In a Danish palliative care unit, the alternative to assisted dying is not striving to cure, offering relief and comfort to patients and their families

• This article is nominated for the 2025 edition of the European Press Prize in the Distinguished Reporting category. Originally published in Danish by Politiken

René Damgaard, 67, lies in a hospital bed in the palliative care unit at Hvidovre hospital outside Copenhagen. It’s the first evening of May, and the window is open, letting mild air and the sound of a blackbird singing into the room.

“This is the kind of weather you love the most. When you usually stand and fish at the sandbank,” says his niece, 53-year-old Mette Damgaard. She is leaning over the bed, her face very close to his. She has been sitting like this for a long time.

Decades-long use of chalice at Worcester College highlights violent colonial history of looted human remains, says Prof Dan Hicks

Oxford academics drank from a chalice made from a human skull for decades, a book that explores the violent colonial history of looted human remains has revealed.

The skull-cup, fashioned from a sawn-off and polished braincase adorned with a silver rim and stand, was used regularly at formal dinners at Worcester College, Oxford, until 2015, according to Prof Dan Hicks, the curator of world archaeology at the university’s Pitt Rivers Museum.

One of pontiff’s last acts was to simplify papal rites, stripping away elaborate rituals and scaling back procession

• Latest updates: tributes paid after Pope Francis dies aged 88

When the late Pope Francis stepped on to the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica to give his first speech as leader of the Catholic church in March 2013, he cast away formality by dressing in simple white robes instead of the regal ermine-trimmed cape usually worn by newly elected pontiffs.

The next day, Francis – a name chosen in honour of Francis of Assisi, the Italian saint who renounced a life of luxury to help the poor – returned to the Rome hotel in which he had stayed before the conclave to pick up his luggage and pay his bill. He substituted a plush apostolic apartment for a simple room within the Vatican walls and, unlike his predecessors, did not spend his summers in Castel Gandolfo, an opulent 12th-century fortress close to Rome.

When Pedro Niada awoke to find his house tilting and filling with water, he was confused. He soon realised he was in a race against time to save everyone

Jolted awake at 4.30am, Pedro “Peter” Niada was certain a meteorite had fallen near his seaside home, lifting it from its foundations and sending it flying through the air. He took two steps down the stairs, felt water splash his feet and realised the house was sinking.

Nothing made sense. Why was the house tilting? Why could he hear what sounded like a waterfall outside? The sound of breaking timber led him to pull back the curtain at The Flying Fish (El Pez Volador), the 12-bed tourist lodge he had built by hand.

People with albinism are often attacked and even killed for body parts. As elections approach, activist Tonney Mkwapatira fears the situation may get worse

Tonney Mkwapatira was making a rare visit back to his home village from the Malawian city of Blantyre when he saw his childhood friend for the last time. Just a week after Mkwapatira returned to Blantyre he heard that his friend, a security guard for a church, had been murdered.

“His name was Chikumbutso Masina and we used to chat almost every day. We looked alike and it was painful when people missed him because they used to ask me questions like, “Oh we heard that you had died?” It really touched me and I will never forget,” he says.

The American biotech company Colossal Biosciences recently made headlines around the world with claims it had resurrected the dire wolf, an animal that went extinct at the end of the last ice age. But does what the company has done amount to ‘de-extinction’ or should we instead think of these pups as genetically modified versions of the grey wolves that exist today? Science correspondent Nicola Davis tells Madeleine Finlay about the process that created these wolves, how other companies are joining the effort to use genetic modification in conservation, and why some experts have serious ethical questions about bringing back species whose habitats no longer exist

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Report analysed data from 8,500 doctors over 2015-21 and also found pressures on GPs were higher in deprived areas

• Patient satisfaction with GP services in England has collapsed, research finds

GPs working in the most deprived areas in England are paid an average salary £5,525 less a year than their counterparts working in wealthier areas, according to a study.

The report, by researchers at the University of Manchester and published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, analysed data from more than 8,500 GPs between 2015 and 2021 in the GP work life survey.

From raids on marijuana farms to illegal bitcoin miners, suppliers are finding new ways to tackle the rise in gas and electricity theft

• More British households struggling with bills will resort to energy theft, campaigners say

By the time a team of police officers and engineers stormed a disused office block in Wigan, Greater Manchester, on a November morning last year, the building had been abandoned.

