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Pre-match optimism

“You may not be entirely surprised to learn that I’m not confident about this game,” writes proud Welshman and Liverpool fan Matt Dony. “But, having not terribly enjoyed the international break, it would be nice to have something to cheer about. So I’m trying to be rational! The Liverpool XI is strong. City aren’t the force they used to be. The unpredictability of knock-out competition. Szoboszlai has been unplayable at times this season. There are reasons to be cheerful! (City are still going to win, aren’t they? I hate football…)”

Published: April 4, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘Occasionally a picture can change the course of history’: 33 scandalous photos that shocked the world

When it comes to scandal, seeing is believing – which is why these images caused such a stir

Words can tell a story, but it’s pictures that will make you believe in it. Such is the power of a photograph; the ability to strip away illusions, to illuminate something hidden, and sometimes force us to accept unpalatable truths. When it comes to scandal, seeing is believing – occasionally even to the point that a picture changes the course of history.

How might life have been different for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had he not been photographed clutching the midriff of the 17-year-old girl he would later claim he had never met? Without this haunting triptych of the former prince, the late Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein’s fixer, Ghislaine Maxwell, hovering in the background, there would have been nothing physical to connect the then prince with a trafficking victim. Though for years Andrew’s friends insisted that the photograph must have been doctored, buried within the Epstein files recently released by the US Department of Justice is a note from Maxwell that appears to confirm it is real.

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

As a state visit looms … can King Charles tame Trump?

Royal visitors have long been popular in the US, and Charles has decades of diplomacy under his belt. But can soft power save the special relationship?

What’s the worst that could happen when King Charles visits Donald Trump in Washington at the end of this month? And what will be the best outcome from Keir Starmer’s point of view, since it is the prime minister who directed the visit to go ahead in the hope of improving our battered, supposedly special relationship? While the relationship is still apparently meaningful to Britain, to the US it appears to not mean so much – especially now.

The king goes where he is told, whether he would prefer to stay at home or not. This time to a land whose president denounces our aircraft carriers as toys and accuses us of cowardice, and whose defence secretary talks derisively of our Royal Navy. Perhaps Charles ought to wear his naval admiral’s uniform when he goes to the White House, medals and all.

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

As Team Trump wage unceasing war on Iran, evangelical nationalists are destroying any moral world order we once had | Simon Tisdall

The brutalisation of global norms by figures like Pete Hegseth must be seen as an ethical issue. It’s a fight against chaos, and all major religions must play a role

That combative old hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers, is not much heard these days, though it was once a favourite with church congregations and school assemblies. Written in 1865 by Sabine Baring-Gould, an English clergyman and religious scholar, its belligerent refrain urges the faithful on to battle, victory and conquest: “Onward, Christian soldiers / Marching as to war / With the cross of Jesus / Going on before!” Its martial tone suited the Victorian zeitgeist but it made succeeding generations uneasy (though it was still sung in my primary school in the early 1960s). Nowadays, this sort of triumphalism gives religion a bad name.

Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, and a leading Christian soldier, would certainly disagree. He probably hums it on his way to work. At a recent Christian worship service in the Pentagon – an irregular event, given the constitution’s dislike of anything smacking of state religion – Hegseth, referencing Iran, prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. Hegseth’s creed is killing. He describes Iranians as “religious fanatics”. And he should know. His intolerant brand of evangelical Christian nationalism is extreme even by US standards – yet has Donald Trump’s backing. Trump was a Presbyterian until 2020, when he abruptly declared he wasn’t. God knows what he is now.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

Blind date: ‘The restaurant shuffled our table around three times so we could keep chatting until they closed’

Rachel, 32, a consultant, meets Josh, 34, an accountant

What were you hoping for?
A lovely meal on a misty Saturday, hopefully with someone I’d like to see again.

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

‘There’s more to life than work’: Bangkok’s young people embrace mass outdoor aerobics sessions

Group exercise had been associated with older people, but the playlist of K-pop and US hip-hop is a hit with gen Z

It’s evening rush hour in central Bangkok, the roads are clogged with traffic and the air is heavy from the heat. But in a corner of the capital’s biggest park, the crowds are already gathering to dance.

As the music starts, an aerobics leader glides across a small stage. A sea of arms move from side to side, then touch the sky. Knees pop up and down. Ankles tap.

The sessions have become so popular that projector screens and extra speakers have been added

Published: April 4, 2026, 4:00 am

Death, displacement and military duties: children plunged into crisis by Middle East war

The US-Israeli war will have a lifelong impact on millions of children across the Middle East

Millions of children have been plunged into crisis by the war in the Middle East, with reports of child soldiers in Iran, mass forced displacements in Lebanon and the killing of hundreds of minors.

According to the UN agency for children, Unicef, more than 340 children have been killed and thousands injured since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, which has retaliated with bombings across the region.

Published: April 4, 2026, 7:00 am

Record high ocean temperatures off southern California raise fears of prolonged marine heatwave

Researchers warn the high-pressure conditions could disrupt marine life and ecosystems if it continues

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For more than a century, shoreline stations operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have measured water temperatures along the California coast. This year, they are flashing a warning sign.

Over the last three months, several stations have repeatedly posted record-breaking daily high temperatures – with the La Jolla station registering temperatures a full 10F above historical average at one point last month.

Published: April 4, 2026, 12:00 pm

New Covid variant BA.3.2 detected across US, but experts urge vigilance over alarm

Strain found in 29 states and Puerto Rico carries spike mutations, but no data shows increased severity

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BA.3.2, an Omicron variant of Covid-19 with dozens of new spike mutations, has been detected in 29 US states and Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but experts say there is not yet evidence it is more severe than other recent variants.

“The right response to BA.3.2 is serious attention, not alarm,” says Dr Jake Scott, a Stanford professor and infectious disease expert who authored a systematic review of Covid vaccines for the New England Journal of Medicine.

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:00 am

Artemis II astronauts now closer to the moon than the Earth

Crew members can now see the moon, which one described as ‘a beautiful sight’, from their spacecraft’s docking hatch

The Artemis II crew are now closer to the moon than the Earth, Nasa has said, as the four astronauts completed the third day of their flight to the moon.

“We can see the moon out of the docking hatch right now. It’s a beautiful sight,” said an unnamed member of the crew, which Nasa shared in a post on X on Saturday morning.

Published: April 4, 2026, 12:36 pm

‘Racist ideology lodges itself amid austerity politics’: newly elected French mayor on tackling far right

Bally Bagayoko, who was targeted by racist abuse after winning Saint-Denis mayorship, vows to tackle inequality to stem deepening divisions

A French mayor who faced a barrage of racist insults that are being investigated by police has called for France to urgently tackle race hatred and stem the rise of far-right ideas ahead of next year’s presidential election.

“It has become a lot easier for racist views to be expressed … and unfortunately racist comments are becoming trivialised,” said Bally Bagayoko, 52, in his office at Saint-Denis town hall outside Paris, where he was recently elected mayor for the radical left.

Published: April 4, 2026, 7:47 am

‘Feels like history is being made’: will young Hungarian voters oust Orbán?

The rightwing populist has been in power for 16 years but a new generation of voters are preparing to vote for his opponent, polls suggest

As he rushed to finish off his cigarette before heading to class, Ákos, 20, confessed that he has more at stake than most as Hungarians prepare to head to the polls in the coming days.

“If things remain the same, or get even worse, I can’t see a future here,” said the aspiring teacher. “There are many people who want to try living elsewhere, and that’s totally fine, but I’m not one of them. For so long I’ve dreamed of working and teaching here.”

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:00 am

‘The frontline is like Terminator’: fighting robots give Ukraine hope in war with Russia

Use of unmanned ground vehicles has grown exponentially since 2024 turning the war into a technological contest

Victor Pavlov showed off Ukraine’s newest and most versatile weapon: a battery-powered land robot.

The unmanned ground vehicles come in various shapes and sizes. One runs on caterpillar tracks and resembles a roofless milk float. Another has wheels and antennas. A third carries anti-tank mines. Since spring 2024 their use has grown exponentially.

