gone in Europe while being relegated in the same season?” wonders Matt Reilly.

This question was probably asked in reference to Tottenham, who were still in the Champions League at the time, but it’s still relevant to some of this year’s quarter-finalists. Nottingham Forest are three points above the relegation places in the Premier League; Fiorentina only have a five-point cushion in Serie A.

Real Zaragoza 2001-02, first round; 2007-08, first round

Alaves 2002-03, second round

Celta Vigo 2006-07, last 16

Real Zaragoza 2007-08, first round

Real Betis 2013-14, last 16

Espanyol 2019-20, last 32

Blackburn Rovers 1998-99, Uefa Cup first round

Bradford City 2000-01, Intertoto semi-final

Ipswich Town 2001-02, Uefa Cup third round

Ruda Hvezda Brno 1960-61, Cup Winners’ Cup

Dynamo Zilina 1961-62, Cup Winners’ Cup

Espanyol 1961-62. Inter-Cities Fairs Cup

Napoli 1962-63, Cup Winners’ Cup

Bayern Munich 1962-63, Inter-Cities Fairs Cup

1. FC Magdeburg 1965-66, Cup Winners’ Cup

Lyn 1968-69, Cup Winners’ Cup

Beroe Stara Zagora 1973-74, Cup Winners’ Cup

Real Betis 1977-78, Cup Winners’ Cup

Bologna 1990-91, Uefa Cup

First round Artmedia Bratislavia (2-2 away, 3-1 home)

Group stage Sparta Prague (2-0 away), Zulte Waregem (6-2 home), Ajax (2-0 away), Austria Wien (1-0 home)

Last 32 Livorno (2-1 away, 2-0 home)

Last 16 Maccabi Haifa (0-0 away, 4-0 home)

Quarter-final Benfica (3-2 home, 0-0 away)

Semi-final Werder Bremen (3-0 home, 2-1 away)

Final Sevilla 2-2 (1-3 pens)

Delta hikes bag check fee by up to $50 as jet fuel prices soar

Delta is the third major U.S. carrier to hike its bag fees, as airlines face surging jet fuel costs and other headwinds from the Iran war.

The Black Death by Thomas Asbridge review – a medieval horror story

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos

In Venice, authorities tried to enforce social distancing by closing all the bars, and banning the sale of wine by merchant boats plying the canals. In Gloucester, the powers that be attempted to lock down the city by banning anyone travelling to and from Bristol, 40 miles south. But fights broke out among thirsty Italians, and Gloucester’s quarantine was broken – whether it was by people simply going on a trip to check their eyesight has, alas, gone unrecorded. In London, there was a dramatic rise in the sale of personal protective equipment, in the form of gloves.

The story of the Black Death, as historian Thomas Asbridge shows in this magisterial survey, contains many such echoes of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it also shows just how relatively lucky we were a few years ago. The plague was far more lethal, and in the areas it spread between 1346 and 1353 it killed half the population. About 100m died: it was, Asbridge remarks, “the most lethal natural disaster in human history”. If a pathogen with a similar case fatality rate were to erupt worldwide today, billions might die.

The Cure review – eat-the-rich horror fable with a sinister life-extension twist

A fabulously wealthy teen girl with lupus makes a new friend who pulls her out of plush isolation and toward some dark discoveries

It’s been a long, slow slog but after years of market research and audience studies, as well as the success of films like The Substance, those who bankroll horror movies have finally accepted an incontrovertible fact: that women consume the genre not just because they’re along for the ride, but as a primary audience who want to see their own fears and anxieties at the dead centre. And we’re here for it, as the kids say, although this inevitably means there will be a fair amount of shonky, slapdash gynocentric horror on offer, often with generous side portions of eat-the-rich resentment.

This teen-focused feature film, like recent hot-mess TV series The Beauty, is a case in point. Directed by Nancy Leopardi and written by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer (who wrote Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane), The Cure is a fable of poor little rich girl loneliness that has lots of smart ideas, but cuts its narrative corners a little too tightly to take it up to the next level.

