My month in the tradwife world: ‘I can’t pretend I’m not enjoying myself at all ...’

In the past few months, there has been a boom in tradwife novels, while the accounts of influencers only grow more popular. What is it about this culture that makes it so compelling to young women?

‘No one I know wants to go spend their one wild and magical life being a shill for some billionaire tech asshole,” says Shannon, a character in Yesteryear, the buzzy new novel about a tradwife influencer by Caro Claire Burke. Shannon is a gen Z woman who is working as a producer for the protagonist, Natalie, a 32-year-old social media star seemingly with more than a little in common with some aspects of the real-life influencer Hannah Neeleman, who rose to fame documenting her life as a wife and mother on her ranch, Ballerina Farm.

“Just so they can breastfeed in a broom closet someday,” Natalie quips back.

Published: April 15, 2026, 4:00 am

Tax Day is a reminder of America’s unequal tax system. But we can fix it | Zohran Mamdani, Gabriel Zucman and Joseph Stiglitz

There is no justification for a regressive system in which the super-rich contribute less than the rest of us

Today, we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. New York City’s average household income is $131,000. Without extreme inequality, residents could live reasonably well. Instead, a few people at the top of the income ladder capture enormous wealth, while millions of others struggle just to get by. Some simply can’t make it. For them, New York has become fundamentally unaffordable.

This outsized level of inequality has enormous economic, political and social consequences. It undermines social and political cohesion, erodes trust in institutions and leads people to conclude, correctly, that the system is rigged.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:00 am

A moment that changed me: I was desperate to get off the mountain – and that gut instinct saved my life

From the moment I started climbing the 7,000-metre peaks of the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan, something felt off. What followed will stay with me for ever

I didn’t have a reason for my terrible feeling of dread – and that was part of the problem. From the moment I arrived in Tajikistan with my boyfriend, Tim, to climb two 7,000-metre (23,000ft) peaks, something felt off. It wasn’t a fear I could name: it was more like a constant, unnerving low hum.

A helicopter dropped us off – landing on a jagged glacier that was to be our base camp and act as a refuge from avalanches from the towering peaks that surrounded it. The helicopter flew far too low, skimming the glacier ice that looked sharp enough to tear it open. You could see it from the helicopter because there was a gaping hole in the back – a part was missing because it was so old.

Published: April 15, 2026, 5:45 am

MLS will have fewer US World Cup players than ever. Its impact is being felt anyway

The league’s emphasis on youth development has seen its place in the careers of US national team players shift dramatically

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When the United States men’s national team traveled to France for the 1998 World Cup, they did so with 16 Major League Soccer players on their 22-man roster. This was very much by design. MLS had kicked off in 1996 as a fulfilled promise made to Fifa by US Soccer for the right to host the 1994 World Cup. The new league then set about hoarding as many national team players as it could.

In a winless and mirthless tournament in 1998, fraught by a fractious camp, the Americans started an MLS player 21 times in their three group-stage matches, for an average of seven per starting lineup. That number has trended down ever since. In the 2002 run to the World Cup quarter-finals, setting the program’s modern high-water mark, an average of 5.4 MLS players made a start in the USA’s five matches. In 2006, it was 3.33. By 2010, that number had sunk to two; and in 2022, it was only one. In Qatar, the USMNT’s final group stage match against Iran was, in fact, the first time the team had started no MLS players at all at a World Cup since the league’s founding.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:00 am

Trump may believe he is the messiah – but his attack on the pope could prove costly for JD Vance | Arwa Mahdawi

The president’s attack on the head of the Catholic church and the AI depiction of himself as a Christ-like figure have not gone down well with one of the largest groups of swing voters in the US

Poor persecuted Donald Trump has frequently portrayed himself as a modern messiah. Some of his supporters, meanwhile, have compared him directly to Jesus. And, to be fair, while the son of God didn’t eat Big Macs on a private jet and encourage his followers to buy AI stocks, there are similarities between the two figures. Namely the miracle-working. The US president may not be able to turn water into wine, but he’s turned public office into a personal goldmine. This week, Trump also managed to transform a staunch atheist (me) into a defender of the Catholic church.

I’m not defending everything, mind you, just Pope Leo XIV’s recent condemnations of war. “God does not bless any conflict,” the pope wrote on X on Friday. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who … drop bombs.” During Saturday prayers, the pope also called out the “delusion of omnipotence”. While Leo didn’t name names, his statements were widely interpreted as a rebuke of the Trump administration, which has repeatedly framed its warmongering in religious terms.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:28 am

Margo’s Got Money Troubles review – Michelle Pfeiffer’s career renaissance starts here

The star powerfully plays the mum to Elle Fanning’s cash-strapped single mother and OnlyFans creator in this charming schmaltzfest – which could have been so much more

Margo’s Got Money Troubles first gives us the why. Margo’s got money troubles because Margo got pregnant. Margo got pregnant because she is so young, and she thought her English professor writing her a poem was A Good Thing (poems written by English professors are never A Good Thing). She started having sex with her English professor and their combined brain power clearly didn’t extend to contraceptive deployment. Margo stayed pregnant because there’s no story in “young woman has termination, goes on with the rest of her life pretty untraumatised, actually”. Margo had the baby. And that is where the money troubles start.

David E Kelley’s new series is an eight-part comedy-drama, adapted from the pugnacious romp of a 2024 bestselling novel by Rufi Thorpe, and directed by Dearbhla Walsh. It stars Elle Fanning (as great as she is in The Great) as the eponymous heroine and Michelle Pfeiffer as her mother, Shyanne (which, along with her role in The Madison, might signal a proper career renaissance for the actor – Kidman-style, but less boring).

Published: April 15, 2026, 4:00 am

$30m an hour: big oil reaping huge war windfall from consumers, analysis finds

Exclusive: Climate action blockers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and major fossil fuel firms set to make extra $234bn by end of 2026

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The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.

The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 (£74) a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies. Oil and gas supplies will take months to return to pre-war levels and the companies will make $234bn by the end of the year if the oil price continues to average $100. The analysis uses data from leading intelligence provider Rystad Energy, analysed by Global Witness.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:02 am

Tax day: US taxpayers spend hundreds more on military as Trump pushes for vast increase

As Americans race to file their federal taxes before today’s deadline, new analysis breaks down where the money goes

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Many US households spent hundreds more tax dollars on the military last year, according to new analysis, as Donald Trump’s plans to dramatically increase federal defense spending faces growing scrutiny.

Millions of Americans will race to file their taxes today, the final day for federal returns, amid concern over rising living costs and government spending.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:00 am

US DoJ files for overturning January 6 convictions for far-right groups’ members

Filing seeks to overturn seditious conspiracy charges of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members who laid siege to US Capitol in 2021

The US Department of Justice has requested that a federal appeals judge overturn convictions for members of far-right groups Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were previously found guilty of seditious conspiracy in connection with the violent siege of the US capitol in 2021.

Jeanine Pirro, the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia, signed separate motions on Tuesday to vacate convictions for a slew of individuals, including the Proud Boys’ leaders Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs as well as Stewart Rhodes, a former attorney who founded the Oath Keepers’ militia.

Published: April 15, 2026, 1:33 am

House Democrats call for commission led by JD Vance to oust Trump

Measure by Jamie Raskin follows statements by Trump about annihilating Iran and post depicting himself as Jesus

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House Democrats on Tuesday proposed creating a commission that would work with JD Vance to remove Donald Trump from office under the 25th amendment, should they determine he is no longer fit to serve.

The measure, introduced by Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, follows a series of statements from Trump, including his recent warning that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” if it did not capitulate to his demands, and a social media post that depicted him as Jesus Christ.

Published: April 14, 2026, 7:01 pm

Man convicted in wife’s disappearance arrested over unsolved 1990 murder

Bob McCaffrey, whose wife Gayle has never been found, to face murder charges over New Jersey killing of Lisa McBride

A man who was convicted in connection with his wife’s 2012 disappearance in South Carolina has been arrested over the murder of another woman in New Jersey 22 years earlier.