Published: April 4, 2026, 6:00 am

One dead and dozens injured at Peru football stadium during pre-match event

Initial reports suggested parts of arena’s wall had collapsed, but Alianza Lima says there were no structural failures

One person has been killed and dozens more injured at the Alejandro Villanueva Stadium in Lima, Peru, according to the football club Alianza Lima.

Hundreds of fans were attending a “flag-waving event” on Friday around the stadium, a day before a derby match between the home team Alianza Lima and local rivals Universitario de Deportes.

Published: April 4, 2026, 10:00 am

Italian council buys Mussolini’s villa to keep it away from ‘fascist nostalgics’

Riccione’s leftwing mayor, Daniela Angelini, says public purchase is victory for town and ‘act of love and vision’

An Italian council has bought a villa where Benito Mussolini spent his summer holidays, partly to avoid the property falling into the hands of “fascist nostalgics”.

Daniela Angelini, the leftwing mayor of Riccione, a town close to Rimini along Italy’s Adriatic coast, said the acquisition of Villa Mussolini through an auction was “an act of love and vision” and that bringing it back into public hands was a victory for the entire town.

Published: April 4, 2026, 8:00 am

Donald Trump says 'Cuba's next' but what what does it mean? – video explainer

The US president seems to have turned his attention to Cuba in recent weeks, saying that it was 'next'. Officials from both countries have reportedly been in negotiations since February however the content of the discussions remains unclear. The Guardian spoke with professor emeritus of international relations Dr Philip Brenner about what the US might really want with the Island

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:33 am

Oil, strait of Hormuz and empty threats: a timeline of Trump’s flip-flopping on the Iran war

In the fifth week of the war, Trump continues contradicting himself on its objectives and how Americans are affected

When Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury alongside Israel on 28 February, his administration had settled on a set of stated, and broad, objectives: destroy Iran’s missiles, eliminate its navy, prevent a nuclear weapon.

Over a month later those objectives have multiplied, contracted and contradicted each other.

Published: April 4, 2026, 10:00 am

Trump news at a glance: president enlists JD Vance as his ‘fraud czar’, targeting Democratic states

Trump said Vance would focus on blue states and, without providing evidence, accused Democrat leaders of rampant ‘theft’ – key US politics stories from Friday 3 April at a glance

Donald Trump has given his vice-president, JD Vance, a new side gig: “fraud czar”.

The president this week announced a fresh crackdown on “fraud” in Democratic states and tapped Vance to lead the charge. Officials swiftly announced a string of arrests in California.

Published: April 4, 2026, 1:00 am

Trump requests $152m funding to restore Alcatraz as prison

Budget proposal released on Friday outlines president’s desire to revive former federal prison in San Francisco Bay

Donald Trump is asking for $152m to restore Alcatraz, a former federal prison off the coast of San Francisco, according to a budget proposal released on Friday for the 2027 fiscal year.

Last May, Trump first called upon the Department of Justice, the FBI and Homeland Security to rebuild the prison. He heaped praise on Alcatraz’s reputation in a Truth Social post.

Published: April 4, 2026, 12:09 am

‘It broke our home’: family demands answers after death of man abandoned by US border agents

Nurul Shah Alam, a nearly blind Rohingya refugee, was left alone in a Buffalo parking lot. His death has been ruled a homicide – what now?

On 19 February, the second day of Ramadan, Mohamad Faisal Nurul Amin and his family gathered to pray before sunrise in their apartment on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York. After nearly a year of waiting, they believed their family would be together again. Amin’s father, Nurul Shah Alam, 56, was coming home.

“For the first time since we arrived in America, I felt happy,” said Fatima Abdul Roshid, Shah Alam’s wife, speaking through an interpreter. “I thought my husband would be with our two sons and me for Ramadan.”

Published: April 4, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘Unconstrained’ Trump seems to be on a quest to name most everything after himself

President has affixed his name to institutions and edifices, and his visage now glowers from several federal buildings

The US has a history of naming things after its presidents.

Washington DC has the Ronald Reagan airport, while John F Kennedy international airport is New York’s main air transport thoroughfare. The Hoover Dam straddles Nevada and Arizona; Theodore Roosevelt is one of several former presidents to have a Washington DC building named after them; Franklin Delano Roosevelt has an island; Abraham Lincoln has the Lincoln Memorial; and George Washington has the nation’s capital and an entire state.

Published: April 4, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘They’re making them disappear again’: families fear Mexico’s missing are being erased

Government accused of removing loved ones from record after report says tens of thousands lack information to be found

Mothers search in the scrublands, poking the earth for signs of a corpse. Desperate pleas fill social media, crying out for clues that may bring relief. Tattered posters flutter in the wind, asking for help in the search. Often, all that is left of the missing are scattered bones bleached by the sun.

It is arguably Mexico’s greatest human rights crisis. More than 130,000 people have vanished since the state went to war against drug cartels a decade ago. Now, activists and human rights experts say the authorities are trying to erase their loved ones from the record.

Published: April 4, 2026, 10:00 am

Cubans study oil tanker diplomacy for signs of progress in secret talks with US

Despite hostile rhetoric Trump let a Russian ship break his blockade – could it herald a Venezuela-style outcome?

When a sanctioned Russian oil tanker, the Anatoly Kolodkin, docked at Cuba’s Matanzas oil terminal on Tuesday, unloading 700,000 barrels of crude, it was not immediately clear why the ship had been allowed to pass through Donald Trump’s oil blockade.

In January, the US president had proclaimed on social media: “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” yet last week he told reporters, “If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem with it” – and waved the Russian ship through.

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:00 am

Native birth workers are guiding Alaskan mothers through pregnancy once again: ‘I felt really supported and honored’

Indigenous doulas are creating support networks for mothers who are at the highest risk of pregnancy-related death

Mary Sherbick found out she was pregnant at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Although she and her partner had planned it, the pandemic was anxiety-inducing and isolating. While scrolling on social media, she came across online talking circles for Alaska Native women, organized by Alaska Native Birthworkers Community (ANBC), who were pregnant or postpartum. Sherbick, who is Yupik, immediately signed up.

“A lot of us were also just concerned about the way that we would be treated, and some of our concerns of pain or our birth plans within a hospital setting,” Sherbick said. “I think a lot of the women that I talked to just were aware of the history of how Indigenous women, Indigenous people in general, have been treated, and the sterilization programs that have been done unknowingly to Indigenous people.”

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:00 am

Politics of Black hair: why grooming rules are under scrutiny across the diaspora

From schools in Ghana to workplaces in Britain, underpinned by the colonial roots of ‘respectability’, conversations around natural hairstyle persist

Last month a Jamaican woman said her teenage son had been pulled from lessons because school staff had deemed his afro hairstyle inappropriate.

“The dean of discipline called me to state that my son has been removed,” Michelle Scott said. “You’re telling me that you took him, a fifth-form student, out of classes to go and get a haircut?”

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:00 am

Six great reads: the OnlyFans legacy, stolen cargo and Meta’s ‘creepy’ glasses

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:01 am

‘The shadows, the figures playing basketball … I waited for the magic to appear – then it did’: José Luis Morales Martín’s best phone picture

The architect on a special moment he captured one hot afternoon in Spain

José Luis Morales Martín took this photo from his living room window on a hot September afternoon. Martín, who lives in Las Rozas de Madrid, a short drive from the Spanish capital, had just finished his lunch when he heard noises from outside. In the communal courtyard below, two teenagers were playing basketball.

“I was amazed by the light and immediately went to get my phone to capture the scene,” he says. “The geometry of the pavement pattern, the shadows of the building and the figures playing with a basketball … I just waited for the magic to appear – and then it did.”

Published: April 4, 2026, 10:00 am

Tim Dowling: spring has sprung – and so has our tortoise

I’m on the sofa with a beer, watching a show where people always end up not buying property in Mediterranean resorts

I’m sitting in my office shed looking through the open door into the garden. It’s warm and sunny – the first spring-like day of spring.

Across the lawn I see my wife open the kitchen door and place the tortoise on the back step. Later it will be cold and he will have to come in, and I will not be able to find him. I make a mental note to start the search before dark. On my way to the kitchen an hour later, I notice he’s already disappeared.

