McGinn tries to release Watkins down the left. Tonali comes across to put a stop to his gallop. But Tonali’s clearance only goes to Tielemans, who immediately returns it down the inside-left channel to Watkins. He shoots. A deflection off Schar sends the ball into the bottom left, past the wrong-footed, and rooted, Pope. What a start!
Newcastle get the ball rolling. They’re kicking towards the Holte End in this first half.
Pete Townshend welcomes musician back into band after disagreement over his playing at Royal Albert Hall gig
Zak Starkey has been reinstated as The Who’s drummer just days after parting company with the band.
The group announced earlier this week that Starkey, the band’s drummer since 1996, was leaving over a disagreement about his playing at a Royal Albert Hall gig last month.
Barcelona fought back from 3-1 down to beat Celta Vigo 4-3 in a rollercoaster encounter, with a stoppage-time penalty by Raphinha extending their lead over Real Madrid at the top of La Liga to seven points.
Barcelona took the lead in the 12th minute through Ferran Torres but conceded an equaliser three minutes later when Wojciech Szczesny misread a cross and allowed Borja Iglesias to score. The Spanish forward then stunned the home fans when he scored two more goals in the second half, twice racing through to beat the keeper on his way to a hat-trick.
Former president spoke at commemoration for the 168 people who died in the 1995 attack by far-right extremist
Bill Clinton called on Americans to put aside “whose resentments matter most” and issued a defense of government employees as he returned to Oklahoma City on Saturday for a remembrance service for the 30th anniversary of the deadliest homegrown terrorist attack in US history.
“If our lives are going to be dominated by efforts to dominate people we disagree with, we’re going to put the 250-year-old march toward a more perfect union at risk,” he said. “None of us would ever get much done. Believe me, we’ve all got something to be mad about.”
The American author on the follow-up to her bestselling debut Such a Fun Age, why she loves characters you want to shake, and reading 160 novels for the Booker prize
When Arizona-raised novelist Kiley Reid, 37, debuted five years ago with Such a Fun Age, she attained the kind of commercial and critical success that can jinx a second book, even landing a spot on the 2020 Booker longlist. Instead, Come and Get It – which is published in paperback next month – fulfils the promise, pursuing some of the themes of that first work while also daring to be boldly different.
The story unfolds at the University of Arkansas, where wealth, class and race shape the yearnings and anxieties of a group of students and one equally flawed visiting professor. Reid, who has been teaching at the University of Michigan, is currently preparing to move to the Netherlands with her husband and young daughter. She is also on the judging panel for this year’s Booker prize.
Palestinians pushed into new misery as supplies of food, fuel and medicine run out in seven-week siege
Gaza has been pushed to new depths of despair, civilians, medics and humanitarian workers say, by the unprecedented seven-week-long Israeli military blockade that has cut off all aid to the strip.
The siege has left the Palestinian territory facing conditions unmatched in severity since the beginning of the war as residents grapple with sweeping new evacuation orders, the renewed bombing of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, and the exhaustion of food, fuel for generators and medical supplies.
If green policy is going to survive the culture wars, it needs a new pitch – cleaner air, cheaper bills and healthier cities
For a decade, green activists in Britain have been congratulating themselves on their luck. Unlike in many countries in Europe, where motorists, farmers and rightwing groups have been driving anti-climate action, the UK has long enjoyed a comfortable political consensus on the subject. But conditions for a greenlash are assembling.
Most Britons still say they support climate efforts, but the price of decarbonising may at last be about to hit our wallets. Meanwhile, the Conservative party has come a long way since it sported a little green oak tree as its logo. Last month, Kemi Badenoch declared a full culture war against net zero, which she said couldn’t be achieved “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
The Premier League trophy Manchester City have proudly held for the past four years will be soon heading to one side of Stanley Park but, after exploding to life late against Everton, they took an important step towards Champions League qualification on the other. Nico O’Reilly and Mateo Kovacic sealed a victory that even Pep Guardiola may not have seen coming to edge City towards a place among the European elite for a 15th season in succession.
A goalless draw appeared the most likely outcome for most of a pedestrian contest but in a late twist, shaped by the positive impact of Guardiola’s substitutions and David Moyes’ subs having the opposite effect, City seized control of the closing stages and secure a ninth consecutive win at Goodison.
English-speaking minority refugees caught up in clashes between the military and separatists are stranded in neighbouring country
Amid the sound of children excitedly practising a drama for a forthcoming performance, a yam seller calls to passers by with discounts for their wares. Outside a closed graphic design shop overlooking them from a small hill, Solange Ndonga Tibesa tells the story of being uprooted from her homeland in north-west Cameroon.
