Law firms Perkins Coie and WilmerHale say Trump’s executive orders against them are acts of retaliation that violate US constitutional protections
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte will visit the US and meet the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, according to a media notice shared by the military alliance’s press office.
Seven-time champion rockets to 10-4 victory at Crucible
Pang Junxu next up after getting better of Zhang Anda
Ronnie O’Sullivan made a mockery of his recent period of inactivity by reeling off three centuries in five frames as he completed a 10-4 win over Ali Carter in the first round of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield.
The seven-time champion, who has not played on the professional tour since he crashed out of the Championship League in January, looked close to his best as he swiftly set up a last-16 clash against Pang Junxu.
Jonathan Pryce was humorous, O’Toole capricious, Liv Ullman secretly female and Jude Law memorably Speedo-clad – onscreen pontiffs have come in all forms
Everything about the papacy is cinematic – especially picking a new one, as shown in the wildly popular movie Conclave, with Ralph Fiennes as an unwilling contender for the top job. There is the mystery, the ritual, the vestments; the spectacle of a lone, fragile human being poised over an abyss of history and good and evil; the elevation of one flawed man to a position of supreme authority, an exaltation whose parallel to the crucifixion is sensed but not acknowledged.
Discussing the onscreen representation of the pope in Conclave would risk the blasphemy of spoilerism but there have been many popes on screen, some cheekily fictional, many factual. Many a heavyweight British thesp has turned in a gamey cameo as some hooded-eyed Renaissance pontiff. Peter O’Toole was the lizardly and capricious Paul III in TV’s The Tudors (2007), presiding over a simperingly submissive 16th-century court of cardinals. Jeremy Irons was a small-screen Alexander VI in The Borgias (2011), a family member whose face radiated sensual refinement and hauteur.
Researchers say mutations more often found in younger patients’ tumours caused by toxin secreted by E coli strains
Childhood exposure to a toxin produced by bacteria in the bowel may be contributing to the rise of colorectal cancer in under-50s around the world, researchers say.
Countries, including some in Europe and Oceania, have witnessed an increase in young adults with bowel cancer in recent decades, with some of the steepest increases reported in England, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Chile.
Remarks by António Guterres follow virtual meeting with world leaders including China’s Xi Jinping
No government or fossil fuel interest can hold the world back from pursuing a clean energy future, the the UN secretary general has said, after a key meeting with the president of China.
António Guterres held a closed-door virtual meeting with Xi Jinping of China on Wednesday, along with Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; the EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and about a dozen other heads of state and government, to discuss the climate crisis.
World champion surges clear on race's brutal final climb
Kévin Vauquelin second, with Tom Pidcock coming third
Tadej Pogacar bounced back in style after his Paris-Roubaix and Amstel Gold Race heartbreaks as he claimed a second Flèche Wallonne title with an early attack in the finale on Wednesday.
The world champion attacked when 400 metres from the finish on the brutally steep Mur de Huy and never looked back, prevailing over France’s Kévin Vauquelin and third-placed Tom Pidcock of Britain.
A pioneering alternative to the opt-out system proposed by the government is supported by publishers and writers and is set to be available for use this summer
UK licensing bodies have announced a “pioneering” collective licence that will allow authors to be paid for the use of their works to train generative AI models.
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) – which is directed by the Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS) and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), representing publishers and authors – will develop the licence, set to be the first of its kind in the UK.
How do you control a class of kids after the whole nation’s watched you backstabbing on The Traitors, snogging strangers on Love Island or starving half to death on Hunted? Three teachers reveal all
When English teacher Joe Scott used to sign homework planners, it was because students were in trouble. But things changed in January, when the Southampton-based secondary schoolteacher appeared in the latest series of the BBC reality show The Traitors. Pupils started voluntarily pressing their planners into his hands – for autographs. “It felt funny,” says the 38-year-old. “It was such a juxtaposition.”
Teachers have always gone on reality TV – but they haven’t always come off well. In 2001, a contestant on the second series of Big Brother was fired from her job at an east London girls’ school after her towel slipped on air. Six years later in 2007, parents complained after an American elementary school teacher missed 22 days of work to appear on The Bachelor. Just last year, a Canadian educator was let go after taking unauthorised leave to compete on Survivor.
Changes to housing bill would require Charles to pay same tax as everyone else on property he buys in Scotland
Opposition politicians in Scotland have called for King Charles to lose his unique exemption from paying stamp duty on his property transactions.
The Scottish Green party has tabled changes to a housing bill which would require the king to pay tax on any new property he buys in Scotland in the same way as all other property buyers would.
