Alabama asks Supreme Court to allow congressional map that dilutes Black vote

A three-judge panel in Birmingham, Alabama, found that the state's proposed map of House districts was 'intentionally discriminatory."

Talarico: Paxton "clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption"

Texas state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in the Lone Star State, concedes some past statements during debates over transgender policy "missed the mark."

French Open 2026: Rybakina out, Swiatek through, and Djokovic in action on day four – live

Updates from the fourth day’s play at Roland Garros
Gauff: no apology from Australian Open for racket clip
Monfils bows out for last time | Mail Daniel

Khachanov saves another break-back point but Trungelliti earns another and they swap loopy, high-bouncing forehands … until the underdog tries a drop. Khachanov hares in to return it but cedes initiative in the process, and though he then has a chance to finish the rally with a forehand, he overhits, and we’re back level at 5-5, Trungelliti saluting the crowd and enjoying his morning.

Bencic, serving at 40-15, comes in to meet a loopy return, and though she doesn’t finish the point, Mcnally dumps her riposte, and that concludes a 6-4 set, taken by the no 11 seed.

Alabama asks Supreme Court to allow congressional map found racially discriminatory

Alabama Republicans asked the Supreme Court to allow the state to use a congressional map that would give the GOP an edge in the midterm elections.

Republicans stare down inflation abyss with midterms fast approaching

Republicans are struggling to find a clear message to battle high prices as President Trump pushes for funding for a White House ballroom.

‘Put an end to this war’: Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev makes new plea to Putin

After winning the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival, the exiled auteur sent a direct message to the Russian president urging him to stop the war

Accoladed director Andrey Zvyagintsev has sent a direct message to Vladimir Putin urging him to start listening to the Russian people and end the “senseless” war in Ukraine, continuing a war of words between Russia’s most revered living film-maker and the Kremlin that started at the Cannes film festival awards ceremony over the weekend.

“Except for the limbs torn off from your fellow citizens in the name of an illusory goal, except for the massacre of young people that the country needs to build life and the future – nothing good is on the horizon if we don’t stop,” the exiled auteur said in a message sent to the Russian president’s press secretary through official channels on Tuesday.

Manchester United agree £37m deal for Éderson as midfeld rebuild starts

• Atalanta star is not in Brazil’s World Cup squad

• United looking for midfield depth after Casemiro exit

Manchester United have agreed to sign the Atalanta midfielder Éderson for a fee which could rise to about £37m as they work to bolster the squad for their return to the Champions League.

Éderson is in line to be the first summer arrival as United aim to provide Michael Carrick with the depth to cope with four competitions. United’s director of football, Jason Wilcox, has closely monitored the Brazilian’s progress in Serie A and is a keen admirer.

Bondi undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer after recent diagnosis

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer, she told CBS News.

UK will get no special treatment from EU, European ministers say

There will be ‘no cherrypicking’ of policies, EU says, after Starmer says he hopes to negotiate single market for goods

• Europe live – latest updates

The UK will get no special treatment in its future economic relationship with the EU, European ministers have said, in a further blow to Keir Starmer’s hopes of negotiating a single market for goods.

The EU’s ministers for Europe, who met on Tuesday, said they wanted deeper cooperation with the UK, but this had to be in line with fundamental principles, including no cherrypicking of EU policies, according to three diplomatic sources, who spoke about the private discussions.

Canada to order military plane fleet from Sweden in shift from US suppliers

Mark Carney announces purchase of Saab’s GlobalEye early warning aircraft to patrol Arctic territory

Canada has announced plans to buy a fleet of early warning planes from Sweden’s Saab rather than a competing option from Boeing, as the country seeks to reduce reliance on US defense firms.

Mark Carney, the prime minister, said on Wednesday that Canada would opt for Saab’s GlobalEye, which is based on Bombardier’s Global 6500 jet. Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail plane – which has suffered from delays and cost overruns – had also been in contention.

Valgren claims stage 17 of Giro d’Italia but Jonas Vingegaard stays in pink

• Dane wins in Andalo after sweltering stage

• Vingegaard has four-minute lead over Gall

Denmark’s Michael Valgren won the 17th stage of the Giro d’Italia but his compatriot Jonas Vingegaard continued his march to a first overall victory on the Grand Tour. Valgren took the honours in Andalo after attacking from a small group with a kilometre remaining of the undulating 202km ride from Cassano d’Adda with riders suffering from the punishing heat and also sudden downpours.

The 34-year-old EF Education-EasyPost rider claimed his second win of the season, with his other also coming in Italy at the Tirreno-Adriatico.

This report will update

WHO chief calls for DRC ceasefire to tackle Ebola outbreak

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns of ‘catastrophic collision of disease and conflict’, as Uganda closes border with DRC

The head of the World Health Organization has called for an immediate ceasefire in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to help tackle the Ebola outbreak there, as Uganda closed its border with its neighbour in an effort to stop the spread.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on social media that the region was in the midst of a “catastrophic collision of disease and conflict with the Ebola outbreak in Ituri province outpacing the response”. Tedros said on Monday that he would travel to the DRC this week.

Forget limoncello! How Lillet became the fruity, floral drink of the summer

In 2008, only 70,000 cases of this classic French aromatised wine were sold. In 2024, that boomed to 1.3m. What accounts for its sudden enormous resurgence?

I’m a sucker for a spritz. So when I saw a sign in the French House pub in London, advertising its spring special, “Lillet spritz, £6.50”, I immediately ordered one. I wasn’t exactly transported from rainy Soho to sunny Saint-Tropez in just one sip, but the honey-scented, golden-hued bubbles did put me in a summery mood.

Since then, I’ve started seeing Lillet more often. In the UK, it is on the spritz menu at Greene King and Young’s pubs for a second summer. It is a staple in French-style restaurants such as Côte Brasserie and Café Rouge, and in Gallic bars such as Boulebar and Baranis, where punters can play petanque while they drink. Venues around the world have started to serve it too, from Wolf food market in Brussels to Bar Bridge in Sydney. Global sales are reported to have grown from 70,000 cases in 2008 to 1.3m in 2024.

Nicola Jennings on Tony Blair’s critique of Labour policy – cartoon

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James Tedesco’s thrilling last-minute try delivers another monument to State of Origin

An epic first game was won by the veteran Blues fullback but the contest was turned by Kalyn Ponga’s sending off with his team 20-6 up

In drizzling rain, fatigued bodies, all flailing and falling – except one. Evergreen James Tedesco rose to bump then clutch then plant the ball, securing New South Wales a famous State of Origin victory.