In June 2019 she and other travellers were abducted with her three-month-old baby by secessionists, who accused them of supporting the military. Their captors repeatedly hit them with butts of their guns, keeping them in a forest without food or water.
Public toilets are rarely thought of fondly – that is unless you’re talking about those in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. Commissioned in 2019, creatives including renowned architects Shigeru Ban and the late Fumihiko Maki designed 17 beautiful, functional, meticulously clean public toilets, some of which featured in Wim Wenders’s 2023 film Perfect Days. Hong Kong-based photographer Ulana Switucha came across the toilets, each unique, while working on a project about Japanese architecture in 2023, and went back to photograph them the following year. “These structures are works of art,” she says. “They shine as beacons in their urban setting and demonstrate that public design can go beyond functionality to represent cultural and artistic value.”
High-end bar with Middle East-style nut filling is rationed in shops as price of raw kernels surges
Product promotion on TikTok is now powerful enough to influence the vast agricultural economies of the US and Iran – at least when it comes to the consumption of high-end confectionery.
A chocolate bar stuffed with a creamy green pistachio filling has become incredibly popular after a series of video clips shared on the social media site. The first bit of footage praising the taste of the expensive so-called “Dubai chocolate” was posted at the end of 2023 and has now been viewed more than 120m times, to say nothing of the many follow-up videos.
Vladimir Putin has announced an “Easter Truce”, saying that Russian forces will stop combat operations from 6pm Moscow time on Saturday until midnight on Sunday.
In a surprise move, Russia’s president said he was ordering a temporary halt to the fighting out of “humanitarian considerations”. He said he expected Ukraine to follow suit and said this would be a test of whether the “regime” in Kyiv was interested in peace.
The Catholic church has taken the first steps to canonise the architect of Barcelona’s extraordinary Sagrada Família
I don’t understand the processes by which people become saints, but the case for the canonisation of the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, now progressing with the blessing of the pope, seems strong. He was devout – he tried to go without food for 40 days in emulation of Jesus Christ, until a bishop friend talked him out of likely death. The unprecedented phantasmagoria that he designed in stone, iron and ceramic could be called miracles. He even suffered a form of martyrdom, being hit by a tram while apparently deep in thought about his most famous work, the church of Sagrada Família. It’s not quite the same as a burning at the stake or a fusillade of arrows or the other grisly ends of ancient saints, but has its own significance. Gaudí’s mission was to find spiritual meaning in a world transformed by industry and machines, of which the fatal tram might be considered a representative.
Neverending calls to automated customer service lines aren’t just frustrating – new research suggests they may be quietly radicalising as well
Question: what are the eight most annoying words in the English language? Answer: “Your call is important to us … please hold.” But when you have turned into a gibbering wreck after 10 minutes of your valuable time have ticked away – intermittently punctuated by assurances that, while your tormentor is “experiencing high call volumes at the moment”, nevertheless your call is still important to him/her/it – you can take comfort in the thought that you are not alone. In fact, you belong to the majority of sentient beings in an industrial society like ours.
Thanks to a useful piece of market research, we now have an idea of the numbers of victims of this industrial practice – at least in the UK. A survey commissioned by the New Britain Project thinktank found that the average Briton spends between 28 and 41 minutes every week coping with inefficient customer service systems, and that nearly four-fifths of them are frustrated by “the wasted time, the unnecessary friction, and the quiet resignation that has become part of daily interactions with both public and private services”.
A 1960s house has been brought back to its former glory, with a contemporary twist
It feels as if time has stopped, frozen in the swinging 1960s, as you pass through the pristine gate that opens on to this enchanting lakefront building. The lake in question is the magical and wild Mergozzo, tiny, utterly charming and yet still rarely visited by tourists.
The house was built in 1963. Its equally fascinating current owner, Hilary Belle Walker, has American roots – San Francisco is her hometown, but she moved to Italy at the age of 23.
Agencies protecting coal miners from hazards such as ‘black lung’ among those gutted by government cuts
The Trump administration’s efforts to expand coal mining while simultaneously imposing deep cuts to agencies tasked with ensuring miner health and safety has left some advocates “dumbfounded”.
Agencies that protect coal miners from serious occupational hazards, including the condition best known as “black lung”, have been among those affected by major government cuts imposed by the White House and the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) run by the billionaire Elon Musk.
More and more men are being sucked into parts of the internet that circulate misogynist content, leaving their families to deal with the wreckage
Samantha thought of her partner as the most progressive man she had ever had a relationship with. Her Swedish boyfriend seemed, to her, more feminist than many British men she had dated.