Bob McCaffrey Jr, 54, was apprehended in North Carolina, where he had been residing, on suspicion of the 1990 killing of Lisa Marie McBride, 27, in New Jersey, authorities said in a statement.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:00 am

Police investigate claims Katy Perry sexually assaulted Ruby Rose at Melbourne nightclub

Perry denies the allegations, shared by Rose on social media, calling them ‘dangerous reckless lies’

Police are investigating claims Katy Perry sexually assaulted the Australian actor Ruby Rose at a Melbourne nightclub more than a decade ago, allegations the American pop star strenuously denies.

Victoria police on Wednesday said in a statement: “Melbourne sexual offences and child abuse investigation team (SOCIT) detectives are investigating [an alleged] historical sexual assault that occurred in Melbourne in 2010.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:34 am

American Youtuber Johnny Somali sentenced to jail in South Korea over ‘comfort women’ statue stunt

Johnny Somali, 25, caused outrage after filming himself kissing a statue commemorating wartime sex slaves

An American YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said on Wednesday.

Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch.

Published: April 15, 2026, 5:22 am

Former Alabama star allegedly impersonated NFL’s Penix, Njoku and McKinney in $20m loan scam

Luther Davis, a national champion with the Crimson Tide, is said to have worn wigs and make-up to secure fraudulent loans

A former University of Alabama football star plans to plead guilty later this month to orchestrating an alleged scheme in which he impersonated NFL players and defrauded lenders out of nearly $20m. The alleged scam is described in detail by the US attorney for the northern district of Georgia, including depictions of the former defensive lineman donning disguises during loan closings.

Luther Davis, a member of the Alabama team that won the 2010 national championship game, along with a partner, CJ Evins, “obtained at least thirteen fraudulent loans totaling more than $19,845,000”, the criminal information filing alleges. A criminal information (CI) document is filed by a US attorney when a defendant agrees to waive the constitutional right to indictment by a grand jury and instead proceed by typically entering a guilty plea; both Davis and Evins are doing so according to the court docket.

Aliya Sports and Sure Sports did not reply to a request for comment for this article.

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:00 am

Sperm whales’ communication closely parallels human language, study finds

Analysis shows whales’ coda vocalizations are ‘highly complex’ and remarkably similar to our own

We may appear to have little in common with sperm whales – enormous, ocean-dwelling animals that last shared a common ancestor with humans more than 90 million years ago. But the whales’ vocalized communications are remarkably similar to our own, researchers have discovered.

Not only do sperm whale have a form of “alphabet” and form vowels within their vocalizations but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech, the new study has found.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:00 am

‘Psychological torture’: outcry over conditions at ICE desert detention camp

Detainees tell of abuse at sprawling Texas facility whose giant generators gobble energy and fuel climate crisis

Dust was everywhere, covering people’s blankets and clogging their airways inside Camp East Montana, the huge tent facility for immigration detention in west Texas, said D, a young Venezuelan man who was held there.

The air conditioning blasted constantly, keeping the living areas inside tents the length of two football fields at what felt like near-freezing temperatures despite the balmy weather outside, and rain leaked through the tarps, so people awoke on wet mattresses, he recalled.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:00 am

‘They want to keep denying us our rights’: workers in Vermont’s $5.4bn dairy industry fight for basic labor protections

Migrant labor fuels much of Vermont’s dairy industry, but workers are exempt from minimum wage rules, overtime protections and the right to unionize

Hilario’s work shift on a Vermont dairy farm began at 10.30pm when he lifted a red fleece blanket and rose from a makeshift bed next to the kitchen sink.

The 65-year-old pushed aside a lace curtain that covered his apartment door, dividing his room from the dairy’s sour-smelling milking parlor. In the barn, a horseshoe-shaped milking platform hummed awake. Super-producer black-and-white Holstein cows, twice Hilario’s size, peered out from vinyl curtains.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Power in the hands of people’: union leaders push to revive ailing US labor movement

Organizers unveil new drive to reverse decline in union membership as workers seek to combat growing wealth inequality

Leaders of some of the largest unions in the US have unveiled a drive to jumpstart the country’s ailing labor movement and combat growing wealth inequality under Donald Trump.

To make it easier for workers to join a union, and strengthen the hand of new unions negotiating with powerful businesses, a string of prominent organizers joined together to launch Union Now, a non-profit designed to increase labor union density.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:00 am

Cubans self-medicate as crisis takes toll on mental health: ‘There is no idea to hold on to’

Many people are turning to prescription drugs – and some to herbal remedies and even hard drugs – amid an outlook that feels bleaker than the collapse of the Soviet Union

Cris Sánchez believed he had left Cuba for good when he moved to London in 1994, but concerns for his ailing parents brought him back in 2018. Since then, the strain of life in Havana has caused him to turn to prescription drugs – “Just to take the edge off things,” he said.

He is not alone. Currently under a US-imposed oil blockade, and following years of economic decline, Cubans are self-administering regulated drugs in growing numbers, as a mental health crisis envelopes the island.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:00 am

‘I wanted my work to be shameless’: 93-year-old artist Joan Semmel on her trailblazing nudes

In the 1970s, the painter shocked the art world with paintings modeled on her own nude body. Now in her 10th decade, she’s celebrated as a feminist pioneer

On a life-revivingly sunny day in New York, light pours into the SoHo studio of the 93-year-old painter Joan Semmel. She’s lived in the floor-through railroad apartment since 1970, and she works out of a high-ceilinged room overlooking Spring Street, dominated by a decades-old snake plant. A loft stuffed with canvases occupies one side of the carpeted room, while the other wall displays four recent paintings that will appear in her upcoming show, Continuities, spread between locations of Alexander Gray Associates in New York and Brussels.

Each vibrant piece evokes elements that have long connected Semmel’s process – gesture, doubling, transparency and abstraction – and features the same model she’s used for more than 50 years: her own nude body. She has maintained that these are not self-portraits, and for much of her career they lacked heads. Semmel bursts into laughter while recalling her surprise when people asked how she felt about “being naked out there. I’m not, that’s a painting,” she says. “It’s a construct, but it’s not me.”

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:00 am

Sex and drugs and poisoned champagne: 90 years on, we can finally see Joan Crawford’s wildest film

A legal dispute led to Letty Lynton, the golden age superstar’s controversial drama, being sealed away. Only now can audiences see what all the fuss was about

Joan Crawford was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s golden age, but one of her most famous, and controversial, films has not been screened legally since January 1936. Ninety years later, thanks to her grandson, that is all about to change. The 1932 MGM film Letty Lynton tells the lethal tale of a Manhattan socialite, her fiance and her vindictive ex-lover. It was a hit at the box office – although something of a conundrum for the critics. They just couldn’t understand how MGM had managed to sneak such a risque story past the censors. That was only the start of the trouble.

MGM had wanted to buy the rights to a play called Dishonored Lady, written by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes. This was a hit on Broadway in 1930, but its booze, drugs and sex content meant it had already been designated by the Hays office as “unfit for motion picture adaptation”. MGM only backed out when the authors demanded $30,000 – and the Hays office made it clear they wouldn’t give an inch, not on a story about a woman they considered a “nymphomaniac”. Instead, for just $3,500, MGM bought the rights to Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novel Letty Lynton, which, just like Dishonored Lady, was inspired by the real-life case of Madeleine Smith. In 1857, Smith, a Scottish socialite, was tried for murder, accused of poisoning her lover with arsenic after he threatened to use her love letters to expose their affair and jeopardise her engagement.

Published: April 15, 2026, 5:00 am

‘I was peeing blood constantly’: my ketamine hell – and what made me stop

Thomas Delaney’s addiction issues started when he was a teen and worsened through his 20s. Eventually, an argument with his mother led him to change everything

Thomas Delaney never used to believe he was “good enough to be loved”. Growing up, he internalised the hurt he saw playing out at home. “I thought I was useless, I wasn’t a nice person … I even thought that my mum and dad didn’t love each other because of me.”

