‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’: the radical history behind one of Europe’s biggest socialist movements

A new book by Molly Crabapple documents the rise and fall of a revolutionary Jewish party that fought against Zionism and for ‘solidarity across difference’

There is perhaps no more vivid illustration of the moral nadir Israel has reached than the Knesset’s passage, two days before Passover, of a death penalty law that applies only to Palestinians. The measure, whose approval was greeted with tears of joy and the popping of champagne in the legislative chamber, is a concise legal expression of the core animating idea of modern Israel: that there exists no humane obligation in Jewish tradition with a durable universal ambit. The notion that Jews should have a special concern for the fate of all humanity, regardless of ethnicity or creed, lies dead beneath the rubble in Gaza.

It had to be killed, however, because there was a time when it lived. Cosmopolitanism over nationalism, social democracy over rapacious capitalism, collective liberation over ethno-chauvinist fortress-building – these were the values that animated the Jewish Labour Bund, a revolutionary party founded in 1897 in the Tsarist empire. “For leftist Jews longing for resources within our own past for combating the Zionist death cult,” as author, activist and artist Molly Crabapple puts it, “the Bund is a model.” A model with an audience – Crabapple’s new history of the Bund was already in its second printing the week before it came out.

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘Not unique to war’: millions of Americans suffer from moral injury. What’s causing it?

Psychologist Michael Valdovinos explains this ‘unique kind of stress’, which is now acknowledged in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

To experience moral injury is to be forced to act in ways or to witness actions that contradict your most deeply held convictions.

You can sustain moral injury in one catastrophic event, like hurting an enemy combatant in an armed conflict you don’t believe is just. It can also appear after a slow crescendo of moral distress, as people who work in slaughterhouses or prisons report. Easily mistaken for depression, moral distress frequently presents as sadness or feeling like a bad person.

Published: April 7, 2026, 4:00 pm

Dyson v Bissell: I compared their latest lightweight stick vacs head to head

I pitted the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones against the Bissell PowerClean Dualbrush – which one cleaned up rice, dirt and flour the best?

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Stick vacs are pricey. But if you’ve got cakes of dust on hardwood floors, small messes on carpet or pet hair on the sofa, they don’t stand a chance against these powerful dirt-sucking machines.

I discovered that for myself when I tested two of the latest, most advanced stick vacs on all kinds of debris. Over several weeks, I pitted the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones against the Bissell PowerClean Dualbrush to see which of these new models has the best design, best power and most importantly, best value.

Weight: 4lb

Battery life (quoted): 30mins

Battery life (measured): 28mins

Dust capacity: 0.02gal

Additional filters supplied? No

Weight: 8lb

Battery life (quoted): 50mins

Battery life (measured): 48mins

Dust capacity: 0.10gal

Additional filters supplied? No

Published: April 7, 2026, 7:15 pm

‘Oh my God, did someone accuse me of killing my mom?’

Rachel Waters gave morphine to her dying mother to ease her in her final hours. Then came the murder charge

Rachel Waters was in her apartment in Queens, watching food reviews on YouTube, when a nurse called: her mother was dying.

She needed to get to the memory care facility in Evans, Georgia, immediately. A physician had said Marsha could die within hours.

Published: April 7, 2026, 11:00 am

DC’s highly qualified workers can’t find jobs: ‘What is happening?’

Washington DC has the highest unemployment rate in the US

Alicia Contreras was in Tunisia, working as the deputy country representative for Libya for USAID, when she received the news: she was fired. The Trump administration had ceased the cooperation agency’s operations and terminated most overseas staff. What she didn’t expect back then was that after a double major, an MBA and 17 years of experience as a public servant, she wouldn’t be able to find a job back at home.

Contreras moved back to the Washington DC area last September and immediately started her job search. She looked for positions in both the public and private sectors, in-person, hybrid and remote. She focused her search mostly on the US capital city and its two nearby states, Maryland and Virginia, because of her family commitments: she has two children, ages three and six. Six months later, none of her close to 100 applications have been successful.

Published: April 7, 2026, 11:00 am

Why does alcohol make us both happy and miserable – and what else does it do to our minds and bodies?

It sends us to sleep and wakes us in the night, excites us and depresses us, gives us confidence one moment, anxiety the next. How does this messy drug wield so much power?

Whatever you think of alcohol, you have to admit that it’s versatile. Ever since the first humans started smashing up fruit and leaving it in pots to chug a few days later, we’ve been relying on it to celebrate and commiserate, to deal with anxiety and to make us more creative. We use it to build confidence and kill boredom, to get us in the mood for going out and to put us to (nonoptimal) sleep. Where most mind-altering substances have one or two specific use-cases, alcohol does the lot. That’s probably why it’s been so ubiquitous throughout human history – and why it can be so hard to give up entirely.

“We often call alcohol pharmacologically promiscuous,” says Dr Rayyan Zafar, a neuropsychopharmacologist from Imperial College London. “It doesn’t just calm you: it can stimulate reward pathways, dampen threat signals, release endogenous opioids that can relieve pain or stress, alter decision-making and shift mood, all at the same time.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 1:00 pm

Middle East crisis live: Iran war ceasefire doesn’t include Lebanon, says Israel; Trump says uranium will be ‘taken care of’

Pakistan’s PM had said the ceasefire would cover Lebanon; Iran says passage through the strait of Hormuz will be allowed for the next 2 weeks

• US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire with Tehran saying it will reopen strait of Hormuz

• Iran war ceasefire announcement – what we know so far

Here are some of the latest images coming in from the Middle East as the war continues in week six.

The Israeli military has just warned the people of Iran not to use trains, saying that doing so “endangers your life”.

Dear Citizens, for the sake of your security, we kindly request that from this moment until 21:00 Iran time, you refrain from using and travelling by train throughout Iran.

Your presence on trains and near railway lines endangers your life.

Published: April 8, 2026, 3:41 am

‘Desperately searching for any sort of exit ramp’: US political leaders react as Trump announces ceasefire

Chuck Schumer attacks president’s ‘ridiculous bluster’ while Republicans cast decision as shrewd tactical move

• US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Political leaders and many Americans breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday evening, after Donald Trump announced a provisional ceasefire deal following threats to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” if Tehran failed to reopen the strait of Hormuz by a self-imposed deadline.

The announcement of the agreement, mediated by Pakistan, came roughly 90 minutes before the 8pm ET deadline by which Trump pledged to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges in a move legal and military scholars said would be considered a war crime.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:35 am

Oil prices plunge and stocks jump after Trump announces conditional ceasefire with Iran

Brent crude oil dropped to $93 a barrel after US president’s announcement and Iran’s pledge to reopen strait of Hormuz under its management

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• Full report: US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire with Tehran saying it will reopen strait of Hormuz

Oil prices plunged by almost 15% after Donald Trump held off on his threat to bomb Iran into the stone ages on Tuesday night, and Iran’s foreign minister said passage through the strait of Hormuz would be allowed for the next two weeks under the management of its military.

Posting to Truth Social, with just over an hour until his deadline was due to pass, the US president said he was holding off on threatened attacks on Iran’s bridges, power plants and other civilian targets, subject to Tehran agreeing to a two-week ceasefire and reopening of the strait of Hormuz.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:29 am

Republicans silent as Democrats call on US cabinet to oust Trump over Iran

Lawmakers call for use of 25th amendment after president brazenly threatens to commit war crimes in Iran

As Donald Trump unleashes curse-filled threats against Iran, Democrats are raising alarm over his mental stability and calling for his removal from office – while Republicans remain conspicuously silent.