“I never had to ask him to clear up,” she says. “All our labour was shared. He had done therapy. He was happy to talk about his emotions.”
Holly Aitchison, wearing No 10 for England, kicks off.
The teams are out on the pitch in Leicester. Now for the anthems. A welcome blast of “Flower of Scotland” … and now Mitchell, in the stands, joins in with a rendition of “God Save the King”. Oliver Packer, Marlie’s son, is one of the mascots.
US vice-president, who is a Catholic convert, discusses immigration and international wars with secretary of state
The US vice-president, JD Vance, had “an exchange of opinions” with the Vatican’s secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.
The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia.
This most curious of Aberdeen seasons will end in Scottish football’s showpiece occasion. Time will tell whether this outcome proves fatal for the Hearts manager Neil Critchley, who has a damaging habit of falling on the wrong side of fine margins. Celtic or St Johnstone lie in wait for Aberdeen on 24 May. Jimmy Thelin’s team opened the campaign by going 16 unbeaten. A 12-game stretch where they could not win was to follow. The Scottish Cup final will round off their 2024-25.
Oday Dabbagh was Aberdeen’s hero, scoring the odd goal in three with less than two minutes of extra time remaining. Hearts played the entire second half with 10 men following Michael Steinwender’s red card. They were later reduced to nine after Cammy Devlin collected a second yellow. Hearts were sturdy and stuffy enough but, like so often this season, lacked punch.
Alla Shyrshonkova was on a bus when Russian missiles hit the city. Now a toy bear and hippo mark the spot where 35 people, including two children, were killed
Last weekend, Alla Shyrshonkova got on the 62 bus on a journey to her cottage near the Ukrainian city of Sumy. It was a warm spring day. “I thought I’d sit with friends, have some tea. Birds were singing. The weather was beautiful. It was so nice,” she recalled.
“The bus was packed. There wasn’t a single free seat. People were standing. Some were going to church for Palm Sunday. There were families with children.”
The progressive Democrat from Queens is the son of a famous film-maker and poised to take on frontrunner Andrew Cuomo
Can a 33-year-old cricket-playing socialist, who wants to freeze rent, make city transport free and once aspired to be a rapper win an already turbulent election to become the next mayor of New York?
Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assembly member in Queens, has been the surprise package in the Democratic primary and is now poised to take on the frontrunner in the race, ex-state governor Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting a political comeback after being forced from office in the face of a series of sexual harassment claims.
Analysts trace a link between financial security and a troubling, increasingly devil-may-care, attitude to political risk
Steve Coogan wants people to see his new film, The Penguin Lessons, and think about how they might be living in a wealthy cocoon, disengaged from the world.
The film’s central character – a Briton teaching expat children in Argentina – rescues a penguin and tries to help local people persecuted by the rightwing government. Re-enacting a true story, Coogan is showing how it’s possible to be involved in local communities even when the protagonist is an outsider.
Brothers had hoped resentencing hearing would pave way for immediate release – but judge orders pause until May
The Menendez brothers have spent years waiting for another day in court and a chance to prove that they should be freed after serving over three decades in prison for the 1989 slayings of their parents.
This week it appeared their time was perhaps finally coming – a judge was set to review their request for a resentencing and determine whether they have been rehabilitated. Their attorney, Mark Geragos, planned to ask the Los Angeles county judge Michael Jesic to reduce Erik and Lyle Menendez’s charges to manslaughter, which would allow them to be released from prison immediately.
Michael B Jordan stars as twin 1930s mobsters in the Black Panther director’s phenomenal-looking, blues-infused supernatural tale
In Black Panther (2018) and its sequel, Wakanda Forever (2022), Ryan Coogler directed two of Marvel’s most satisfying and textured recent movies. His 2015 Rocky spin-off Creed represents the gold standard when it comes to franchise-wrangling, honouring the original series yet standing up and fighting its own corner as a distinct movie. If anyone has earned the chance to make a passion project, it’s Coogler. But who knew that this would result in something as wild, untrammelled and thrillingly unpredictable as Sinners? Starring Michael B Jordan in the dual role of 1930s gangster twins Smoke (surly, threatening) and Stack (charming, reckless), it’s a sweltering, sexy southern gothic horror, a blues-infused vampire flick in which the music flows as freely as the blood.
The brothers leave Chicago with the kind of cash that usually comes with a body count. Back in their Mississippi homeland, they team up with a young cousin, aspiring bluesman Sammie (Miles Caton, an impressive newcomer with deep, rich bourbon-soaked voice). The plan: to open a Black-owned juke joint under the noses of the Ku Klux Klan. But it turns out that an even greater evil awaits them.