When I visit him (and his extremely affectionate black-and-white cat, Figaro) at home in Glasgow, Delaney, dressed in a jumper printed with the words “nicotine is dumb”, is frank about the impact his childhood had on him. “I had suicidal ideations from a very, very young age because I assumed that, if I was dead, maybe my mum and dad wouldn’t be arguing.” Later, he became addicted to ketamine. At his most unwell, he weighed just 38kg (6st).

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:00 am

‘Seeking connection’: the video game where players stopped shooting and started talking

In a post-apocalyptic landscape of cutthroat scavengers, surprisingly peaceful players are opting to team up and open up – a phenomenon that’s intriguing game developers and psychologists alike

The video game Arc Raiders is set in a lethal imagining of an apocalyptic future for humanity. Survivors have been forced to live deep underground in colonies while mysterious, murderous AI machines patrol the surface. Only the desolate ruins of former cities survive, and reckless human “raiders” take trips topside to conduct dangerous scavenging missions.

For all the menace of these armed robots, called Arcs, the deadly droids are not the biggest threat in this hugely popular game, which was released late last year and has sold more than 14m copies. Raiders operate with the constant anxiety that another person will shoot them on sight and steal their loot. Mercilessness is rewarded in this kind of competitive, high-stakes world.

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:00 am

Justice denied: why families of apartheid victims are still searching for answers

Struggle for justice symbolises limitations of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose hearings began 30 years ago

Darkness had fallen on 27 June 1985 when Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlauli and Sparrow Mkonto set off on the 150-mile drive back from a meeting of anti-apartheid activists in the South African city of Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha. They never made it home.

About an hour into their journey, as the road wound north from the coast towards their home town of Cradock (now called Nxuba), the four men were pulled over by three white security police officers. They were handcuffed and driven back towards Gqeberha.

Published: April 15, 2026, 5:00 am

When an author says she had to decline a $175,000 prize, what does it say about the publishing world? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Helen DeWitt turning down the Windham-Campbell literary award caused controversy. But her bold act highlights that such prizes aren’t always as meritocratic as they might seem

“All you need is a five-minute spot on a morning TV show,” a colleague told me recently. “Then everyone will buy your novel.” I tried to picture myself, with my horror of being filmed, in thick orange makeup, perched on a sofa in a brightly lit studio while trying to talk about how the French critic Hélène Cixous inspired me to want to write the first great ovulation novel. It sounded ridiculous for all involved.

Yet when you’re a writer, you are supposed to take every opportunity you can get. That was the attitude to news that Helen DeWitt had turned down the $175,000 (£129,000) Windham-Campbell prize on the basis of being unable to fulfil its promotional obligations, which included six to eight hours of filming. The prize, which this year was given to eight writers in recognition of their life’s work, is intended to give recipients time and space to work independently of financial concerns.

Published: April 15, 2026, 5:00 am

Hungary’s strongman lost. His ideas live on in the White House | Jamil Smith

The United States tolerates Trump’s behavior because of our warped definition of strength

The strongest men I’ve known didn’t behave anything like Donald Trump.

They were capable of restraint, first off. They may have spoken loudly, but they never used volume to enforce authority. None of them thought domination equaled leadership. How silly that would be.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:00 am

Hungary beware: authoritarianism can be checked, but it is rarely dismissed with a single blow | Blanche Leridon

Poland has shown that it takes far more time and energy to rebuild a country’s rule of law than it does to dismantle it

“Historic” is an adjective used too often these days, at the risk of trivialising the word and diluting its substance. But Sunday’s Hungarian election, which marked the fall of Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power, deserves the label. The chief architect of European illiberalism, the man who dismantled Hungary’s rule of law, presided over a system of endemic corruption and stood as an avowed enemy of Ukraine is gone.

The scale of the moment is undeniable. For Ukraine and for the European project, the relief is palpable. With an election turnout of 79.5% – the highest the country has seen since the fall of the USSR – and a strong mobilisation of the youth vote, the Hungarian people have delivered a clear mandate for change. Despite the explicit support of Donald Trump and the Maga-sphere, despite an electoral map gerrymandered in his favour and a locked-down media landscape, Orbán lost. What is more, he lost so decisively that he was forced to concede immediately. There is, without a doubt, reason for enthusiasts of liberal democracy to celebrate – a “Budapest spring” in its own right.

Blanche Leridon is director of French studies at Institut Montaigne, an author and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris

Published: April 15, 2026, 4:00 am

The Brexit delusion is dead – so now Keir Starmer doesn’t need to pretend any more | Rafael Behr

To rebuild relations with Europe in a dangerous world, the prime minister needs to win big arguments, not hide behind outdated red lines

In opposition, Keir Starmer pushed Brexit to the margin of debate. In government, he has learned that Europe is central to Britain’s interests whether you talk about it or not. The avoidance of painful arguments from the past turns out to be a handicap when making plans for the future.

This was predictable. Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto pretended that Brexit was a historical event. It was something Boris Johnson got “done” in 2020, in fulfilment of his winning campaign pledge from the previous year. The terms could be tweaked, but Starmer promised to preserve the substance. That was an indulgence of public fatigue with the whole issue, made electorally expedient by fear of offending former Labour supporters who had voted leave in the referendum.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:00 am

How the streaming dream turned sports on TV into a costly maze

What began as a fan-friendly revolution has splintered into a confusing, expensive web of subscriptions, blackouts and ads

There was a moment, perhaps a decade ago, when it felt as if sports broadcasting nirvana was near. A world where ordinary fans could access any game on any device, any time, anywhere.

Or near enough, as cord-cutting devastated traditional cable subscription models and viewers who had long been locked into expensive and restrictive TV packages now had choices. Streaming nurtured a diverse and bespoke landscape.

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:00 am

A long-term plan with mixed results: how Matt Crocker’s US Soccer tenure stacked up

The US federation’s sporting director hired Mauricio Pochettino and Emma Hayes, but it’s too early to judge his larger impact

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Sporting directors live in the mid-to-long-term. While the coaches they hire and players they recruit have to deal with the highs and lows of week-to-week performance reviews, the executives watch on and make sure the project hasn’t veered off course. With a club, the rule of thumb is that it can take at least three transfer windows to start seeing tangible evidence of progress under a new sporting director. In international soccer, it often takes multiple cycles.

Matt Crocker arrived at US Soccer in April 2023 pledging to guide the program into a brave new era while acknowledging that initiative would take time to actualize. As it turned out, he never game himself that time. US Soccer announced on Tuesday that Crocker was stepping down as sporting director, and he’s reportedly due to take up a similar position with Saudi Arabia.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:32 am

NFL reporter Russini resigns amid ‘self-feeding speculation’ over photos with Patriots’ Vrabel

• Photos prompted investigation by The Athletic

• Russini seen as one of NFL’s top reporters

NFL reporter Dianna Russini has resigned from The Athletic less than a week after photos of her and New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel prompted an internal investigation at The New York Times-owned sports outlet.

The New York Post last week published the photos of Vrabel and Russini at an Arizona resort and said they were taken before the NFL owners meetings that began in Phoenix on 29 March.

Published: April 14, 2026, 8:23 pm

Ruthless PSG prove that not even Anfield has an infinite capacity for miracles | Jonathan Wilson

Stage was set for one of Liverpool’s classic comeback nights – but not this team against these European champions

Often in the past Liverpool has demanded and Anfield has delivered. Past glories perhaps shouldn’t influence the present, but they do; precedent begets belief. That’s part of the mythos of the great stadiums, how they develop a life and an identity of their own. But a club cannot simply give itself to an arena and hope that it will do the job that players and management and the executive body cannot. No ground, not even Anfield, has an infinite capacity for miracles.