This was a man said to be too old for rugby league’s grand contest. Who lost his job last year, an axe appearing to sever the connection between the Blues and one of their modern heroes. A man who until this moment had watched the evening unfold from the periphery.

Former Obama advisor reflects on the 'Battle for American Identity'

Ben Rhodes was a speech writer and security advisor for President Obama. His book, All We Say, is a collection of 15 speeches — from Ben Franklin to Trump — about what it means to be American.

South Africa World Cup 2026 team guide

Hugo Broos has transformed Bafana Bafana, creating a side strong on teamwork and held together by Teboho Mokoena

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

Alice Zaslavsky’s parsnip and pear soup with cheesy toast tops – recipe

Parsnip at a clip! The root veg is affordable now, and paired with pears, the retro combo works wonders in Alice Zaslavsky’s midweek soup

• Check out more Alice Zaslavsky recipes

Some vegetables are a Tuesday night no-brainer, while others feel like more of a Sunday schlep. Poor parsnip falls into the latter category, relegated to slow braises and weekend roasts.

Weather-resistant root veg like parsnips, swedes and celeriac are affordable at this time of year, but their fibrousness doesn’t yield as easily or quickly as tender, fair-weather veg.

Greetings from Cape Verde, where the sounds of samba, jazz and morna fill the air

Music is interwoven with the sounds of daily life in this West African island nation, which hosted two international music festivals in April and has been named the African Capital of Culture for 2028.

‘He doesn’t mention inequality once’: Burnham hits back at Blair’s Labour criticism

Burnham joins senior figures such as Torsten Bell saying the former PM’s essay does not address today’s challenges

• UK politics live – latest updates

Tony Blair’s criticism of the Labour party fails to engage with inequality and the “extremes of austerity”, senior party figures have said.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who is widely expected to launch a leadership challenge if he wins next month’s Makerfield byelection, said the essay merited a “considered response” and he would set one out on Thursday.

Extreme heat in Europe ‘a brutal reminder’ of climate crisis, UN chief says

Simon Stiell said burning fossil fuels was driving intense heatwaves as UK and France broke temperature records on consecutive days

The UN climate chief has said an extreme early heat event sweeping parts of western Europe was “a brutal reminder of the spiralling impacts of the climate crisis”, after France and the UK set new temperature records for May on two consecutive days.

Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said on Wednesday the “main culprit” was humanity’s burning of coal, oil and gas – known to be the primary driver of climate change.

Palestinians use recycling as Israel's restrictions trigger a trash crisis

Palestinians in the West Bank live amid garbage following Israeli restrictions. Two Palestinian entrepreneurs are trying to make a change.

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s no-show at Don Jr’s Bahamas wedding: ‘Flying to an island makes him miss Epstein’

The late-night host slammed the president’s Iran bombings, ‘perfect’ health reports and reacted to RFK Jr’s snake attack

On Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel addressed Donald Trump Jr’s wedding, the New York Knicks making it to the NBA finals and raised an eyebrow to claims that Donald Trump’s physical went “perfectly”.

Thirty-five people want to be the next president of France. What could possibly go wrong?

Unless the mainstream gets its act together, next year’s election looks likely to hand the keys of the Élysée to the far right

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“The real risk,” France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, reportedly said last month, “is that this tangle of ambitions reflects such a lack of engagement with reality on the part of all these candidates that voters find the whole thing grotesque.”

He has a point. By this time next year, France will have a new president and Emmanuel Macron, who is constitutionally barred from serving more than two consecutive terms, will have left after a decade in the Élysée Palace.

Water safety experts warn of dangers of outdoor swimming as heatwave grips UK

At least nine people have died in recent days as people have tried to cool off in Britain’s waterways

Water safety experts have warned about the dangers of outdoor swimming after a number of drownings in recent days as people try to escape soaring temperatures by cooling off in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and other bodies of water.

Emergency services have reported at least nine deaths because of water-related incidents in the past few days, seven of them young people, as Britain’s heatwave sends crowds of people to the seaside and other swimming spots.

Premier League 2025-26 review: the team of the season

Bruno Fernandes, Elliot Anderson and Igor Thiago join a number of Arsenal and Manchester City players in the XI

By WhoScored

Raya kept 19 clean sheets and won his third straight Golden Glove, just one shy of Petr Cech and Joe Hart’s record, but he makes this team thanks to his game-defining interventions in high-pressure moments in the title race. The Spaniard was there when his side needed him most: against Brighton in December, at Stamford Bridge in March and perhaps the defining image of his season, the smothering save from Mateus Fernandes against West Ham in the final fortnight of the campaign. In a game of fine margins, Raya has so often been the difference for Arsenal.

Ai Weiwei warns of worsening censorship in the West

Ai Weiwei, who published a new book, "On Censorship," warned the West is "no longer defending very basic humanity, rationality, human rights, freedom of speech."

‘Worry no longer, I am back’ – Tony Blair’s Why I Have Always Been Right About Everything, digested by John Crace

Former PM’s essay on Labour’s self-delusion shows he is the perfect person to provide such a critique

Hi guys. And the laydeez. It’s me, Tony. You know, the best prime minister the country ever had. The man with the rictus smile, the diamond skull and dead behind the eyes. The divinity who understands everything but himself.

I know what you are thinking. It’s been far, far too long since you have last heard from me. You’ve all been lost in the political wilderness. Bereft without your spiritual leader. Worry no longer. I am back. To comfort and hold you all. To shine a light into your sad little worlds. All I’ve ever wanted is to serve. And to be loved. But I hold no bitterness for the way you all turned your backs on me. So often the fate of many a messiah.

Ribbit is the new Wordle, and I’m here to share it with you

A gentle daily puzzle is quietly becoming the most joyful part of my morning routine​ and reminds me that not every win needs to be epic

There’s been some pretty big news in the last couple of weeks in video game world: the long-running space shooter Destiny 2 is winding up after almost nine years, PlayStation appears to have decided to stop releasing its flagship single-player games on PC, and Microsoft wants us to look like we’re shouting every time we type XBOX. But the biggest news for me is that I have found my new favourite word game. I am going to be so bold as to call it the new Wordle.

