• As it happened: Cam Ward picked No 1 overall by Titans
• Jacksonville trade with Browns for No 2 selection
• New York Giants pick Abdul Carter at No 3 overall

The first pick of the 2025 NFL draft went much as expected as the Tennessee Titans selected the talented Miami quarterback Cam Ward No 1 overall. It was at No 2 – and who wasn’t picked later – where things got a little more interesting on Thursday night in Green Bay.

Jacksonville, who had been sitting at No 5, traded up to take the Cleveland Browns’ spot at No 2, where the Jaguars selected Travis Hunter. Hunter is one of the most fascinating players to enter the NFL in years: a superbly talented athlete who can play both offense, at wide receiver, and defense, at cornerback. In return, the Browns received four picks, including the Jags’ second- and fourth-rounders this year and their 2026 first-rounder. Jacksonville also received a fourth-rounder and a sixth-rounder in return from the Browns.

Tens of thousands of mourners have queued for hours to pay their last respects to pontiff, whose coffin will be closed on Friday evening

The Vatican will make final preparations on Friday for Pope Francis’s funeral as the last of the huge crowds of mourners file through St Peter’s Basilica to view his open coffin.

Many of the 50 heads of state and 10 monarchs attending Saturday’s ceremony in St Peter’s Square, who include US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are expected to arrive in Rome on Friday.

Transforming a former industrial area in Sweden will bring psychological benefits for future residents and reduce construction’s climate impact

Although activity is high, it is surprisingly quiet inside the construction site of a high school extension in Sickla, a former industrial area in south Stockholm that is set to become part of the “largest mass timber project in the world” according to the Swedish urban property developer Atrium Ljungberg.

Just a few months remain until students enter the premises, but there is no sound of drilling or pounding against concrete walls. The scent of wood is unmistakable, and signs of the material can be spotted everywhere – from glulam (glued laminated timber) columns and beams in the building’s frame to cross-laminated timber (CLT) slabs in the floors, ceilings and staircases. CLT, made by gluing together layers of planed wood into panels, offers strength and rigidity comparable to concrete but is significantly lighter and quicker to build with.

The Herds project from the team behind Little Amal will travel 20,000km taking its message on environmental crisis across the world

Hundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.

The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

The story of the former cricket prodigy and car crash survivor Freddie Flintoff is fascinating … but this documentary shows he has such extreme PTSD that he keeps slamming the shutters down

Freddie Flintoff is numb. As the 98-minute Disney+ documentary Flintoff begins, we find its subject sitting in a hospital room. He can’t feel his lip, the one that was torn from his face in a nightmarish car accident on the Top Gear track in 2022. But more than that, he is mentally checked out. As one doctor after another tells him that he is recovering well and looking good, he stares at the ground dejectedly. He just wants everyone to stop sugarcoating everything and tell him the truth, he says. What he wants to hear is that he looks like “a fucking mess”.

Flintoff was designed as the big unveiling of the new, post-accident Freddie Flintoff. His days as a cricketing prodigy are over and so, it seems, are his days as a permanent light entertainment fixture. He is older, slower and more reflective. He is also plagued, night after night, by looping footage of the accident that ended Top Gear. Ostensibly this is where we’ll get to watch his comeback.

Noah Musingku made a fortune with a Ponzi scheme and then retreated to a remote armed compound in the jungle, where he still commands the loyalty of his Bougainville subjects

By Sean Williams. Read by Simon Darwen

Exclusive: EU Transparency Register shows law firms also among lobbyists working for fossil fuel companies

A handful of “small but dirty” public affairs and law firms in Europe are enabling pollution by lobbying extensively for big oil, an analysis has found, with most major companies in the industry working for at least one fossil fuel client.

Several of the top spenders on activities to influence EU policymaking are on the payroll of oil and gas companies, according to an analysis of the EU Transparency Register by the Good Lobby nonprofit, but fossil fuel clients represent just 1% of the industry’s revenue.

An orange blur obscured my vision. By morning it was even worse

It was a cool May afternoon in 2002. I was 19 and had driven to Westport beach in Washington with a few friends to enjoy a day by the ocean.

As a child, I’d been a keen gymnast, always doing backflips and energetic routines. As I got older, I still had a habit of doing cartwheels whenever I found an open space. That day on the beach, on the soft, flat sand, I couldn’t resist.

The archbishop is traditionalists’ preferred candidate for a reason: his papacy would wind back the progress made under Pope Francis

Who might be the next pope? The question is famously difficult to answer. But we can be reasonably confident that if the successful contender comes from the traditionalist camp – as opposed to the reformists – then he is likely to be Hungary’s most senior bishop, Péter Erdő.