Democrats are escalating their rebukes as the 79-year-old president delivers rambling, incoherent speeches, hurls puerile insults at US allies and brazenly threatens to commit war crimes. He used an Easter Sunday social media post to warn Iran to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell”.

Published: April 7, 2026, 7:54 pm

Republican wins Georgia runoff election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene

Voters pick Clay Fuller, deciding Iran war was not enough to propel a Democrat into a conservative-leaning House seat

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Clay Fuller supports the war in Iran. Shawn Harris opposes it. Voters in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former district in north-west Georgia decided that this distinction was not enough to propel a Democrat into a conservative-leaning House seat on Tuesday night.

Associated Press called the election as results from the rural counties of north-western corner of the state rolled in.

Published: April 8, 2026, 12:42 am

‘A blatant political ploy’: California sheriff’s seizure of referendum ballots sets off alarm bells

Chad Bianco of Riverside county obtained warrants to seize ballots cast for state’s successful redistricting referendum

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A California sheriff’s decision to seize about 650,000 ballots based on specious allegations of fraud has raised considerable alarm bells that similar efforts to undermine confidence in the electoral system could materialize this fall.

The episode underscores how sheriffs and other officials can transform shoddy claims about voter fraud into law enforcement actions. Executing a warrant to seize ballots disrupts the chain of custody that is critical to maintaining ballot integrity, and also plants the idea in the public’s mind that a crime has occurred.

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:05 pm

Artemis II crew describe ‘overwhelming’ emotions after soaring past the moon

Nasa astronauts begin journey home having collected eagerly awaited images of impact craters and ridges

Nasa’s Artemis II astronauts have described the powerful emotion they felt while soaring over the moon as they photographed impact craters, cracks and ridges and began their long journey home.

Among the eagerly awaited images captured by the crew, who worked in pairs at the Orion capsule windows, are those of the Earth rising from behind the moon, a solar eclipse and parts of the 590-mile (950km) wide Orientale impact basin that have never been observed with the naked eye.

Published: April 7, 2026, 2:23 pm

ICE agents shoot man in car in northern California

Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez hospitalized after shooting in rural Patterson as officials say investigation under way

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot a man in a vehicle in northern California on Tuesday.

ICE agents conducted a vehicle stop in Patterson, a rural agricultural town in California’s Central Valley about 80 miles east of San Jose, to arrest Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, ICE director Todd Lyons said in a statement.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:16 am

US soldier’s wife released after arrest by ICE agents at military base

Annie Ramos, who came to US from Honduras as a toddler, was detained last week at husband’s base in Louisiana

The wife of a US soldier who was detained last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at her husband’s Louisiana military base was released from federal custody on Tuesday.

“All I have ever wanted is to live with dignity in the country I have called home since I was a baby,” Annie Ramos said in a statement following her release.

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:30 pm

Stork warning: woman gives birth midair on Jamaica-to-New York flight

Baby was delivered during Caribbean Airlines flight from Kingston to the US; nationality of child to be determined

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A routine passenger flight from Jamaica landed at New York’s John F Kennedy international airport with one more person than it took off with after a woman gave birth in midair, potentially setting up a tricky situation over the newborn’s citizenship.

The “medical event” occurred on a Caribbean Airlines flight from Kingston on Saturday, according to a news release from the carrier.

Published: April 7, 2026, 6:16 pm

Anna Wintour shares Vogue cover with Hollywood doppelganger Meryl Streep

Vogue’s global editorial director says Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada ‘distant’ from the real her

After more than 30 years helming Vogue, and becoming a pop icon in the process, Anna Wintour has graced the cover of the fashion magazine alongside her Hollywood doppelganger, Meryl Streep.

The global editorial director of Vogue is photographed by Annie Leibovitz alongside Streep, who plays Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, a brash, ruthless editor of a fashion magazine thought to be based on Wintour.

Published: April 7, 2026, 6:35 pm

Trump news at a glance: president steps back from threat to destroy Iran’s ‘whole civilization’ after ceasefire deal reached

Trump announces two-week conditional ceasefire after last-minute diplomatic intervention led by Pakistan – key US politics stories from Tuesday 7 April at a glance

It appears Iran’s whole civilization will not die tonight.

With less than two hours before his self-imposed deadline for Iran to surrender or face annihilation, Donald Trump announced that the US and Iran had agreed to a two-week conditional ceasefire after a last-minute diplomatic intervention led by Pakistan.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:00 am

DHS secretary calls for US states to lead disaster response instead of Fema

Markwayne Mullin visits Asheville to survey Hurricane Helene recovery in first big trip since Kristi Noem’s ouster

Markwayne Mullin, the US homeland security secretary, used a visit to Asheville, North Carolina to call for a fundamental shift in the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), arguing that states and local governments – not the federal agency – should lead disaster response.

“We shouldn’t look at Fema as being a first responder, but look at Fema as supporting the first responders you already have,” Mullin told reporters at a roundtable discussion.

Published: April 7, 2026, 8:26 pm

JD Vance accuses EU of ‘interference’ as he visits Hungary to help Orbán win election

US vice-president rails against ‘bureaucrats in Brussels’ interfering in Sunday’s vote during Budapest visit

JD Vance has railed against the EU, accusing it of blatantly interfering in Hungary’s upcoming elections, even as the US vice-president said he had travelled to Budapest to “help” Viktor Orbán win Sunday’s vote.

Speaking to reporters shortly after landing in Budapest on Tuesday, Vance’s tone was combative as he alleged that the EU was responsible for “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he had ever seen.

Published: April 7, 2026, 6:59 pm

World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns – and climate health impacts are ‘mother of all injustices’

Exclusive: Former UN climate chief to co-chair Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality

• What are the health impacts of sea-level rise, and who should pay?

• Christiana Figueres: Sea-level rise is a health crisis and we must hold polluters accountable

Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.

Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.

Published: April 7, 2026, 10:30 pm

Trump threatens to ‘take out’ Iran … again – The Latest

Donald Trump says the US will bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges if Tehran fails to meet his latest deadline to reopen the strait of Hormuz. The US president says he is ‘not at all’ concerned that such attacks on civilian infrastructure could amount to war crimes and a ‘whole civilisation will die tonight’ if Iran doesn’t agree to a deal.

But will Trump follow through on the threat? And what could it mean for the war in the Middle East? Lucy Hough is joined by senior international correspondent Julian Borger – watch on YouTube

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:50 pm

Members of neo-Nazi ‘active clubs’ join combat events at secretive Virginia compound

Licensed school teacher and one-time police officer among those participating in riot-style gatherings as experts warn of threat to public safety

A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution”.

Social media posts and group chats show members of so-called active clubs from Texas, Tennessee and Pennsylvania have in recent weeks and months traveled to Lynchburg, Virginia, to train together at a secretive compound. The compound is run by the Wolves of Vinland, which the civil rights watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a neopagan white nationalist hate group. Also present were members of the white supremacist hate group Patriot Front and the neo-Nazi skinhead group known as the Hammerskins.

Published: April 7, 2026, 11:00 am

Midwest’s bottleneck bridge is getting help at last – but is it all good news?

Upgrade to Brent Spence Bridge linking Kentucky and Ohio clouded by concerns about cost overruns, pollution and housing

Connecting manufacturers in the industrial north to booming southern cities in Georgia and beyond in the south, the Brent Spence Bridge that spans the Ohio River is a debacle to all who know it.