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

Eminem’s 8 Mile helped me survive abuse – and opened my eyes to a world outside of orthodox Judaism

My upbringing denied me access to the arts and led to me bottling up my feelings about what was happening to me. Then I saw Eminem taking control of his destiny, and decided I needed to do the same

At 15, I had never been to the cinema, or even watched a movie. I grew up in a strictly Orthodox Charedi Jewish household, the daughter of a rabbi, in Glasgow, where we had next to no exposure to cultural influences beyond our religious world. The bookshelves were stacked with biblical texts and teachings, we sang in Yiddish and I only saw TV at my less religious grandparents’ house, where we could watch the end of the tennis if it was finishing as we arrived.

By my mid-teens, my parents had moved to Jerusalem and sent me to live in Manchester, with a scholar who would later abuse me. The abuse went on for six months while his family slept or when they were out. I had no one to turn to or tell; even if I had, no one had taught me the words for what was happening to me. It was a complicated, lonely time without adults to rely on.

Published: April 4, 2026, 6:00 am

Jared Kushner is seeking peace deals in the Middle East. He’s also raising money for his own firm | Mohamad Bazzi

The president’s son-in-law is acting as an envoy even as he looks to secure billions for his company from foreign governments

After Donald Trump returned to the White House, his son-in-law and former senior adviser Jared Kushner declined to take a job in the new administration and instead planned to focus on running his Miami-based private equity firm. Kushner said he would also forgo raising more money for his company while Trump was in office, to avoid any appearance of a conflict.

But since last summer, Kushner has re-emerged as a high-level peace envoy for Trump, helping broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza; steering negotiations to end the war between Russia and Ukraine; and, most recently, playing a central role in the aborted negotiations between Iran and the US over Tehran’s nuclear program. Kushner still doesn’t hold an official government position – he’s a private citizen who has been negotiating some of the most important foreign policy agreements on behalf of the Trump administration, with a direct line to the president.

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:00 am

Courts keep ruling against Trump. But they can’t save our democracy singlehandedly | Margaret Sullivan

Decisions on the White House ballroom, public media and journalists’ access to the Pentagon are heartening. But restoring our institutions is up to us

In another one of those strange and unprecedented moments of the Trump years, the president of the United States showed up at the supreme court the other day. No other presidents have done so, probably because they – to varying degrees – respected the separation of power among the three branches of US government.

But Trump has not shown himself to share in that basic principle.

Published: April 3, 2026, 1:00 pm

It’s official: scientists aren’t funny. But it doesn’t have to be this way | Helen Pilcher

It’s a world of bottom quarks and arsole compounds – so why is science still so serious? Levity can make it all a lot easier to understand

Science is an infamously dry endeavour. The noble practice seeks to answer humanity’s most inscrutable questions. How did life begin? What is consciousness? Why does naming cows increase their milk yield? Within this austere framework, there is little room for levity. I think most scientists would agree there is nothing funny about bottom quarks, nor the five-membered organoarsenic compound known as arsole.

So I wasn’t surprised by the findings of a recent peer-reviewed paper, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, that surveyed the use of humour across 531 scientific talks at 14 academic conferences. Stefano Mammola, from the Italian National Research Council, and colleagues found that on average scientists delivered only 1.6 jokes per presentation, of which 66% generated “only polite chuckles”. Science and comedy, it seems, don’t mix.

Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of This Book May Cause Side Effects

Published: April 4, 2026, 9:00 am

Architect of the Easter Rising, hanged as a traitor: for Roger Casement, a pardon still seems far away | Rory Carroll

Relations with Britain have improved again since Brexit, but battles over Irish history remain visible in Stormont’s endless feuding

• Rory Carroll is the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent and author of A Rebel and a Traitor: A Fugitive, the Manhunt and Birth of the IRA

More than a century after he was marched to the gallows, there is still something radioactive about Roger Casement, a name that continues to emit a faint crackle in British-Irish relations.

He was knighted in 1911 by King George V for distinguished imperial service, but then embraced radical Irish nationalism and sought German help for the 1916 Easter Rising.

Rory Carroll is the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent and author of A Rebel and a Traitor: A Fugitive, the Manhunt and the Birth of the IRA

Published: April 4, 2026, 7:00 am

Easter, minus the eggs: the Becky Barnicoat cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

The Guardian view on the US and Europe: the UK tried to be a bridge, but Trump likes to burn them | Editorial

The president’s outbursts on allies and Nato were further confirmation that Europe cannot wait to bolster security – and Britain must play its part

“She had no more surprises for him; the unexpected in her behaviour was the only thing to expect,” Henry James wrote in his novel Daisy Miller. Leaders dealing with Donald Trump surely recognise the sentiment. James’s character was a young American out of her depth in Europe, falling victim to prejudices. Mr Trump is a real-world problem, and this time, Europe is battered by the prejudices and vengefulness of the American.

This week alone the US president has publicly mocked the British prime minister and armed forces (as weak), the French president (over his marriage), told allies to get their own oil – having set the Middle East on fire – and said leaving Nato was “beyond reconsideration”. Mr Trump’s wishful thinking has hit reality in Iran, where the war that he and Benjamin Netanyahu began will not be easily ended. His resulting frustration, concern about domestic political repercussions and desire to distract the public are matched by vindictiveness towards allies who rightly refused to join in.

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

Published: April 3, 2026, 4:32 pm

Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley have tense postgame exchange after South Carolina shock UConn in Final Four

• Gamecocks end Huskies’ winning streak at 54 games

• Auriemma: ‘I said what I had to say. It was nothing’

• Staley: ‘If I did something wrong to Geno, I had no idea’

UConn coach Geno Auriemma and South Carolina coach Dawn Staley had a heated exchange on the sideline after the Gamecocks beat the undefeated Huskies 62-48 in Friday night’s semi-final of the women’s NCAA Tournament.

South Carolina ended UConn’s winning streak at 54 games and secured a return trip to the national championship game.

Published: April 4, 2026, 1:25 am

Rising star ‘Wreck-It Will’ Sherman has roots in US rugby’s past and eyes on its future

If the Eagles are to make a mark on their home World Cup in 2031, the hard-hitting Anthem RC lock could have a key role to play

Will Sherman may be the future of US rugby, but his roots are in the game’s American past. The 22-year-old standout second-row forward for Anthem Rugby Carolina in Major League Rugby is the son of Wade Sherman, a member of a champion Cal Berkeley team that included Mark Bingham, who on 11 September 2001 was one of the Flight 93 passengers who fought their hijackers and kept it from reaching Washington.

“There was a super old photo that my dad pulled up, and the first time I heard that story was from him,” Sherman said. “He was like, ‘That guy standing to my left is an American hero.’”

Published: April 4, 2026, 10:00 am

‘I still have a lot left’: Rory McIlroy on his Masters defence and staying motivated

Northern Irishman bristles at suggestions he has peaked as he returns to Augusta with the same intensity as always

It was an opening which depicted more than a decade of toil. “I’d like to start this press conference with a question,” said Rory McIlroy. “What are we all going to talk about next year?”

The wait was over. McIlroy had not only won the Masters, not only ended an 11-year wait for a fifth major, and not only become the sixth man in history to complete a grand slam. The ticking of all three boxes at once and in extraordinary circumstances was why the scenes at Augusta National in 2025 are unlikely to be matched as the 90th Masters staging approaches.

Published: April 3, 2026, 6:00 pm

Luka Dončić will miss rest of Lakers’ regular season with hamstring strain

• NBA scoring leader hurt in Thursday’s loss to Thunder

• LA have five games left before postseason begins

• Absence may force Dončić out of individual awards race

Luka Dončić will miss the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers’ regular season with a Grade 2 strain of his left hamstring, the team announced Friday.

Dončić is the NBA’s top scorer and the driving force behind the Lakers’ surge into the third spot in the Western Conference standings, but he injured his leg during Los Angeles’ blowout 139-96 loss to Oklahoma City on Thursday. An MRI exam revealed the severity of the strain.

Published: April 3, 2026, 10:47 pm

‘Don’t wait four more years’: World Cup co-hosts Canada offer Italy fans free shirt swap

• Canada Soccer holding jersey exchange in Toronto

• Italy failed to qualify for finals after playoff defeat

Italian football fans are being encouraged to put their national team’s World Cup 2026 qualification failure behind them – by backing co-hosts Canada instead.