If you follow Hungarian politics then you will know of Erdő – a highly cultured man, respected for his broad learning well beyond his specialism in church law. His expertise has made him a valued consultant to Vatican bodies, while his sermons and interviews abound with historical and literary references. Yet he’s also a remote figure, lacking the common touch that defined Francis’s papacy; ascetic-looking, he’s rarely pictured smiling.

Alex Faludy is a British-Hungarian freelance journalist based in Budapest, specialising in religious affairs

After being fast-tracked to stardom, the bad boys of Y2K pop butted heads and burned out. They explain how they faced their demons for an arena-sized reunion – and why Simon Cowell was ‘a proper winker’

In September 1998, amid a rocketing pop career that would end up with every one of their 11 singles reaching the UK Top 10, British boyband Five went missing. They were due to visit the US, where the lascivious When the Lights Go Out had got huge, but Five – Ritchie Neville (curtains), Scott Robinson (spiky hair), Abz Love (hats), Sean Conlon (baby-faced), and Jason “J” Brown (eyebrow ring) – had other ideas. “We decided we wanted a couple of days off,” says Scott, now without spikes and sporting a thick salt-and-pepper beard. “So we booked our own flights back to the UK.”

Rather than visit family like everyone else, J returned to the band’s shared house in Surrey. “There were fans camping outside, literally in tents on the little lawn,” he says, shaking his shaved head, now minus the eyebrow ring. “We needed to decompress – we were losing our minds. But all I had was people shouting through the letterbox at me for three days.” Whenever he wanted food he had to crawl from the living room to the kitchen on his stomach. “Then they started turning against me: ‘We know you’re in there! We bought your album! You owe us!’”

The US justice department says it did not fire a former pardon attorney, Liz Oyer, after she refused to recommend reinstating Mel Gibson’s gun rights.

But Oyer tells Jonathan Freedland a different story, one she believes points to a wider crackdown by the Trump administration on the rule of law in America

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‘Nobody has been harder … about Donald Trump than me,’ Maher says after fellow comedian compared his meal with US president to meeting Hitler

Bill Maher has responded to Larry David’s satirical essay in the New York Times that compared Maher’s glowing account of having dinner with Donald Trump to dining with Adolf Hitler.

Maher, a vocal critic of Trump in the past, had dinner with the US president and a group of his high-profile supporters, including their mutual friend Kid Rock, on 31 March. On an episode of his talkshow Real Time on 11 April, Maher described Trump as “gracious” and “much more self-aware than he lets on”, saying: “Everything I’ve ever not liked about him was – I swear to God – absent, at least on this night with this guy.”

Are you responding to reality or possibility, asks advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Knowing the difference might help your better judgment win out

• Read more Leading questions

How do I start dating casually when I know I’m going to catch feelings even if I don’t want to? My last relationship ended about a year ago and I’ve been taking time for myself and healing and all that good stuff but I now feel as though I’m ready to get back out there.

I haven’t dated casually before and I’d like to try it out, but even if I know it’s a bad idea, there’s going to be a significant part of myself that might fall in love with whoever I spend time with. How do I turn off that completely illogical, hopeless romantic part of my brain?

Defense chief had line set up to bypass official security protocols and use Signal app on personal computer, AP says

Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, two people familiar with the line told the Associated Press.

ABC News also reported that Hegseth had what is known as a “dirty line” – what IT professionals call a commercial internet line that is used to connect to websites blocked by the Pentagon’s unclassified and classified lines. Defense department computers connect to the internet through two different systems: SiprNet – or secure internet protocol router network, which is the Pentagon’s network for classified information – and NiprNet – the non-classified internet protocol router network, which handles unclassified information.

Hearing scheduled for Friday as residents receive anonymous leaflets that downplay pollution dangers

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is stirring controversy in Memphis, Tennessee. That’s where he’s building a massive supercomputer to power his company xAI. Community residents and environmental activists say that since the supercomputer was fired up last summer it has become one of the biggest air polluters in the county. But some local officials have championed the billionaire, saying he’s investing in Memphis.

The first public hearing with the health department is scheduled for Friday, where county officials will hear from all sides of the debate. In the run-up to the hearing, secretive fliers claiming xAI has low emissions were sent to residents of historically Black neighborhoods; at the same time, environmental groups have been amassing data about how much pollution the AI company is likely generating.