Built and designed in the early 1960s to accommodate a maximum of 85,000 vehicles a day, today twice as many cars and trucks traverse it along the Interstate-75, a 1,785-mile (2,873km) route that stretches from the border with Canada in the north to the Florida Keys. Its narrow lanes, curved approaches and absence of emergency access lanes meant that, following frequent accidents, drivers could find themselves stuck for hours.

Published: April 7, 2026, 2:00 pm

Aftermath of a rescue: wreckage of aircraft at site of US mission in Iran

In a patch of desert in Isfahan province, personnel clear the site where just hours earlier two C-130 planes and two helicopters were destroyed

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The small farming community of Parzan near the city of Shahreza in Iran’s Isfahan province had been largely spared from the US-Israeli war now in its second month – until several US aircraft landed on a dirt airstrip near their village.

The site of the destroyed aircraft in Isfahan province

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:36 pm

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s posts: ‘The only president who teases a bombing the same way ABC promotes episodes’

Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s unhinged social media posts about Iran and a very strange edition of the White House Easter egg roll

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s expletive-laden social media posts about the war in Iran and mocked his tonally jarring White House Easter egg roll.

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:30 pm

Who needs looksmaxxing when you’ve got Catholicmaxxing? The TikTok trend making religion great again

Some of the young Americans swept up in the movement are looking for the meaning of life; others for a new partner. Well, it’s a broad church …

Name: Catholicmaxxing.

Age: Less than a year.

Published: April 7, 2026, 2:26 pm

If Trump commits war crimes in Iran, he can be prosecuted | Kenneth Roth

There is no question that Trump’s threats, if carried out, would amount to war crimes. The international justice system is positioned to act

Donald Trump is openly threatening war crimes in Iran because he apparently thinks he can get away with them. Sadly, the US supreme court has given him reason to believe in his impunity within the United States. But there are international options for prosecution that lie beyond the court’s lawless license. They are not easy to exercise, but the terrible precedent of the world’s most powerful president openly flouting international humanitarian law should compel action.

There is no doubt that Trump is contemplating war crimes. As part of his plan to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages” and wipe out a “whole civilization”, Trump has threatened to destroy such civilian infrastructure as desalination plants, electrical-generating facilities and bridges.

Published: April 7, 2026, 4:53 pm

After 15 years, I’m leaving Trump’s America and coming home to Australia. It feels like an escape | Simon Adams

I no longer wish to live in a country where performative cruelty has become the guiding principle of government

When not firing off social media posts threatening potential war crimes against 93 million Iranians, Donald Trump is busy quietly killing the so-called American dream. With gasoline at US$4 a gallon, credit card debt hitting a record US$1.28tn, and stagnating wages, Americans are struggling to detect the prosperity their president promised them. Regardless, Trump plans to spend a record $1.5tn on the military in 2027 – a 40% increase for the Pentagon at a time when farm bankruptcies have increased by 46%.

But if Trump’s illegal war on Iran has taught us anything, it is this: Americans will pay any price for freedom, except if it increases the price of groceries or gasoline. People in the Maga heartlands tolerated the erosion of civil liberties, democracy and the rule of law during the first year of Trump’s second presidency but they will be unforgiving if their standard of living declines.

Published: April 7, 2026, 11:53 pm

Sea-level rise is a health crisis and we must hold polluters accountable | Christiana Figueres

Those facing the earliest and harshest consequences are, overwhelmingly, those who did the least to create them

• World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns

• What are the health impacts of sea-level rise, and who should pay?

There are moments in history when a crisis long treated as distant reveals itself to be intimate, immediate and profoundly human. Sea-level rise is one of those moments.

For years it has been discussed in the abstract language of centimetres, coastal infrastructure and future projections. This can make it seem like a technical challenge – something for engineers and planners to grapple with. But rising seas are already damaging bodies, minds, livelihoods and cultures. Sea-level rise is a present-day health crisis.

Published: April 7, 2026, 10:30 pm

Two Trump moves last week could kill off future accountability for his deeds | Jan-Werner Müller

The Trump ‘library’ and an attack on the Presidential Records Act have more in common than it might seem

Last week, the Trump administration proudly published two pieces of news which, at first sight, could not be more different: one a dry 52-page legal opinion from the justice department declaring the 1978 Presidential Records Act unconstitutional; the other an AI-generated clip of Trump’s planned “presidential library”, a waterfront skyscraper in Miami. Both sent the same message, though: the legal opinion – authored by a jurist heavily involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 election – leaves Trump free to destroy evidence of wrongdoing; the building envisaged for Biscayne Bay appears to be less of a library than a hotel complex. As the president reassured anyone suspecting that he might fill a glitzy edifice with boring papers and books: “I don’t believe in building libraries or museums.” These are clear signals about wanting to avoid accountability; it is not too early to devise strategies to counter politically motivated amnesia.

In what jurists widely saw as an opinion of breathtakingly bad faith, T Elliot Gaiser, the Ohio-based election denier and a former clerk of Samuel Alito, asserted that Congress had no right to ask the president to preserve records; the imperative to create and keep documents served “no legislative purpose” and could “impede” the day-to-day “performance” of the head of the executive. The act had been crafted in the wake of the misdeeds of Richard Nixon, who had wanted discretion over which of his tapes and papers to destroy; in response, Congress first passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act in 1974, making the government take custody of Nixon’s materials. Nixon sued; the supreme court rejected the view that the separation of powers had been violated; the justices also took the occasion to affirm the importance of “the American people’s ability to reconstruct and come to terms with their history”. Congress then passed the more general Presidential Records Act, which no one up until Trump appeared to have experienced as remotely burdensome.

Published: April 7, 2026, 12:00 pm

Martin Rowson on Trump’s bunker – cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:24 pm

Trump needs to go. If we can’t use the 25th amendment, I have another idea | Arwa Mahdawi

The US constitution should make it possible to remove a president who’s not fit for office. But we’re going to need another way out

For the past few months, I have been waging a cold war with a neighbour who constantly puts out their rubbish on the wrong day. And by “cold war” I mean complaining incessantly to my longsuffering wife while the neighbour goes about their business blissfully unaware that we are mortal enemies. But enough is enough. Last week I decided to end this situation via a strongly worded letter. “Tuesday will be Explosions Day in your house, neighbour!” I wrote. “There will be nothing like it!!! Put out your Fuckin’ Rubbish properly, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

I am sorry to drag Allah into this obviously imaginary exchange, but I’m just channelling the US president. I’m sure you’ve already seen Donald Trump’s profanity-laden Easter Sunday warning to Iran, where he threatened to carry out the mass bombing of civilian infrastructure – but if you haven’t, then go read it and weep. The days where Trump’s outbursts were amusing (remember “covfefe”?) are long gone. There is nothing funny about endless stream-of-consciousness screeds from a man who is not just destroying the US, but dragging the whole world down with it. If a civilian acted like the president routinely does, they’d find themselves fired very quickly.

Published: April 7, 2026, 1:45 pm

The Guardian view on Artemis II: the light and dark sides of the moon | Editorial

The threat posed by a new space race is real. But so is the wonder of humankind’s reaching for the skies

“Everything we need, Earth provides. And that is somewhat of a miracle, and one that you can’t truly know until you’ve had the perspective of the other.” This is how the US astronaut Christina Koch summed up her experience of travelling to the far side of the moon on Monday. The feeling of a deepened appreciation for home recalls statements by an earlier generation of space travellers. The famous Earthrise photograph, taken on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, has been credited as one of the drivers behind the environmental movement. Such was the power of the first images of the “blue planet” captured from space.

