Let’s have a look at what’s happening in Europe today. You’ll see the central figure in the picture at the top of this live blog is one Harry Kane, who can finally get his hands on some silverware if Bayern Munich defeat Mainz at home today and last season’s champions, Bayer Leverkusen, fail to beat Augsburg at home. It will also be Vincent Kompany’s first top-flight title as a manager (he’s been keen to point out that he won the Championship with Burnley).
As pollution levels hit record highs and fresh water becomes ‘the new oil’, is it time to radically reimagine our relationship to the natural world?
If you find it difficult to think of a river as alive, try picturing a dying or dead river. This is easier. We know what this looks like. We know how it feels. A dying river is one who does not reach the sea. A dying river’s fish float belly-up in stagnant pools. Swans on the upper Thames near Windsor now wear brown tidemarks on their snowy chest feathers, showing where they have sailed through sewage. I recently saw a Southern Water riverbank sign badged with a bright blue logo that read “Water for Life”. The sign instructed passersby to “avoid contact with the water. If you’ve had contact with the water, please wash your hands before eating.” In parts of this septic isle, fresh water has become first undrinkable, then unswimmable, then untouchable.
How did it come to this – and where do we go from here? The crisis is one of imagination as well as of legislation. We have forgotten that our fate flows with that of rivers, and always has. Our relationship with fresh water has become intensely instrumentalised, privatised and monetised: river understood as resource, not life force. The duty of care for rivers, who extend such care to us, has been abrogated. Regulation has gone unenforced, monitoring is strategically underfunded. Rivers named after deities – the Shannon (Sinnan), the Dee (Deva) – now struggle under burdens of nitrates, forever chemicals and waste.
Without their fathers’ surnames there is zero chance the mixmatched catchweight contest would take place
Back in his pomp as an era-defining, generational dog-torturer, the great Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov did an interesting experiment with shapes. This involved showing a dog called Vampire a combination of circles and ovals. Circles meant he was about to be fed. Ovals meant no food and possibly, maybe, at a push, being electrocuted.
Before long Vampire was showing the familiar conditioned response, salivating when he saw a circle, shying away from the oval. At which point Pavlov began to show him shapes that were weirdly pitched between the two, not quite an oval, not quite a circle, half a food promise, half something else, until eventually Vampire snapped, yelping and running around in circles, unable to interpret the truth of the thing in front of him. So, top work there everyone. Another dog successfully confused.
Topsy-turvy food trend trickling into supermarkets as sweet treats no longer reserved as an end-of-dinner finale
The idea of pudding as a sweet finale to lunch or dinner is being inverted by the rise of the breakfast pudding. This topsy-turvy food trend includes everything from chia seed puddings designed to taste like cookie dough, overnight oats that resemble tiramisu and Weetabix biscuits transformed into what could be mistaken for vanilla cheesecake.
TikTok is the main instigator of the trend, causing dieticians, fitness influencers and homecooks to do battle with viral recipes. The process tends to involve soaking base ingredients such as oats and chia seeds overnight with natural plant additions such as dates and cacao powder or somewhat less healthy, processed items such as melted chocolate bars and spreads including Lotus Biscoff, a brand of caramelised biscuits. There are recipes inspired by Snickers, Kinder Bueno and Bounty bars alongside others modelled on cinnamon rolls and matcha lattes.
Some, especially within the US, see the conclave as an opportunity to establish a more conservative leader
For Catholics who cherished Pope Francis’s relentless defence of the dignity of migrants and minorities, the footage of his deeply awkward meeting with JD Vance on Easter Sunday made for unsettling viewing. During his 12 years in St Peter’s chair, Francis railed against Christian complicity with “America first”-type nationalist movements across the west. Here, looming over him on what turned out to be the eve of his death, was the White House embodiment of the insular, bullying politics he spent so much energy fighting against.
What now? The pope “from the ends of the earth” will be laid to rest on Saturday in an unadorned tomb in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore basilica, after a funeral attended by about 50 heads of state and 130 delegations from around the world. Progressives inside and outside the church will hope that encounter with the US vice-president was not an ominous portent.
The Egyptian is more than simply a role model in his adopted home, he speaks to the city’s broader mythology
There are occasional sightings of him around the city. A face is glimpsed; perhaps climbing out of a car, perhaps stepping into a mosque. A phone is surreptitiously brandished. The rumour spreads like fire. Pretty quickly these sightings take on the status of urban myths; brief brushes with the divine. There was the time he was at a petrol station and decided to pay for everyone’s fuel. There was the kid who chased after his car, went smack into a lamppost and now boasts a photograph of himself with a lavishly bloodied nose, and Mohamed Salah’s arm tenderly clasped around his shoulder.