Just because Liverpool came from 3-0 down to beat Barcelona in 2019, there’s no reason to believe they could overhaul a two-goal deficit against Paris Saint-Germain in 2026. Anfield did its bit on a windy night on which early drizzle gave way to teeming rain. The rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone was suitably stirring, the noise from both sets of fans boisterous. But it was not enough.

Published: April 14, 2026, 9:48 pm

‘No fear. Pure fire’: Mikel Arteta rallies wounded Arsenal before Sporting test

Manager calls on players and fans to embrace the chance of Champions League success despite recent defeats

There was a dramatic pause when Mikel Arteta was asked what he wants from the Arsenal supporters against Sporting on Wednesday evening in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final.

After his attempts to rouse them before the early kick-off against Bournemouth at the weekend by telling them to “bring your lunch” backfired spectacularly with a costly home defeat that ended with some fans booing the Premier League leaders off the pitch, this time the message was more considered.

Published: April 15, 2026, 7:00 am

The Spin | Teenager Sooryavanshi from ‘a different planet’ but superstardom not guaranteed

Fifteen-year-old sensation has sent Jasprit Bumrah over the ropes but how he confronts lean patch will be key

When Jasprit Bumrah stood at the top of his mark for the Mumbai Indians against Rajasthan Royals in this year’s Indian Premier League, he was the most complete all-format bowler in history. With a whiplash action that explodes from a staccato run-up like a stick of dynamite from unraveling silk, he fires searing yorkers and steepling bouncers at will. Three balls later, he was the setup for the story’s real protagonist.

Before this moment, Bumrah, winner of five IPLs and two World Cups, had delivered 5,445 balls in T20 cricket for Mumbai and his country. Only 180 of them were sent sailing over the rope for six. That’s a maximum, to use the parlance of the day, every five overs. Since 2013 he has been a walking cheat code, the point of difference in almost every game. None of that seemed to matter to 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:32 am

Azzi Fudd taken first in WNBA draft by Dallas Wings in UConn reunion with Paige Bueckers

• Fudd goes No 1, reunites with Bueckers

• UCLA set record with five first-round picks

• Analysis: Ella Brockway goes pick by pick

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Azzi Fudd was selected by the Dallas Wings with the first pick of the WNBA draft on Monday night, capping a 12-month ascent from NCAA champion to the top overall choice and setting up a reunion with former University of Connecticut teammate Paige Bueckers.

The 5ft 11in guard, who led UConn to last year’s national title and was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player, is the seventh player from the program to go No 1. Bueckers, the top selection by Dallas in the 2025 draft and the reigning WNBA rookie of the year, watched Fudd’s name called from a sold-out crowd at the Shed, the $500m cultural center at Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s west side.

Published: April 14, 2026, 2:11 am

Hidden treasures: Spanish archaeologists discover trove of ancient shipwrecks in Bay of Gibraltar

Researchers identify wrecks at the bottom of the sea from as far back as fifth century BC, from Europe and beyond

Spanish archaeologists exploring the bay that curves between the southern port of Algeciras and the Rock of Gibraltar have documented the wrecks of more than 30 ships that came to grief near the Pillars of Hercules between the fifth century BC and the second world war.

Over the millennia, the bay, which sits at the north end of the strait of Gibraltar that separates Europe from Africa, has swallowed everything from Phoenician and Roman vessels to British, Spanish, Venetian and Dutch ships – as well as the odd aeroplane.

Published: April 15, 2026, 8:00 am

After 1,200 years, cherry blossom record to live on despite Japanese scientist’s death

Prof Yasuyuki Aono’s meticulous work charted shifting bloom dates as a marker of climate change

Even in his final months, he counted the days until the cherry blossoms. Prof Yasuyuki Aono of Osaka Metropolitan University spent his career gathering data on the spring flowering dates of cherry trees in Japan in what is one of the world’s longest climate records tracking a seasonal occurrence.

Using sources dating as far back as the 9th century, he revealed that cherry tree flowerings have occurred progressively earlier in recent decades – a now famous marker of climate change.

Published: April 15, 2026, 5:00 am

US military says it killed four more people in a boat strike in the eastern Pacific

Strike marks third deadly attack on vessels in region in four days, and the killing of 174 people since September

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The US military said it killed four more people in a boat strike in the eastern Pacific ocean on Tuesday, marking the third deadly attack on vessels in the region in four days.

The US Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced the killings in a social media post, claiming, without providing evidence, that the men killed were “narco-terrorists”.

Published: April 15, 2026, 1:40 am

‘An incalculable loss’: Hampshire College to close doors after fall semester

Massachusetts liberal arts college laments ‘heartbreaking reality’ and says financial pressures to blame

A Massachusetts liberal arts college is set to close permanently due to low enrollment and financial problems.

The board of trustees of Hampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Amherst founded in 1965, pointed to “financial pressures” that have been “compounded by shifting external factors”.

Published: April 14, 2026, 10:59 pm

North Korea rapidly expanding nuclear weapons capability, UN watchdog warns

Pyongyang making ‘very serious’ progress on producing weapons, with rapid rise in activity at main nuclear complex

North Korea has made “very serious” progress in its ability to produce more nuclear weapons, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has said, in another sign that the regime is seeking to use its nuclear arsenal to ensure its survival.

North Korea is thought to have assembled about 50 nuclear warheads, although some experts are sceptical of its claims that it is able to miniaturise them so they can be attached to long-range ballistic missiles.

Published: April 15, 2026, 7:51 am

Trump warns US-UK trade deal ‘can always be changed’ with relations in ‘sad state’

President says he gave Britain ‘better deal than I had to’ but ally was ‘not there when we needed them’ on Iran

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Donald Trump has threatened to row back on the trade deal the US signed with the UK last year, in his latest salvo against the British government over sharp differences about the US’s approach to the Middle East.

The US president said the economic deal struck with the UK, which cut some of his tariffs on cars, aluminium and steel, was “better than I had to” and that it could “always be changed”.

Published: April 15, 2026, 8:11 am

Paris art enthusiast wins €1m Picasso painting in €100 charity raffle

Ari Hodara bought his ticket at the weekend after finding out about the raffle by chance while dining out

A Parisian art enthusiast could not believe his luck when he found out on Tuesday he had won a Pablo Picasso painting worth more than €1m with a €100 raffle ticket.

“How do I check that it’s not a hoax?” said Ari Hodara, 58, after organisers called him following the draw at Christie’s auction house in the French capital.

Published: April 15, 2026, 7:41 am

Cuba could beat US energy blockade with $8bn investment in renewables, says thinktank

Report by Common Wealth argues rest of the world should pay for country’s transition as reparative climate finance

Cuba could beat the US’s crippling energy blockade for ever with just an $8bn investment in renewable energy. And the rest of the world should pay for it.

Those are the bold claims of a thinktank analysis of the embattled socialist republic’s energy policy, which claims that Cuba could show its Caribbean neighbours the way to a green energy future.

Published: April 14, 2026, 11:01 pm

Inside a jubilant DC conference where ‘the climate deniers are in charge now’

Trump’s EPA chief Lee Zeldin’s presence shows how much influence climate deniers now have, experts say

As scientists confirmed that March was the United States’ most abnormally hot month in recorded history, dozens of climate deniers gathered to promote misinformation and tout their newfound influence on federal policy.

At a conference hosted by the prominent science-denying thinktank the Heartland Institute last week, a crowd of mostly middle-aged men in suits claimed the world is finally waking up to the idea that the climate crisis does not exist.

Published: April 14, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘Suddenly, boom, it’s completely warm’: summers are getting longer – especially in Sydney, study finds

Researchers examined trends in 10 global cities, with Sydney’s summer growing at two-and-a-half times the average

Scientist Ted Scott could feel that summers in his home state of Minnesota were not what they used to be.

With the climate crisis accelerating, Scott could feel and see the seasons changing from their usual patterns – especially summer – and he wanted to know what the data said.