Canada Soccer, the national governing body for the sport, is offering a jersey swap on Saturday for fans in Toronto’s Little Italy district. “Dear Italian soccer fans, Don’t wait four more years. Swap your jersey for Canada,” read a post on X.

Published: April 4, 2026, 11:45 am

Tiger Woods told police he talked to ‘the president’ after arrest, bodycam shows

• Golfer has pled not guilty to DUI charges in Florida

• Footage shows Woods’s shock: ‘I’m being arrested?’

• Hydrocodone pills found in pocket following arrest

Bodycam footage of Tiger Woods’s arrest for DUI shows the golfer looking surprised when he was handcuffed by police officers at the scene of a vehicle crash last week and telling a deputy he had spoken to “the president” on the phone after the incident.

“I do believe your normal faculties are impaired, and you’re under an unknown substance, so at this time you’re under arrest for DUI,” Martin County Sheriff’s deputy Tatiana Levenar told Woods after officers conducted a series of field sobriety exercises on the 50-year-old.

Published: April 3, 2026, 2:08 pm

USMNT World Cup squad predictions: how we see the 26 for 2026

Mauricio Pochettino faces several tough decisions to name a squad for the 2026 World Cup hosts

A full 24 matches into the Mauricio Pochettino era, we have arrived at the moment of truth. The US men’s national team’s 2026 World Cup roster will be named on 26 May, and the team’s two recent friendlies (a 5-2 loss to Belgium and a 2-0 loss to Portgual) have given Pochettino plenty to think about as he makes his selection.

We here at the Guardian have made our picks as well – based a little on our own preference, but still within the realm of what Pochettino may do. Separately, the three of us made our 26-man rosters. Any player who we agreed on got the “on the squad” designation. Anyone we differed on is listed as “up for debate”, with other notable exclusions listed as “out of the picture”.

Published: April 3, 2026, 9:00 am

Trump announces ‘fraud’ crackdown in Democratic states as arrests begin in California

US president makes baseless claims about fraud in blue states and says JD Vance will lead clampdown as ‘fraud czar’

Donald Trump announced a fresh crackdown on “fraud” in Democratic states and tapped JD Vance to lead the charge. Officials swiftly announced a string of arrests in California.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, the US president announced that his vice-president was now “in charge of ‘fraud’ in the United States”, claiming the problem is “massive and pervasive” and that Vance’s new role as “fraud czar” will be “a major factor in how great the future of our country will be”.

Published: April 3, 2026, 10:04 pm

Ukraine war briefing: Russian army records almost no territorial gains for first time since 2023, analysis shows

Russian advances slowing, thinktank’s data shows; 14 killed in Ukraine in massive drone and missile salvo. What we know on day 1,501

Russia’s army recorded almost no territorial gains on the frontline in Ukraine in March for the first time in two-and-a-half years, according to analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) conducted by Agence France-Presse. The Russian army has been slowing in its advances since late 2025 – because of Kyiv’s localised breakthroughs in the south-east of the country. Across the entire frontline, the Russian army seized only 23 sq km (8.9 sq miles) in March, losing territory in some areas, according to the analysis. This figure excludes infiltration operations conducted by Russian forces beyond the frontline, as well as advances claimed by the Russian side but neither confirmed nor denied by the ISW.

The Russian army made 319 sq km of gains in January and 123 sq km in February, which was then the smallest advance since April 2024. Its advance in March was the smallest since September 2023. The ISW attributed the slowdown to Ukrainian counteroffensives, but also to “Russia’s ban on using Starlink terminals in Ukraine” and “the Kremlin’s efforts to restrict access to Telegram”. The messaging app – very popular among Russians, including those fighting on the front – has been barely usable in recent months due to blocks imposed by the authorities. As in February, Russia lost ground on the southern section of the frontline, between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Russian strikes killed 14 people in Ukraine on Friday, officials said, as Moscow launched the latest in an increasing number of daytime barrages. Moscow has been firing aerial broadsides at Ukraine throughout its more than four-year invasion, mostly at night, but in recent weeks has stepped up daytime attacks. The Russian military used more than 500 drones and dozens of missiles in its salvo on Friday, according to the Ukrainian air force.

Russia’s Baltic oil export hubs at Ust-Luga and Primorsk remain unable to handle shipments after a series of Ukrainian drone attacks, prompting the country’s refineries to find alternative routes for export, industry sources said on Friday. The attacks have damaged port infrastructure and continued through the last two weeks of March, with at least five strikes on Ust-Luga in the space of 10 days. Sources said the export restrictions, along with disruptions at large refineries, could lead to a decrease in oil production in Russia. Traders said refineries had been unable to deliver diesel fuel to Primorsk for export since 22 March, leaving refineries in European Russia and Siberia without their most viable export route. Traders said refineries were having to consider more expensive rail transport routes to other export terminals.

A Ukrainian drone and missile attack on southern Russia killed at least one person, injured four others and sparked a blaze aboard a foreign-flagged vessel, Russian officials said on Saturday.

Zelenskyy has called on lawmakers to pass key legislation next week to avert a funding crisis, help Ukraine fight the war against Russia, and enact key reforms required for EU accession. Due to lagging reforms and slow legislative progress in late 2025 and early this year, Ukraine missed deadlines to unlock billions from its key lenders, economists said. With the need for external financing standing at $52bn this year – equivalent to about a quarter of annual economic output – the budget situation is desperate. “I have a list of key draft laws that are critical for securing funding,” the Ukrainian president said in remarks released on Friday. They range from strengthening the court system to reforming energy sector procedures. “I believe that members of parliament from all parties must understand the importance of these bills for Ukraine’s budget,” said Zelenskyy, who has a majority in parliament but its relations with his government have soured.

Published: April 4, 2026, 12:30 am

‘India is going to face a food crisis’: Farmers panic over fertiliser shortages amid Iran war

Ripple effects of oil and fertiliser shortage felt by farmers in India and Sri Lanka despite governments saying there is enough stock to go round

Gurvinder Singh never thought the war in Iran would touch his quiet corner of Punjab.

Yet looking out over his smallholding, where he alternates between wheat and rice crops in the state known as India’s breadbasket, the 52-year-old farmer can barely think of anything else. His anxiety over a conflict playing out thousands of miles away is crippling as he fears what will come of this season’s rice crop.

Published: April 3, 2026, 11:00 pm

‘Wild west’ reformer pilates boom is causing rise in injuries, experts warn

Lack of regulation for specialist classes leaves UK fitness enthusiasts at risk, say professional bodies

The boom in reformer pilates has created a “wild west” of studios where poor regulation has resulted in inexperienced teachers and a rise in injuries, professional standards bodies have warned.

Pilates is not formally or legally regulated, and as its popularity has surged, industry experts say, so too has the growth of packed reformer-based classes often led by instructors with limited training.

Published: April 4, 2026, 8:00 am

Evacuations ordered as two wildfires break out in southern California

Stiff winds ‘spreading the smoke’ as Springs fire bears down on Moreno Valley while smaller Crown fire also burning

A pair of wildfires broke out in southern California on Friday, marking the region’s first significant burns in a spring that has seen a major heatwave.

The fires started in windy conditions that have caused them to spread quickly. The National Weather Service issued a wind advisory for parts of southern California through midday Friday, warning of gusts up to 50mph.

Published: April 4, 2026, 2:05 am

Hospital visit fuels speculation about Samuel Alito’s future on supreme court

Veteran justice, 76, was treated for dehydration in March; a retirement would give Trump new chance to shape court

US supreme court justice Samuel Alito was reportedly taken to a hospital after becoming sick at a Federalist Society dinner in Philadelphia in March, further fueling speculation that Donald Trump could have more chances to shape the land’s highest court through new appointments.

A CNN report said Alito was checked by medical staff and given fluids due to dehydration. He later returned to his home in Virginia that same night with his security detail. In the weeks since, Alito has resumed his duties, including participating in oral arguments.

Published: April 3, 2026, 8:12 pm

Senator decries new shoes-on security policy at US airports as ‘reckless’

Democrat Tammy Duckworth writes letter to TSA calling on agency to reinstate the shoes-off airport security policy

Nine months after US airports allowed passengers to pass through scanners without taking off their shoes, rescinding the stringent policy after almost two decades, a top senator claimed the “reckless” move could put passengers in danger.