The hope that such journeys can foster global cooperation and appreciation for life was also the theme of the prize-winning novel Orbital, which is set on a space station among a multinational crew. But if it was ever possible to overlook the darker side of space travel, it definitely isn’t today. In the 1960s, the American and Soviet programmes were projections of the two blocs’ military strength. In the 2020s, the tech billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are key players in a dramatically revived US industry, while a post-terrestrial geopolitical battle between the US and China takes shape. Nasa aims to put a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030.

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 7, 2026, 5:46 pm

The Guardian view on North Korea and the Kims: whoever’s at the helm, the regime serves only itself | Editorial

Speculation that the leader’s teenage daughter will succeed him is rife. But Ju-ae’s high profile is about continuity, not change

North Korea is unique in turning a putatively communist state into a dynastic system now in its third generation. So while the proposition that Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter will inherit power is sparking debate, unexpected political transitions are not entirely new. On Monday, South Korea’s intelligence agency said that it had “credible” information that Kim Ju-ae is positioned as her father’s successor. Its briefing to legislators in Seoul followed appearances alongside her father highlighting her military credentials – including driving a tank – and months of rhetorical inflation, with state media describing her as “a great person of guidance”.

The Mount Paektu bloodline – linking the family to a sacred mountain seen as the mythical origin of the Korean people – is championed in North Korean propaganda. Yet, given that Ju-ae is around 13 and her father only 42, talk of succession appears wildly premature. Very little is known about her: her exact age is uncertain; she may in fact be called Ju-hae – North Korean media does not name her; and she may have two siblings, possibly boys.

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 7, 2026, 5:46 pm

Arteta admits Arsenal had point to prove after ‘big moment in season’ with win at Sporting

• Havertz goal offers response after back-to-back defeats

• Arteta praises ‘extraordinary’ Raya for crucial saves

Mikel Arteta acknowledged that Arsenal had a point to prove against Sporting after losing their last two matches and believes that Kai Havertz’s late winner could prove to be a “big moment” in their season.

Arsenal had David Raya to thank for making three superb saves that kept the scores level before Havertz came off the bench to seal a priceless away victory. It was a huge relief for Arteta, who had urged his players to rediscover their identity after they suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time this season against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final and Championship side Southampton in the FA Cup.

Published: April 7, 2026, 10:43 pm

Harry Kane gives Bayern Munich edge despite Real Madrid fightback in thriller

“This is why you guys come to these games,” Vincent Kompany had said, and especially here. For the quality, the chaos and the goals, the edge, the drama and the history that invades every moment. Another wild Champions League night had this place believing in another crazy comeback, the noise level rising towards what appeared destined to be one, last thunderous crescendo as Real Madrid rose again and went for their biggest European rivals. In the end, though, Bayern Munich held on for a win that sets up another, definitive battle at the Allianz Arena next week.

Strikes from Luis Díaz and Harry Kane either side of half-time had given Bayern a 2-0 lead, underlining an incontestable authority in the opening hour. But a Kylian Mbappé goal 16 minutes from the end began a rebellion that could have left the tie on even more of a knife edge than it is, Madrid finding chances for a draw or even another victory. They also found Manuel Neuer rolling back the years, aged 40, with nine saves.

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:12 pm

Dawn Staley: Time to ‘turn the page’ on Final Four skirmish with Geno Auriemma

• Staley says she has ‘great deal of respect’ for UConn coach

• Auriemma had issued apology to South Carolina staff

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley says it is time to move past her Final Four skirmish with UConn coach Geno Auriemma that became the talk of the tournament.

Staley released a statement on South Carolina’s X account on Tuesday in which she expressed her respect for Auriemma and said the two have spoken since South Carolina’s 62-48 victory in the Final Four on Friday night. The season ended with UCLA’s runaway 79-51 win over South Carolina in Sunday’s national championship game.

Published: April 7, 2026, 8:06 pm

Rory McIlroy returns to scene of Masters glory with ‘big weight off my shoulders’ | Andy Bull

The defending champion is a lot more relaxed but ‘just as motivated’ this year after finally winning at Augusta

On the Tuesday of last year’s Masters, Rory McIlroy dined with Justin Rose in the clubhouse at Augusta. He arrived right around the time that all the guests at Scottie Scheffler’s champions dinner were having cocktails on the balcony. “I was pulling up Magnolia Lane,” McIlroy says. “And I’m like, well, do I go and park way over at the parking lot? Because I’m not going to park in the champions parking lot.’”

Not when there’s Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and everyone else looking down. “I didn’t want to get out and use a valet because they were going to see me and it was going to be weird. So I had this really awkward moment,” McIlroy says with a laugh. “Thankfully that was the last time that I needed to do that.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 8:12 pm

Drone racing to drone strikes: have war and sport become indistinguishable?

The Trump administration’s pushing of the war in Iran reflects a sporting culture driven by clipped-up content, shameless tribalism and a lust for escalation

Among the more surprising continuities of 2026 has been the visual kinship between the Winter Olympics and the US’s illegal and unprovoked war in Iran. High-speed camera drones were a highlight of TV coverage of the recent Games in Milano Cortina, bringing viewers within kissing distance of the action as Olympic athletes hurtled down the slopes and around the tracks in the skiing and sliding events. The incessant screech of the drones aside, the introduction of quadcopter-borne cameras felt like a real step forward in coverage of the winter sports, bringing a (literal) new perspective to events that had become, over recent decades, fairly static as a viewing experience.

No sooner had the Olympics finished than aerial video was back on our screens – only the footage, in this case, was of a far darker variety. In place of the ludicrous hip flexibility of the slaloming skiers and the high-speed cornering of the monobobbers, for the past month our feeds have been flooded with satellite and drone imagery of the US military blowing Iranian aircraft, ships, vehicles, munitions buildings, and citizens to smithereens. The aerial perspective that brought the strength and speed and elasticity and joy of Olympic competition to our screens now transmits the daily horrors of war in easily snackable, two-minute clips on to our phones. In the era of the milkshake duck, it’s almost expected that anything positive in our culture will eventually turn sour – and technology, of course, is ethically agnostic, a tool that can be used for both good and evil ends. But even in a culture as depraved and hypocritical as ours, the seamless transition from drone-supplied footage of Olympic excellence to drone-supplied footage of war crimes has felt genuinely jarring.

Published: April 7, 2026, 11:00 am

Bryson DeChambeau making his own golf clubs in quest for Masters title

• American faded to finish joint-fifth last year at Augusta

• ‘I am working on irons, building irons, building a driver’

Bryson DeChambeau has revealed the latest strand to his career: golf club manufacturing. The two-time major winner used pre-tournament media duties at the Masters to explain he is making his own clubs, in what marks a stark departure from elite golfers working in tandem with equipment companies.

“I think it’s the willingness to always try to improve,” DeChambeau said. “There’s this nature that I have about myself where innovation is a habit of mine and I really find and take pride in that ability to learn, even through failure, even through making a bad decision or a good decision.

Published: April 7, 2026, 8:25 pm

USMNT striker Patrick Agyemang to miss World Cup after ‘serious’ achilles injury

• Derby striker was stretchered off after awkward landing

• 25-year-old had scored for US in friendly v Belgium

US national team striker Patrick Agyemang will miss this summer’s World Cup after suffering a “serious” achilles tendon injury during Derby County’s 2-0 win over Stoke City on Monday, the club said.

The 25-year-old, who is in his first season at Derby, rose to settle a ball in the 37th minute and landed awkwardly. Play stopped for five minutes before he was stretchered off by medical staff.

