The US musician was a major influence on post-punk and alt-rock scenes thanks to his spirited, chaotic style
David Thomas, who fronted the wild and free-thinking American rock band Pere Ubu, has died aged 71.
A statement on Pere Ubu’s Facebook page said that he died “in his home town of Brighton & Hove, with his wife and youngest step-daughter by his side. MC5 were playing on the radio. He will ultimately be returned to his home, the farm in Pennsylvania, where he insisted he was to be ‘thrown in the barn’ … We’ll leave you with his own words, which sums up who he was better than we can: ‘My name is David Fucking Thomas… and I’m the lead singer of the best fucking rock and roll band in the world.’”
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© Photograph: Dubravko Grakalic/Alamy
© Photograph: Dubravko Grakalic/Alamy
Children among nine dead and at least 70 wounded by Russian attack, Ukraine says
We understand that while the visit will be cut short after Zelenskyy’s meeting with Ramaphosa, their media activities will still proceed, meaning we should hear from the Ukrainian president in the next few hours.
Rachel and I will keep an eye on this development to see if Zelenskyy takes part in a scheduled press conference in Pretoria in case he wants to say more about the attacks overnight.
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© Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
© Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
More than 50,000 people, queuing for hours, viewed body of late pontiff over 24-hour period, says Vatican
St Peter’s Basilica has reopened for thousands of people to pay their final respects to Pope Francis for a second day, following a brief pause after keeping its doors open all night.
The 16th-century basilica, where Francis’s simple wooden coffin is placed on the main altar, was scheduled to close at midnight but remained open until 5.30am to allow in those who still wished to enter.
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© Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP
© Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP
Both sides say they have resolved to end conflict through peaceful means after ‘frank’ talks facilitated by Qatar
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and a coalition of militias including the Rwanda-backed M23 have agreed to work towards a truce to end the fighting that has engulfed the eastern part of the country since January.
In similarly worded statements released on Wednesday night, the government and Alliance Fleuve Congo (Congo River Alliance) said their representatives had held talks facilitated by Qatar and resolved to end the conflict through peaceful means.
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© Photograph: Brian Inganga/AP
© Photograph: Brian Inganga/AP
This outrageous skewering of the modern dating landscape confronts toxic masculinity and the contradictions of female desire
Nearly every page in Sophie Kemp’s debut is smart, jarring and wickedly funny. Set in Brooklyn in 2019, this wild, absurdist take on the millennial novel tracks the adventures of Reality Kahn, a 23-year-old waterslide commercial actor and zine-maker who determines to become “the greatest girlfriend of all time”, after her drug-dealing sex partner, Emil, casually suggests that she gets herself a man. Prior to that point, Reality had just been living her life, no strings attached. “Would having a special guy around really make me happier? Was this the life purpose I was looking for?” A boyfriend, she decides, might “add colour to my life as well as provide intrigue”. And, New York City being “a place where nefarious individuals got ideas”, he could also protect her from “getting raped so much”.
Reality’s quest kicks off with a hunt for “intel”. Where do guys who make good boyfriends usually spend their time? Farcical as it is, her inquiry touches on that most sobering of cliches about true love: that it is darn hard to find. Emil responds with confusion: “Where do they hang out? Girl, I think you’re sexy as fuck and fun, but for serious, you are on some sort of insane-ass trip these days. They’re not a pack of wildebeests in the plains.” Desperate for better advice, Reality turns to Girlfriend Weekly, Kemp’s cheeky homage to the time-honoured world of women’s magazines. It has all the answers she’s looking for, even if they are hilariously fusty and over the top: “Bring a little charm with you everywhere that you go. For example, when you are at the grocer’s, be sure to give a smile and a wink to the dashing gentleman in the porkpie hat. Say: ‘Gee whiz, woo-woo, you are a beautiful specimen and I am a virgin.’”
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© Photograph: PR IMAGE
© Photograph: PR IMAGE
For half a century, the GOP has embraced tax cuts for the rich. But as Americans turn against the idea, the party is divided
“I am a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice – I know that there are some people in this room who don’t believe that my marriage should have been legal,” the rightwing impresario Bari Weiss told a Federalist Society gathering in 2023. “And that’s OK. Because we’re all Americans who want lower taxes.”
The assembled conservatives guffawed at hearing the quiet part out loud: in this case, the admission that tax cuts for the rich have been the glue holding the US conservative movement together.
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© Photograph: AP
© Photograph: AP
I need to stop dwelling on everything I get wrong, from sending my ball into the drink to squeezing the wrong bottom
Whether you’re into sport or not, there’s wisdom to be mined from it. Once you’ve picked your way through the platitudes, banalities and cliche there’s gold in there.
Rory McIlroy’s famous victory at the US Masters earlier this month yielded, for me anyway, a particularly good example. McIlroy’s psychologist, Bob Rotella, has been credited with helping his man develop golf’s key mental skill: putting your bad shots behind you and barely giving them a second thought.