The policy amounts to a “potentially catastrophic security deficiency”, according to Tammy Duckworth, Democrat for Illinois, and ranking member of the Senate commerce, science and transportation (CST) aviation subcommittee.

Published: April 3, 2026, 8:22 pm

Gucci Mane apparently robbed at gunpoint by rapper and seven others

Pooh Shiesty among those accused of robbing and kidnapping three men after dispute involving record label

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Federal prosecutors on Thursday accused rapper Pooh Shiesty and eight others of robbing three men at gunpoint and kidnapping them in January in Texas after a contract dispute involving the rap star Gucci Mane’s record label.

The US attorney’s office in Dallas declined to name the victims and an FBI affidavit attached to a criminal complaint only refers to them by their initials. One victim, RD, is described as the owner of 1017 Records – the label belonging to Gucci Mane, whose legal name is Radric Delantic Davis.

Published: April 3, 2026, 6:41 pm

From early birds to emerging butterflies: UK shows signs of earliest spring on record

Citizen science data reveals early flowering, nesting and insect activity as global heating accelerate seasonal change

Bluebells are flowering, swallows are returning and orange-tip butterflies are flying in what could become Britain’s earliest recorded spring.

Records for early spring occurrences are being smashed as 2026 looks to be the earliest this century for frogspawn laying, blackbirds nesting, brimstone butterflies emerging and hazel flowering, according to Nature’s Calendar, which has logged citizen science records of seasonal change since 2000.

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

‘Amazing’: how to grow a meadow in the sea

Vibrant seagrass meadows once flourished around the UK but most have been destroyed. Now, communities and scientists are working to restore them

“There’s not many jobs where you get to be a sea gardener,” says Dr Oliver Thomas, senior science officer at Project Seagrass. He’s looking for flashes of eel grass that have survived the winter in the wide golden sand of Penrhyn beach on Ynys Môn (Anglesey), in north Wales.

But growing a meadow in the sea is not an easy job. Vast swathes of the gorgeous underwater swards, vital nurseries for fish such as cod, have been wiped out around the UK in the past century. Up to 92% have been lost. Restoring them – and their water-cleaning, carbon-storing, coast-protecting benefits – is a colossal challenge.

Published: April 3, 2026, 12:00 pm

Democratic attorneys general sue Trump over order to restrict mail voting

Over 20 attorneys general challenge the executive order and say it’s an unconstitutional move to disenfranchise voters

More than 20 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit Friday challenging Donald Trump’s Tuesday executive order to restrict who can vote by mail.

In his order, Trump directed the US Postal Service to abstain from sending mail-in or absentee ballots to people who are not on a pre-ordained list of eligible citizens.

Published: April 3, 2026, 9:40 pm

Quadruple amputee cornhole pro says he fatally shot person in self-defense

Dayton Webber is accused of shooting Bradrick Michael Wells twice in the head during an argument

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A quadruple amputee professional cornhole player acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a passenger in his Tesla during a heated argument, his attorney has said.

Dayton Webber, 27, appeared in Charles county district court via videoconference for a bail review on Wednesday, where Judge Patrick Devine noted that he left Maryland after the 22 March shooting of 27-year-old Bradrick Michael Wells. Devine ordered Webber to remain jailed without bail.

Published: April 3, 2026, 7:15 pm

Comedian Eugene Mirman thanks rescuers who pulled him from fiery car crash in New Hampshire

Best known for voice-acting in Bob’s Burgers, Mirman was injured after his vehicle struck a toll plaza and ignited

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Bob’s Burgers voice actor Eugene Mirman says he is “extraordinarily thankful to the heroic people” that pulled him from the wreckage of his fiery car crash on Tuesday at a New Hampshire toll plaza – an accident that reportedly left him with serious injuries.

The 51-year-old comedian expressed his gratitude in an Instagram post late on Friday morning, which also described his being emotionally buoyed up by “the well wishes, love and kind messages from friends and strangers” in the wake of the wreck.

Published: April 3, 2026, 5:58 pm

Bondi out, Blanche in: what will a new justice department head mean for the Epstein investigation?

Bondi, reportedly ousted due to her botched handling of Epstein files, is still set to testify before Congress on 14 April

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As news emerged this week presaging Donald Trump’s dismissal of Pam Bondi, one of his motivations reportedly related to her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files.

While the new acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, insisted he had “never” heard the president say “that anything that happened to her had anything to do with the Epstein files”, it’s clear the issue has dogged Bondi throughout her tumultuous tenure.

Published: April 3, 2026, 4:30 pm

Relationship with Trump may be beyond repair, Keir Starmer told

PM gets widespread backing after president’s mocking impersonation takes US-UK relationship to new low

Keir Starmer has been warned his relationship with Donald Trump may be beyond repair after the US president derided the prime minister for consulting his team about military decisions, in a mocking impersonation.

In a new low for UK-US relations, Trump appeared to imitate Starmer in a weak voice during an Easter lunch speech at the White House, and said the UK was “not our best” ally.

Published: April 3, 2026, 5:11 pm

Cuba begins to free more than 2,000 prisoners as US eases fuel blockade

Havana makes a Holy Week ‘humanitarian’ gesture as Russian tanker is allowed to reach oil-starved island

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Cuban authorities have begun to free prisoners after announcing they would pardon 2,010 inmates, the second release in less than a month as the country faces heightened US pressure.

More than 20 inmates emerged from La Lima penitentiary in east Havana on Friday, holding their release papers, crying and hugging relatives who had been waiting for them all morning.

Published: April 3, 2026, 4:01 pm

Food prices spiked in March as Middle East conflict drove up energy costs, UN says

Biggest rises were in vegetable oil and sugar prices, which increased by 5% and 7% respectively

• Visual guide to the Gulf fertiliser blockade

Food prices rose sharply in March as war in the Middle East drove up energy prices and freight costs around the world, a UN report says.

An index of food commodity prices by the UN’s food and agriculture organisation increased by 2.4% in March, its second consecutive monthly rise.

Published: April 3, 2026, 10:57 am

Three people charged over alleged arson attack on Jewish charity ambulances in London

Hamza Iqbal, 20, Rehan Khan, 19, and a 17-year-old boy are due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on Saturday

Three people have been charged over an alleged arson attack on Jewish volunteer ambulances in north-west London.

Hamza Iqbal, 20, and Rehan Khan, 19, both British nationals from Leyton, and a 17-year-old boy, a dual British and Pakistani national from Walthamstow, were charged with arson being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

Published: April 3, 2026, 9:40 pm

Chess Mates: the fantastic true story of the sex toy rumour that buzzed around the world

It was the anal bead theory that caused a global sensation. Now, a new Netflix film tells the tale of two grandmasters, one scandal – and a whole lot of bad blood

Chess Mates (Netflix, Tuesday) has an unsettling early gambit: the face of Piers Morgan, looming via archive footage. “Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?” Morgan asks down camera, as if prepping an ill-advised phone-in. “Your curiosity is concerning. Maybe you’re personally interested?” shoots back his interviewee, Hans Niemann (above). The minds of chess masters, as glimpsed in this fantastic documentary, are almost as compelling as any back-passage shenanigans on the table.

It’s worth looking up the whole clip, from when Niemann found himself at the centre of a cheating scandal. The 19-year-old had come from nowhere; in a match at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, he did the impossible and beat the Goat. That’s Norwegian Magnus Carlsen: an undisputed titan who sees lines of play like Neo sees the Matrix, and has held the world No 1 spot, unbroken, since 2011. Suspecting foul play, Carlsen withdrew from the competition. Ever since, suspicion has swirled round his American rival. Which is where the beads enter. So to speak.

Published: April 4, 2026, 6:00 am

‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing

From sad-fishing on Facebook to sensational Substack revelations – today’s readers don’t have to look far for confessional writing. Is this the end of autobiography?

Every day I meet strangers who share intimate details with me. It’s called reading. In a newspaper piece a former sex addict recalls her need for BDSM (“when a sexual partner hurt me, I felt seen”) and how she conquered her dependency. On Substack an actor describes her grief on losing a baby (“After the miscarriage, I became convinced my daughter was backstage. I would push back the costumes on the rack and almost expect to find her”). And then there are the published memoirs, first-person stories of trauma, displacement and heartbreak. It’s not just women who unburden themselves, of course. As Martin Amis says in his memoir, Experience: “We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.”