From remotely locking your phone to changing passwords, do this quickly to protect yourself and restore peace of mind
Smartphones contain the entirety of our modern lives, from photos, messages and memories to credit cards, bank accounts and all life admin, so when one gets lost or stolen it can be far worse than the cost of the actual handset.
Here’s what to do if the worst happens. Quickly taking these steps will help protect yourself against data theft, scams and fraud, and with luck could even lead to you being reunited with your phone.
Try to locate your phone with Find My on Apple or Google, if you have it turned on. You can use a browser on a computer, tablet or even a friend’s phone.
Remotely lock your phone using Find My and mark it as lost, which helps protect your data, blocks the use of Apple or Google Pay and can leave a message on the screen for anyone who finds it. You can also remotely erase your phone from here too.
Contact your network provider and block your sim to stop thieves running up bills. Also ask it to check for any new “charge to bill” activity and to disable the feature.
Contact your credit card company for any cards you have stored on your phone and disable Apple or Google Pay.
Report the theft to the police and give them your phone’s IMEI number, which may be on the box, in your Apple or Google account or their Find My services.
Contact your insurance company if you have phone cover.
Change your passwords for important accounts. Start with your email account so that thieves can’t gain access to your other accounts through password resets.
Remove your phone from your accounts and services, which will log it out and stop thieves accessing saved details.
He’ll play mixed doubles as the pickleball US Open
Former tennis world No 1 Andre Agassi will make his professional debut in the fast-growing sport of pickelball next week when he teams up with top ranked Anna Leigh Waters for the mixed doubles at the US Open Pickleball Championships.
Invented in 1965 by a group of American friends, pickleball is a fast-paced paddle sport similar to tennis and badminton played on smaller courts using a perforated plastic ball, and interest has skyrocketed in recent years.
These noisy, filthy, feral creatures make my life a misery. Is there really no way to get rid of them?
Pigeons. Appalling things. I looked them up on the bird charity RSPB’s website and snorted when I came across the Where to See section. The answer is, just so you know, everywhere. Perhaps not so much outside towns and cities but in urban areas you’re never far from the sight and sound of the bloody things. If, unaccountably, you’re not familiar with this species, do feel free to get in touch and come round to my place and observe them at your leisure.
Truly they are the soundtrack of my life. For years they’ve been getting into a drainage channel on the roof. Morning, noon and night they scratch and coo and jump about. The racket is infernal. I lie in bed reflecting on the filth in that gulley just above my head. I know it’s filthy, because when there’s heavy rain their revolting detritus washes down and blocks the downpipe. I have to pull their unspeakable waste out of the pipe before something bursts and floods. There are no words to describe the tangle of excrement, nesting materials, eggs, feathers and bones. Oh Lord, the bones. I’d be less repulsed rummaging through the bin outside a chicken shop on a Sunday morning.
‘As a species, these crocs are easy to find and easy to catch. Brice Itoua is the most skilled hunter in his village. But they kill the crocs to eat – not to sell’
The Congo dwarf crocodile is a lovely species. They’re very shy and, unfortunately, very easy to find and catch. Mostly hunted for their bushmeat, these crocs only grow up to a few feet in length and during the dry season, they often spend the daytime hiding in burrows and dens at the water’s edge. Hunters use a long, woody liana vine with a hook on the end to drag them out, before binding their snout with a shorter vine and carrying them away.
Last summer, I shot a story about the Congo dwarf crocodile after being given access to the Lake Télé Community Reserve by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which manages this protected area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the Congolese government.
The Canadian singer-songwriter is releasing an album about his transition. Trump’s ‘dehumanizing’ new passport rules mean he won’t perform it for US fans
Bells Larsen knew that releasing a low-fi, folksy album about his transition as the Trump administration relentlessly attacked LGBTQ+ people would give it an inherently political edge. But the Canadian singer-songwriter did not expect to be caught in a bureaucratic nightmare while attempting to tour the US – and ultimately have to cancel that tour due to the gender marker in his passport.
On 12 April, Larsen announced on Instagram that he was pulling out of concerts to promote the album in eight cities this spring: “To put it super plainly, because I’m trans (and have an M on my passport), I can’t tour in the States,” he wrote.
It remains one of the most enduring images in the history of sport: Roger Bannister collapsing at the finish after becoming the first person to shatter the four-minute-mile barrier. Since that day in 1954, when Bannister achieved a feat many had thought was impossible, just over 2,000 others have followed in his footsteps – all of them men.