The Testaments review – brace yourself for a bloody sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

Don’t be fooled by the lighter tone of Margaret Atwood’s follow-on. June’s daughter is now grown up in Gilead, where daily horrors are still in full swing – and Aunt Lydia is back

I had to give up on the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale quite early on – the mass mock execution scene did for me – because it was too relentlessly bleak, too full of dread, too awful, too true. Margaret Atwood’s future-dystopia tale, published in 1985, drew on nothing that had not already occurred in totalitarian and tyrannical regimes around the world. Translated to the screen, the visceral terror of it all was almost too much from the very beginning.

Now, the sequel Atwood published in 2019, The Testaments, has come for us, created by The Handmaid’s Tale’s showrunner, Bruce Miller. Brace yourselves.

Universal Music stock rises after Pershing Square's $64 billion takeover proposal

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square said Universal Music's stock price has "languished" due to a range of issues that can be addressed with the merger.

A moment that changed me: I saw a big cat on Dartmoor – and no one believed me

Larger than any dog, let alone a house cat, the beast swaggered through the Dartmoor mist. My schoolfriends and I were entranced – until the adults who had slept through everything told us we were lying

I was 11, with a handful of friends on a school trip to Dartmoor. We’d set up our tents near the edge of a camp, which was mostly empty.

The first morning, our tent woke before the teachers. We stole out to find another group of boys already on the dewy grass, standing hands in pockets, together in nature. The sun was just coming up. The last of the night-time mist was peeling away.

Trump announces "double sided ceasefire" with Iran, says Strait of Hormuz must reopen

President Trump said​ he has agreed to a "double sided CEASEFIRE" with Iran, less than two hours before his deadline for Iran to either cut a deal with the U.S. or face massive strikes on its power plants.

Palestinian girl who lost arm in Israeli missile attack on Gaza arrives in UK

Mariam Sabbah, 10, to get specialist care in Britain instead of US, after Trump halted visitor visas for Palestinians

A Palestinian child who lost her arm during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza arrived in the UK for specialist treatment on Tuesday, amid ongoing pressure on the British government to step up efforts to help evacuate critically ill and injured children from the territory.

Mariam Sabbah arrived at Heathrow airport with her mother, Fatma Salman, and two brothers. They were met by a small crowd bearing gifts, balloons and bouquets.

Modern heroes and a ravaged Earth: reboot of 1950s space comic Dan Dare has liftoff

Beloved characters reinvented in graphic novel coming later this year – just as interest rockets in all things space

Sufferin’ satellites! The quintessential British space hero Dan Dare is back, 76 years after he first appeared in iconic comic magazine the Eagle.

With all eyes on Nasa’s Artemis II moon mission, and with the big-screen adaptation of Andy Weir’s science fiction novel Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, going stratospheric at the box office, our love affair with space has been reignited.

The Boys season five review – it’s the final outing for this gory splatterfest

As the extraordinary superhero satire comes to an end, a mighty showdown has terrifying parallels with modern America. What a horrifying pleasure it has been to watch

The Boys is back in town, for its fifth and final season. There’s too much to recap in full for those who have not yet had the pleasure of the satirical superhero show created by Eric Kripke from the comic books written by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Or who have not yet been horrified by the gory splatterfest (courtesy of all kinds of body fluids) of the preceding 32 episodes, which have seen orifices and appendages put to extraordinary use, and some of which have rightly entered what we will very carefully spell as the annals of TV history.

So, let’s just say that the new season finds us set for a showdown between an increasingly power-mad (“Have you seen the memes about me? Posting them should be a crime”) – or, as the voices of angels start speaking to him, possibly just mad – Homelander (Antony Starr) and the Butcher crew. The former is now overlord of the US, with the president and, apparently, Sage (Susan Heyward) at his beck and call. But the gang has just succeeded in screening – in front of a Maga … I mean, Homelander-loving … rally – the long-buried footage of him leaving the passengers on Flight 37 (as he did all the way back in season one when he was just a little baby villain) to die.

‘People are so judgmental’: the growing cohort of over-55s facing homelessness

Richard Hewett, who was forced to sleep in his car when his relationship broke down, is one of many in the UK hit by rising costs and a lack of social housing

When Richard Hewett’s relationship broke down, he was forced to leave his partner’s council house – but found his disability benefits didn’t stretch far enough to get him his own flat in his Essex home town. He resorted to the next best option: sleeping in his car.