Recent memoirs have upped the ante, though. What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers) is now open to anyone with a story to tell – “nobody memoirs”, the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them. Candour is the key, no matter how fraught the consequences. “Most writers I know,” Maggie Nelson writes in The Argonauts, “nurse persistent fantasies about the horrible things – or the horrible thing – that will happen to them if and when they express themselves as they desire”. But she takes that risk, addressing the book to “you”, her fluidly gendered husband Harry (who’s angry when she shows him a draft), while exploring identity, pregnancy, motherhood and sexuality.

Published: April 4, 2026, 8:00 am

Supergirl: the new trailer suggests that the DC Universe has an intriguing trick up its sleeve

A criticism of Superman stories is the guy’s near invincibility. And while a new trailer sees Kara tearing about like a cosmic gunslinger, there are hints her powers are at risk

If James Gunn’s aim with last year’s Superman was to give us a Man of Steel who stood out from those who came before him on the big screen, he nailed it. Even those who didn’t quite warm to this sunnier, weirder but more human incarnation could at least admire the way the film vaulted clear of almost every previous iteration. Delivering Kara Zor-El ought to be an easier job, for it is possible to argue that there has never been a definitive version of Supergirl on any screen, big or small.

Yet it is starting to look as if the newly formed DC Universe is once again ready to push outwards rather than merely backwards. This week saw the release of a new trailer, in which Milly Alcock’s Kara tears through alien bars, starships and off-world landscapes with the swagger of a cosmic gunslinger. But perhaps more intriguing were comments from director Craig Gillespie in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, which saw the film-maker open up about the story’s nine-world structure and the unusually heavy amount of planet-hopping involved.

Published: April 3, 2026, 1:31 pm

Your Friends & Neighbours season two review – Jon Hamm was made for this moreish crime caper

The star returns as wealthy neighbourhood thief Coop in this rich dessert of a show. But as he tackles middle-age malaise, there’s a lot of heart – plus a guest appearance by James Marsden

Does Your Friends & Neighbours love its unhappy, very wealthy characters, or despise them? Does it laugh at the 1%, envy them, pity them? It does all of the above at once and, as we return to the fictional enclave of Westport, New York – an obvious stand-in for real financiers’ playground Westchester – this mischievous US dramedy is still a rich dessert of a show, unhealthy but oh so moreish.

Jon Hamm is Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a role that, if it were given to any other actor, would require them to do their best Jon Hamm impersonation. Sturdy, smooth – this is a man made of oak and mahogany, when the rest of us are bags of twigs and jelly – and seemingly always with a tumbler of $500 whisky in his fist, he is blessed with the ability to charm any man/woman into a deal/his bed. Other men have been handed their place in the banking elite and are now drifting through a life of luxury; Coop is better at playing the game than they are because he is sharp enough to see what a sham it all is. He has that trademark deep Hamm gaze, a tension behind the eyes.

Published: April 3, 2026, 7:00 am

Earl Sweatshirt, Mike and Surf Gang: Pompeii // Utility review – rap radicals’ appealing study in contrasts

(10k/Tan Cressida/Surf Gang)
Earl’s post-Odd Future career swerved the mainstream to follow the path laid out by NYC underground rapper Mike, and their first double album lets both shine

Earl Sweatshirt swerved into public consciousness as part of the edgy but brilliant California rap collective Odd Future in the late 2000s. Practically from day one, he was considered the tastemaker’s choice member, virtuosic even as a teenager. Rather than play for the mainstream, Earl has spent the past decade or so immersing himself in New York’s underground rap scene, resulting in one of the most unique and unpredictable discographies of his generation.

One of his prime inspirations for that new path was Mike, the beloved underground New York rapper whose own body of work is thrilling and vital. Here, the pair link with Surf Gang, the producer-musician clique that credibly lays claim to the title of “the next Odd Future” on Pompeii // Utility, a hyperactive and engrossing double record that finds Mike taking one side and Earl the other.

Published: April 3, 2026, 7:30 am

Add to playlist: the endlessly inventive, radiant indie rock of Friko and the week’s best new tracks

The Chicago band’s frantic, urgent guitar melodies celebrate hope, friendship and family in these uncertain times

From Chicago, Illinois
Recommended if you like Modest Mouse, Wilco, Car Seat Headrest
Up next Second album Something Worth Waiting For out 24 April, touring the US from April and Europe in summer

In Friko’s hands, a swirl of influences and experiments curve the many colours of indie rock into an endlessly inventive, radiant ramble. The Chicago band’s upcoming, cheekily titled second album, Something Worth Waiting For, explores the energy of yearning: for growth, for change, for stability. Across nine tracks, Friko take inspiration from their recent spate of touring to orbit the idea of finding things worth moving for and the value of the journey itself.

Published: April 3, 2026, 11:00 am

Messiah album review – Whelan takes Handel’s oratorio back to its beginnings

Irish Baroque Orchestra and Choir/Whelan
(Linn)
Conductor Peter Whelan leads a finely judged and agile period-instrument performance with only 13 singers.

Every year, the Irish Baroque Orchestra and their conductor Peter Whelan bring Messiah back to Dublin, the city of its 1742 premiere. Their recording of Handel’s oratorio – the first on period instruments by an Irish ensemble – attempts to recreate the version heard at its first performance at the Fishamble Street music hall, a hot-ticket event at which such a crush was anticipated that the ladies in the audience were requested to forgo hoops in their skirts and the gentlemen to leave their swords at home.

One of the attractions was the scandal-hit contralto and actor Susannah Cibber, who sang several arias including some more often sung today by other voice types: on the recording, gratifyingly, we get to hear a substantial share for Helen Charlston, her voice firm, slightly metallic and unflaggingly expressive. Also included is a less familiar duet-and-chorus version of How Beautiful Are the Feet, written for two of the countertenors from the Dublin cathedral choirs. Here and elsewhere Alexander Chance is in buoyant voice – he also gets the two arias Handel adapted later for his star castrato in London. Hilary Cronin’s sweet-sounding soprano stands out among the solo voices.

Published: April 3, 2026, 12:54 pm

Sanaya Ardeshir: Hand of Thought review | Ammar Kalia's global album of the month

(Karigar)
The Indian producer steps away from electronics into intricate, slow-building compositions that favour texture and restraint

As Sandunes, Indian producer Sanaya Ardeshir has spent the last decade exploring the melodic side of electronic music with three ebullient albums that drew on the bright instrumentation and pop references of contemporaries such as Bonobo. Now releasing her first record under her own name, Ardeshir explores entirely new territory, namely expansive piano compositions that supplant dancefloor rhythms with slowly unfurling minimalist repetition.

Drawing on her training as a pianist, Ardeshir displays a confident command of the keys, building an insistent right-hand motif on the opening track that creates a foundation for saxophonist Rhys Sebastian’s drawn-out notes. This unwavering piano phrasing allows her collaborators to layer evocative instrumental swells, producing bursts of woodwind fanfare on the plaintive Between Dreams and swirls of trilling synth strings on the choppy Barefoot Steps. Percussionist Sarathy Korwar delivers a standout feature on Deccan Queen, giving structure to Ardeshir’s frenetic arpeggios with his steadily intensifying tabla rhythms.

Published: April 3, 2026, 8:00 am

The best recent poetry – review roundup

Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland; The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore; The Tree Is Missing by Shannon Kuta Kelly; Dog Star by Michael Symmons Roberts; Horses by Jake Skeets

Goyle, Chert, Mire by Jean Sprackland (Jonathan Cape, £13)
The 45 unrhymed sonnets in Sprackland’s sixth collection coalesce into three spellbinding interwoven sequences. Set in the Blackdown Hills, a remote stretch between Somerset and Devon, the poems explore the friction between art and articulation, habitat and inhabitation. Here, the landscape is not a backdrop but a linguistic event: “a drop swells on the lip of a leaf and falls / like a word being said”. By removing the first person throughout, Sprackland makes us encounter the landscape intimately: it’s not mediated through a speaker’s interiority but in “mossy silence”, “the rumble of the combine harvester”, “the noise / of meltwater hurtling over stones”, or “the shattered pieces of yourself”. Overshadowed by an unnamed illness, the poems bear wounds but don’t broadcast suffering; this restraint fosters minute attention to “pilgrim gnats attending the water” and the mire’s “long translation from gley to peat”. Sprackland’s ability alternately to narrow and widen our focus – from a closeup on insect life to geological time – reveals how consciousness itself moves between scales. Unlike many nature poems that overanimate or sentimentalise, the book is alive to the limits of human agency: it knows “language itself is prone to collapse”. Yet in that collapse, we can find meaning; recognise the “spiky logic” of natural process, following it as “the sparrow enters / and follows” the “sprawling holly”. The unwavering sonnet form represents an act of courage, a disciplined response to illness and dissolution, creating order where language threatens to collapse. This is a profound, enduring collection.