From struggles over miscarriages of justice to groundbreaking music, Lanre Bakare looks at the places and events that shaped Black Britain in the Thatcher years

When Guardian arts and culture correspondent Lanre Bakare was growing up, he learned the same Black British history as many of us did. It was a series of singular events: the docking of the Windrush in 1948, unrest in Notting Hill or Brixton, the murder of Stephen Lawrence. All important, but all firmly focused on the capital.

Now Lanre has written a book about the Thatcher years, looking at the stories that are less often told: those that took place outside London, in Liverpool – with the oldest Black community in the UK – or in his home town of Bradford.

US renews push to end Ukraine war, reportedly on terms favourable to Russia – key US politics stories from 24 April

During his election campaign Donald Trump had promised to end the war in 24 hours. But almost 100 days into his second term the US president has appealed directly to Russian president Vladimir Putin, telling him on social media: “Vladimir, STOP!”

Trump’s remarks referred to the deadliest attack on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv this year, which killed 12 people and injured at least 90 on Thursday. The attack comes as Trump has made a renewed push to end the Ukraine war, reportedly on terms favourable to Russia.

• Titans pick Miami QB Cam Ward as No 1 overall pick
• Giants go for defensive star Abdul Carter at No 3
• Travis Hunter wants to be the NFL’s Ohtani. Will anyone let him?
• Email beau.dure@theguardian.com with your thoughts

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has opted to ride a bicycle to the stage, accompanied by some legendary Green Bay Packers players and fans. That is a Green Bay tradition of which I was not aware. Booing the commissioner is also traditional, and that’s continuing this year.

ESPN shows us an empty couch somewhere in Texas that is apparently where they expect to see Shedeur Sanders. It’s a nice couch, at least.

Donald Trump, who has seen his approval rating sink, has not ruled out serving a third term – though most spectators consider that highly unlikely

Donald Trump’s online store is selling clothing emblazoned “Trump 2028”, the year of the next US presidential election, in which the Republican is constitutionally banned from running.

The 78-year-old, who has seen his approval rating sink in recent opinion polls, has not ruled out serving a third term – though most spectators consider that highly unlikely.

Small group booed and yelled at Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown’s welcome and Victorian governor’s acknowledgement of country

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A man is expected to be charged for offensive behaviour after a group including an alleged neo-Nazi booed and heckled a welcome to country at Melbourne’s main Anzac Day dawn ceremony.

A small group of people booed and yelled throughout the welcome delivered by Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown at the 5:30am service at the city’s Shrine of Remembrance.

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Chelsea to give youth a chance, Ipswich look to prolong the inevitable and Jamie Vardy begins his swansong

Tyrique George has caught the eye since breaking into Chelsea’s first team. A homegrown talent, the 19-year-old winger has done well in his Conference League outings and is in contention for his first start in the league when Enzo Maresca’s side host Everton in Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off. Fast, direct and sharp on the ball, George has quickly become a favourite with supporters and he lifted some of the pressure off Maresca after coming off the bench to score an excellent equaliser in Chelsea’s comeback win at Fulham last weekend. Thrown on as a striker, George made it 1-1 with a fine shot from the edge of the area. It was the latest in a series of positive contributions from the teenager. His enthusiasm could make a difference against Everton. Jacob Steinberg

Chelsea v Everton, Premier League, Saturday 12.30pm (all times BST)

Brighton v West Ham, Premier League, Saturday 3pm

Newcastle v Ipswich, Premier League, Saturday 3pm

Southampton v Fulham, Premier League, Saturday 3pm

Two Bayeux scholars at loggerheads over whether dangling shape depicts dagger or the embroidery’s 94th phallus

In a historical spat that could be subtitled “1066 with knobs on”, two medieval experts are engaged in a battle over how many male genitalia are embroidered into the Bayeux tapestry.

The Oxford professor George Garnett drew worldwide interest six years ago when he announced he had totted up 93 penises stitched into the embroidered account of the Norman conquest of England.

Crystal Palace defender on dreaming of FA Cup glory, Oliver Glasner and the importance of faith to the team

Maxence Lacroix is treating Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final at Wembley as just another game but the same can’t be said of his mother. “She’s more stressed than me right now,” the Crystal Palace defender says. “But I think it’s really good for a mother or father to see their son running his dream and playing this type of game because she knew it was difficult before and now she sees her son growing, having a family and doing what he wants. So I think she’s proud, a little bit stressed but it’s all right.”