It wasn’t what he had expected, aged 59. At 6ft 2in, he squeezed into a Ford Focus and struggled to sleep. When he broke his ankle, he couldn’t look after it properly, contracted sepsis and had his leg amputated.

Jet fuel supply concerns grow as war with Iran drags on, airlines cut flights

Fuel prices have nearly doubled in the U.S. since the United States and Israel attacked Iran.

Gulf countries scramble to intercept missiles hours into U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement

Many Middle Eastern countries continued to report incoming ballistic missiles and drones from Iran on Wednesday, within hours after the U.S. and Iran announced a two-week ceasefire.

U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson released after kidnapping in Iraq

American journalist Shelly Kittleson​ is being released on the condition that she leave Iraq immediately, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq says.

North Korea’s ‘most beloved daughter’ – podcast

Journalist Jean H Lee on Kim Ju-ae, the daughter of Kim Jong-un, and the future of North Korea

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has attended many photo ops with his daughter Kim Ju-ae in recent months, adding to speculation she will be designated as the future supreme leader.

Jean H Lee, journalist and former Pyongyang bureau chief for the Associated Press, tells Helen Pidd what we know about the teenager.

Telehealth abortion will remain available for now, after a federal judge's ruling

The abortion pill mifepristone must undergo a safety review by the FDA, the judge said. Louisiana's case seeking to ban its use through telemedicine will proceed after that review.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball review – ingenious musical revival goes full queer ball

Broadhurst Theatre, New York

After a disastrous 2019 movie, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s easily ridiculed 80s smash hit has now been transformed into something thrillingly new

One criticism lobbied at the 2019 film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats was that it tried to dress the show up in too much extra stuff. Garish CGI and inelegant sets distracted from what is meant to be the core mission of Cats: to watch talented performers sing and dance as cats. The trick is to keep the show – which is mostly just a song cycle cataloging various felines as described in whimsical poems by TS Eliot – as streamlined as possible, highlighting powerful voices a’blare and lithe bodies in motion. Realism and narrative should not be of chief concern.

But what if there was another way to present Cats that still honored the main principles of the piece while adding further context, even further meaning? That is the feat pulled off by directors Zhailon Livingston and Bill Rauch with Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a bright and winsome reimagining of Webber’s 45-year-old musical. First premiering in a downtown space, the Jellicle Ball has now transferred to Broadway, inviting a wider audience into its celebration of queer ball culture.

Republican Clay Fuller to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in House

Republican Clay Fuller faced Democrat Shawn Harris in a Georgia runoff election after Marjorie Taylor Greene stepped down from her House seat.

Daughter of missing American in the Bahamas seeks answers as search continues

Lynette Hooker's daughter, Karli Aylesworth, described her mother as an experienced swimmer who has been sailing for over 10 years.

Trump has backed down from his threat to wipe out Iran's civilization

President Trump has backed down from his threat to wipe out Iran's civilization and bomb its power plants by Tuesday night. Online, he said he agreed to suspend the bombing of Iran for two weeks.

Trump faces calls for removal over threats to wipe out 'whole civilization' in Iran

President Donald Trump's threats to ramp up the U.S. offensive in Iran prompted calls for his impeachment or removal.

Daughter of missing American in Bahamas says the story isn't adding up

Authorities in the Bahamas kept up their search for a Michigan mom who's been missing for three days. Her husband says she fell overboard, but Cristian Benavides spoke with the woman's daughter, who says she doesn't believe that.

Stunning photos from Artemis II show Earth, moon, eclipse from space

The astronauts aboard Artemis II are the first humans to see some parts of the far side of the moon with the naked eye.

Artemis II's "Earthset" captures the beauty of perspective

During a time of great uncertainty and change, the photos from Artemis II's mission can give Americans some perspective. Tony Dokoupil takes a look.

Novo Nordisk's explosive Wegovy pill launch draws a new wave of patients into GLP-1 weight loss treatment

CNBC spoke with five U.S. patients who recently started the pill following its launch and have varying initial experiences with the drug.

Elon Musk seeks ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as part of lawsuit

Elon Musk is seeking to have OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman removed from their roles as officers in the company as part of a lawsuit.

Iran updates: Pakistan seeks 2-week pause after Trump warns 'whole civilization will die' if no deal by deadline

The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz since the war began has led to a historic oil supply shock, which quickly sent global energy prices soaring.