The German scientist on her new book arguing that inequality, wealth and sexism are making the climate crisis worse – and what we need to do about it
Friederike Otto is a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London. She is also the co-founder of the World Weather Attribution initiative, which seeks to determine the influence of global warming on intensity and likelihood of an extreme weather event. The project also examines how factors such as ill-suited architecture and poverty exacerbate heatwaves, hurricanes, floods and wildfires. This is the theme of her second book, Climate Injustice: Why We Need to Fight Global Inequality to Combat Climate Change.
The thesis of your book is that the climate crisis is a symptom of global inequality and injustice. That will be quite topsy-turvy to some people, who think global heating is caused by the amount of carbon that we are putting into the atmosphere. Yes, of course, if you just stick to the physics, then the warming is caused by the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. And it is also the case that those who benefit from the burning of fossil fuels are the few already wealthy people who have stakes in or own the companies themselves. The vast majority of people do not benefit. The American dream is social mobility, not burning fossil fuels.
Native seed demand far outpaces supply for the state’s ambitious conservation plan. This group combs the landscape to address the deficit
Deep in California’s agricultural heartland, Haleigh Holgate marched through the expansive wildflower-dotted plains of the San Luis national wildlife refuge complex in search of something precious.
She surveyed the native grasses and flowering plants that painted the Central valley landscape in almost blinding swaths of yellow. Her objective on that sweltering spring day was to gather materials pivotal to California’s ambitious environmental agenda – seeds.
But the future of main line steam operations could be under threat unless the traditional fire-breathing machines can be fitted with pioneering modern technology.
It was an afternoon of missed opportunities for Arsenal as they fell to defeat in the first leg of their Women’s Champions League semi-final. Melchie Dumornay’s late winner silenced the 40,000-strong crowd after Mariona Caldentey’s penalty had cancelled out Kadidiatou Diani’s opener for the visitors.
Arsenal’s manager, Renee Slegers, maintained belief in her side’s ability to turn the tie around after they recovered from an impressive first-half performance from the visitors.
Bases in Norfolk, Devon and Hampshire face MoD investigation over possible leaching of dangerous PFAS into environment
Three UK military bases have been marked for investigation over fears they may be leaking toxic “forever chemicals” into drinking water sources and important environmental sites.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will investigate RAF Marham in Norfolk, RM Chivenor in Devon and AAC Middle Wallop in Hampshire after concerns they may be leaching toxic PFAS chemicals into their surroundings. The sites were identified using a new PFAS risk screening tool developed by the Environment Agency (EA) designed to locate and prioritise pollution threats.
Issues around basic services, corruption and class trouble vibrant Johannesburg, which this year hosts the G20 summit
Bethabile Mavis Manqele mops the veranda of the house she has lived in for most of the last 40 years. The ceiling above her is full of holes, blackened by years of cooking fires. Manqele, 64, isn’t sure how many people live in the house’s seven rooms. There are no utilities, the landlord is absent and she hasn’t paid rent in years, she says through a translator. The occupants share a portable toilet provided and cleaned by an NGO, plus one outdoor tap with the house next door, which has no roof.
Manqele’s home in the inner city district of Berea is emblematic of Johannesburg’s downtown, which was progressively abandoned by wealthy people, businesses and government from the 1980s. Hundreds of buildings left empty by landlords are now overcrowded, and the area is notorious for crime.
The pressure’s off when we’re not staring at each other, we can relax and have a nice chat
On the day after Boxing Day last year, my dad and I went to buy some cabbage. My aunt and cousins were joining us for dinner that evening and we had a meal to prepare. The local supermarket was closed and the cabbage, sourced from an Italian deli around the corner, was obscenely overpriced. In a bind, we bought some anyway and headed back home to begin cooking. Standing around the kitchen island chopping and peeling vegetables, preparing a rib of beef and assembling a side dish of dauphinoise potatoes, we listened to music and chatted. The meal was a success and the cabbage – lightly browned and decorated with caraway seeds – tasty. But most important was that, for the time we had spent cooking, I felt closer to my dad.
This kind of intimacy almost always occurs for me while I’m cooking with someone. When I was 14, I was paired with a classmate in food technology where we were tasked with making a meal from scratch. We decided on a menu of jerk chicken, rice and peas. For practice, we gathered a group of friends at my house and, after procuring our ingredients, got to work. The results of our efforts were average, but that joint experience of clumsily blitzing fiery scotch bonnet peppers, onions, garlic and various sauces into a clumpy and barely edible mess cemented our friendship.