Left behind were rooms filled with thousands of cannabis plants: a nursery on the first floor, the growing crop on the second, and leaves drying out on the third. The criminal gang behind the marijuana farm is thought to have fled after the grid operator cut off the stolen electricity used to power scores of LED lamps.

Having missed out in my youth, I thought that was that – until I took a revelatory trip with my sons. We’re going again this year

Youth might not be wasted on the young, but for the longest time I thought Interrailing was. When I was a student, as the 1980s became the 1990s, many of my friends took the opportunity to discover Europe by train and they all returned with amazing stories of discovery. But for long-forgotten reasons, it was something I was always going to do but never actually got round to. And then suddenly I was in my late 20s and reluctantly resigned myself to never doing it, having been reliably informed by so many people that it was an opportunity only open to those under the age of 26.

Fast forward a few decades to spring 2023 and I’m trying to decide where to take my teenage children for our first holiday in five years – a gap caused largely, but not wholly, by the pandemic. My most memorable childhood holiday had come in 1981 when, over the course of a few days, my dad drove my family and our caravan from Nottingham to Pisa. I still remember the incredible feeling of my horizons broadening overnight. I’d love to give my children a similar experience, except I don’t drive.

Phil Mongredien is a production editor on Guardian Opinion and Long Reads

Just hours after wishing the world a happy Easter, the 267th head of the Roman Catholic church passed away. What was his legacy and who will take his place? Catherine Pepinster reports

Pope Francis was working until the end. On Easter Sunday, the 88-year-old head of the Catholic church offered an Easter greeting to the crowds in St Peter’s Square who had gathered for mass. By the next morning, after months battling pneumonia and bronchitis, he had passed away.

From the beginning, the first Latin American pope wanted his papacy to be different. Catherine Pepinster, the former editor of the Tablet, says one of his first notable actions was to go to a prison, rather than a church, to wash people’s feet in the traditional Maundy Thursday rite. It was typical of a pontiff who refused many of the luxuries of his predecessors – from giving up an apartment in the papal palace to only wearing simple leather shoes.

Pontiff had requested simple burial ‘without particular decoration’ at Rome church rather than beneath St Peter’s

• Death of Pope Francis – latest updates
• Pope Francis obituary

Pope Francis died of a stroke and subsequent heart failure, the Vatican has said in a statement, revealing that the pontiff had requested to be buried in a simple, unadorned tomb.

The 88-year-old pope, revered by millions of Catholics around the world, died at 7.35am in his apartment at Casa Santa Marta on Monday. His cause of death was confirmed through an ECG test, the Vatican said.

From Timor-Leste to PNG and the Philippines, millions of Catholics are marking the death of Pope Francis

The death of Pope Francis has left millions of people in south-east Asia and the Pacific in deep mourning, as they remember a Catholic leader known for his humility, interfaith commitment and dedication to their region.

In tiny Timor-Leste, where more than 95% of people are Catholic, Francis was the first pope to visit since its independence.

Palestinian activist, held in Louisiana detention facility, only allowed to call in as wife delivered their first child

Noor Abdalla, the wife of detained Columbia university graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, has announced the birth of their son.

In a statement released on Monday evening, Abdalla wrote: “I welcomed our son into the world earlier today without Mahmoud by my side. Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son. This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer.”

Instead of alarmism or shaming, we need to create spaces where young men feel heard, challenged and supported

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For years, we’ve looked at democracies like the US, Germany and South Korea, disturbed by what a nation divided along gender and generation lines could look like. Australia, by comparison, seemed less polarised, but new research hints that something’s starting to shift – slowly, unevenly and with plenty of caveats – among young Australians too.

But let’s not jump the gun – because the story is more complicated than it first appears, and framing “young men” as a purely reactionary force isn’t going to get us anywhere helpful.

Young people rode a wave of hope and power when hundreds of thousands protested with them in 2019. Then, momentum was lost

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On a stinking hot November day, seven years ago, Grace Vegesana and a handful of other young climate activists set up a small stage in a large square in Sydney’s CBD – and waited. Inspired by the first school striker for climate, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the high school students decided to organise their own rally.

Vegesana expected a hundred people to show up. Five thousand came. “It was like, oh my God, we’ve unleashed some kind of beast, people want more,” she recalls. In the months afterwards crowds doubled and then tripled.