The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore (Corsair, £14.99)
Moore’s new collection constructs an ambitious architecture for exploring intergenerational trauma and motherhood. At its best, we find her confessional signature, as in The Black Notices, cataloguing unidentified murdered women, or Giving Birth With Anne Sexton, where literary inheritance meets bodily terror. Sometimes, however, this commitment to sincerity and transparency results in poems that feel like pedagogic exercises: Damaged Cento catalogues the “eight stages” of domestic homicide, while The Trimesters documents pregnancy’s upheavals. The motherhood poems, though deeply felt, risk predictability in their exploration of well-trodden territory – breastfeeding, bedtime routines, and the spectre of parental loss (“I imagine someone taking her away, / or a car ploughing into the pram”). It’s technically hard to make this new. Moore clearly presents the “I” as a site of shared, unpolished vulnerability, prioritising emotional legibility over lyric innovation.

Published: April 3, 2026, 11:00 am

Sarah Hall: ‘Everyone wangs on about Anna Karenina – I’ve never been able to finish it’

The author on being inspired by Michael Ondaatje and how Hilary Mantel helped her overcome her aversion to historical figure novels

My earliest reading memory
The headteacher in my village primary school used to recount terrifying Cumbrian ghost tales to the class, which I’m sure was formative. I can also still hear my mum sing-songing rhymes; “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s”. My dad read the Ant and Bee books to me, repeatedly – he’d drive back over a high upland road from work and get home in time for bedtime stories. But my earliest independent reading memory is The Story of Ferdinand by Leaf and Lawson. I loved that bull!

My favourite book growing up
Big books gave me the whirlies so it took a while for them to start landing.

Published: April 3, 2026, 9:00 am

‘I am trapped in a sweet-smelling cycle of video game-branded toiletries’: Lush’s Mario Galaxy range, reviewed

From a subtle Princess Peach lip jelly to a Yoshi egg that’s been traumatising children, the cosmetic chain’s latest tie-in is out of this world

When The Super Mario Bros Movie came out in 2023, it came with a rather unlikely tie-in: a range of skincare and bathing products from cosmetics chain Lush. The store, known for its devotion to natural ingredients and support for social justice causes, didn’t seem like the obvious partner for a major video game franchise. Because of this, I thought I should try them out, assuming that my dalliance with beauty journalism would be short-lived.

I was wrong. The collection was so successful, Lush later released a Minecraft range, which I also reviewed, and now there’s a Super Mario Galaxy range to tie in with the new movie. Somehow, I have become the Guardian’s Lush correspondent and it seems I am now trapped in a sweet-smelling cycle of video game-branded toiletries. There are definitely worse fates, so I’m just going with it.

Published: April 3, 2026, 9:00 am

Colbert on Trump’s Iran speech: old news ‘delivered by a narcotized turtle’

The late-night host reacted to Trump’s prime-time address on the war and his firing of attorney general Pam Bondi

With most late-night hosts on holiday, Stephen Colbert recapped Donald Trump’s prime-time national address on the war in Iran and his firing of the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.

Published: April 3, 2026, 2:35 pm

‘Taking my clothes off is my whole life!’ Bryan Cranston on the glorious gross-out return of Malcolm in the Middle

TV’s most outrageous family is back – and for the Breaking Bad icon, it’s a great excuse to let rip ... and get naked again. The stars talk skivvies, chugging raw meat and being stung in the crotch by 60,000 honey bees

The intro to the new Malcolm in the Middle is quite the thing. Kids punch police officers. Santa Claus gets kicked in the face. A barrel full of faeces detonates inside a family car. This recap of previous episodes is so full of gross-out comedy and family fights that a grandma grabs her teenage grandson and crushes his testicles until he squeals. “And,” intones a voiceover at its end, “someone actually asked for more of this.”

Did they? It’s been 20 years since the Emmy-winning sitcom about an outrageous working-class US family with the titular child genius went off air. It’s a show whose fans remember it fondly for never dipping in quality throughout its seven seasons. But were they really clamouring for more?

Published: April 3, 2026, 12:00 pm

Culture of care: surreal celebrations of Iranian tenderness – in pictures

As the daughter of refugees, Iranian American artist Sheida Soleimani’s work reframes caring for bodies – both human and animal - as a political act. Her new exhibition, Forest of Stars, will be on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery from 16 April to 22 May

Published: April 3, 2026, 9:00 am

‘It’s the year of gay Brazilian cruising!’ The makers of Night Stage on public sex and their ‘deranged erotic thriller’

Writer-directors Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher talk about the ‘assimilation myth’, why Wim Wenders is wrong and how they’re developing queer western and horror movies

You wait for ever for a visually electrifying Brazilian film featuring scenes in a gay cruising ground, then two come along at once. First, the Oscar-nominated The Secret Agent showed nocturnal trysts in Recife being violently interrupted by a rampaging disembodied leg. Now hedonists in the queer thriller Night Stage flock to a park in the southern city of Porto Alegre where they can openly make the beast with two or more backs. “It’s the year of gay Brazilian cruising!” says Marcio Reolon, mock-triumphantly.

Reolon co-wrote and co-directed Night Stage with his partner, Filipe Matzembacher, who is seated beside him this morning in their Berlin apartment. The couple’s look is best described as exchange-student punk: studded bracelets, silver earrings thick as curtain rings. Reolon, who is 41 with sharp cheekbones and a cockatoo quiff, wears a padlock on a chain around his neck. The 37-year-old Matzembacher, cherubic and curly-haired, sports a barbed-wire tattoo on his left hand.

Published: April 3, 2026, 7:00 am

Route des Vacances: a gastronomic driving holiday from Paris to the Mediterranean

The RN7 road to the Côte d’Azur is enjoying a renaissance among lovers of slow travel in search of offbeat France

‘We were five people in my parents’ 2CV; we would set out at 3am and by 10am, around about Lyon, my father would need a break. My mother would set up a deckchair for him under a tree by the side of the road and he would sleep before driving the rest of the way to Toulon.”

On a recent road trip through France, I met up with Thierry Doillon, a vintage car fanatic who helped restore a 1950s petrol station on the Route Nationale 7. I wanted to talk about the heyday of this iconic road (so famous that singer-songwriter Charles Trenet released a song about it in 1955) and why it’s enjoying a renaissance with holidaymakers.

Published: April 4, 2026, 6:00 am

Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for Sichuan-style braised aubergines with tofu | The new vegan

A cheerful rice bowl fragrant with ginger, garlic and spring onion, and laced with a sprightly chilli bean sauce

With spring in the air, I want a dish that’s the equivalent of turning the key in the ignition, firing up the engine and riding off into the sun. In short: something with a bit of va-va-voom. That dish, for me, is these Sichuan aubergines, a take on the classic “fish fragrant aubergines” (so called because the same aromatics are often used to cook fish). Creamy to begin with, they’re layered with flavour by way of ginger, garlic, spring onion and, finally, laced with delight and good times owing to the bright chilli bean sauce and vinegar.

Published: April 4, 2026, 5:00 am

‘They look goofy and I don’t care’: Padma Lakshmi’s onion goggles and other kitchen favorites

The longtime Top Chef host told us about her favorite things in her New York City kitchen, from steel gloves to a Dutch oven that’s lasted over 20 years

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What’s in Padma Lakshmi’s kitchen? Like me, her many viewers and readers have probably wondered this over the years.