Ribbit is one of the varied suite of daily games on Puzzmo, an online puzzle platform. It launched at the beginning of January, but I only recently discovered it because I have been unwell, bored, and spending too much time on my phone. Puzzmo’s daily hits include a satisfying shape-arranging game, variations on chess that make me feel extremely stupid, and pleasing word games, which are my favourites. Circuits has you making connections between the beginnings and ends of phrases (eg “stone cold > cold medicine > medicine cabinet”) as fast as you can. Bongo gives you a bunch of letter tiles and asks you to arrange them for a maximum score.

Expert explains why the world feels more lonely

Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer joins "CBS Mornings" to discuss what might be behind the world feeling lonelier.

Paxton bests Cornyn in Texas Republican Senate primary after Trump endorsement

President Donald Trump last week endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

Two Venezuelan boys in a forest full of vultures: Silvana Trevale’s best photograph

‘I left Venezuela after someone held a gun to my head. But I returned to show what beauty it has – like these two boys coming back from a fishing trip at an amazing beach’

My parents encouraged me to leave Venezuela. The situation in the country at that time, the mid-2010s, had started to get really hard, with food and medicine shortages – and violent robberies were becoming a regular thing. A lot of people had started to leave and my parents were worried that if I stayed something bad would happen. I had already seen my mum robbed and I’d had a gun held to my head, but that was normal. I was lucky enough to be able to go to England. But when I arrived, to study at Huddersfield University, I had the feeling many immigrants have – of not belonging, questioning who I was and where I was from. I understood what I was losing, too, and it hurt.

I remain deeply connected to Venezuela and whenever I go back to visit my parents we always go to the beach. My whole family loves the ocean: it’s how I spent a lot of my childhood. I started shooting there, too, hanging out with kids, spending time with young people and seeing what they were going through, but I also felt I could give something back. The kids had so much fun during those shoots.

Federal judge had sex in chambers with high-ranking police officer, panel says

The judge sits in a district court in either Alabama, Georgia or Florida, but their name is being kept secret by a disciplinary panel.

Democrats say they were shut out of fraud event after Vance says crackdown ‘should not be a partisan’

State attorneys general say their deputies were turned away and criticized the White House for ‘politicizing’ fraud issues

Three Democratic state attorneys general said their deputies were turned away from a roundtable hosted by JD Vance on Tuesday, sowing confusion about what the White House has billed as a bipartisan crackdown on fraud.

After attorneys general – including New York’s Letitia James, California’s Rob Bonta and New Jersey’s Jennifer Davenport – declined a last-minute invitation to participate in the event alongside their Republican counterparts, they said representatives from their offices travelled to Washington to attend , but were shut out.

Five villagers found alive in Laos cave as search continues for two missing

Video appears to show divers discovering group sitting on a rock surrounded by flood water

Rescuers have reached five of seven people who have been trapped for a week in a flooded, remote cave in Laos, after days spent navigating narrow, inundated passageways amid persistent rain.

Video footage shared on social media by rescue divers showed the five men crouched together on a rocky ledge in a dark cave chamber, surrounded by muddy water. “There’s no need to cry,” one of the rescue team told the men, who first entered the cave on Wednesday. Two men remain unaccounted for.

Matthew Perry's assistant to be sentenced for role in actor's ketamine death

Matthew Perry's assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, will be the fifth and final person sentenced for playing a role in the actor's 2023 ketamine death. Carter Evans reports.

Raging torrents, fighting gulls and Muslim devotion: photos of the day – Wednesday

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

Revealed: Mandelson vetting warned of ties to senior figures in China, Russia and Israel

Exclusive: Vetting officials also flagged £1m loan when recommending he should be denied security clearance

• Key questions: did ‘mitigations’ cover links to China and Russia?

Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel were among the concerns raised by the UK’s vetting agency when it concluded he should be denied clearance, multiple sources have told the Guardian.

Mandelson’s links to China’s minister of finance, Lan Fo’an, the sanctions-hit Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and a former Israeli military intelligence general, Tamir Hayman, were all flagged by the agency as areas of concern shortly before he took up his post as the UK’s ambassador to the US, the sources said.

Infrared camera on Lynette and Brian Hooker's boat may help with investigation

An infrared camera on Brian and Lynette Hooker's sailboat may contain key evidence in the Michigan woman's disappearance in the Bahamas. Cristian Benavides reports.

Tony Blair is strong on diagnosis, deluded on prescription: Britain’s ills can’t be fixed by him | Larry Elliott

The former PM’s essay rightly calls for a coherent economic plan, but then sets too much store by AI – and a worldview stuck in the past

Tony Blair is right. Labour has made some big and avoidable mistakes since it came to power nearly two years ago. Keir Starmer had a strategy for winning the election but lacked a coherent plan for what his government would do next. Fair cop.

Blair is also correct when he says that unless Britain tackles some long-term structural issues, it is in danger of being relegated from the “premier league of nations”. Achieving higher levels of sustainable growth is one challenge. Welfare reform is another. And as the former prime minister notes, reversing Brexit is not a solution to those problems.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

Lord Howe Island got rid of its rats and mice – now its ‘wonderful’ insect life is back

Invasive vermin decimated the island’s native flora and fauna – but its unique cockroaches and beetles are thriving once again

In the summer months, Lord Howe Island’s unique stag beetle, with wing cases that appear forged from iridescent green metal, fly around the ancient tree tops looking for a mate.

“That’s really something wonderful,” said Ian Hutton, a naturalist and nature guide on the World Heritage-listed island.

NBA playoffs: Thunder one win from finals as Wembanyama declines to speak to media

• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scores 32 points in victory

• OKC lead best-of-seven series 3-2 after 127-114 win

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander did not like the way he started on Tuesday night, but the Oklahoma City Thunder star came up big in the second and third quarters – with plenty of help from the cast around him – as the Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs 127-114 to take a 3-2 lead in the Western Conference finals.

“I thought we were first to the fight tonight on both ends and I thought we weren’t the other night,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “I just loved the way we approached tonight on both ends of the floor.”

Biden sues justice department to block release of Hur interview audio

Former president says disclosure of recordings tied to classified files inquiry would violate his privacy

Joe Biden, the former president, has filed a lawsuit to try to prevent the justice department (DoJ) from releasing transcripts and audio of interviews that exposed his frequent memory lapses and helped derail his 2024 re-election campaign.

The decade-old conversations with the author of his biography ended up in the hands of Robert Hur, the special counsel who was appointed to look into allegations Biden improperly handled classified documents.

At least 1 dead, 9 missing after chemical tank implosion in Washington

The damaged tank at Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. held approximately 900,000 gallons of white liquor, a chemical used in paper processing, authorities said.