A few weeks ago, with that new contract still unsigned, a rumour spread around the city that Salah was out at the docks filming content for the club’s media channels. Invariably by the time the crowds arrived he was gone. For the people of Liverpool, their greatest footballer is someone really only seen in snatches: a blur, a whisper, a trick of the light. And if this is partly the nature of celebrity, then it is worth pointing out that this is also how a lot of Premier League defences have been experiencing Salah this season.
Exhausted and relieved, the Kangala Wildlife Rescue team have revealed precisely how they finally caught Valerie the dachshund, after 529 days on the run in Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
The Kangala directors, Jared and Lisa Karran, were excited to share the news that Valerie had been secured, but they were also extremely careful not to let the small dog escape from a specially designed cage.
In our new column on pop culture that prompted people to upend their lives, a reader reveals how a sex scene from the HBO comedy made her realise her own love life was lacking
I had always avoided watching Sex and the City. I thought it looked a bit girlie for me. It was only during lockdown that I finally got round to seeing it. I found the first few episodes entertaining, but didn’t really connect with any of the storylines. I was the same age as the characters, but I had been in a relationship for four years, so Carrie’s disastrous dates felt far removed from my own experience. I saw the show as no more than a guilty pleasure, something to do while my boyfriend played PlayStation in the other room. I certainly didn’t think it would end my relationship.
It was Charlotte who got me hooked. Specifically her relationship with Trey, her sexually repressed husband. There was so much nuance to the scenes between them. The show dramatised the uncomfortable, shameful parts of a relationship like I’d never seen before on TV. My boyfriend and I had moved in together that year, and he seemed to have completely lost interest in sex. I played it down to friends, saying I had gone off sex too – but I hadn’t. I told myself what was happening between us was a natural progression out of the honeymoon stage, but it hurt me deeply every time I tried to be affectionate with my boyfriend and he turned me away.
This comedy of manners set among Berlin’s cultural elite is a prescient interrogation of language, identity and power
On 7 March 2025 the New York Timespublished a list of words that the Trump administration was systematically culling from government documents and educational materials. This list, which includes the words “gender ideology”, “affirming care”, “confirmation bias”, “ethnicity”, “identity”, “immigrants”, “racism”, “prostitute”, “political”, “intersectional” and “privilege”, reads like a bingo card for Nell Zink’s astonishingly prescient new novel, Sister Europe, in which a large cast of racially, economically and gender-diverse characters convene over the course of a single evening to attend a literary awards ceremony in Berlin.
On its surface, Sister Europe is a comedy of manners set among Berlin’s exclusive and elusive cultural elite. The prose is searingly quick, revelatory and funny: Zink’s dialogue reads like our best plays. Entertaining banter could be this book’s largest trophy, were it not for the contents of the banter, which are so ambitious and ethically interested that they make it clear that Zink is one of our most important contemporary writers.
On reading [Masud’s] books, Demian discovered to his consternation a grating and persistent anti-Black racism. Was it excusable? He excused it, on the grounds that it would be hard for an anti-Black racist to do much damage in Norway, where anti-Muslim racism was a deadly threat (admittedly much of it intersectional, directed against Somalis). Was it patronising to suspend his ethical standards because the man was a genius, or Eurocentric not to suspend them, and which was worse?
He whispered hesitantly, speaking into the towel over her ear, “You want to change your life.”
“That was stupid,” she replied. “Life should change me. I don’t want to be destructive of a living thing, flattening it with myidentity.” She said the word slowly. As though identities were something ubiquitous, but distasteful, like dust mites, that might be dispensed with, given careful hygiene.
They can learn hundreds of words, count to five and read humans like a book, so why do we struggle to understand them? Scientists reveal the truth about our pets – and whether they ever feel guilty for eating our slippers
The thing that made me think my dog may be a genius was the word monkey. We’d developed a game where I’d hide her monkey toy – a sad, lifeless being, long lobotomised by my golden retriever puppy – and, when I asked her to find it, I realised she could differentiate the word monkey from other objects. A woman in the park had a similar story. On holiday in an unfamiliar cottage, she had misplaced the car keys. After hunting for them for over an hour, her dog, a border collie, overheard her and her husband talking about it, recognised the word “keys” and immediately went and found them.