Published: April 14, 2026, 7:11 am

‘Without them there is no life’: the race to understand the mysterious world of Africa’s fungi

Amid growing evidence of fungi’s key role in ecosystems and storing carbon, African scientists are championing the need to preserve ‘funga’ as much as flora and fauna

Madagascar has long been celebrated for its remarkable wildlife, with the vast majority of its species – from ring-tailed lemurs to certain species of baobab trees – found nowhere else on the planet. But when discussing the island nation’s endemic treasures, fungi are often left out of the conversation.

Yet “fungi are some of the most important things in the world”, says Anna Ralaiveloarisoa, a Malagasy scientist. “They feed 90% of terrestrial plants. Without them, there is no life on the Earth.”

Published: April 14, 2026, 4:00 am

New accuser says Eric Swalwell sexually assaulted her in 2018

Lonna Drewes alleges Democratic congressman drugged and raped her at hotel

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Another woman has accused Eric Swalwell of sexual assault, claiming the California Democrat drugged and raped her in 2018.

At a press conference in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, the woman, Lonna Drewes, said she delayed coming forward sooner with her allegations that Swalwell drugged and raped her in a West Hollywood hotel room because of his “political power”.

Published: April 14, 2026, 5:45 pm

French woman, 86, held by ICE after moving to US to marry 1950s sweetheart

The family of Marie-Thérèse, from Brittany, fear for her health after she was cuffed and placed in a detention centre

An 86-year-old French woman who moved to the US to marry her 1950s sweetheart is being held in a crowded detention centre in Louisiana after she was arrested by immigration agents and cuffed by her hands and feet.

The family of the woman, named only as Marie-Thérèse, said they feared for her health as French consular officials attempted to secure her release. One of her sons told the Ouest-France newspaper that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had treated his mother like a hardened criminal.

Published: April 14, 2026, 5:18 pm

ICE detention of US citizen in Minnesota investigated as kidnapping, false arrest

County officials review whether ICE’s warrantless raid and forced transport of a St Paul US citizen broke law

Authorities in Minnesota are investigating the detention by federal immigration officers of a US citizen as a possible kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment.

The arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 56, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in January became symbolic of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s brutal crackdown in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul.

Published: April 14, 2026, 4:53 pm

JD Vance defends Trump amid spat with Pope Leo: ‘Stick to matters of morality’

Catholic vice-president effectively tells Leo to stay in his lane after pope criticized the White House over the Iran war

JD Vance has weighed in on Donald Trump’s feud with Pope Leo, effectively telling the pontiff to stay in his lane after the head of the Catholic church criticized the White House over the Iran war.

“It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” the vice-president – a Catholic convert himself – said in an interview on Fox News on Monday night.

Published: April 14, 2026, 1:50 pm

UK to call for end to Sudan bloodshed at Berlin talks on third anniversary of war

British aid to double as 19m people face acute hunger, but summit unlikely to end conflict amid Saudi-UAE tensions

The British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, will urge Sudan’s warring parties to “cease bloodshed” during a major conference on Wednesday, which analysts believe is unlikely to deliver a significant step towards peace.

The talks in Berlin – held on the third anniversary of the start of Sudan’s ruinous war – are expected to help address a catastrophic funding shortfall that is compounding the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Published: April 14, 2026, 11:01 pm

Magyar meets Hungarian president and goes on state media as he plans break with Orbán era – Europe live

Prime minister elect says he expects new government to be in place by mid-May

US president Donald Trump told ABC News ​reporter Jonathan Karl ‌he was not concerned about Viktor Orbán’s loss in Hungary, and that he actually likes incoming ​prime minister Péter Magyar.

“I think ​the new man’s going to do a ⁠good job – he’s a good man,” ​Trump told the reporter, Reuters reported.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:29 am

Soaring rents and a four-hour commute: the misery of the Lagos housing crisis

The Nigerian megacity’s dynamic growth is outstripping its rental supply, and wages are not keeping up with rising costs

Every weekday before dawn, Oluwatobi Ogundipe leaves his small flat in Sango Ota, an industrial town in Ogun state, for a four hour commute to the glass towers of Lagos Island.

Despite working in one of Nigeria’s growing technology sectors, the 32-year-old product manager cannot afford to live any closer to his office.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:00 am

Air New Zealand's economy Skynest bunk beds set for launch

Passengers can book a four-hour session in the bunk beds from May for Auckland-New York flights but airline cautions against smuggling in children

Economy passengers on Air New Zealand’s ultra-long-haul flight between Auckland and New York can book a spot in the airline’s bunk-bed style sleeping pods from May, which will take to skies in late 2026.

In what the airline says is a world first, six full-length, lie-flat sleeping pods, are squeezed into the aisle of the new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. The pods, known as “Skynest”, will include fresh bedding, a privacy curtain, ambient lighting and kit with eye-masks, skincare, earplugs and socks.

Published: April 15, 2026, 2:07 am

‘One simple gesture says it all’: the world in black and white – in pictures

From sunbathers holding hands to rain-soaked metro stations, Marina Sersale’s magical monochrome images take us across Italy, Japan and beyond

Published: April 15, 2026, 6:00 am

‘This craving to go viral is tiresome’: the artists sick of the pressure to promote on social media

From Stewart Lee in his wolf costume to Werner Herzog’s big steak sizzle-up, artists are now under huge duress to ‘chase the algorithm’ and reach audiences. Many of them are hitting burnout – and hitting back

There was a meme recently featuring Tony Soprano looking characteristically menacing, with a caption that reads: “Imagine telling him he needs to create short form content to engage the algorithm.” But that sentiment feels inescapable: 82% of all internet traffic is now made up of videos, and the number of short-form videos published on the likes of TikTok and Instagram grew by 71% in the year from 2024.

You may have noticed there is a particularly high number of videos featuring people’s faces, which the algorithm rewards. All of a sudden, chefs, lawyers, podcasters, critics – all people with jobs once associated with an off-camera existence – are turning the lens on themselves. Even film director Werner Herzog, a once proud non-social media user, is now sizzling steaks and doing unboxing videos to camera.

Published: April 15, 2026, 4:00 am

Truth & Treason review – persuasive, punchy treatment of teenager who takes on the Gestapo

Based on a true story, Ewan Horrocks as a young German denouncing Nazism and Rupert Evans as a Gestapo officer work well to loosen the Christian saviour narrative grip

This second world war-set feature dramatises the story of German-resistance figure Helmuth Hübener, a Mormon teenager from Hamburg who went from being a member of the Hitler Youth to distributing leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. According to the film, Hübener (Ewan Horrocks) was partly inspired to act because his Jewish friend Salomon Schwarz gets shipped off to Auschwitz. Hübener’s main motivation, apparently, was that he wanted people to know the truth, hence the movie’s alliterative title.

It would be oh-so-easy to dismiss this film as maladroit Christian saviour-touting melodrama, however historically accurate it might be. It is especially tempting given one of the companies backing it is faith-based outfit Angel Studios, which brought us the QAnon-adjacent Sound of Freedom from a few years back. Plus, poor old Salomon (Nye Occomore) barely features much before he meets his epiphany-inciting fate. He certainly doesn’t get as much screen time as Hübener’s chief antagonist, Gestapo officer Erwin Mussener (Rupert Evans), who we learn has a soft side and his own freight of tragedy to bear before he starts yanking people’s fingernails out.

Published: April 15, 2026, 6:00 am

Mother Mary review – Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel are lost in ludicrous pop star drama

Music from Charli xcx can’t save David Lowery’s dour chamber piece, despite some flashes of dazzling style

For a certain stripe of pop fan, diva worship comes along with having a high tolerance for their unique flavor of psychobabble. So when Anne Hathaway, as the titular singer in David Lowery’s Mother Mary, declares that her new single Spooky Action is about Einstein’s “transubstantiation of feelings”, I ignored the snorts from those in the theater beside me. Finally, I thought, fondly casting my mind back to when Lady Gaga would talk about her music as a reverse Warholian explosion: a pop star who is not afraid to lean into high-concept nonsense. My generosity quickly faded when I began to realize that Mother Mary – the character and the film – was missing a crucial component for any modern pop star worth their salt: self-awareness.