World awaits news on U.S.-Iran talks as Israel launches more strikes on Hezbollah

U.S. and Iran negotiations remain unclear as Israel renewed strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Imtiaz Tyab reports.

Amazon starts selling its AI shopping technology to other retailers

Amazon said it's already signed up Kate Spade as a customer for its AI shopping technology.

Hungarian MPs vote to remain member of ICC, overturning decision made by Orbán

Since Péter Magyar’s election victory he has vowed to reverse withdrawal from court before it took effect

Lawmakers in Hungary have voted overwhelmingly for the country to remain a member of the international criminal court, reversing a decision made by the previous government of Viktor Orbán.

Wednesday’s vote came days before the country was poised to become the only EU member state not to recognise the jurisdiction of the global tribunal, which aims to prosecute those accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: well, hello dolly shoes! The heels that are actually comfortable

This polished, proper shoe is about more style than sexiness. But work it right and you can have a lot of fun – without the risk of falling over

It seems wild to me now that I used to wear heels – and I mean high heels – every day. To work, and then out afterwards, 12, 15 hours straight. But at the time it felt entirely normal. The discomfort was one of those daily traumas you become desensitised to, the same way that rush-hour commuters don’t think twice about spending a train ride nose-deep in a stranger’s armpit. Blisters, heel tips bitten off by gratings, the odd sprained ankle, and constant taxi rides I could ill afford were all part of everyday life.

The stiletto’s long reign of terror began losing its hold in the streetwear-obsessed 2010s, and then along came lockdown and the comfort-first revolution. This has been the decade of the loafer and the party flat. My collection of needle-thin, 4-inch-plus Manolos, Louboutins and Choos now live in a display cabinet, the gorgeous but obsolete relics of an ancien régime.

‘We’re going backwards’: Black political power under threat in Alabama after Voting Rights Act gutting

US supreme court ruling could eliminate two majority-Black districts and entrench Republican control from Congress to county school boards

Alabama has long been considered the birthplace of the voting rights movement in America.

During a peaceful voting rights demonstration in 1965, an Alabama state trooper shot and killed church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson. In response, about 600 marchers set out from Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, toward the state capitol building in Montgomery to demand the right to vote. What met them on the other side – state troopers on horseback, billy clubs, teargas and a sheriff’s posse – was broadcast that evening on national television.

Israeli launches more than 120 airstrikes against Lebanon in a day

One of heaviest days of bombing in weeks complicates peace talks as Israel targets sites linked to Hezbollah

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel launched more than 120 airstrikes against Lebanon on Tuesday in one of the heaviest days of bombing in weeks, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his military was escalating its offensive against Hezbollah.

A ceasefire brokered by the US last month between Israel and the militant Islamist movement now appears close to total collapse, complicating negotiations to bring a definitive end to the war with Iran.

Latest details on deadly chemical tank implosion in Washington state

A massive chemical tank implosion at a Washington state paper mill killed at least one person and left nine workers missing, authorities said. Jonathan Vigliotti reports.

Germany’s most wanted woman jailed after three decades evading police

Former Red Army Faction militant Daniela Klette sentenced to 13 years for armed robberies after dissolution of terrorist network

• Europe live – latest updates

A German court has sentenced Daniela Klette, a former member of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof group, to 13 years in jail for armed robberies committed during three decades hiding in plain sight.

Long Germany’s most-wanted woman, Klette was the last female member of the far-left terrorist network still on the run before her arrest at her home in Berlin in February 2024.

Kinky hippos, foul-mouthed raccoons and heaps of heart: Big Mouth’s creators’ wild new animated comedy

This tale of a horny bear on a quest of sexual exploration after his partner leaves him during hibernation is certainly shocking. But can it match the sweetness of its predecessor?

In the first minute of Netflix’s animated comedy Mating Season, a bear wakes up, urinates uncontrollably across his cave, stumbles outside, sees two horny raccoons banging away, then spirals into a deep well of shame about it. At this stage, it is barely worth pointing out that Mating Season is the spiritual successor to the outrageous, witty comedy Big Mouth, so completely does it inhabit that show’s DNA.

And at this point, you will already know if the show is for you or not. Because Big Mouth, as popular as it was, polarised audiences like little else. That show was about the horrors of puberty and sexual awakening, and it was tailored with absolute precision to its target audience of hormone-battered adolescent boys. You could argue that it did this a little too precisely, because its juvenilia was so relentlessly nuclear-powered that plenty of people found themselves turned off by all the sex and farts and swearing.

How did Arsenal become a home for Black players and fans?

After two decades, long-suffering Gunners fans from across the diaspora have been rewarded with a Premier League win. So why has this sometimes beleaguered team earned such adulation?

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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. As the resident Arsenal fan, I’m stepping in for Nesrine the week after my club lifted the Premier League trophy for the first time since 2004, prompting celebrations on a scale we rarely see, at home and across the globe.

Arsenal have a storied history with Black players, and its fanbase reflects that. A cursory look at the joy on Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze’s faces at Selhurst Park and the ensuing melee of supporters on the streets of London right through to Kampala is strong proof of that. I look at why a north London club has the love and dedication of so many in the Black diaspora – a flame that has remained lit through the good, the bad and indifferent.

Risk-taking, rigour and radicalism – Daniel Harding is an exciting prospect for Los Angeles

Also, happy 125th to the Wigmore Hall, and, the vivid soundworld of 16th-century Spain

A tale of two conductors on the west coast of America this week. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced that Daniel Harding will be their next music director from 2027, which is also when Elim Chan starts her job leading the San Francisco Symphony. These are both forward-looking appointments, showing a commitment to the future of these orchestras and the art-form in California.

Mind you, San Francisco’s situation looked pretty dire until recently, after the previous incumbent Esa-Pekka Salonen’s largely unrealised dreams of putting the orchestra at the heart of cultural and technological innovation. It made sense – why not use the San Fran orchestra as a Silicon Valley of the humanities, without the corporate evil, addictive algorithms and responsibility-free tech-brocracy? Alas: Salonen was stymied by the pandemic among other things, and made clear his artistic disagreements with the board in his letter of departure.

‘Moral bankrupts’: Pirlo and Materazzi provoke fury by attending ‘Football Day’ in Russia

• Former Italy stars criticised over presence in Moscow

• They defend visit as being for sport and children

The presence of the Italian World Cup winners Andrea Pirlo and Marco Materazzi in Russia for a sports event has sparked outrage. The former players signed autographs and posed for selfies with Kremlin supporters on the day Moscow launched one of its most brutal missile attacks on Kyiv.