Russian president has previously spurned direct negotiations unless Ukraine holds elections; Ukrainian delegation headed to London. What we know on day 1,154

I get that the noise in your head is so unbearable it must be drowned out by Mambo No 5. I just don’t think it should be inflicted on the rest of us

• Read more in the Petty gripes series

I love music. I think there’s nothing better than immersing myself in a really powerful song. But I don’t expect the rest of the general public wants to listen to whatever my earworm of the day is. That is why God invented headphones.

For some reason, though, I assume a subset of the population weren’t informed of this miracle invention. These are the people who insist on playing music aloud through their phones – or worse, through a handheld speaker – in public places.

• Woman files complaint against former player and analyst
• Sharpe’s lawyer issued denial of allegations

NFL hall of famer Shannon Sharpe has been accused of sexual assault and battery by a former partner in a lawsuit filed on Sunday in Nevada.

The woman says she met the 56-year-old Sharpe, who is now an ESPN analyst, at a Los Angeles gym in 2023 when she was 22. A two-year consensual relationship ensued, during which she alleges he raped her.

• Veteran breaks down after beating Joe O’Connor 10-7
• Mark Allen looks to past after seeing off Fan Zhengyi

The tearful four-time world champion John Higgins overcame overwhelming emotions to beat Joe O’Connor 10-7 at the Crucible.

The 49-year-old was out of sorts in losing the morning session 5-4 but returned later in the day to turn things around and admitted afterwards he was battling strong feelings.

Passport, driver’s license and keys also reportedly taken but not clear if theft was random or if Trump ally was targeted

A purse belonging to Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, that contained $3,000 in cash, her passport, driver’s license and her apartment keys was stolen while she ate dinner at a restaurant in downtown Washington on Sunday night.

The secretary revealed the theft to reporters at the White House Easter egg roll on Monday. Noem said the incident remained unresolved.

While his legacy in confronting the sex abuse scandal is still incomplete, Francis demonstrated that change is possible and mercy can be real

• Pope Francis, groundbreaking Jesuit pontiff, dies
• Potential candidates to succeed Pope Francis

Early in his papacy Pope Francis said the name for God is mercy. He understood the church had become too doctrinaire, divisive and judgmental for too many people. The drift of Catholics from conventional practice in the west said as much. He knew the church had alienated the LGBTQ community, discriminated against women and resisted full participation for divorced and remarried Catholics. He acknowledged that previous popes had not confronted the clerical sex abuse scandal. He wanted to do better and the Catholic world was with him, the institution was not.

The Catholic church by its nature is a conservative institution. It uses inertia as a management tool. Change is a slow and drawn-out affair. Francis regularly railed against clericalism because of its sense of entitlement and misuse of power. He saw it as one of the reasons why the church became obsessed with protecting its image instead of believing and caring for the victims of clerical sex abuse. He also realised the clerical instinct to protect their own and conceal their crimes was underpinned by their exclusive hold on the workings of the church.

US president dismisses criticism of defense secretary sharing information on strikes in Yemen to his family

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.

“He’s doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he’s doing,” Trump said dismissively, referring to the rebel group in Yemen targeted by those missile strikes, on the sidelines of the White House Easter egg roll event on Monday.

María Isabel Salvador tells security council the country could face ‘total chaos’ without necessary international aid

Haiti, where rampant gang violence has surged in recent weeks, is approaching a “point of no return” leading to “total chaos”, the UN special representative to the troubled Caribbean nation has warned.

“As gang violence continues to spread to new areas of the country, Haitians experience growing levels of vulnerability and increasing skepticism about the ability of the state to respond to their needs,” María Isabel Salvador told the UN securitycouncil.

University fights back against threats to cut about $9bn in funding for school after it refused to comply with demands

Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging it is trying to “gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard”.

The university is fighting back against the administration’s threat to review about $9bn in federal funding after Harvard officials refused to comply with a list of demands that included appointing an outside overseer to ensure that the viewpoints being taught at the university were “diverse”. Harvard is specifically looking to halt a freeze on $2.2bn in grants.

• Leicester striker furious with club’s relegation
• ‘Collectively, as players and as a club, we failed’

Jamie Vardy has apologised to Leicester’s fans for the club’s relegation and labelled his own season as a “total embarrassment”.