Published: April 7, 2026, 1:11 pm

Michigan outlasts UConn to win first NCAA men’s basketball title since 1989

• Elliot Cadeau scored 19 points and won Final Four MOP

• Foul trouble haunts Huskies in low-scoring affair

• As it happened: Read Beau Dure’s live play-by-play

High-scoring Michigan had to get down and dirty to dig out the national title Monday, making only two three-pointers all night but still muscling its way to a 69-63 victory over stingy, stubborn UConn.

Elliot Cadeau led the Wolverines with 19 points, including the team’s first basket from beyond the arc, which came 7:04 into the second half. He was later named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:38 am

Jason Day hits out at ‘selfish’ Tiger Woods after DUI charge

• Australian golfer saddened by his ‘hero’ facing struggle with addiction

• Five-time Masters champion to miss first major after car crash and arrest

Australian ace Jason Day has expressed sadness at Tiger Woods’ plight but taken issue with the golf great’s “selfish” judgement for driving under the influence.

Woods has reportedly checked himself into rehab in Switzerland after being arrested and charged on 27 March after crashing his car near his home on Jupiter Island in Florida.

Published: April 7, 2026, 12:38 am

American journalist released a week after being kidnapped in Iraq

Freelancer Shelly Kittleson was reportedly held by Iran-backed militia which says she must now leave country

The US journalist Shelly Kittleson, who was kidnapped from a Baghdad street corner last week, has been released, secretary of state Marco Rubio announced on Tuesday.

“We are relieved that this American is now free and are working to support her safe departure from Iraq,” he said on social media.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:17 am

Chris Taylor wins Wisconsin state supreme court election giving liberal judges a 5-2 majority

Taylor defeated conservative rival Maria Lazar, providing another gauge of Democrats’ durability in midterms

Wisconsin voters sent another liberal justice to the state supreme court, with Chris Taylor beating conservative Maria Lazar and giving liberals a 5-2 edge on the high court.

The retirement of Justice Rebecca Bradley, a conservative, gave liberals a chance to further consolidate their hold on the high court ahead of the next presidential election, when the swing state is sure to see challenges to election results.

Published: April 8, 2026, 2:04 am

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv lays out how ‘Russian satellites help Iran in war’

Iran bombed US bases and allies’ facilities soon after Russian satellites mapped them, according to Ukrainian assessment. What we know on day 1,505

Russian satellites made detailed imagery of military facilities and critical sites across the Middle East including US bases and other targets that were attacked by Iran soon afterwards, according to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment. Reuters reported that the assessment cited at least 24 surveys of areas in 11 Middle Eastern countries from 21-31 March, covering 46 “objects” including US and other military bases and airports and oilfields. Within days of being surveyed, military bases and headquarters were targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, the assessment said.

Russian satellites were actively surveying the strait of Hormuz, according to the Ukrainians. Reuters said a western military source and a separate regional security cited their own intelligence in backing up the claims. Reuters said the Iranian foreign ministry had no immediate comment and the defence ministry in Russia did not respond to a request for comment.

Reuters said its regional security source confirmed a specific incident where a Russian satellite imaged Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia days before Iran struck the facility on 27 March, hitting a sophisticated US E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft. The next day a Russian satellite passed over again to assess the damage, the assessment said. The Ukrainian report also alleges Russian and Iranian hackers were collaborating in the cyber domain.

The Ukrainian military said it had struck Russia’s Ust-Luga oil terminal in the Leningrad region on Tuesday. The general staff said on Telegram it had preliminary confirmation of damage to three storage tanks belonging to the Transneft-Baltika company.

Crude oil exports from Russia’s Sheskharis terminal in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk were suspended after a big drone attack and a fire, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday. The terminal, which typically loads 700,000 barrels a day of crude oil, is Russia’s key oil outlet in the Black Sea. Its suspension will add to the strain on Russian infrastructure, which has been repeatedly attacked.

Moscow’s troops targeted two buses in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, its governor, Oleksandr Ganzha, said on Telegram. A drone smashed into a bus approaching a stop in Nikopol’s city centre, he said, and later another bus was hit in a neighbouring community. Four people were killed in Nikopol and at least 16 injured, officials said. In the southern city of Kherson, a Russian attack on a residential area that lasted half an hour killed four elderly people and injured seven more, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Prokudin. Other deadly Russian strikes took place in Zaporizhzhia and Sumy oblasts, said Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian drone strikes killed five civilians including a 12-year-old boy and his parents in Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, Russian officials said on Tuesday. Reuters could not independently verify the officials’ statements, and Ukraine denies deliberately targeting civilians.

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:22 am

First Nation asks court to block Alberta referendum on seceding from Canada

Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation has asked a court to halt the separatist push, arguing it would violate their treaty rights

A First Nation in Alberta has said that a separatist push for the province to secede from Canada is “consummately irresponsible and dishonourable” and should be shut down, arguing in court that a proposed referendum would violate their treaty rights.

A minority of residents of the oil-rich province have long argued that the province’s woes are due to the structure of payments to the federal government and a perceived inability to get their vast fossil fuel reserves to market.

Published: April 7, 2026, 4:43 pm

Accused Long Island serial killer, ex-wife and daughter sued by alleged victim’s son

Benjamin Torres, son of Valerie Mack, files suit before Rex Heuermann reportedly set to change plea to guilty

The accused serial killer Rex Heuermann is being sued along with his former wife and their daughter, by the son of one of his alleged victims.

Benjamin Torres, the son of Valerie Mack, one the alleged victims in the case against Heuermann, claims his mother was “tortured ferociously, and her body dismembered”.

Published: April 7, 2026, 8:09 pm

Human skull discovered during Easter egg hunt near Los Angeles

Authorities launch investigation after human remains found at DeForest Park in Long Beach

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The discovery of a human skull during an Easter egg hunt near Los Angeles has prompted authorities to launch an investigation.

At about 5pm on Sunday a family discovered the human remains during an egg hunt at DeForest Park in Long Beach, California, according to local reports.

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:49 pm

Parents charged after toddler snuck into wolf enclosure at Pennsylvania zoo

Parents face child endangerment charge after their kid suffered a minor injury at ZooAmerica in Hersheypark

The parents of a toddler who suffered a minor injury at a Pennsylvania theme park zoo after squeezing through a fence near a wolf enclosure and making contact with one of the animals have been charged with endangering the welfare of children, with police accusing them of paying attention to their cellphones at the time.

In a news release, police said that the parents both walked about 25ft to 30ft (7.5 meters to 9 meters) away from the child to a seating area with benches and appeared to be paying attention to their cellphones when they noticed what was happening Saturday at ZooAmerica in Hersheypark.

Published: April 7, 2026, 6:38 pm

Oil slick from bombed Iranian ship threatens protected wetland

Shahid Bagheri leaking fuel towards Hara mangrove forest, home to migrating birds and endangered turtles

• Middle East crisis – live updates

An oil slick from a stricken Iranian ship threatens to contaminate one of the Middle East’s most important wetlands, satellite image analysis suggests, making it one of a number of spills posing a risk to the livelihoods of coastal communities in the Gulf.

The Shahid Bagheri, a drone carrier, began leaking heavy fuel oil in Iranian territorial waters near the strait of Hormuz after it was hit by a US warplane in the first few days of the US-Israel attack on Iran.