The former Juventus and Milan midfielder Pirlo, one of the defining figures of Italian football and now manager of United FC in Dubai, was photographed on Sunday alongside the Russian striker Artem Dzyuba, during “Football Day” celebrations at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. Shortly after the start of the full-scale invasion, Dzyuba, Russia’s former captain, said he was “proud to be Russian”.

Power Ballad review – Nick Jonas and Paul Rudd star in terrific comedy of bromance and betrayal

Irish writer-director John Carney brilliantly brings together Rudd’s washed up wedding-singer and Jonas’s insecure ex-boyband superstar

Once again, Irish writer-director John Carney delivers an aspartame rush of enjoyment with this terrific comedy of bromance and betrayal in the world of music, starring Nick Jonas (from the Jonas Brothers) as Danny Wilson, a preeningly insecure ex-boyband superstar trying to go solo and searching for a hit single, and Paul Rudd as Rick Power, a washed up wedding-singer who rashly plays Danny a catchy song he’s been working on.

Power Ballad is about making it and dreaming big, about every busker never giving up on hopes of one day being mega. But as so often with Carney, it’s about something else, usually left unacknowledged in movies about music or any sort of showbusiness: the terrible binary of success and failure. For every star there is an invisible army of losers, the sad cases who used to be the star’s home town friends or early collaborators and have a lifelong task ahead of them coming to terms with not making it. In the bitter words of Les McQueen, rhythm guitarist for failed 70s group Crème Brulee on TV’s The League of Gentlemen: “It’s a shit business …”

How to turn squishy strawberries into a classic British dessert – recipe | Waste not

Their short shelf life might count against them, but even when they’re past their best, strawberries still offer plenty of possibility

This year, I’m an ambassador for Cole & Mason, a British brand that makes some of the best pepper mills I know and for whom I’ve come up with The Art of Seasoning, a recipe series about my approach to seasoning food. It covers both the basics, including the impact of different salts and peppers, as well as innovative ways to use seasoning, such as in Eton mess and today’s posset. Strawberries have a pretty short shelf life, but even when they’re a bit squishy, they can still be turned into something delicious, be that a topping for your morning porridge or this simple, rich and seasonal dessert.

Texas primary runoff takeaways. And, DOJ mass-deletes info on Jan. 6 riot cases

The Texas primary runoffs have now concluded and major November election matchups are set. And Trump's Justice Department has deleted significant information from the Jan. 6 riot cases.

‘It’s the West Bank’: Lebanese villagers on life inside Israel’s ‘yellow line’

Residents live in fear of nightly raids and daytime bombings from the Israeli military occupying their land

For hours, Hussein Abdel al-El and his wife, Um Alaa, did not move. They sat in the bathroom in the dark, not daring to touch their phones; the faint glow of the screen might give them away to the Israeli soldiers outside. It was 1am, the Israelis were raiding their neighbours’ house, and the septuagenarian couple did not want their door knocked on next.

In the next house over, Israeli soldiers had forced residents against the wall at gunpoint, zip-tying their hands. They searched the home and interrogated its occupants before putting a black bag over the head of a shepherd, Qassem al-Qadari, taking him to an Israeli military base across the border for further questioning.

Mortgage refinance demand drops 18% as rates hit highest level since August

Mortgage rates rose to the highest level in nine months, hitting refinance demand hardest. Homebuyers also pulled back but were still more active than last year.

Man accused of hurling rock at rare seal was assaulted, lawyer says

A witness recorded what prosecutors say was a video of Igor Lytvynchuk throwing the rock at a Hawaiian monk seal at a Maui beach.

Flying Tiger snapped up by Modella Capital amid fears for its future

UK private equity investor with reputation for hard-nosed restructuring says it is backing existing management

• Business live – latest updates

Flying Tiger is the latest retailer to be snapped up by Modella Capital, the British investment firm which already owns the former high street arm of WH Smith, now called TG Jones.

The Danish company, known for its cut-price homewares and craft kits, operates about 1,000 stores worldwide, including 80 in the UK, where it employs more than 1,000 people.

Backrooms review – Kane Parsons’ icily disturbing horror rewrites the genre rulebook

Debut from 20-year-old director examines memory, reality and fear after Chiwetel Ejiofor accesses an infinite series of hidden rooms that all feel creepily askew

All the lonely people … where do they all belong? YouTuber Kane Parsons makes his feature directing debut with this icily brilliant and genuinely disturbing conceptual horror film based on his web series, and scripted by Will Soodik. There is something here of J-horror, the V/H/S found footage franchise, Dan Erickson’s Severance and Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal. It’s about people walled up in their own memories, imprisoned in endlessly remembered scenes from their past, or miserably perceived versions of their present existences in which they have become caricatures of themselves, gargoyle stars of their paralysed inner world of failure. Or perhaps the action of the film is not metaphorical in this or any other sense, and the “backrooms” of the title simply exist.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve give barnstormingly good performances as Clark and Mary; it is the early 90s and Clark is a failed architect, separated from his wife, and an alcoholic who to make ends meet self-hatingly manages a drearily and eerily vast discount furniture store, called Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. He does dumb TV ads dressed as a pirate while uneasily aware he should be a sultan to make the “Ottoman empire” pun work. He goes to see a therapist, Mary, a sad, gentle person who markets her own self-help audio tapes and is haunted by childhood memories of her abusive mother.

The World Cup of kits: who are the winners for 2026?

The World Cup is two weeks away, but the chatter around kits has been going for a while. From riffs on much-loved favourites to new entries with the potential to become future classics, here are the 10 fashion picks to become familiar with before the tournament

SpaceX-Tesla merger chatter reignites as Musk pushes rocket company toward Nasdaq

With SpaceX headed for the public markets next month, industry experts and people close to Elon Musk are speculating about a potential tie-up with Tesla.

Reform UK spending on Facebook ads surged before May elections

Party spent £252,000 in last two weeks of campaign on its main Facebook pages compared with Labour’s £276,000

• UK politics live – latest updates

Reform UK ramped up the funding and sophistication of its political Facebook ads in the final weeks of campaigning for the May elections, in a sign of the growing financial muscle of Nigel Farage’s party.

There were several days in the fortnight before the party’s breakthrough electoral performance when Reform spent more than any other party on the influential platform.