Growing up in Ajat, a village in the Dordogne, Lacroix knew he was never going to follow in his mother Corrine’s footsteps by becoming a doctor. Having moved to Germany from the French side Sochaux as a 20-year-old after coming through the prestigious Clairefontaine academy, he reunited with Oliver Glasner – his former manager at Wolfsburg – in south London last summer. The elegant defender is the heartbeat of the Palace side that will face Aston Villa for a place in the final and has been tipped to win his first senior cap sooner rather than later after representing France at every youth level.

State’s nominal GDP reaches $4.1tn, edging out Japan’s $4.02tn, ranking it behind the US, China and Germany

California’s economy has surpassed Japan’s, making the Golden state the fourth largest economy in the world, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday.

The state’s nominal GDP reached $4.1tn, according to data from the International Monetary Fund and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, edging out Japan’s $4.02tn nominal GDP. California now ranks behind the US at $29.18tn, China at $18.74tn and Germany at $4.65tn.

• Woman filed lawsuit against former NFL star
• Hall of famer denies allegations against him

Former NFL star Shannon Sharpe says he is stepping away from his duties as an ESPN analyst after a lawsuit was filed against him in Nevada on Sunday.

The lawsuit was filed by a woman who says she met the 56-year-old Sharpe at a Los Angeles gym in 2023 when she was 20. A two-year consensual relationship ensued during which, she alleges, he raped her.

Tech giant exceeds Wall Street expectations despite 17% drop in stock price and tariffs levied on its trade partners

Google’s parent company Alphabet reported strong first quarter earnings on Thursday, despite being embroiled in antitrust lawsuits brought by the US government and seeing a 17% drop in its stock price since the beginning of the year. This is the company’s first earnings report since Donald Trump levied tariffs on trade partners around the world.

Despite the upheaval for Alphabet, it exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, reporting revenue of $90.23bn, up 12% since the same time last year, and $2.81 in earnings per share. Analysts had projected first quarter revenue of $89.2bn and earnings of $2.01 per share, according to consensus estimates. The global tariffs were not expected to create much of an impact for Alphabet, since they were mostly instituted after the end of the quarter.

• Van Gerwen comes back from 4-0 down to beat Littler 6-5
• Price defeats world No 1 Humphries 6-4 in final

Luke Littler threw away the chance to silence the baying Liverpool crowd as Gerwyn Price claimed victory on night 12 of the Premier League.

Littler, booed on to stage on the banks of the Mersey owing to his allegiance to Manchester United, capitulated against Michael van Gerwen in the quarter-finals of the weekly competition.

• Teenager is son of NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas
• 18-year-old reportedly in serious condition after crash

Alijah Arenas, a top basketball prospect and son of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas, has been placed in an induced coma after a car crash in Los Angeles, according to reports.

ESPN reported that the 18-year-old was involved in a crash in the early hours of Thursday morning when a Tesla Cybertruck left the road and crashed. The Los Angeles Fire Department did not officially identify the driver but the person was taken to a local hospital in serious condition.

Elton John and Donald Trump among those to congratulate Northern Irishman before Zurich Classic in New Orleans

“Please welcome your Players and Masters champion, Rory McIlroy.”

Shortly before 8am on the 10th tee at TPC Louisiana. The gallery is less than 100 in number. Still, there is extra pep in the starter’s voice. Those last four words carry such weight, they conjure such images. Masters champion, Rory McIlroy. An introduction he had waited a lifetime to receive. It somehow felt inadequate that it was over in a split second. “Very nice,” said McIlroy later. “I could get used to it.” He will be afforded that very privilege.

Employees received text from EEOC on personal phones linking to survey asking if they are Jewish or Israeli

Employees from Barnard College received text messages this week from the federally run Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on their personal phones linking to a voluntary survey asking recipients if they are Jewish or Israeli and whether they have been subjected to harassment or antisemitism.

The text, which was reviewed by the Guardian, states that the civil rights agency is “currently reviewing the employment practices at Barnard College” and invites current and former employees to complete the linked survey. It is not clear how many college employees received the survey, but it appears to have been sent to a sizable portion of the faculty and other staff.

Tehran’s negotiator says it has a right to produce fuel for its nuclear plants

Iran has insisted it must be allowed to have its own uranium enrichment capacity for its civil nuclear programme, rejecting a US demand that Tehran must rely exclusively on imported nuclear fuel.

If Washington sticks to the position taken by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, in the third round of talks in Oman on Saturday, the two sides will have hit their first major negotiating hurdle. They are trying to reach an agreement that blocks off Iran’s access to a nuclear bomb in return for relief from economic sanctions.