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:02 pm

US is ‘using Mexico as a garbage sink’ leading to ‘toxic crisis’, UN expert says

Marcos Orellana, a special rapporteur, found lax environmental standards and lack of oversight allowed pollution to accumulate

• Revealed: Mexico’s industrial boomtown is making goods for the US. Residents say they’re ‘breathing poison’

Mexico is facing a “toxic crisis” and has become a “garbage sink” for the US, exposing Mexican communities to dangerous pollution, a UN expert has warned.

In an interview with the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, an investigative outlet, Marcos Orellana, an environmental specialist, said pollutants ranging from imported waste to dangerous pesticides were affecting people’s right to live healthy lives.

Published: April 7, 2026, 10:00 am

As Iran war exposes global dependence on fossil fuels, the biggest emitters are reaping the rewards

Worst polluters hold world’s future in their hands as they benefit from higher fossil fuel prices, but global trends favour renewables

Oil stands at about $110 a barrel and some forecasts have predicted it could reach $150. Food prices are on the rise and are expected to leap further owing to the fertiliser supply crunch, leading the World Food Programme USA to warn that global food insecurity could reach record levels, with 45 million more people pushed into acute hunger. Industries from steel to chemicals have alerted markets that they face shortages and soaring costs, while households across the world are feeling the pinch – people have been told to turn down their thermostats, take the bus or cycle, and cut their speed on motorways.

The impact of the US-Israel war on Iran – the third global shock in six years, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic – has laid bare how reliant our economies still are on fossil fuels. Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said in March: “Fossil fuel dependency is ripping away national security and sovereignty and replacing it with subservience and rising costs.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 5:00 am

‘We still deserve due process,’ says Cambodian man deported by US to Eswatini

Pheap Rom was one of 15 people sent to prison in African kingdom last year despite completing US sentences

A Cambodian man deported by the US said he would have accepted being sent to Cambodia, but instead ended up imprisoned in Eswatini, a country he knew so little about that when he first read the name he thought it was another immigration detention centre in Louisiana.

Pheap Rom, who had been convicted of attempted murder, was one of 10 deportees sent to Eswatini by the US in October 2025. They joined a group of five men, from Cambodia, Cuba, Jamaica, Vietnam and Yemen, who were deported to the small southern African country in July. All were sent to a maximum-security prison. Rom was deported from Eswatini to Cambodia in March.

Published: April 7, 2026, 4:13 pm

Musk’s SpaceX courts retail investors as it aims for record-breaking stock market flotation

Elon Musk’s aerospace to AI company will host summer event to try to convince buyers it is worth $2tn

• Business live – latest updates

SpaceX will kick off the marketing for its highly anticipated stock exchange debut by hosting an event in June for 1,500 retail investors, as executives set out to convince buyers that the aerospace to artificial intelligence group should be valued at $2tn.

In an unusual move, the company has earmarked a large portion of its shares – potentially up to 30% – for non-professional, non-institutional investors, banking on the popularity of its chief executive, Elon Musk, to help it raise $75bn (about £56bn) in what is expected to be the largest public offering in history.

Published: April 7, 2026, 1:43 pm

Rapper Offset hospitalised after being shot outside Florida casino

The former member of Migos is in a stable condition after being shot on Monday, with police detaining two people

The rapper Offset is in a stable condition in hospital after he was shot outside a Florida casino on Monday.

The former member of the Atlanta hip-hop trio Migos, whose real name is Kiari Kendrell Cephus, was shot in a valet area outside the Seminole Hard Rock hotel and casino, Offset’s spokesperson confirmed to media.

Published: April 7, 2026, 4:04 pm

New Zealand asks US to send fuel tankers to Pacific to alleviate pressure caused by Iran war

After meeting with Marco Rubio, foreign minister Winston Peters says he made sure US understands ‘significant economic impacts on New Zealand and Pacific’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

New Zealand has called on the US to send fuel tankers to the Pacific to help alleviate some of the significant economic and fuel pressure caused by the war in the Middle East.

Winston Peters, New Zealand’s foreign minister, met the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in Washington on Tuesday, where they discussed bilateral relations, the war in Iran and the Pacific.

Published: April 8, 2026, 12:09 am

Donald Trump Jr calls EU ‘a bit of a mess’ on visit to Bosnia’s Republika Srpska

Comments by US president’s son seen as gesture of support for ousted pro-Russian leader Milorad Dodik

Donald Trump’s eldest son has criticised the EU as “a little bit of a mess” during a visit to Bosnia’s Republika Srpska widely seen as a gesture of support for the ousted pro-Russian leader Milorad Dodik.

Donald Trump Jr travelled to the Serb-run region’s de facto capital, Banja Luka, as the guest of Dodik’s son Igor. The visit coincided with remarks by JD Vance in Budapest, who accused the EU of meddling in an election in Hungary, even as he endorsed Viktor Orbán ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Published: April 7, 2026, 7:06 pm

Wireless festival cancelled after Kanye West banned from entering UK

Rapper had been booked to play at festival in London, prompting outcry over his past antisemitic remarks

The Wireless music festival has been cancelled after the artist formerly known as Kanye West was banned from entering the UK amid a deepening political row over his previous antisemitic statements.

West, legally known as Ye, was due to headline all three days of the festival in July and made an application to travel to the UK via an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) on Monday, but this was blocked by officials.

Published: April 7, 2026, 6:58 pm

UK government urged to act over proposed illegal Israeli settlement

Former diplomats say ministers must threaten action against any companies bidding to build E1 settlement of 3,400 houses in West Bank

• Britain must lead efforts to stop Israel’s annexation of the West Bank – full text of letter

A group of leading former UK ambassadors and high commissioners has called on the UK government to threaten action against any companies bidding to build an illegal Israeli settlement “designed to divide the West Bank in two and destroy Palestine’s viability”.

In a letter published in the Guardian, the 32 former diplomats said tenders for the planned E1 settlement, which would involve the construction of 3,400 houses on “Palestinian soil” as part of Israel’s “systemic West Bank annexation”, were due to be issued on 1 June.

Published: April 7, 2026, 5:00 pm

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

Broadhurst Theatre, New York

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

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

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

Published: April 8, 2026, 1:00 am

‘Even more beautiful than I imagined’: the nifty Japanese printing gadget uniting artists worldwide

It’s fast, affordable and its colours are as vivid as screenprints. Designer and risograph devotee Gabriella Marcella talks about founding Riso Club, connecting device users from New York, London, Damascus, Kyiv, Lille, Lima and beyond

Gabriella Marcella felt something in her brain click when she first used a risograph printer. “The process, the immediacy – it resonated,” says the Scottish-Italian designer. “A lot of my aesthetic comes from that machine.” Many artists and creatives share that reaction, and now Marcella has curated an exhibition of international art showcasing their work at Glasgow’s Glue Factory Galleries.

The risograph, created in Japan in the 1980s, is a nifty printer that looks like a photocopier but creates work like a screenprinter. The company that produced it, Riso Kagaku, was founded by Noboru Hayama, a businessman whose goal was to make intuitive and affordable printing products. Using soy inks to produce small print-runs of products with a handmade feel and distinctive style, the risograph print – or riso – has become synonymous with zines, activism and independent creatives.