Inside the effort to save one of America's most imperiled salamanders

When a species is facing extinction, it takes an enormous human effort to stave it off. Case in point: the painstaking campaign to save the frosted flatwoods salamander.

‘The UK is a hostile environment to do art’: Tara Clerkin Trio on the​ir bold, bright music – and the fight working class artists face

The British band’s breezy, collagist sound has charmed underground music fans – though it belies the family and financial strife that went into their beautiful second LP

During a session for their 2020 debut album, Tara Clerkin Trio were interrupted by building work taking place outside. Scrapes and clangs of scaffolding got caught in the chord loop they were making on a childhood keyboard at the time. Rather than scrap the recording and start again, they grew attached to the soft dissonance of the metal, and sought to replicate it in the final version of the song. They ended up using a more audible clip from a royalty-free sample website, Tara Clerkin recalls, laughing. “We had to credit the guy who had recorded the sound on the sleevenotes.”

These happy accidents and incidental noises have gone on to shape much of the Bristol-formed band’s breezy, collage-like sound, which has charmed underground music fans across the spectrum (including jazz heads – despite the name, they stress that they are not a jazz band). That first album is now on its fourth repress and they’ve released two acclaimed EPs since. Drifting somewhere between minimalist jazz, avant-pop and trip-hop, their looping compositions are born from hours of improvising and layering. Their melodies clatter, clonk and wander in strange directions around Clerkin’s daydreamy incantations, conjured from a motley crew of instruments they can and can’t play properly.

The chaotic, unique, beautiful Lebanon I knew has been reduced to rubble. When will it end?

Suspected war crimes happen almost daily as Israel continues its bombardment, which Unicef estimates is killing nearly 14 children a day. We cannot write this off as just another war in a war-torn region

There are various reasons why, at 43, I still don’t know how to drive a car. Clumsiness is one. I can’t even walk straight half the time, so I don’t think it’s a good idea that I take control of a 2-tonne vehicle.

Another reason is that my first driving lesson was in Beirut and the experience scarred me for life. The car was falling apart, Lebanese drivers ignore traffic rules and the lesson was in Arabic, which I barely speak. After I had veered on to a busy road the wrong way, my teacher made me get out of the car and yelled at me. I didn’t understand exactly what he was yelling, but it wasn’t good.

What exactly are the Savannah Bananas becoming?

The Bananas started as baseball’s most eccentric attraction. Now they are building something that increasingly resembles a traveling entertainment universe of their own

The Savannah Bananas brand has, arguably, become bigger than the Savannah Bananas themselves. What would seem to be a crucial component of the Bananas experience – the actual team – is increasingly absent from games featuring the showboating version of baseball that the Bananas themselves popularized. By all accounts, however, fans don’t care.

When the Guardian last examined the Bananas in 2023, the organization had only just abandoned its amateur roots in collegiate summer baseball to focus strictly on “bananaball”, a funhouse-mirror reflection of baseball that focuses on trick plays, player antics and crowd engagement. At the time, bananaball was restricted to two teams – the Bananas and their forever foes, the Party Animals – who seemed prepared to follow a well-trodden path to long-term, if moderate success.

The mural project honouring the Black cultural heritage of Rio de Janeiro – photo essay

Despite its majority Afro-descendant population, fewer than 10% of public monuments across Rio commemorate Black people. Photographer María Magdalena Arréllaga chronicles the project seeking to redress the balance

Once home to the world’s largest port of arrival for enslaved Africans, Rio de Janeiro has, like the rest of Brazil, a majority Afro-descendant population.

Many of the country’s most prominent Black figures – scientists, lawyers, athletes, politicians, writers, musicians, activists and intellectuals – were either born or lived in the country’s second-largest city, which served as the capital for nearly 200 years.

A mural of the Brazilian singer-songwriter and composer Luiz Melodia, painted on a wall in Estácio, the Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood where he lived

The movie 'Pressure' leans into the drama of high-stakes weather forecasts

The new movie tells a story about how good meteorology can literally win wars. It also takes us back in time, to when the United States was at a disadvantage when it came to weather science.

Dissident detained in South Korea after fleeing China in rubber boat

Dong Guangping has tried to escape on several previous occasions after being jailed for his activism in China

A Chinese dissident has washed up on the shores of South Korea after attempting to flee China in a rubber boat.

Dong Guangping, 68, is in custody in South Korea, having been detained by the coastguard on Monday evening. He is thought to have travelled more than 30 hours by sea to reach the shores of China’s democratic neighbour.

How Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoons captured America: ‘One of our nation’s greatest journalists’

A new book looks back at the work of artist and journalist Garry Trudeau and how he told the story of a country’s highs and lows through a comic strip

In The Simpsons, Bart is always 10, Lisa eight and Maggie a baby. In Peanuts, Charlie Brown and Lucy van Pelt are perpetual children. In Garfield, age shall not weary the eponymous lasagne-loving cat, nor the years condemn.

But Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoons are different, with characters ageing, evolving, having children and occasionally even dying. Still active after 56 years, Trudeau’s sprawling narrative – woven through the four-panel confines of a comic strip – invites comparison with Charles Dickens.

For far-right extremists, the rise of a new enemy: Women

Misogyny is an increasing factor in far-right attacks, but it often goes unnoticed.

Clyburn's district stays intact as South Carolina Republicans scrap redistricting

The majority-Black district held for 34 years by South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn will survive intact, for now, after Republican state lawmakers rejected a plan to redraw congressional maps.

What We Ask Google by Simon Rogers review – the secrets of our search history

The company’s data editor trawls through billions of queries to deliver a portrait of the world’s preoccupations

As anyone who has procreated this century knows, childrearing involves daily rounds of online searching. The most common parenting-related queries feature in What We Ask Google, a valiant attempt by the search giant’s data editor Simon Rogers to create a “surprisingly hopeful picture of humankind” (that’s the subtitle) from searches performed over the past two decades. “Why do babies get hiccups?” we ask. “When do babies teethe?” “Why do toddlers bite?” “How do you know if your child has ADHD?” “How to tell kids about divorce?”

Since 2006, engineers have used Google Trends to make sense of common (and anonymised) queries like these, going back as far as 2004, when phones were dumb and less than half of UK households had internet access. Rogers, a British former Guardian journalist based in California, views the results as a kind of social mirror.

Blossoming among spoil heaps: how 1,000 years of lead mining gave birth to banks of pansies and pennycress

Calaminarian grassland is a rare habitat where plants thrive in soils contaminated by heavy metals. But should these toxic meadows be protected or allowed to fade away?