Leicester were relegated on Sunday with five games of the Premier League campaign to play after defeat at home to Liverpool. That loss saw Leicester slump to a record ninth successive top-flight home defeat without scoring a goal.

• WTC format ‘as if designed on the back of a fag packet’
• New 2025 edition includes tributes to Graham Thorpe

Wisden hits the shelves this week and, as well as unveiling its latest batch of award winners, it has trained its sights on the International Cricket Council. The World Test Championship, the book argues, is a “shambles masquerading as a showpiece”.

The publication of the sport’s annual bible is timely, with the future of the WTC discussed recently at ICC meetings in ­Zimbabwe. In typically opaque fashion, the sport’s governing body is yet to announce the outcome of the debate.

Ekaterina Barabash, 63, facing up to 10 years in jail due to outspoken criticism of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine

A Russian journalist who faced up to 10 years in prison for criticising the army has escaped house arrest and is now wanted by police, Russian state media has reported.

Ekaterina Barabash, 63, had been arrested in February on suspicion of spreading false information about the Russian armed forces in several posts she made on social media.

There is no need to attempt to rewrite history by arguing that Tottenham failed to see what they had in Nuno Espírito Santo. All that matters now is that this meticulous, softly ­spoken manager is the perfect fit for ­Nottingham Forest.

They have provided Nuno with the perfect platform for his counterpunching tactics and, in what would surely be the story of the ­Premier League season, are closing in on Champions League football after beating Ange Postecoglou’s half-hearted Spurs.

• Scott Parker says achievement ‘means everything’
• Daniel Farke lauds his side for delivering ‘in great style’

The Burnley head coach, Scott Parker, described his third Premier League promotion as his best yet after taking Burnley up, while Daniel Farke said Leeds are “back where we belong” after securing a top-flight return.

Parker has taken Fulham and Bournemouth to the Premier League in previous jobs and will have a third chance to challenge the elite next season after two goals from Josh Brownhill edged Burnley past third-placed Sheffield United to ensure their opponents can no longer catch them or Leeds.

• Raducanu working with coach on informal basis
• Pair teamed up during Miami Open in March

Emma Raducanu has revealed she intends to continue her coaching partnership with Mark Petchey on an ad hoc basis following her quarter-final run at the Miami Open last month.

“We’re keeping things informal for now and it’s been working,” she said in a joint interview with the Guardian and the BBC before the Madrid Open. “He’s someone I’ve known for a long time and I do feel like I can trust him.

Nayib Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador for 252 prisoners in Venezuela

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has accused El Salvador’s president of being a “tyrannical” human trafficker after Nayib Bukele offered to exchange the 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to his country’s prisons by Donald Trump for the same number of political prisoners in Venezuela.

Bukele made the offer on Sunday night in a message addressed directly to his authoritarian counterpart Nicolás Maduro. “I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number … of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold,” El Salvador’s leader posted.

Flight headed for Atlanta, Georgia, had left gate when flames began to rise, forcing people to clear jet via slides

A Delta aircraft caught on fire on the tarmac at the Orlando international airport on Monday morning, forcing frightened passengers to evacuate the jet via slides.

The Delta flight, which was headed for Atlanta, Georgia, had left its gate at about 11.15am ET when one of the aircraft’s engines caught fire, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Potential danger to humans and wildlife from harmful pesticide discovered in fish at 10 times safety limit

Residues of the insecticide DDT have been found to persist at “alarming rates” in trout even after 70 years, potentially posing a significant danger to humans and wildlife that eat the fish, research has found.

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, known as DDT, was used on forested land in New Brunswick, Canada, from 1952 to 1968. The researchers found traces of it remained in brook trout in some lakes, often at levels 10 times higher than the recommended safety threshold for wildlife.

Worshippers gathered in Rome for the Easter weekend reflect on legacy of pontiff who pushed the limits

Bill Nicoletti and his family, from Philadelphia, were among the thousands gathered in St Peter’s Square for Easter Sunday mass when Pope Francis arrived in his open-air popemobile.

The vehicle cruised through the square, stopping occasionally for the pontiff to bless babies that were brought towards him, as the delighted crowd shouted “Viva il papa!” (Long live the pope!)

Martin Scorsese, Russell Crowe, Whoopi Goldberg and Eva Longoria are among stars remembering late pope who died aged 88

• Pope Francis tributes – latest updates

Numerous celebrities, many among the nearly 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide, expressed condolences for the late Pope Francis, who died early on Monday – the morning after Easter Sunday – at the age of 88.