However, the pages of history could soon be freshly rewritten after the Olympic 1500m champion, Faith Kipyegon, and her sponsors Nike, announced plans “to make the impossible possible” again by becoming the first woman to run a sub-four-minute mile this summer.
Members of Board of Deputies who signed open letter about war in Gaza are now ‘subject to a complaints procedure’
Three dozen members of the largest body representing British Jews are facing disciplinary action after signing an open letter criticising Israel over the war in Gaza.
Amid signs of deepening divisions among British Jews over the 18-month-old war, the Board of Deputies announced this week that all 36 signatories to the letter were now “subject to a complaints procedure” after “multiple complaints”.
Support for climate action is growing in the US, but partisan divides and fossil fuel interests hold sway
Over the last 12 months, the United States has endured a rash of disasters worsened by the climate crisis: devastating wildfires in southern California, a catastrophic hurricane in western North Carolina, and deadly heatwaves across the country.
Americans increasingly believe global heating is a serious threat that will affect them personally – and 74% want to see more climate action. Yet while that sounds high, it is still lower than most other countries around the world. What explains this disparity?
Holy balls of wool! From pointless paintings to emotionless snapshots, the once-controversial award tiptoes too earnestly across the minefield of today’s culture wars
Remember when controversy was fun? If not, that’s because you’re too young. But back in the 1990s, my child, Britain got itself in hilarious knots about conceptual art, the readymade and whether a pickled shark or elephant dung can be art, with the Turner prize as battleground. It was a culture war but with laughs, because no one’s identity was at stake and it wasn’t like Brian Sewell was going to become prime minister and have Rachel Whiteread jailed.
It is by embracing the earnestness of today’s high-stakes culture wars that the Turner prize has lost its edge, the art getting more careful as the ideologies loom larger. This year’s shortlist is the soppiest yet. Two of the artists nominated are painters. Painters, I ask you! This makes some sense of the shortlist announcement taking place on JMW Turner’s 250th birthday. But as painters go, do Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa (who also creates bland installations) compare with the boldness of Mr Turner? Neither is pushing back the boundaries of what a painting might be, or redefining this art for the 21st century in scale, freedom, audacity.
PC, PlayStation 5 (version played); Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive Boasting a unique world, challenging combat and great writing, this RPG has a lot going for it, if only it didn’t revel in its own mysteriousness so much
When we meet Clair Obscur’s protagonist Gustave, he’s getting ready to say goodbye to his ex-girlfriend, Sophie. Once a year the Paintress, a giant god-like woman visible from across the sea, wakes, paints a number on a large monolith, and in the peaceful town of Lumière, everyone whose age corresponds with the number dies. This process, called the Gommage, has shortened people’s lives for 67 years, and now it’s Sophie’s turn. Immediately after this heart-wrenching goodbye, Gustave and his adopted sister Maelle get ready to set sail as part of Expedition 33, on a journey to defeat the Paintress and end her gruesome cycle.
While stunningly beautiful, the continent you arrive at is no friendly place, and the path to the Paintress is filled with surreal monsters called Nevrons, which you fight in turn-based battles. Characters have a melee attack and a long-range attack, but most importantly, they have a large variety of unique skills including elemental magic attacks and strong attacks with multiple hits that have the chance to stun. Each member of your team has a special way of building up damage even further; Maelle for example uses a defensive, offensive or aggressive combat stance, inspired by fencing, while the magic that Lune wields builds up so-called stains that you can then spend to make other spells more powerful. Add to this long list of optional passive skills called Pictos, and soon you have a wide array of ways to enhance your characters. The interplay between building up action points to use skills, building up damage and defending is really interesting, and I enjoyed trying out different tactics, even as it meant that a lot of my time was spent in menus.
Rachel Reeves could be forced to raise taxes or announce deeper cuts to public spending after figures revealed UK borrowing overshot official forecasts by almost £15bn in the last financial year.
With the British economy coming under mounting strain amid Donald Trump’s escalating trade war, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said borrowing in the financial year ending in March was £151.9bn, more than £20bn higher than in the previous financial year.
Kevin Farrell rose through the ecclesiastical ranks to be made camerlengo by Pope Francis, whose death has thrust him into the global spotlight
The cardinal who announced the death of Pope Francis bore the ancient Vatican title of camerlengo and spoke in Italian, but there was no mistaking the Dublin accent.
Long before he rose through the ecclesiastical ranks and was entrusted with temporarily running the Holy See, Kevin Farrell was an altar boy from an Irish republican family in the working-class suburb of Drimnagh.
Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, will not be attending the funeral of Pope Francis, despite his foreign ministry saying earlier it was their “most important aim” in negotiations with the Vatican that he be there in person.
The ministry announced on Wednesday that Taiwan would be sending its former vice president, Chen Chien-jen, as special envoy. Chen has deep ties with the Vatican and met Pope Francis six times, but the decision means Taiwan’s delegation will be without a serving government official, despite the Vatican being one of Taiwan’s few diplomatic allies.
In 1993, the Swedish artist had reached a dead end – so he burned all his work. Seeing the ashes inspired him to embark on an epic journey through the Indian wilderness, a Swedish cave – and now Britain
Drive north of Stockholm for an hour or so and, buried within woodland near the village of Vendel, you will come across the 200-year-old house where Gustaf Broms lives. There are no shops or even neighbours here – just trees, wild animals and a man making beguiling performance art videos. You shouldn’t, however, assume that Broms feels isolated.
“I don’t see it like that,” he says through a beaming smile. In the early 1990s, the Swedish artist moved to Kumaon in northern India, right near the border with western Nepal and Tibet. Compared with that, this place couldn’t be more accessible. “It’s easy enough to get on a bike if I need something,” he shrugs.
First penalties under landmark Digital Markets Act are fines of €500m to Apple and €200m to Facebook owner
The European Commission has fined Apple €500m (£429m) and Meta €200m for breaking rules on fair competition and user choice, in the first penalties issued under one of the EU’s landmark internet laws.
The fines under the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is intended to ensure fair business practices by tech companies, are likely to provide another flashpoint with Donald Trump’s administration, which has fiercely attacked Europe’s internet regulation.
Experts say Pentagon chief has endangered secrets of US defense department and given assistance to foreign spies
As more develops about the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his repeated disclosures of sensitive military intelligence in unsecured Signal group chats, there are growing concerns his behavior has weakened the Pentagon in the eyes of its foreign adversaries and made him and his entourage a top espionage target.
Allies, already concerned by Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs, have also begun to see the US as an intelligence-sharing liability. There are fears that the mounting firings and leak inquiries in Hegseth’s orbit, along with his inability to manage these internal crises, exposes the entire global US war footing – especially, if a geopolitical and external crisis comes across his desk.
The condition is more excruciating than childbirth or gunshot wounds, but little understood. An online community of ‘clusterheads’ are self-experimenting with psilocybin – with promising results
Peter was working late, watching two roulette tables in play at a London casino, when he felt something stir behind his right eye. It was just a shadow of sensation, a horribly familiar tickle. But on that summer night in 2018, as chips hit the tables and gamblers’ conversation swelled, panic set in. He knew he only had a few minutes.
Peter found his boss, muttered that he had to leave, now, and ran outside. By then, the tickle had escalated; it felt like a red-hot poker was being shoved through his right pupil. Tears flowed from that eye, which was nearly swollen shut, and mucus from his right nostril. Half-blinded, gripping at his face, he stumbled along the street, eventually escaping into a company car that whisked him home, where he blacked out.
During the latest in Howard Burton’s Masterpiece series, the art historian turns his low-tech but scholarly attention to Raphael’s interior decoration in the Vatican palace
Here is the latest in the series of high-minded, low-tech studies of Renaissance art history from Howard Burton, a theoretical physicist turned art historian, who has launched a series of films called, with admirable Ronseal-ness, Renaissance Masterpieces. Having already looked over Botticelli’s Primavera, Burton now turns to Raphael’s wall fresco in the Vatican palace, arguably the high point of the artist’s prodigious output and a work to rival Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel decorations.
Burton has already tackled The School of Athens as part of his mammoth survey of Raphael’s entire oeuvre, Raphael: A Portrait, but here he gets to drill down in considerable detail for the film’s 81-minute running time. Admittedly, the visuals are as rudimentary as Burton’s previous offerings – it looks like a glorified PowerPoint, with Burton’s sonorous commentary overlaid in unpunctuated voiceover – but as before, the tone works: Burton is scholarly without being dull, and clear without being obvious.
Whether federal courts can force Trump to comply with their orders is an essential question for US democracy
The US supreme court and other federal courts have begun flexing their muscles to push back on Donald Trump’s efforts to defy judicial orders, escalating a hugely consequential battle over the rule of law.
The supreme court issued a significant order early Saturday morning blocking the federal government from removing people from the United States who had been detained in northern Texas. Separately, US district Judge James Boasberg has found probable cause to hold the government in contempt for defying his orders to halt deportations.
Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich are returning to the Championship. Which of their players deserve to stay up?
Leicester were relegated at the weekend and will join Southampton in the Championship next season. Ipswich are 15 points from safety with five games to play, so it’s only a matter of time before they too are consigned to the second tier. The three sides have been extremely disappointing this season, picking up just 10 wins between them, but they have some talented players who will be targets for Premier League sides in the summer transfer window.
The British-Nigerian artist explores colonialism and connection in his first major solo exhibition in Africa. Plus, a grime MC goes oyster farming
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. Earlier this month I was in Antananarivo, Madagascar, where I checked out the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare’s first major solo exhibition in Africa. For this week’s newsletter I caught up with him about the landmark show, and learned a lot about the growing Malagasy art scene.
Madagascar is not a country that figures prominently in media – western or otherwise (beyond the children’s film) – and as such it was difficult to know what to expect. I hadn’t imagined an opportunity to visit, and so Fondation H’s invitation to the capital to explore the art scene felt once in a lifetime. It was certainly a long way to travel for an exhibition: from London, with a stopover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the journey topped 15 hours, though as soon as I landed in Madagascar I was instantly taken by its lush, grassy plains and mountainous topography.
Despite Pope Francis’s desire for a simple and comparatively low-key send-off, those tasked with organising and delivering the funeral of the 266th bishop of Rome still face a vast array of logistical, technological and security challenges.
With as many as 170 foreign delegations – including those of Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prince William – expected to descend on the Vatican for Saturday’s funeral, along with crowds of up to 200,000 people, those overseeing the event are in for a hyper-vigilant few days.
Ralph Fiennes was Oscar-nominated for his role in the thriller which follows cardinals wrangling to replace a fictional pontiff after his death
The death of Pope Francis on 21 April led to an abrupt uptick in viewership of Conclave, Edward Berger’s thriller which depicts the events following the death of a fictional pope, and the cardinals wrangling to replace him.
The film, which won best picture at the Baftas earlier this year and was nominated for eight Oscars, is available on assorted streaming platforms worldwide. According to Luminate, which tracks streaming viewership, Conclave was viewed for about 1.8m minutes on 20 April, and 6.9m minutes the next day – an increase of 283%.
A movement that believes abortion should be treated as homicide has grown alongside a Republican penchant for punishment
So far this year, lawmakers in at least 12states have introduced legislation that would treat fetuses as people and leave women who have abortions vulnerable to being charged with homicide – a charge that, in several of these states, carries the death penalty.
Once seen as politically toxic, this kind of legislation has become more popular in the years since Roe v Wade fell, erasing the national right to abortion. This likely comes asno surprise to Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law and one of the foremost commentators on the US abortion wars. The anti-abortion movement, she writes in her new book Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction, has really “always been a fetal-personhood movement” – one that is so emboldened, it is increasingly unconcerned with public opinion or even democratic norms.
Facebook and Instagram owner also criticised for leaving up posts inciting violence during UK riots
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced sweeping content moderation changes “hastily” and with no indication it had considered the human rights impact, the social media company’s oversight board has said.
The assessment of the changes came as the board also criticised the Facebook and Instagram owner for leaving up three posts containing anti-Muslim and anti-migrant content during riots in the UK last summer.
London’s underground dance scene is increasingly funded by inherited wealth. From Mike Ashley’s son to a Tetra Pak heir, moneyed promoters explain their motivations
Nestled between Millwall FC stadium and an intersection of south London railway lines, the 350-capacity Venue MOT – once an actual MOT garage – is a cornerstone of the city’s underground music scene. But every Tuesday, owner Jan Mohammed gathers his staff at the bar and tells them how much money it has lost since the weekend.
Mohammed, a sculptor, started renting a nearby space to use as a studio more than a decade ago. With no residential neighbours and relatively low costs, he opened Venue MOT in 2018 based on simple intuition: “I thought music could thrive here,” he says. Despite the losses and Mohammed calling his operation a “comedy of errors”, it does. Time Out recently labelled Venue MOT the best nightclub in London and Jamie xx called it “one of the last places in London that feels genuinely free and DIY” after his 10-night residency last year with guests including Charli xcx and Daphni. Mohammed describes the club’s atmosphere as “DDS” – deep, dark and sweaty. Indomitable characters like him are the lifeblood of a financially unstable scene that must constantly adapt to licensing rules and urban redevelopment.
US president also says he has ‘no intention’ of firing chair of American central bank Jay Powell
Stock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the American central bank, Jay Powell.
The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he plannned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”
Connexion