At first, the small purple flowers are hard to spot in the weak May sunshine. Slowly the drifts of delicate mountain pansies, along with the white rosettes of alpine pennycress, begin to jump out, scattered across an area little bigger than a football pitch, on the banks of the River Allen in Northumberland.

This is a pocket of calaminarian grassland, an increasingly rare habitat where specialist plants called metallophytes have adapted to live in soils deeply contaminated by heavy metals, the legacy of more than 1,000 years of lead mining.

‘It’s getting hotter and it’s not stopping’: dealing with the heat in five of Europe’s capitals

Tourists and locals in Madrid, Paris, London, Dublin and Berlin share their experiences of the unseasonable May temperatures

In recent days across parts of Europe, temperatures have soared, heat records have been broken and spring has felt more like the height of summer. Météo France, the French national weather service, has attributed this to a “heat dome”, with warmth held in place by a high-pressure weather front that has produced temperatures more than 10C above what used to be usual for this time of year.

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather around the world, driving deadly extremes that can strike at abnormal times in unusual places and claim lives.

‘Argentina needs to end its fantasy of being a European country’: Lucrecia Martel on the story of a killing

The film-maker talks about her homeland’s ‘racism, paternalism and infantilisation’ towards Indigenous people and her award-winning documentary about a community leader’s murder

In one scene from Landmarks, the new documentary by the Argentinian film-maker Lucrecia Martel, a tour guide shows children a painting on the ceiling of a Catholic church depicting how “Indigenous attempted to break into the city”. “See how these angels fought to keep the Indigenous out, and they sent these beams to scare them away,” says the guide.

The following scene shows Indigenous people from the region – including a child baptised in that very church – watching footage of the tour on a mobile phone. One of them said: “Listening to him [the guide], you realise how convinced he is that even God wants to erase us for good.”

Bullet in the Head review – John Woo’s Vietnam war fever dream is an explosive masterpiece

The Hong Kong action master’s deliriously violent 1990 epic fuses gangland thriller, war movie and tragic melodrama into a spectacular vision of greed and moral collapse

The title of this 1990 John Woo extravaganza might lead the uninitiated to expect a chillingly focused, targeted assassination. Actually, there are innumerable bullets and innumerable heads in this over-the-top gonzo spectacle. It is a crime thriller, a wartime action film set in Vietnam, but it offers something other than the usual Hollywood perspective; it is a parable of greed comparable to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and even a kind of romantic melodrama.

There is, however, one key bullet in a head, a literal bullet lodged in the skull of someone who achieves a macabre zombie-like semi-survival, the bullet being symbolic of the way violence takes root in the brain, dehumanising its victim. The final “boardroom” scene disclosing this image is toweringly mad and strange. Yet in this movie, as in so many other Woo films, we can see how the director counterintuitively uses sad music – harmonica, woodwind – over grisly, brutal action sequences, as if what he wants us to register is not the violence or the shock but just how poignantly futile and pathetic it all is.

Neolithic treasures and sparkling seas on Orkney – all for £2 bus fares

A new cap on bus fares in the Highlands and islands makes exploring this stunning archipelago in Scotland a breeze

The views are remarkable. From one window, gorse-gold hills roll west towards mountains patched with snow. On the other side, fields of new spring lambs slope down to a silver sea. Elsewhere, the bus crosses wide estuaries and cascading burns. There are thatched crofts, rocky bays and birch woods starred with anemones. One of the most remarkable things about this scenic 111-mile, 3½-hour trip on bus X99 is that it costs just £2.

Until March 2026, a single from Inverness to Scrabster on Scotland’s north coast was £28. Now, thanks to a new bus fare cap in Orkney, Highland and Moray, no journey in the area costs more than £2. The bus is timed to coincide with the Northlink Ferry to Stromness, Orkney’s second biggest town, and I’m heading there to explore by bus.

Nearly in one in five UK girls receive unwanted images online, poll finds

Barnardo’s says survey shows online abuse and harassment becoming ‘part of background noise of growing up’

Nearly one in five girls in the UK receive persistent, unwanted images online, according to a poll by the charity Barnardo’s, which warned that online misogyny was becoming an everyday part of childhood.

Its survey of 4,000 young people found that a quarter of girls had been called degrading names online, while one in seven 13- to 15-year-olds had been asked to send a nude photo.

A moment that changed me: I was turning 40 with an arthritis diagnosis – on a whim I took up my favourite teen hobby again

I started kickboxing 20 years ago in a bid to be like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but thought I could never manage all the punching and jumping. It turns out I could handle much more than I thought

At 14, I decided to learn a martial art. I told my parents it was to defend myself on the mean streets of Congleton – a market town in Cheshire largely devoid of danger – when, in truth, it was because I wanted to be like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I joined a kickboxing club, and what could have been a passing phase became a thrice-weekly commitment spanning four years. I was a model student, picking up a different coloured belt every few months to mark my progression through the grades. I grew strong and flexible, swapping puppy fat for muscle. I routinely fought men without fear and found a confidence in my body I have never experienced before or since.

Britain’s green transition should belong to everyone. Why is Labour so intent on stopping us having our say? | George Monbiot

Tearing up planning and using protest laws to criminalise local people – this isn’t how to build the broad consent needed

We will not persuade. We will not explain. We will not listen. We know best and we will force you to comply. This, I’m sorry to say, is how the government’s climate policy works. Or rather, how it doesn’t. Because nothing could be better calculated to alienate the people you need to reach than climate authoritarianism.

Three astonishing things are happening simultaneously. One is the government’s utterly baffling failure to communicate with us on this existential issue. Where are the public information videos? Where are the televised emergency briefings on climate breakdown, like the emergency briefings on Covid-19?

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Iceland’s foreign minister fears ‘Brexit moment’ in EU accession referendum

Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir accuses opponents of fearmongering amid warnings over misinformation and AI

Iceland’s foreign minister has said she fears her country faces a “Brexit moment” in its looming EU referendum amid warnings over misinformation, foreign interference and AI.

With just over three months to go until Iceland votes on whether or not to continue accession talks with the EU, developments are being closely watched by Washington, Moscow and Brussels.

Country diary: Perilous puffins and a plucky underdog | Mya Bambrick

Swanage, Dorset: While the seabirds here make the headlines, my eye is drawn to the unassuming rock pipit and its accelerating song

It’s a stunning evening for a walk at Durlston Country Park. The position of its headland on the south-west coast of England makes it a fantastic place to watch bird migration in action. As I walk along the coastal path, enjoying the panoramic sea views, barn swallows arrive from across the Channel.