Mother Mary is a one-time music A-lister in search of a comeback after a mysterious event that has taken her out of commission. She seems … haunted, and is experiencing a fashion emergency to boot, unable to find anything to wear for her imminent return to the stage. Three days before she is due to make her big appearance she turns up in the rain at the gothic mansion of fashion designer Sam Anselm (an enjoyably over-the-top Michaela Coel), looking like a rat caught in a monsoon, begging for an outfit that “feels like me”. Sam has moved on considerably since she was Mother Mary’s partner in fashion, and perhaps her lover behind closed doors too. In fact, she entirely loathes the pop star. “You are a carcinogen, you are a tumor,” Sam says in an amusingly ominous voiceover. “The bile is rising.”

Published: April 14, 2026, 3:18 pm

Miracle Mile: boy meets girl, romcom meets nuclear war

This 80s thriller straddles both a charming love affair and the threat of impending apocalypse. Somehow, it all works

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Miracle Mile is the result of an 80s romcom getting a severe bout of nuclear fear. It’s a uniquely chilling thriller, combining the disparate elements of screwball romance with a paranoid conspiracy to create a beat-the-clock urgency that defies categorisation and expectations.

Jazz musician Harry (Anthony Edwards) meets and falls in love with Julie (Mare Winningham) while visiting Los Angeles, having spent an idyllic afternoon together. Julie rushes off to work and Harry returns to his hotel, with the pair arranging to meet that night.

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Published: April 14, 2026, 3:00 pm

Is the new Super Mario Galaxy movie really that bad?

A shallow plot and advert-adjacent cameos justify the critics’ condemnation of Nintendo’s latest film. But there’s sincere affection for the universe here, too

I was bracing myself for the worst when I headed into the cinema with my children to watch the new Super Mario Galaxy movie over the Easter break. The reviews have been memorably dire. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it worse than AI; Empire deemed it a “humourless, hysterical trudge”. It’s been vilified even more than the first Mario movie, which film critics also hated.

I am a lifelong Nintendo fan, though – I literally wrote the book on the company – so even if it was terrible, there was a possibility that the Mario-loving child within me might temporarily take over my critical faculties and get me through it. That’s what happened with the first Mario movie, which I found to be perfectly OK. I was not actively offended by it, as the film critics seemed to be; audiences seemed to land mostly in my camp, if the huge discrepancy between its audience ratings and review ratings were any indication. Could the sequel really be that much worse?

Published: April 14, 2026, 9:59 am

‘She wanted to disappear in silence’: the magical life and mysterious death of married musician duo Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi

Blending minimalism, ambient and folk music in the former Czechoslovakia, the couple made pilgrim-like tours around Europe, beguiling everyone they met. Fans including the National’s Bryce Dessner explain their allure

The Czech duo Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi often seemed out of time. From the mid-80s, the married couple filtered minimalist composition, ambient and folk through baroque instruments, honing their craft in Prague’s churches and monasteries to create a mysterious combination of modernism and old European music against a communist backdrop. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Havels’ unhurried music didn’t rush to match the new pace of capitalism in the country. Instead, they would tour Europe by rail and bus, describing themselves as “pilgrims who wander and play”, as Vojtěch said in a 2009 documentary directed by Vincent Moon. Whether playing their string instruments or minimalist piano etudes for four hands, the pair merged into a symbiotic life-form.

The couple saw themselves as acting in service of the music, “of this energy between us and the audience”, said Irena. “Something that can only be shared together, going through us, when the ego is a little asleep.”

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:09 am

‘R&B today is like Brazilian football – the creativity, the skill’: Odeal, the genre’s hottest UK star

After being dropped by his label, the British-Nigerian singer became huge as an independent artist. So why did the Brit awards snub him? Ahead of arena dates, he reflects on his journey so far

“I’m not looking at a crowd tonight,” Odeal says hours before his first ever Brixton Academy performance in late March. “I’m looking at my people; aunties, uncles, friends, peers and supporters.”

Dressed in loungewear and stretched across a leather sofa backstage at the south London venue, the British-Nigerian singer seems calm, as if he’s exactly where he expected to be. The 26-year-old has the type of fame particular to the British R&B scene: adoration and many millions of streams from the genre’s global fanbase, to the point where he’ll soon play arenas across the US in support of R&B megastar Summer Walker – though is yet to have much mainstream recognition beyond that.

Published: April 14, 2026, 2:00 pm

Shrooms, alligators and the swamp: how the ‘satanic e-girls of TikTok’ revived psychedelic sludge metallers Acid Bath

The Louisiana band came to a tragically early end in the 90s, but after going viral they’ll soon play stadiums with System of a Down. They look back on the claggy riffs and circle pits

‘It’s a mind-blower,” says singer Dax Riggs on the surprising TikTok-driven renaissance of the renowned 1990s psychedelic sludge metallers Acid Bath. “In the front row you’ll see an old fan and next to them is a 13-year-old kid singing all the words,” adds guitarist Sammy Duet. “What the hell is going on here?”

Formed in the Louisiana bayou in 1991 with oppressive, swampy sounds soundtracking tales of drugs, death and decay, Acid Bath deftly hopped from treacly, melodic grooves to bluesy licks and fast-chugging thrashers, sometimes in the same song. “Society here was totally decrepit and unfair in a lot of ways, but the beauty of the landscape is supreme,” says Riggs of the backwater wetlands that loomed large in their psyches. Their claggy, peculiar southern gothic style burned bright, before the death of bassist Audie Pitre in 1997 brought their journey to a close.

Published: April 14, 2026, 8:10 am

The Fallen by Louise Brangan review – an enraging account of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries

The horrifying story of the Catholic-run institutions that incarcerated thousands of women and girls

Many readers, and surely most Irish readers, will finish this book in a state of white-knuckled rage, mingled with sorrow and at least a pang of guilt. It is a detailed, thoroughgoing and appalling account of the Magdalene laundries, the most famous, and most infamous, among Ireland’s extended and varied landscape of penal or correctional institutions, which operated for most of the 20th century – the last of the laundries was closed in 1996.

As the academic Louise Brangan points out in The Fallen, it is easy to become confused by the number and variety of prisons, mental asylums, orphanages, workhouses and homes for unmarried mothers that proliferated in Ireland between the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the late 1990s. However, the Magdalene laundries were unique. Dr Brangan writes: “In a regime distinguished by its excessive inhumanity, the Magdalene laundries were its deep end. In 1951, when the laundries were at their height, for every 100,000 males, 27 were in prison … [while] for every 100,000 females, 70 were in a laundry. These were not peripheral: they were Ireland’s main carceral institution.”

Published: April 15, 2026, 6:00 am

Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace

A man who meant to be a priest is faced with a moral crossroads in this ambitious and affecting first novel

Jon Doyle’s debut novel tells the story of Mack O’Brien, a young man who went to a seminary to study for the priesthood but was asked to leave because he had no real calling, and has therefore returned to his family home in Wales to work out what to do with his life. Cheek by jowl with his ailing, deeply religious mother, and a father struggling to process the grief of his own parents’ recent deaths, he finds himself drawn into participating in a local theatre production – playing a disciple in Owen Sheers’s now-legendary Passion of Port Talbot, an immersive community-led re-enactment of the crucifixion that took place over several days in Port Talbot in 2012, starring Michael Sheen.

Mack is recruited after a steelworker from the plant where he works as a security guard drops out of the show. Material enough for a novel already, one might think, but all this becomes more or less background noise when, on the same night he agrees to be in the play, Mack bumps into Siwan, a young woman he was close to at school. Siwan’s mother was an environmental activist who ended up going to prison for her protests. Siwan had visited him at the seminary on the day he agreed to leave the priesthood and said to him, “forgive me father, for I am about to sin”. The nature of the sin she is intent on committing becomes the focus of the novel.