Published: April 7, 2026, 11:18 am

The Stranger review – lustrously beautiful and superbly realised modern take on the Camus classic

François Ozon’s adaptation of the 1942 novella L’Etranger passionately honours the original text while bringing a contemporary perspective to its themes of empire and race

A heatstricken reverie of violence and mystery unfolds in this film, a numb ecstasy of the inexplicable, as experienced by a sensitive white European under the unbearable noonday sun. Set in 1940s French Algeria (and filmed in Morocco), François Ozon’s lustrously beautiful and superbly realised monochrome version of Albert Camus’s novella L’Etranger has an almost supernaturally detailed sense of period and place. It amounts to a passionate act of ancestor worship in honour of a renowned French artwork, though by making changes that bring a contemporary perspective on the book’s themes of empire and race – changes that include a critique of the original text – this adaptation perhaps loses some of its source material’s brutal, heartless power and arguably some of the title’s meaning.

An archive reel introduces us briskly to Algiers and its casbah, with a hint of Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko; then we are shown our antihero Meursault, remanded there on trial for the capital crime of murder, played with many an unreadable moue of listless unconcern by Benjamin Voisin. Flashbacks show us his dull office job in Algiers, where he turns down a promotion and transfer to Paris, one of his many shrugging gestures of indifference to his own interests.

Published: April 7, 2026, 8:00 am

‘Coke and booze didn’t help my creativity’: Joe Eszterhas on his wild times – and his supernatural, anti-woke Basic Instinct reboot

He was the screenwriting colossus behind Flashdance, Jagged Edge, Showgirls and more. Now clean, ‘Hollywood’s Shakespeare’ talks about today’s scared studios, his refugee trauma – and taking acid with Hunter S Thompson

Joe Eszterhas was the swaggering pitchman of 80s and 90s Hollywood; the king of the high-concept, precision-tooled blockbuster. He wrote Jagged Edge, co-scripted Flashdance, and pocketed a then record $3m for his Basic Instinct screenplay. Writers typically skulk near the bottom of the industry food chain but Eszterhas flipped the script to make himself a boss and a brand. ABC called him a “living legend”, while Time magazine posed a breathless rhetorical question: “If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?”

Pride, as any hack writer will tell you, usually comes before a fall, and so it was with Eszterhas, who confused success with excess and barely got out of the business alive. “The coke and the booze,” he says, remembering. “Those weren’t helping my creativity, they were holding it back.” His best years in Hollywood were conversely his worst.

Published: April 7, 2026, 4:00 am

Silence took Martin Scorsese nearly 30 years to make – and it shows

The period drama set in feudal Japan is an epic of divine proportion, tackling grand questions of faith and colonisation with remarkable fervour

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The year is 1640. Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) arrives in Japan with fellow Jesuit missionary Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) to search for their missing mentor, Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson). There, Rodrigues witnesses how “Kirishitans” – historical Japanese Catholics – must practise their faith in secret because their religion is heresy in Edo-period Japan. As he observes how the Japanese belief differs from his teachings, Rodrigues begins to question his faith. Despite praying ceaselessly, Rodrigues does not hear back from God.

Silence, one of Martin Scorsese’s passion projects, was released in 2016 after nearly three decades in development. Scorsese’s dedication mirrors the spiritual journey of his protagonist.

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘I thought I’d finish the album then die’: how Angelo De Augustine came back from a medical nightmare

When the singer-songwriter and Sufjan Stevens collaborator became gravely ill, he had to learn to walk, talk, hear, play and sing again. Music – and a love of antique instrumentation – helped him rebuild

On Halloween 2022, Angelo De Augustine was at home in Los Angeles when he suddenly collapsed. “I got all these strange sensations and knew something was very wrong,” says the 33-year old singer-songwriter. “Then I lost control of my body.” Luckily, he had family around who were able to rush him to hospital, where he was put through days of exhausting tests. “I was conscious most of the time unfortunately,” he says drily, “but I don’t remember a whole lot about it other than I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see well and I couldn’t really move.” Despite countless explorations, doctors were unable to offer a concrete diagnosis, and eventually sent him home. “They said, ‘Come back if you go completely deaf or blind.’”

Reeling and semi-incapacitated, De Augustine had just one thought: to finish Toil and Trouble, the album he had been making for the preceding year. “Nobody was helping and I didn’t think I would survive the illness,” he admits. “I couldn’t do basic tasks like lift things, but I’d worked so hard I didn’t want to leave it incomplete. As far as I was concerned, I wanted to get it finished and then thought I was probably gonna die.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 1:48 pm

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe review – a compulsive tale of money, lies and avoidable tragedy

A New Yorker writer traces the web of deceit that led a troubled teenager to his violent death

Early one winter morning in November 2019, a surveillance camera at MI6’s headquarters on the Thames registered the silhouette of a young man on the balcony of an apartment complex on the opposite side of the river. It was dark but the fifth-floor balcony was brightly lit. The man seemed to hesitate a moment before he jumped. On the way down his hip struck the embankment wall and, possibly unconscious as he hit the water, he drowned. His body was found five hours later face down in riverbank mud, shirtless and in tracksuit bottoms. The autopsy revealed multiple injuries (including a broken jaw) that were caused either by the fall or by a prior assault; the pathologist was unable to determine which.

The Metropolitan police identified the body as that of Zac Brettler, aged 19. He had spent the night he died with a gangland debt collector and drug trafficker named Verinder Sharma. Sharma, 55, said he owned the apartment and allowed Zac to stay with him in the complex rent-free. But phone records and CCTV showed that a third man, Akbar Shamji, had been present that night. A cryptocurrency and real estate trader who lived in Mayfair, Shamji denied any wrongdoing during police interrogation, and continues to maintain his innocence. He stated that Brettler was a compulsive liar who had pretended to be the son of a dead Russian oligarch in order to befriend him and his business associate Sharma. In a further bizarre imposture, Brettler used the alter-ego “Zac Ismailov” and even affected a Russian accent. Shamji could not be arrested on suspicion of murder since he was not in the apartment at the time of the fall. As for Sharma, the M16 camera provided proof that he had not pushed Brettler over the balcony. If these men did not cause the teenager’s death, who did?

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:00 am

Upward Bound by Woody Brown review – extraordinary debut from a non-speaking autistic author

This garrulous, charming story of a young man stuck in a daycare centre for disabled adults offers a vital insider’s perspective

Upward Bound is a dismal adult daycare centre in the Los Angeles suburbs, with “poop-coloured” walls and a small swimming pool out the back. The name on the sign is cruelly misleading because Upward Bound serves as a dumping ground for the city’s disabled community, a pen to hold people who have aged out of school. Any inmate who manages to clamber free – be it up, down or sideways – has slipped the net, beaten the odds and might therefore be viewed as a small miracle.

The author Woody Brown feels similarly touched with magic, having swerved the hell of adult care in pursuit of a professional writing career. He’s the first non-speaking autistic graduate of UCLA and a 2024 alumnus of the writing programme at Columbia University; Upward Bound, his triumphant first novel, looks back not with anger but with compassion and grace. Brown feels for the centre’s exhausted staff almost as much as he does for its mouldering, desperate “clients”, who are forced to map out their days with pointless time-wasting activities. Upward Bound – a jailbreak story of sorts – suggests that practically everyone here has been falsely imprisoned. His book is the literary equivalent of sending the ladder back down.

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:53 am

Legendary Disney composer Alan Menken on winning Oscars, Razzies and his ‘filthy’ rock musical

The Whole New World composer who soundtracked millennial childhoods and won eight Oscars looks back on a stellar career

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In early 1991, the composer Alan Menken took a keyboard to St Vincent’s hospital in New York to visit his friend and creative partner, the lyricist Howard Ashman. Ashman was in the final stages of Aids-related illness, but was determined to finish his work on Disney’s Aladdin. Together, they knocked out the music and lyrics for Prince Ali – one of the movie’s most joyous numbers – as Ashman lay in bed.