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© Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images
The Conservative Pierre Poilievre was poised to be the next PM until a lurch in US relations tilted polls to the Liberals
Every election, the message from exasperated pundits and pedants is the same: Canadians don’t actually vote directly for their prime minister.
But on a rural intersection south of Ottawa, residents could be mistaken for thinking otherwise.
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© Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Reuters
© Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Chadema spokesperson says party’s deputy chair and secretary general held on way to protest over treason charges
Tanzania’s main opposition party has said at least two of its officials have been arrested on their way to a rally to support the leading government opponent Tundu Lissu, who is due in court to face a treason charge.
Authorities in the east African country have increasingly cracked down on the opposition Chadema party in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary polls in October.
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© Photograph: Emmanuel Herman/Reuters
© Photograph: Emmanuel Herman/Reuters
Our writers take a look at the best prospects coming out of college, and which teams needs to nail their picks over the coming days
Travis Hunter, CB/WR. Any team picking No 1 overall needs a quarterback. And Cam Ward is the top quarterback prospect in the class. But the No 1 pick should be Hunter, the electrifying hybrid corner/receiver. Whether he can play both ways in the league is an open question, but wherever he lines up, Hunter will be a gamechanger at a premium position. OC
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© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
Discovery could provide valuable clues as to how the climate crisis might affect Antarctica, says study
Giant, flat-topped icebergs the size of the city of Cambridge drifted off the coast of Britain during the last ice age, according to a study that has uncovered evidence of their existence for the first time.
A series of distinctive, comb-like grooves found preserved in sediment near Aberdeen in Scotland were left behind by the underside of huge “tabular” icebergs that dragged across the North Sea floor between 18,000 and 20,000 years ago, the researchers said.
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© Illustration: British Antarctic Survey
© Illustration: British Antarctic Survey
She has been called a ‘brave disruptor’ by campaigners and ‘rabid’ by internet critics. But for Charlotte Proudman, only one opinion matters: that of the women and children she defends in the family courts
At lunchtime, when she is working at her barristers’ chambers in central London, Charlotte Proudman, a specialist in family law, faces a confronting choice. Should she nip around the corner to Pret a Manger or join her colleagues at the Middle Temple dining hall? It’s not so much a question of whether she feels like a sandwich or a sit-down meal, but a more existential decision, requiring her to analyse who she is and where she belongs.
It is 15 years since Proudman qualified as a barrister, but she still feels a sense of alienation when she walks into the formal dining halls. “It’s largely a sea of male, pale, stale figures sitting there, all in their suits. They all look identical, and are probably from similar demographic backgrounds. As a woman, you already stand out,” she says when we meet at her deserted offices on Good Friday. “It feels like a pocket of establishment elitism. In Pret you’ll have a mixture of solicitors, some paralegals, maybe some judges popping in and out; it’s more cosmopolitan.”
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© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
Newcastle have said Eddie Howe has returned to work after a period in hospital with pneumonia. The manager was admitted to hospital two Fridays ago and missed three matches.
“Newcastle United are delighted to confirm that Eddie Howe has returned to his duties at the club’s training centre,” a club statement read. “Eddie had recently been hospitalised with pneumonia and has now returned to work after a period of recovery. We thank supporters for their warm wishes.”
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© Photograph: Ryan Browne/ProSports/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Ryan Browne/ProSports/REX/Shutterstock
The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world
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© Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP
© Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP
A journalist’s bracingly honest account of interviews with musicians from Brian May to Shaun Ryder
When the journalist Kate Mossman was a child, she developed an obsession with the rock band Queen. Mossman came of age in the 1990s, but the irony and snark of that decade left her cold. Instead, she lived for the “middle-aged musicians from the 80s in jacket and jeans, and for the open-hearted, non-cynical pop times that had come before”. Watching Queen’s posthumous single These Are the Days of Our Lives on Top of the Pops in 1991, she “felt something within myself ignite”. Though she was captivated by the strange longing of a monochrome Freddie Mercury, who had died weeks earlier, it was drummer Roger Taylor who became the focus of her obsession. On the mantelpiece of her childhood home sat a holy relic: a beer glass he had drunk from during a solo gig. Twenty years later, while on her way to interview Taylor and Queen guitarist Brian May for a magazine profile, Mossman confesses: “I think I’m going to black out.”
Her sharp yet heartfelt interviews with Taylor and May – which took place separately – appear in Men of a Certain Age, a compendium of Mossman’s work previously published in the Word, the now defunct music magazine, and in political weekly the New Statesman. The book features 19 encounters with ageing male musicians including Shaun Ryder, Bruce Hornsby, Jeff Beck, Ray Davies, Sting, Dave Gahan, Jon Bon Jovi, Nick Cave and Terence Trent D’Arby. Mossman tops and tails the articles with present-day thoughts, reflecting on her expectations, the preparation, the long journeys to far-flung homes, and the peculiar and sometimes fraught dynamic between interviewer and interviewee.
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© Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images
© Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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