So maybe my dog, Rhubarb, isn’t a genius after all. Dogs, says Vanessa Woods, director of the Puppy Kindergarten project at Duke University in North Carolina, US, and writer of several books including Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog, can know hundreds of words for objects. “Over 1,000, probably,” she says. “And actually it’s more interesting than that, because they learn words the way children learn words, and that’s not by repetition.” Psychology professor Juliane Kaminski showed back in 2004 that a dog called Rico (another border collie), could learn, as children do, by inference – he didn’t need to know the name of a new toy, he could work it out by excluding the toys he did know the names of.
Ebow Graham died after falling out of a third-storey window in east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode
An ambulance service and an NHS trust have admitted breaching their duty of care over the death of Ebow Graham, a founding member of the hip-hop group Foreign Beggars.
Graham, 40, died after falling out of a third-storey window in Clapton, east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode. Hours earlier London ambulance paramedics had dismissed his friends’ concerns about his behaviour. And a crisis call handler from East London NHS trust also failed to properly assess his risk or arrange an urgent mental health assessment within the recommended time.
Experts and readers give tips on making the most of your outdoor space without spending thousands
You don’t need a luxury patio set, a subscription to a seed club or a pair of fancy gloves to have a great garden. Some of the most charming outdoor spaces have been created with hardly any budget at all – just a bit of time, a few innovative ideas and maybe the occasional raid of the recycling bin.
British garden owners say they would consider spending up to £4,700 to create their dream outdoor space, according to Wickes’s great garden report. However, with rising costs and more people living in temporary or shared spaces, many are finding cheaper ways to create something beautiful.
From the Albert Square pub and Bombay Sapphire bottle to the Pest Control Office, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Which father and son footballers both have more than 100 international caps? 2 In 1907, who opened her first classroom in Rome? 3 Which mythical beast had a human face, lion’s body and scorpion’s tail? 4 What becomes the Padma within Bangladesh? 5 Used in the 14th century, the pot-de-fer was an early type of what? 6 Whose work is sold and authenticated by the Pest Control Office? 7 Which African country is named from the Shona for “houses of stone”? 8 What list currently ends with oganesson? What links:
9 Buckthorn bark; brazilwood; cochineal; madder; safflower? 10 Platypus (0); human (1); dolphin (2); ostrich (3); cattle (4)? 11 Brownie; Frankenstrat; Lucille; Red Special; Trigger? 12 Aktau; Baku; Makhachkala; Rasht; Türkmenbaşy? 13 Albert Square pub; Bombay Sapphire bottle; first postage stamp? 14 Big Bounce; Big Crunch; Big Freeze; Big Rip? 15 Asparagus; Burgh; Burrow; Lindisfarne; Mersea?
The thrilling Star Wars spin-off returns, the Floyd sound epic in a 1971 concert film and the timely papal drama hits streaming. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
Recent proposals put forward in countries such as Sweden, Finland and Germany reflect wider shift, say analysts
The plans, hatched by Sweden’s rightwing government with support of its far-right backers, made waves around the world. Politicians said they were working to strip citizenship from dual nationals who had been convicted of some crimes.
It was a hint of a broader conversation taking place in capitals around the world. As far-right and nationalist parties steadily gain political ground, analysts say that citizenship is increasingly being linked to crime, giving rise to a shift that risks creating two classes of citizens and marginalising specific communities.
It is an awkward weekend for Giorgia Meloni. The Italian leader will host a gathering of world leaders to say goodbye to a much-revered pope whose public views – from the treatment of people fleeing war to the climate crisis – were diametrically opposed to hers.
While Pope Francis was a staunch advocate for asylum seekers, and blessed the vessels that saved refugees at sea, Meloni once said Italy should “repatriate migrants back to their countries and then sink the boats that rescued them”.
Anthony John Felton ambushed Richard Pyke with spanner over suspected sex with teacher he had affair with
A headteacher who was caught on video attacking his deputy with a large adjustable spanner, in an assault motivated by “overwhelming sexual jealousy”, has been jailed for more than two years.
Anthony John Felton, 54, concealed the wrench in his jacket pocket as he approached his colleague, Richard Pyke, 51, from behind. Video of the incident showed him taking out the heavy tool and then repeatedly swinging it at Pyke’s head.
Funeral in St Peter’s Square is being presided over by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re
At least 130 foreign delegations, including about “50 heads of state and 10 reigning monarchs”, would attend PopeFrancis’s funeral on Saturday, the Vatican said on Thursday.