Menken and Ashman had already collaborated on Disney’s hit 1989 animated musical The Little Mermaid; in the winter of 1991, they were putting the finishing touches on Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast simultaneously. Ashman was “fighting for his life” while they were working on all three, Menken recalls from his home studio in upstate New York. At first, he had no idea his friend was sick, let alone battling HIV; Ashman only revealed his diagnosis after they won the Oscar for best original song for Under the Sea in 1990.

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘I couldn’t see, breathe or sing. I blacked out twice’: why are so many metal bands wearing masks?

From Sleep Token to Ghost and Slaughter to Prevail, the genre’s biggest stars are using freaky facial disguises. Are they hiding behind them – or revealing their true nature?

When US avant garde metal band Imperial Triumphant decided that their image needed a shake-up in 2015, they considered putting on corpse paint, the ghastly makeup popularised by 90s black metal. But, their singer/guitarist Zachary Ezrin says, they then realised how much effort it would take – and how uncool the post-gig rituals would feel: “You just rocked a show, and now you have to sit backstage and wipe off your makeup.” (Perish the thought of being the average female pop star.)

They instead chose to wear striking gold masks modelled after 1920s art deco architecture, though these brought their own problems when they got lost in transit. “We had to do one show where Steve [Blanco, bass] was wearing a new mask that we put together from parts. We went to some Hungarian costume shop and just started grabbing stuff and piecing it together.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:25 am

Harry Styles announces jazz, pop, indie and electronic artists for his Meltdown festival

London festival will feature an intimate Styles performance as well as appearances from Warpaint, Kamasi Washington, Devonté Hynes and more

Harry Styles has announced the lineup of artists he has curated for this year’s Meltdown festival, held at London’s Southbank Centre.

As well as performing a solo concert on 16 June at Royal Festival Hall, sandwiched amid his run of 12 dates at the considerably larger Wembley Stadium, Styles has brought together a diverse range of artists spanning jazz, pop, indie rock and electronic music.

Published: April 7, 2026, 11:18 am

Gangnam styles: South Korea’s brutalist gems – in pictures

It’s all about the austere beauty of concrete in photographer Paul Tulett’s starkly stunning shots of the country’s jaw-dropping, rapidly evolving architectural highlights

Published: April 7, 2026, 6:00 am

A gangster, a bogus inheritance and a dead 19-year-old: the mystery Patrick Radden Keefe couldn’t ignore

When Zac Brettler jumped to his death in London, the coroner recorded an open verdict, admitting: ‘I don’t know what happened.’ The acclaimed author of Say Nothing and, now, London Falling, talks about his search for answers

In the summer of 2023, the American writer and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe was in London for the filming of Say Nothing, the television adaptation of his much-lauded, much-awarded account of a Troubles murder. It was there, on set, that Keefe got talking to a visitor, a friend of the director, who happened to tell Keefe about friends of his, the Brettlers, a London family who had experienced something tragic, strange and terrible.

Rachelle and Matthew Brettler’s 19-year-old son, Zac, had died in November 2019 when he jumped from the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury apartment overlooking the Thames. There had been no reason to believe he was suicidal – but plenty to suggest that he was very afraid. Zac had spent his last few months in the orbit of two men who believed him to be the son of a Russian oligarch, heir to a £200m legacy. Both men had been with Zac on the night he died – one had been in the apartment at the time – and gave varying accounts in police interviews. The family believed that the Met response had been full of holes – key witnesses hadn’t been formally interviewed, bloodstains on the apartment walls hadn’t been tested – and the investigation concluded in 2021 with the Crown Prosecution Service deciding there was insufficient evidence to bring charges for murder and perverting the course of justice. The inquest in 2022 ended in an open verdict. “I can’t fill in the gaps; I can’t speculate,” the coroner concluded. “I don’t know what happened.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 4:00 am

A perched parakeet and a posing squirrel – readers’ best photographs

Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

Published: April 7, 2026, 3:00 pm

Houseplant hacks: do eggshells deter fungus gnats from laying eggs?

It sounds thrifty and natural, but kitchen waste won’t help. Here’s what will

The problem
Fungus gnats are one of the most annoying houseplant pests because they seem to appear out of nowhere, hovering around the soil and your face with equal enthusiasm. One internet fix suggests crushing eggshells and adding them to the compost to keep the gnats away. It sounds thrifty and natural.

The hack
The theory is that a layer of crushed shell will stop adult gnats from laying eggs and maybe even add a little natural fertiliser to the soil. It’s also the kind of hack people love because it recycles kitchen waste.

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:00 am

‘Before I can stop her, my daughter is licking crumbs from the table’: my search for the perfect kids’ menu

Chips, fish fingers, pizza … restaurant food for children is depressingly predictable. Are there more adventurous options? I took my four-year-old daughter on a month-long mission to find out

We’re heading out for dinner. Before I tell my four-year-old where we’re going, she has already announced that she’s going to have fish, chips and lots of ketchup. It sounds delicious; a classic. But there’s the irksome feeling that the intrepid impulses of childhood should be met with food that expands palates rather than feeding into the well-trodden path to a beige meal.

My guilt is only slightly assuaged by the ungenerous thought that maybe I can lay some blame at other people’s feet. Namely – as if it hasn’t got enough on its plate already – the hospitality industry. A certainty of fish and chips hasn’t come from nowhere – so often, regardless of the type of restaurant, kids’ menus have the same fodder.

Published: April 7, 2026, 9:00 am

Sluts, simps and body shaming: the rise of Africa’s manosphere

Experts have been alarmed at the growth of deep misogyny dressed up as self-help on social media. We profile seven men from across the continent who are gaining traction

It is not just Europe and the US that are grappling with a growing landscape of misogynistic influencers online. While Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, Sneako and other voices grow in toxicity in the manosphere of the west, across Africa – which has more than 400 million people aged between 15 and 35 – several individuals are gaining traction.

The manosphere is a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles such as dating and fitness, but often promote harmful misogynistic attitudes. Sunita Caminha, who leads UN Women on ending violence against women and girls in east and southern Africa, first started noticing its presence in Africa about five years ago, and believes it is on the rise. “Research and data that keeps coming out is very consistent [in] showing this is an alarming issue in different countries and contexts across the continent.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 6:00 am

Trump cut funding for gun violence prevention. California’s Latino communities are facing the fallout

Non-profits are scaling back programs, raising fears of worsening violence in historically underserved communities

Sergio Diaz knows how to make people feel comfortable. It is a skill he learned from his years as a salesman selling shoes, cellphones and lawn care hardware in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is no longer a salesman, but relating to others is still crucial in Diaz’s work as a gun violence prevention specialist for the Oakland non-profit Youth Alive.

Every day, the 34-year-old goes to trauma centers, like Highland hospital in East Oakland, and meets with people who are recovering after being shot. He talks with them at their bedsides to figure out what they need to redirect them away from retaliation – whether it’s help applying for medical benefits or getting a driver’s license. Beyond his way with words, he says he is able to build relationships with his clients, many of whom are immigrants from Central America, because he understands their circumstances.

Published: April 7, 2026, 5:00 pm

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

They have degrees, expertise and years of experience – but can’t find work. For many Americans, AI training has become a last refuge in a brutal job market

When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn’t find work for nearly a year, his family’s foundation crumbled.

“You hear about people who hit rock bottom,” Ciriello told the Guardian. “Well, I was there.”

Published: April 7, 2026, 12:00 pm

An anti-ICE protest and a thumbs up from space: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: April 7, 2026, 12:49 pm