Published: April 15, 2026, 8:01 am

My Year in Paris With Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy review – wonderfully entertaining

Biography mingles with fiction as Levy explores the avant-garde writer through the story of three female friends in Paris

The narrator of Deborah Levy’s witty scherzo of a “fiction” – “novel” isn’t the word for this uncategorisable book – thinks that Gertrude Stein would have liked Sigmund Freud. She imagines them enjoying a cigar together while their wives make small talk. Would Frau Freud “have exchanged her recipe for boiled beef with Alice B [Toklas]’s recipe for hashish fudge”? The two never met (though with her interest in the “bottom character” and his in the “unconscious”, Stein and Freud would have had plenty to talk about), but that barely matters. This book is full of things that don’t actually happen, of relationships that are not what the people involved suppose them to be, of digressions and fantasies and encounters that are imagined but never take place.

It all starts with a lost cat. The cat is called “it”: lower-case “i” followed by lower-case “t”. This causes all sorts of linguistic confusion, highlighting the way we use the word “it” to mean something indeterminate (as in the first sentence of this paragraph), or something trivial, or something tremendous. The phrase “lost it” recurs, the “it” meaning – variously – one’s mind, sympathy with Ernest Hemingway, daring to be as unconventional as Gertrude Stein, the stream of consciousness “flowing under the mowed and manicured golf courses on which men swung their clubs in the 21st century”, the temptation to smile while being undermined by a patronising man, the drudgery of housekeeping, the thing – which might be obedience or shame – that holds an artist back from becoming a modernist … or love, or one’s mother, or a black-and-white cat with one deformed ear.

Published: April 14, 2026, 6:01 am

All Them Dogs by Djamel White review – murderous desires in the badlands of Dublin

Sparks fly in this homoerotic dance of desire and betrayal, from a powerful new voice in Irish literature

Toxic masculinity, that repressed and repressive male energy that does so much to fuel brutality and abuse, sometimes finds itself on the brink of a vulnerable homoeroticism. In Djamel White’s debut novel All Them Dogs, a vividly propulsive neo-noir, two violent men discover that murderous desires can lead to love as well as death. This is a fast-paced crime thriller with a psychosexual twist, set in a dangerously Freudian arena of Eros and Thanatos.

On the run for five years after killing a man in a gang fight, Tony Ward has returned to the badlands of west Dublin under the protection of a local crime boss. Teamed up with tall and sullen enforcer Darren “Flute” Walsh, Tony is back on his home turf grafting a grim routine of collecting debts and drug dealer’s dues. Propelled through a world of old scores and hard knocks, our protagonist is a shark who has to keep moving simply to survive. But when he and Flute are called upon to kill a failing dealer, their brutal conspiracy becomes a visceral dance of desire and betrayal.

Published: April 14, 2026, 8:00 am

Post your questions for Adam Scott

From his breakthrough role in public-sector comedy Parks and Rec to his mysterious and important work in corporate-dystopia drama Severance, the actor is ready to talk

Adam Scott has been a familiar face since the 90s, popping up in everything from Hellraiser IV: Bloodline to Star Trek: First Contact, and comedies including Knocked Up and Step Brothers. You might remember him – and his beard – as the smarmy boss sparring with Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (“I was saying you know who looks good in a beard? Dumbledore. Not you”), or meddling with timelines in Hot Tub Time Machine 2.

It was his role as state auditor Ben Wyatt in Parks and Recreation, that made him indispensable: the anxious policy wonk turned devoted husband to Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler). Fans will have their own favourite Ben moments – from the two-second stop-motion film that took weeks to make, to the invention of the Cones of Dunshire board game and his earnest devotion to Game of Thrones and 90s alt-rockers Letters to Cleo.

Published: April 15, 2026, 11:25 am

Kanye West postpones Marseille concert as France considers blocking him from performing

Interior minister is ‘highly determined’ to block US rapper from performing in the southern city in June due to his past antisemitic remarks, sources say

Kanye West has announced he will postpone an upcoming concert in France, just after reports emerged that France’s interior minister is seeking to block the US rapper from performing due to his antisemitic remarks.

“After much thought and consideration, it is my sole decision to postpone my show in Marseille, France until further notice,” the rapper, legally known as Ye, wrote on X.

Published: April 15, 2026, 12:34 am

Nicole Kidman reveals she is training to become a death doula to ‘provide solace and care’ to dying

Australian actor says the death of her mother in 2024 inspired the new direction

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Nicole Kidman has revealed her next role: death doula.

The Australian actor revealed she is now training to be a death doula – professionals who provide emotional, physical and psychological support to the dying – while speaking at the University of San Francisco.

Published: April 15, 2026, 4:17 am

‘Such a water-cooler show!’ Jane Krakowski on Ally McBeal – and life as the world’s biggest scene-stealer

The 1990s series set her career alight; then came 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and countless theatre triumphs. She discusses Tina Fey, Stephen Sondheim and why it would take a broken leg to keep her off stage

‘I’ve been on three television shows that moved the needle a little bit,” says Jane Krakowski. “It sounds obnoxious for me to say it, so hopefully you’ll phrase that as if you said it.” In fact, I did also say it: the first was Ally McBeal, from 1997 until 2002, in which she played Elaine Vassal, an idiosyncratic character in a groundbreaking show. The kind of people who liked to sit around arguing about telly and post-modernism talked constantly about what kind of feminism McBeal was iterating, in the late 90s, with its scatty, neurotic heroine, such an unfamiliar screen trope of Career Woman, but somehow so much closer to life. Krakowski was almost the photo-negative of Calista Flockhart’s title character: brassy, eccentric, unconcerned by others’ opinions. Similarly, her character in 30 Rock, Jenna Maroney, acted as the bookend to Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon – Krakowski untouched by self-awareness, Fey beset by it. That ran from 2006 until 2013, and two years later, Fey’s follow-up, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, featured Krakowski as Jacqueline White, a magnetically unlikable wealthy socialite, in a fictional world so surreally improbable that it feels like a high-wire act only this particular cast could have pulled off.

You could split hairs about whether Ally McBeal invented the “dramedy” or just honed it, and the question of Fey’s comic sensibility could suck you in like quicksand. But in each show, Krakowski creates a character that you cannot imagine having landed, fully formed, on the page. She is expressive in a way that’s so high-voltage but so controlled, funny in a way that feels so instinctive but so deliberated, that the dialogue and the performance seem to explode together like two chemical elements.

Published: April 14, 2026, 9:00 am

Bosses say AI boosts productivity – workers say they’re drowning in ‘workslop’

Workslop refers to AI-generated work that seems polished but is flawed and in need of heavy corrections

Ken, a copywriter for a large, Miami-based cybersecurity firm, used to enjoy his job. But then the “workslop” started piling up.

Workslop is an unintended consequence of the AI boom. It’s what happens when employees use AI to quickly generate work that seems polished – at least superficially – but is in fact so flawed or inaccurate that it needs to be heavily corrected, cleaned up or even completely redone after it’s passed on to colleagues.

Published: April 14, 2026, 2:00 pm

MacBook Air M5 review: Apple’s best consumer laptop speeds up

Chip upgrade brings pro-level power, long battery life and plenty of storage, but the Air now faces real competition

Apple’s latest MacBook Air is its most powerful yet, comes with double the starting storage and is better than ever for getting work done and as the benchmark for a consumer laptop. But this year the new lower-cost MacBook Neo has muddied the waters.

The M5 MacBook Air starts at £1,099 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,799) for the 13in version, which is £100 or equivalent more than last year’s excellent M4 version, but comes with at least 512GB of storage. It sits above the £599 MacBook Neo and below the £1,699 M5 MacBook Pro, making the Air Apple’s mid-range machine.