Heads of state and government who have confirmed their attendance at the funeral include Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump, Keir Starmer and Javier Milei, the president of Pope Francis’s native Argentina. Francis had a delicate relationship with politics in his home country, but Milei hailed his “goodness and wisdom”.
We will be present at the pope’s funeral, as is only right.
Exhausted residents point out latest drone strike came hours after Donald Trump’s rare rebuke to Vladimir Putin
About 1am on Friday, Yuliia Verbytska woke to the sound of an air raid siren. She grabbed her teenage children – Dmitry, 17, and Olexiy, 12 – and sat in the corridor, checking her phone. In the sky above came an ominous whine. Minutes later, a Russian drone crashed into the disused soap factory down the road in Polyova Street. There was an enormous explosion.
“We don’t have a shelter in our building, so we hide behind two concrete walls. All the neighbours sit together. You wonder if this is your last moment,” she said. Friday’s raid followed a massive attack on Thursday on Verbytska’s home, Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and on the capital, Kyiv, where 12 people were killed. “I haven’t slept for two days,” she said wearily.
Pop’s top matriarch is finally getting the credit she’s due. She talks about her shock diagnosis, conspiracy theories about her family, and the Instagram posts that get her in trouble with her kids
It’s been a decade since Tina Knowles started dictating her life story into her phone for her grandchildren and future great-grandchildren. She wanted them to know their history – her early life and world were so different from theirs, she might as well have been from another planet. Knowles, the youngest of seven, born to a docker and seamstress, grew up poor in segregated Texas. Her grandchildren, born to Knowles’s superstar daughters, Beyoncé and Solange, are growing up in Los Angeles and New York with unimaginable wealth, but under unimaginable scrutiny.
A couple of years ago, Knowles started writing a book that was supposed to be her behind-the-scenes take on the outfits she had created for her daughters’ music careers – the dazzling triple-denimlooks she had cobbled together from fabric remnants and army-surplus stores, with almost no budget, for Beyoncé’s group Destiny’s Child in the 1990s.She was still improvising costumes once Beyoncé had gone solo and could have her pick of designer clothes; even the singer’s spectacular recent Renaissance tour had input from her mother.
Coming from Egypt, I know a dictatorship when I see one. The same can’t be said for the white voters who brought Trump to power
“What’s he done now?” My parents live in Cairo and I’m in New York City. We FaceTime once a week and that question is like a game we play. My parents ask about Donald Trump and I ask about Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, whom Trump calls “my favourite dictator”. Aren’t we Egyptian-Americans lucky – a dictator for each side of our hyphen.
Tellingly, the “he” my parents ask about has dominated our conversations lately.
Mona Eltahawy writes the FEMINIST GIANT newsletter. She is the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls and Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution
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In the early hours of 24 April the realisation dawned: Putin will get a deal that humiliates Ukraine – or continue to slaughter our civilians
Day 1,156 of the invasion; 24 April 2025. Thirty hours after the end of Russia’s fake “Easter ceasefire”. It is 6.21am: feeling anxious, I call my father. He is travelling by train from the western part of Ukraine to Kyiv, due to arrive in 40 minutes. He picks up the phone, and from his cheerful tone I gather that he has not yet heard the news. I ask if the train is running late. My father says everything is fine, he can already spot familiar places in the Kyiv region. He wants to know why I doubt the arrival time. I tell him that sadly Russia has been shelling the country all night long. In Kyiv, I say, we have lived through one of the worst nights. “I’m jumping in a taxi,” I add. “I’ll see you soon.”
Those who survive shelling often imitate the sounds of explosions when they talk about the experience. I instantly think of this when an early morning roll call of “how are you?” starts in the friends’ group chat. Whoosh. Whiz. Boom. Bang. The only thing I can write is the sounds of what came flying at us the during the night. Like a child learning to talk. Or a person who has lost the ability to speak.
Developed countries pressed to submit national plans well before Cop30 as time runs out to avoid 1.5C temperature rise
Rich countries are dragging their feet on producing new plans to combat the climate crisis, thereby putting the poor into greater danger, some of the world’s most vulnerable nations have warned.
All governments are supposed to publish new plans this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but so far only a small majority have done so, and some of the plans submitted have been inadequate to the scale of action needed.
Shedeur Sanders is still waiting – after three rounds of the NFL draft, 102 picks and five quarterbacks selected ahead of Deion Sanders’s highly touted son.