Female film-makers call for action to end culture of ‘silence and impunity’

Six in 10 women in Spain’s film and audiovisual industry have suffered sexual violence, according to a report that calls for urgent action to protect female workers.

The report, from the Association of Women Film-Makers and Audio-Visual Media, found that 60.3% of the women surveyed had been subjected to some form of sexual violence in spaces related to the industries.

• ‘Having a verified account would make a big difference’
• Athlete makes London Marathon debut on Sunday

Eilish McColgan has revealed that she has even been body-shamed by school teachers, as she called for social media companies to use formal identification to prevent the abuse she faces every day.

But McColgan, who will make her London Marathon debut on Sunday, has vowed to defy the bullies by staying on social media even though she was accused of “looking like a skeleton” and having anorexia when her mum, Liz, reposted a video of her training last month.

Department cites Trump’s ‘energy emergency’ declaration to expedite permissions from multiple years to 28 days

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The US interior department has announced plans to radically fast track permitting for projects involving fossil fuels and mining citing Donald Trump’s ‘energy emergency’ declaration that many experts say does not exist.

The move would reduce to a maximum of 28 days permitting procedures that previously could take multiple years, the department said late Wednesday.

President’s comments follow Chinese government’s denial of ‘baseless’ claim that Washington was close to deal

The US and China held talks on Thursday to help resolve the trade war between the world’s two largest economies, Donald Trump said.

“We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China,” the US president told reporters at the White House.

President sought to unilaterally add proof of citizenship requirement to voter registration form

A federal judge on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters.

The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections.

Disillusioned cop Hardy must rescue a corrupt politician’s son from triads and police but potential for drama goes down in a hail of bullets

The title is appropriate. Welsh director Gareth Evans is the action maestro who rocked our world with his superb skull-rattling thrillers The Raid and The Raid 2; this new one for Netflix certainly has its fair share of OTT gonzo mayhem. Shootouts in cramped interiors and in the open air sometimes seem to go on so long that the gunfire feels like an extended drumroll. Dozens of people get riddled with bullets from automatic weaponry; they all go into that shoulder-rolling, arm-waving, blood-spurting choreography. At one stage, a comatose and heavily bandaged person in a hospital bed gets the same machine gun treatment, and even this poor guy has to jitterbug, infinitesimally and horizontally, in his hospital pyjamas as he gets filled full of lead.

But frankly the action and the violence is too chaotic and almost meaningless and the CGI-Gotham-type cityscape where the drama takes place feels too artificial to me. (The film was actually shot in Cardiff.) Tom Hardy, doing his wheezy-nasal and faintly Cagney tough guy voice, plays Walker, a disillusioned but basically decent cop, who has found himself coerced into doing dirty work for corrupt politician Lawrence Beaumont, played by Forest Whitaker.

Allegation against Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of the Base, could shed new meaning on group’s efforts inside Ukraine

Alleged former members of an international neo-Nazi terrorist organization are claiming its Russia-based and American leader is a Kremlin spy, according to online records reviewed by the Guardian.

The allegation that Rinaldo Nazzaro, a former Pentagon contractor and founder of the Base, listed as a designated terrorist organization all over the world, is an alleged Russian intelligence asset could bring new meaning to his group’s latest effort: sabotage and assassination missions inside Ukraine to weaken the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Pope Francis’s progressive legacy rests in the hands of cardinal electors who will be juggling competing agendas

In keeping with the humble style of his papacy, Pope Francis did his best to dial down the pomp and ceremony that would mark his passing. In St Peter’s Basilica, where he now lies in state, Francis’s body rests in an unelaborate coffin and has not been placed on the traditional elevated bier. The tomb in which he will be buried is to be underground and unadorned, carrying only the plain inscription “Franciscus”, again on his instructions.

The final grace notes of a remarkable papacy will add to the pathos of Saturday’s funeral, which hundreds of thousands of mourners are expected to attend. The Argentinian pope’s plain, direct style endeared him to millions of non-Catholics as well as to the faithful. But the ecclesiastical politics of what happens next, in a divided church, will be anything but straightforward.

Haaretz report comes as supreme court gives Israeli PM more time to respond to affidavit from fired Shin Bet chief

New developments have come to light in the killing of 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip last month, with evidence reportedly contradicting the Israel Defense Forces’ claim that soldiers did not fire indiscriminately at the medical workers.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Wednesday that its analysis of the IDF’s own materials collected as part of an internal investigation into the incident contradicted the army’s claim that soldiers did not shoot indiscriminately at Palestinian ambulances and a fire engine in the early hours of 23 March.