Below is a cacophony of sound coming from the cliff edges; this part of the Jurassic Coast is home to a breeding colony of seabirds, with last year’s survey recording 1,377 guillemots, 179 razorbills, 12 fulmars and just six puffins.

The safest vehicles for teen drivers and how much they cost

The Insurance Institute and Consumer Reports ranked 96 of the safest cars for teens. Here's what to know.

‘Writing is exactly like love – you need to do it in the dark’: novelist Leila Slimani on starting a new chapter in her life

Now in residence at the Madrid Prado, the author talks about its dark, inspirational Goyas, the clandestine nature of her writing – and why she finally wrote about her jailed then posthumously exonerated father

It is a bright, chilly spring morning in Madrid, and the Museo del Prado doesn’t open to the public for another hour. Without the crowds, the museum is amorphous and eerily silent. A pale light pools in the corners and casts long shadows around the paintings, as if the figures inside them have slipped quietly into the room. It is here that I meet the French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, who has spent the past two weeks using the space as inspiration for her work.

With quick strides, Slimani leads us to a basement gallery housing some of her favourite works: Francisco Goya’s dark and haunting Black Paintings, created later in life when the Spanish artist had adopted a particularly bleak outlook on humanity. Among them are Saturn Devouring His Son, a violent depiction of the god biting into his own child; The Fates, with its three ominous figures spinning the thread of life; and Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat), in which the devil appears as a goat presiding over a coven.

Spider-Noir review – Nicolas Cage’s stylish take on the superhero as a 1940s detective is huge fun

All smoke, shady dames and black and white cinematography, Marvel’s latest Spidey offering is fast, witty and confident

As is increasingly, wearyingly, the case as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand/bloat/chase the dollar in an ever-more unseemly and less rewarding manner – delete according to taste – Prime Video’s new series, Spider-Noir, requires you to set aside some lore while retaining other bits. Thus I should point out that the arachno-inflected human being brought to you here is played by Nicolas Cage but is not the spider character that he played in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, although he sounds a lot alike. That one was called Peter Parker, as is traditional. This one’s called Ben Reilly. Why you would still cast one of the most divisively idiosyncratic performers in modern cinematic history – who can no more be dissociated from any of his previous parts by the average human brain than the concept of sourness can be uncoupled from a lemon, sweetness from honey, or Nigel Farage’s face from that of a melting frog’s – is beyond me, but I guess … that’s Hollywood?

As the title suggests, Spider-Noir has been conceived as a homage to the hard-boiled films and fictions of the 1940s. The whole thing was filmed in black and white and digitally colourised thereafter, so that viewers can choose in which form they want to watch it. I look forward to online wars breaking out over this issue, upon which I shall remain Switzerland. Except to say that the decision to colourise a noir homage was a craven one in the first place – never give the people what they want! – and the decision to watch such a version is worse.

Who gets the sofa? The furniture rows at the heart of modern breakups

When you’re separating from a partner you’ve lived with, dividing up your shared belongings isn’t always a priority. There are ways to navigate this emotional and financial minefield, though

When wandering around Ikea arm-in-arm, most newly cohabiting couples are too excited about their new sofa, or Billy bookcase, or the enormous house plant they are about to wrestle into an Uber, to think too deeply about what might happen to those items were their relationship to sour. But at a time when many young couples can’t afford to buy property or have children, furniture can end up being the only thing to fight over at the end of a relationship. And, as the cost of living rises, having to replace furniture after a breakup can have a huge impact on people’s finances.

“It took me a couple of years to recover financially,” says Becca of her 2022 breakup. The 35-year-old, who is based in Leeds, had been in a relationship for about a year when her then-girlfriend invited her to move in to her house. At the time, Becca was renting her own flat, which was “amazing: big garden, really bright and lovely”, she says. But being what she describes as “young, stupid and in love”, she left that behind to move in with her partner. Becca reluctantly agreed to get rid of all the furniture she had bought for her flat, since her girlfriend didn’t want any of it in her place.

Biden sues Justice Department to block release of files from biographer interviews

Former President Joe Biden has sued the Justice Department seeking to block the release of files related to interviews he conducted with a biographer that later became a central part of a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents.

Here's what to watch for in the Texas primary runoff election today

Sen. John Cornyn is projected to lose the GOP Senate primary runoff to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who received President Trump's endorsement.

‘Planetary destruction on fast-forward’: witnessing the disappearance of Indonesia’s ‘eternity glaciers’

Researchers racing to document Oceania’s last tropical glaciers found the remaining ‘eternal snow’ in Indonesia’s West Papua region has lost almost all its ice

• Mapping the last glaciers in Oceania – in pictures

An expedition to document the end days of the last tropical glaciers in Oceania has revealed sombre footage of “planetary destruction on fast-forward”.

The once-mighty ice sheets on Puncak Jaya, a mountain surrounded by dense rainforests in West Papua, Indonesia, have survived beyond projections they would disappear by 2026 but have shrunk to a fraction of their original size.

Star NFL running back Josh Jacobs arrested on domestic violence charges

Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs was arrested Tuesday in Wisconsin on domestic violence charges, officials said.

1 killed, 2 survive U.S. strike on boat in Eastern Pacific, SOUTHCOM says

At least 193 people have been killed in the Trump administration's campaign of missile strikes on boats it claims are trafficking drugs in Latin American waters.

‘Makes no sense’: experts doubt pause in US arms sale to Taiwan is due to Iran war

While approval is due soon for $14bn deal, actual deliveries to Taiwan are years away – making ‘Operation Epic Fury’ in the Gulf an unlikely cause

The Trump administration’s war against Iran should have no impact on arms sales to Taiwan, experts have said, after a US official suggested a pause in the delivery of a key weapons package was due to the Gulf conflict.

Analysts told the Guardian that a $14bn arms package left in limbo after Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping could take up to six years to process, and there was a “low likelihood” of any true connection between events in Iran and weapons delivery to Taiwan.

NASA's moon base plans include landers, buggies and drones for 2028 mission

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin​, Astrolab, Lunar Outpost and Firefly Aerospace are awarded with hundreds of millions of dollars in NASA contracts for the first phase of its moon base plans.

5/26: The Takeout with Major Garrett

Trump says his third physical in 13 months went "perfectly"; details still scarce on potential U.S.-Iran peace deal.