Screen: 13.6in LCD (2560x1600; 224 ppi) True Tone

Processor: Apple M5 with eight or 10-core GPU

RAM: 16, 24 or 32GB

Storage: 512GB, 1, 2 or 4TB SSD

Operating system: macOS 26 Tahoe

Camera: 12MP centre stage

Connectivity: wifi 7, Bluetooth 6, 2x Thunderbolt/USB 4, headphones

Dimensions: 215 x 304.1 x 11.3mm

Weight: 1.23kg

Published: April 15, 2026, 6:00 am

Always in crisis mode? You might be catastrophizing – here’s how to stop

When your boss asks to meet, do you assume you’re about to get fired? Experts explain this common pattern

Your boss asks you for a meeting later in the week; you have never received negative feedback, but you automatically assume you’re about to get fired. Thoughts begin to swirl as you imagine the consequences: soon, you’ll be unemployed and unable to pay your rent.

Or, perhaps, when your partner is a little late coming home, you visualize a terrible accident on the motorway, their car crushed in the pile-up.

Published: April 14, 2026, 4:00 pm

Sali Hughes on beauty: how to repair your hair in three minutes – no scissors or faffing required

Even the promise of stronger, healthier hair could never quite tempt me to use products as opposed to cutting it. Until now …

There are few brands one can credit with having changed the beauty game, but the launch of Olaplex just over a decade ago invalidated the assertion that the only way to fix damaged hair is to cut it.

It used a patented ingredient (the unpronounceable bis-aminopropyl diglycol dimaleate) to strengthen and rebuild all types of hair bonds ravaged by bleach, colour and other chemical or heat treatments.

Published: April 15, 2026, 9:00 am

From gentle strolls to zipline thrills: summer hiking in the Swiss Alps

The vertiginous Valais canton offers adventures aplenty, from abseiling down gorges to wild swims in glacial pools – and nights swapping hiking tales in mountain huts

Thick grey-green mud squidges through my toes as I step into the icy, irresistible water. I’m on the descent from the Britannia Hut at the foot of the Allalinhorn in the Valais canton of the Swiss Alps, and this turquoise pool of glacial meltwater has been on the horizon tempting me for an hour. I peel off all five layers of clothing and plunge into the murky water. After a night in a shared dorm without showers it’s bliss.

In winter, the jagged ridges of the Valais are the domain of expert skiers and ice climbers, but in summer the lower slopes become accessible to hikers, with the added bonus of the ski lift infrastructure. You can be surrounded by dramatic peaks with the security of well-marked trails ranging from gentle strolls to serious alpine routes. I’m here to hike to mountain huts, test my nerves on via ferrata routes, and fill my city-dweller lungs with clean Alpine air.

Published: April 15, 2026, 6:00 am

AI companies make powerful tech – but they’re also savvy marketers

Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI is said to be frighteningly capable, but we shouldn’t get carried away by the hype

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the Guardian’s US tech editor, writing to you from my happy village in Pokopia.

Tech companies are cutting jobs and betting on AI. The payoff is far from guaranteed

‘There’s a lot of desperation’: skilled older workers turn to AI training to stay afloat

‘It has your name on it, but I don’t think it’s you’: how AI is impersonating musicians on Spotify

‘It feels as if I’ve made a new best friend’: my experiment with AI journalling

‘Irresponsible failure’: Google, Meta, Snap and Microsoft slam EU over child sexual abuse law lapse

‘Abhorrent’: the inside story of the Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail

Published: April 14, 2026, 12:04 pm

What can I do with leftover rice? | Kitchen aide

Don’t be scared of cooked rice: our experts share safe ways to turn yesterday’s leftovers into something delicious

How do I store cooked rice safely, and what can I make with it the next day?
Michael, by email
“It’s a bit of a running joke with rice, because I think of all the people in China who aren’t spreading their leftover rice immediately on to a tray to cool and are still alive,” says Amy Poon, of Poon’s at Somerset House in London. “But I have to be responsible and say: cool the rice as quickly as possible, within the hour, and put it in an airtight container and pop it in the fridge [or freezer] straight away.” The reason being, as food science guru Harold McGee notes in his bible On Food & Cooking, “Raw rice almost always carries dormant spores of the bacterium Bacillus cereus, which produces powerful gastrointestinal toxins. The spores can tolerate high temperatures, and some survive cooking.” In short: good storage practices will prevent bacterial growth, not to mention open a whole world of dinner opportunities.

“Rice is the most versatile grain to have around as extras,” confirms Ping Coombes, author of Rice, but there’s another benefit, too. “When rice cools, the molecules rearrange into tighter bonds in a process called retrogradation.” This, Coombes continues, creates resistant starch, and the more resistant the starch, the slower the release of energy. “Eating chilled, pre-cooked rice makes it release sugar molecules into the blood stream more slowly, promoting the feelings of fullness for longer and preventing big variations of blood sugar.” But back to Michael’s prospective meals.

Published: April 14, 2026, 12:00 pm

Vegemite is recognised globally – but how many people know Milo was invented in Australia?

The chocolate malt powder is sold in more than 40 countries, and Australian cafe owners say there’s ‘jingoistic pride’ in serving it on their menus

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When I order the jumbo-sized Milo Godzilla at Ho Jiak in Sydney’s Haymarket, it arrives as advertised – it’s comically large. The Malaysian restaurant prepares the drink by swirling Milo powder with hot water, adding sweet drizzles of condensed milk then chilling the mix with ice. Scoops of ice-cream are added and extra choc-malt powder is showered on top. Served in a one-litre jug, it’s so big I can’t finish it solo: staff hand me three takeaway cups to transport the leftovers.

Like many beloved Milo drinks, the Godzilla is native to south-east Asia. Without ice-cream, it’s essentially a Milo Dinosaur: an iced Milo heavily sprinkled with more of the choc-malt grains and served everywhere from Malaysian market stalls to Indian-Muslim restaurants in Singapore.

Published: April 14, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘Nothing but tree skeletons’: record-breaking wildfires devastate US cattle country

Rising temperatures and extreme drought are driving more destructive spring fires across the Great Plains. This year, forces aligned to create the perfect storm in Nebraska

In a normal year, the vast grasslands that roll across the American Great Plains would be starting to green. But at the center of the US, where most of the nation’s beef producers graze their herds, this spring brought fire instead of moisture, leaving more than a million acres black and barren.

Multiple blazes raged across Nebraska, where the records for the annual acreage burned were obliterated in a single month. The state logged the largest blaze ever recorded when the Morrill fire cascaded across more than 642,000 acres (260,000 hectares) before it was contained in March.

Published: April 14, 2026, 11:00 am

Art, sex, nature: why is everything sold to us as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself?

How a reductive worldview is stripping meaning from our most valued activities

• This article was originally published as The six-second hug on Aeon.co

For decades, films out of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios have opened with Leo the roaring lion, garlanded with the motto ars gratia artis: art for art’s sake. Given that MGM is a money-making behemoth, we might doubt the sincerity of this high-minded sentiment. Still, it certainly expresses one of the few legitimate reasons why people should make movies. Art for the sake of anything else – profit, self-promotion, propaganda – isn’t really art at all, or at least not in its purest sense.

It therefore came as a bit of a shock to see a recent advert for the National Art Pass, which gives holders free or discounted entry to galleries and museums around the UK. The tagline “See more. Live more” sounded right: art does indeed enrich our lives. But it turned out that the “more” here was purely quantitative, not qualitative. “Grow some years on to your life with art,” proclaimed the main slogan, followed by: “Spending time in galleries and museums could help you live longer.” Art not for art’s sake, but for your heart’s sake, the fleshy not the spiritual one at that. This messaging around the arts has become ubiquitous, with Arts Council England promoting the idea that “engaging in creative and cultural activities has proven health benefits for individuals and communities”.

Published: April 14, 2026, 4:00 am

Tell us your experience with AI in job interviews

We would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI

Companies are increasingly using AI in their hiring processes – including conducting job interviews themselves. With this in mind, we would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

Published: April 15, 2026, 10:27 am

Magazine covers and a Dignity Day march in Caracas: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: April 14, 2026, 1:16 pm