So I asked her. She shared what she loves using in her terracotta-hued kitchen in New York City: classic items, like the Dutch oven that’s lasted over 20 years, and a few surprises, like the pair of mad-scientist onion goggles that protect her eyes from tearing up.

Published: April 3, 2026, 1:30 pm

Less waste and fewer dishes: these glass food containers changed how I store leftovers

Don’t let leftovers languish in the fridge. These oven, microwave and freezer-safe glass containers from Anyday helped me waste less food – and do fewer dishes

• The seven best non-toxic cooking pans in the US

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When I cook for my family, I always pack up leftover food with the best of intentions, and remnants of a weeknight meal generally get eaten within a day or two. Large spreads, however, are a different story.

In the past, I would stuff what was left from a large dinner or party into the biggest air-tight containers they required, then cram them all into my fridge, full-well believing my kids and I would live off of those leftovers for the better part of a week.

The best glass food storage containers: Anyday 2-Cup Glass Round Dish Multipack

Published: April 3, 2026, 12:45 pm

What to know about the controversial practice of ‘orgasmic meditation’

The practice touted by Nicole Daedone combined spirituality, mindfulness and sexuality. Then came the controversy – and prison sentence

In 2009, the New York Times ran a story about Nicole Daedone and her wellness company, OneTaste, which promoted women’s empowerment through a practice known as “orgasmic meditation” (OM).

“I don’t think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality,” Daedone said at the time.

Published: April 3, 2026, 6:26 pm

Stop the brain rot! 12 ways to stay sharp in a mind-frazzling world

Feel like too much low-quality screen time is making you … dumber? From focusing on your environment to ‘washing’ your brain, experts share tips on how to sharpen up and keep your mind fighting fit
Plus: how rotten is your brain? Take our quiz to find out

Ever had one of those days when you get nothing done but still somehow feel exhausted? Of course you have: brain rot, the Oxford word of the year for 2024, isn’t yet in any medical dictionaries, but it’s probably best understood as the decline in cognitive abilities that comes from endless exposure to easily digestible information. And, thanks to the ubiquity of short‑form video and social media, it’s almost certainly on the rise.

“When we’re engaging with this sort of media, our brains are both underworked – because the information is easy to understand – and overworked because there is so much information to absorb,” says Dr Wendy Ross, a senior lecturer in psychology at London Metropolitan University. “That’s why you end up tired even if you’re just scrolling on your couch.” Want to throw the process into reverse and recover your attention? Here’s how.

Published: April 3, 2026, 11:51 am

Yes, allergy season has already started. Here’s how to manage symptoms

Pollen seasons are now ‘longer and more intense’, say experts. Here is what to know about allergy treatments and when to seek medical help

Are you wondering why you’ve started to have allergy symptoms – itchy eyes, sneezing – so early this year?

Allergy seasons are now “longer and more intense”, says Dr Katelyn Jetelina, adjunct professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. Warmer, shorter winters mean shorter periods of freezing temperatures. This means the growing season for plants is lengthened, and they release pollen earlier in the spring and later into the fall, Jetelina explains.

Published: April 3, 2026, 5:28 pm

‘Linen is meaningful in Belfast’: how an old industry is weaving the city a new identity

Fabric that once defined Northern Ireland’s capital is at heart of its stylish revival, embraced by designers, royalty and heritage farmers alike

On a cobbled street in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, next door to a hipster coffee shop and opposite an ice-cream parlour that has a near-constant queue since going viral on TikTok, the elegant Kindred of Ireland boutique is doing a surprisingly brisk trade in artfully oversized butter yellow linen blouses and exquisite Donegal mulberry tweed jackets finished with a length of rose pink linen tied in a bow at the nape of the neck.

Half a century after the Troubles, Belfast is finding a new identity through an industry that once defined it. Linen – the fibre that built its wealth and earned it the name Linenopolis – is being woven into a story of renewal. Almost a century after the postwar collapse of an industry that, at its peak, employed 40% of the working population of Northern Ireland, linen is returning as a marker of identity.

Published: April 3, 2026, 3:00 pm

The most beautiful coast in the world? Exploring New Zealand’s overlooked Nelson Tasman by sand and sea

For years this region was regarded as little more than a gateway from the North Island to the South. But spend several days there and you’ll ache to tear yourself away

The visitor to New Zealand’s South Island knows what they have to see. There’s a well-trodden circuit. Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook, to gaze at the stars. Queenstown, for a spot of daredevil adventure. The glaciers, Fox and Franz Josef. And then down to Milford Sound, for the fjord, cliffs and waterfalls. Each stop stunning, each one worthy of its place in a tourist trail so long-established they call it the southern loop.

But for those searching for something new, bent less on ticking off the New Zealand icons than on experiencing a region as brimming with natural beauty as it’s been relatively, and mysteriously, overlooked, there is another destination. Head to the place they’re calling Nelson Tasman.

Published: April 3, 2026, 11:00 pm

What links PT Barnum’s elephant with a book of Job beast? The Saturday quiz

From the Arconia and a nine-dart finish to madder, weld and woad, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 What unique structure carries the Bridgewater canal over the Manchester ship canal?
2 Melanistic leopards are more commonly known as what?
3 Which European national flag features seven castles?
4 The Arconia is the apartment block in the title of what TV series?
5 Station Island in Donegal is claimed to be an entrance to where?
6 Which woman hit a nine-dart finish in a PDC event in February?
7 The experimental boats Ra and Ra II were chiefly made from what?
8 Who did Henry VIII describe as a “rose without a thorn”?
What links:
9 King’s Cross station; McDonald’s, Kings Norton; Parliament Hill; Stonehenge; Uffington?
10 Choice; HD; Knowledge; Select; 2W?
11 Book of Job beast; Tom Hanks age swap film; John Lithgow as Roald Dahl; PT Barnum elephant?
12 Glock firearms; Red Bull energy drink; Swarovski crystals?
13 Merle Oberon; Juliette Binoche; Kaya Scodelario; Margot Robbie?
14 Madder; weld; woad?
15 Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra; Punjab; Guangdong and Shandong?

Published: April 4, 2026, 6:00 am

Why do lightbulbs get hot and how many pandas are there? The kids’ quiz

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

Published: April 4, 2026, 6:00 am

Good Friday around the world – in pictures

Christians take part in processions and re-enactments to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ

Published: April 3, 2026, 3:39 pm

‘Food security timebomb’: a visual guide to the Gulf fertiliser blockade

UN says record numbers of people could face acute hunger if conflict continues

The world has become well versed in the importance of the strait of Hormuz to the world’s energy flows, but attention is increasingly turning to its vital role in another market – the fertiliser on which harvests depend.

A third of the global trade in raw materials for fertiliser passes through the maritime choke point, which is also the route for 20% of shipments of natural gas, which is required to make it.

Published: April 3, 2026, 3:00 am

‘Every night they are bombarding’: at border crossing, some Iranians are fleeing war and some are heading home

People leaving Iran for Turkey tell of impact of bombs and internet blackouts, while others are travelling the other way to be closer to relatives in peril

He could not help but splutter out a laugh at the question. Amir, whose name has been changed for his safety, had just crossed the Kapıköy border point in eastern Turkey, a mountain pass between snow-topped peaks that is one of the few gateways to the west from Iran.

Until a few weeks ago, this was a busy place, popular among Iranian daytrippers coming across to Turkey to do some shopping in the lively city of Van, a further two hours drive west, or to spend a couple of nights out in its discreet Iranian-only nightclubs and bars serving alcohol.

Published: April 3, 2026, 7:00 am

Pope Leo’s first Easter: one year in, what do Catholics think of the new pontiff?

Some would like Leo to be more vocal on world conflict, but others say he uses his influence discreetly

As Leo marks his inaugural Easter as pontiff, almost a year after his predecessor’s death, some Catholics are still trying to work out what kind of pontiff he is.

The feast – the most important in the church’s calendar – comes against the backdrop of war in the Middle East, sparked by the US-Israeli strikes in Iran.

Published: April 3, 2026, 5:00 am

The week around the world in 20 pictures

Crisis in the Middle East, a Russian drone attack in Kharkiv, a Saharan dust storm in Crete and the launch of Artemis II – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing

Published: April 3, 2026, 4:53 pm