Martin Scorsese, who has grappled with Catholic faith in several of his films, called Pope Francis, “in every way, a remarkable human being” in a statement to Variety. “He acknowledged his own failings. He radiated wisdom. He radiated goodness. He had an ironclad commitment to the good. He knew in his soul that ignorance was a terrible plague on humanity. So he never stopped learning. And he never stopped enlightening. And, he embraced, preached and practiced forgiveness. Universal and constant forgiveness.”

In an age of distraction, people in their teens and 20s are setting aside negative influences and concentrating on dogged pursuit of their goals

Name: Locking in.

Age: It’s something gen Z – those aged 13 to 28 – are doing.

It is a place where a Disney-ish castle, complete with turrets, sits near a scaly ‘pangolin’ house. But is Graven Hill now straying from the DIY vision that made its anarchic jumble of styles so mesmerising?

What would the world look like if Kevin McCloud had his way? What if each of us had the chance to build our very own Grand Design, letting our streets be lined with personal visions, liberated from the identikit brick boxes offered by the usual big housebuilders?

A glimpse of this world exists, sort of, on the outskirts of Bicester in Oxfordshire, where the country’s biggest self-build experiment has been under way for 10 years. Graven Hill is a place where rooftops tilt, zigzag and bulge, where windows come in circles, squares and triangles, or poke out from unexpected places. There are balconies fashioned from glass, steel and rustic timber clinging to facades of stone, brick, wood and render, along with every type of fibre-cement board available. Wandering the freshly tarmacked streets feels like walking through a building supplies catalogue. Panels of fake wood are proudly fixed next to rusted cor-ten steel and bits of slate, as if residents were fed fizzy drinks and let loose in a cladding warehouse.

For her fourth novel, the former lawyer draws on her experience working as a legal intern in the UN tribunal for former Yugoslavia

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Out of the Woods, the fourth novel of Gretchen Shirm, is a sobering reflection on the necessity of bearing witness. It is also inseparable from real events: the massacre in 1995 of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by the Serbian Army of Republika Srpska in Srebrenica, and the later conviction of a senior military commander, Radislav Krstić, for genocide. The novel, though imperfect, elevates the lived experience of survivors with care and verisimilitude, while asking probing questions about how to comprehend their trauma.

Jess, an introverted Australian woman in her 50s, has moved to the Netherlands to work as a legal secretary at The Hague. It’s the year 2000, and a United Nations tribunal is prosecuting war crimes committed in former Yugoslavia, with Jess’s days filled with transcribing the testimony of survivors of the Bosnian war. As the trial unfolds, two divergent feelings increasingly disorient her: the yawning gulf between the atrocities and her written account; and her sympathy for one of the defendants, a military commander named K.

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… she was writing these words down but none of them seemed to make sense and she wondered whether something was wrong, whether the translation was off. She waited for someone to tell the witness to stop, to say that an error had been made.

Out of the Woods by Gretchen Shirm is out through Transit Lounge ($34.99)

The 2005 shooting of the Brazilian created national headlines, but the shocking truth of his death remains unknown by many. A new series aims to do justice to his story – and those who fought to clear his name

On 22 July 2005, 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes was shot and killed by firearms officers on the London underground shortly after boarding a train. The information relayed by the Metropolitan police at the time was that he had leapt over the ticket barriers at Stockwell station and was wearing a bulky coat under which officers thought he was hiding a bomb.

The incident occurred two weeks after the 7/7 bombings on London’s transport network, where 52 people were killed, and the day after a copycat attack in which four men tried – and mercifully failed – to detonate devices on three underground trains and a bus; the bombers in the latter incidents fled the scene, triggering a police manhunt. It later emerged that De Menezes was innocent and the intelligence on him was flawed. But such was the impact of that early narrative – the one where his actions and appearance made him seem guilty at a time when police were on high alert – that, 20 years on, it is still what most people remember.

The president said the central bank should lower interest rates, but Powell demurred – and now Trump wants him out

The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, is facing attacks from Donald Trump, who is now threatening to fire the head of the central bank.

Such a move would be unprecedented. The president has historically respected the independence of the central bank, and kept out of its way – even if there was disagreement over Fed policy.