The Colorado quarterback was widely considered a first-round talent. But his stunning slide continued on Friday night when his name wasn’t called in the second or third round.
Pope Francis announced his pastoral intentions from the very beginning of his papacy, saying he preferred a church that was “bruised, hurting and dirty” from being on the streets to one that was cautious and complacent. Although he never strayed from doctrine – to the annoyance of many optimistic liberals – his 12 years as pope were marked by a deliberate embrace of those historically on the margins of the church and society. He wanted a church, he said, for “todos, todos, todos” – which translates into: “Everyone, everyone, everyone.”
Here, some of those who met him recall what his pontificate meant to them.
Buildings that once catered to 1950s road trippers are being transformed into boutique stays attracting a younger demographic
Motel Molly is giving vacay vibes. It’s giving idyllic. It’s giving “hot girl summer” lives on in Mollymook, a town on the New South Wales south coast.
I’m in an oceanside room in one of four colour-themed buildings called Capri, Olive, Limoncello and Rosé. My room in the latter comes in pinks from powder to peach, coral and mauve with – squee! – a Smeg fridge and kettle in a high-gloss fairy-floss colourway. Elsewhere are rattan chairs, Scandi-style ceramics, glasses etched with frosted cursive font and a throw tufted with designs that vaguely evoke the US south-west.
At least 130 foreign delegations and an estimated 200,000 pilgrims to descend on St Peter’s Square on Saturday
An extraordinary array of invitees, spanning heads of state and royals from around the world, as well as refugees, prisoners, transgender people and those who are homeless will descend on St Peter’s Square on Saturday for the funeral of Pope Francis, the groundbreaking liberal pontiff who led the Catholic church for 12 years.
Francis died at the age of 88 on Monday at his home in Casa Santa Marta after a stroke and subsequent heart failure. He had been recovering from double pneumonia that had kept him in hospital for five weeks.
The Anohni and the Johnsons singer is collaborating with marine scientists for two special shows at Sydney’s Vivid festival that will show the reef’s plight
Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. “I feel like I’m going to Auschwitz,” she says nervously. “On the one hand, I’m so excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there’s going to be so much that’s gorgeous. And yet, I’m also scared.”
In a week, the British-born, New York-based avant garde singer of Anohni and the Johnsons is flying to Lizard Island, a paradise of powdery sands on the reef, 1,600km north-west of Brisbane. Its luxury villas and bluest of blue waters are a stark contrast to the grim nature of Anohni’s assignment: documenting the current state of the world’s biggest coral reef.
Tiffany Saine was on life support at time of selection
Harmon said mother helped motivate him in career
Tiffany Saine, the mother of Derrick Harmon, died shortly after learning the Pittsburgh Steelers had selected her son with the 21st pick of the NFL draft.
Harmon was visibly emotional as he was picked, and the ESPN broadcast showed a video in which the defensive tackle spoke about his mother’s health issues and paid tribute to the positive effect she had on his life. Saine was on life support when Harmon was selected and the 21-year-old told reporters he was going to see her in hospital after Thursday night’s ceremony.
Move that opens door for companies to test self-driving technology on trucks over 10,001lb likely to face pushback
California regulators have released a new proposal to allow the testing of self-driving heavy-duty trucks on public roads.
The state’s department of motor vehicles announced proposed regulations on Friday to allow the testing of driverless trucks over 10,001lbs, opening the door for companies to test self-driving technology on vehicles roughly the size of a Ram or Ford super duty pickup truck.
Cheering crowd at 800-year-old cathedral enjoy Plague of Angels gig, which had been branded an ‘outright insult’
Protests at one of the most controversial concerts of the year failed to materialise on Friday evening, as a metal act performed to a cheering crowd of 1,400 people at York Minster.
The 800-year-old cathedral hosted a gig by Plague of Angels, which some of its congregation called an “outright insult” to their faith and said they would be protesting if the concert went ahead.
Paris Saint-Germain’s hopes of becoming the first side to complete a Ligue 1 season unbeaten came crashing down at the Parc des Princes on Friday when Nice handed them their first defeat of the league campaign, winning 3-1 to boost their own Champions League ambitions.
Having already secured the title earlier this month, PSG still top the Ligue 1 standings on 78 points, while Nice move up to fourth on 54.
Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, who died on 4 April 2024, was the son of top-ranking US spy Juliane Gallina
An American man identified as the son of a deputy director of the CIA was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2024 while fighting under contract for the Russian military, according to an investigation by independent Russian media.
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