The actor, 49, talks about his royal heritage, earliest memory, hard times in a hostel, four gifted kids and what happened when he met Sidney Poitier
David, you are going to walk among kings.” This was my mum’s prophecy when I was small. My father is from a royal family in Nigeria, so I interpreted it that way. Remarkably, she was right: I went on to play King Pelasgus, Henry VI, Martin Luther King and Seretse Khama.
My earliest memory is sitting on my dad’s shoulders as he walked down Balham High Street in London. I was eating a cream puff, watching the sugar fall into his hair. I can still smell and taste the cream. It felt magical, both the longest and the shortest walk imaginable.
We moved from the UK to Nigeria, where I attended a military-style boarding school for three years. There were lashings and I was made to cut an entire field with a cutlass. Those formative years were character-building and made me value the wisdom of elders, but the idea of subjecting my own children to that is inconceivable.
When we returned to the UK, we lived in a hostel for a time. Mum was coping with a lot of challenges, but she was a joyful person and always made our environment feel like we were kings again.
My wife [actor Jessica Oyelowo] was told her IQ is off the charts during an assessment for ADHD. Now, she’s a member of Mensa. Our four children are neurodiverse, too. They have incredibly special attributes that they wear as superpowers. I’m in awe that I get to be their father.
Any lasting relationship needs non-negotiables. We made the decision early on never to be apart for longer than two weeks: 26 years married and we’ve only broken that rule once, by 11 hours, when my wife was in Sleepy Hollow. If I ever meet [director] Tim Burton, I’ll be having words.
Never let the sun go down on your wrath. We won’t go to bed if a disagreement isn’t resolved – sleep makes it grow like cancer. Before you know it, you don’t remember why you were fighting, ego and pride becomes a factor, and then it starts to fall apart.
God has never let me down. He’s a key factor in guiding my decisions and feeling safe within them. My wife and I suffered three miscarriages, one of them quite late in the pregnancy. Without faith, we would have retreated into our own corners to lick our wounds, but our love increased.
Sidney Poitier, a hero of mine, was full of compliments and respect when we met. I mustered up the courage to say hello and to tell him what he means to me, but instead he started talking about my work. I still doubt myself that it happened, but I have the photograph.
Oprah Winfrey played my mother in The Butler. In one scene, she slaps me across the face, which was nerve-racking, because with each take she was gaining in confidence. Oprah taught me that the intention with which you do something manifests in the thing itself. If your intentions are pure, the chances are that it will be edifying both for you and the people you’re doing it for.
Success is subjective. It can sometimes mean coming away from something that failed, knowing you gave your best. That has been a guiding and guarding principle for me and has stood me in very good stead.
A Wall Street Journal article offered disturbing details about the billionaire’s behavior. Imagine the backlash if he were a woman
I regret to inform you that, once again, we are all being forced to think about Elon Musk’s gonads. Musk, who has had at least 14 children with four women, hasn’t officially launched a new mini-Musk for a while, but the Wall Street Journal has just dropped some disturbing details about the billionaire’s well-publicized breeding fetish.
Somerset House, London After 10 fun-packed years, it’s a wrap for the UK’s biggest celebration of indie, communal gameplay. But the folk games at the heart of this year’s edition have now filtered into the mainstream, from Taskmaster to The Traitors
When she was a child growing up in Adelaide, Australia, Holly Gramazio made up a game with her friend Summer. The two girls would lie back on swings with their eyes closed. When someone made too much noise nearby, they’d sit to attention and yell as loudly as they could: “Don’t wake me up!” The game captured a child’s view of grownups and their irksome inconsistencies – the self-defeating idea, or perhaps threat, that an adult could scream themselves awake amid their stated efforts to remain asleep. It was a co-operative game: the two girls “won” if they shouted in unison. If only one yelled, they lost. “This is the first game I remember playing,” records Gramazio in the printed guide (which also doubles as a delicious compendium of folk games) for the final Now Play This festival of experimental game design.
It’s wrapping up “for the same reasons a lot of festivals wrap up”, she writes in a blog post marking its closure. “Sooner or later you need to find a way to make it more sustainable… Or if you can’t do that, you have to go: well, we had a fun time but that’s enough.”
The swift rebuke on Monday came after weeks of mounting pressure from Harvard faculty, students, alumni, and the city of Cambridge, all urging the university to defend itself, and higher education as a whole, against what they saw as an unprecedented attack from Washington.
Duke of York’s, London A triumphant staging by Rebecca Lucy Taylor of her new album, A Complicated Woman, is part artistic statement, part power pop club night
Hard-edged digital club music throbs from the theatre stage – a place mostly in darkness, its shadows hiding a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist. Standing in a row, glaring at the theatre audience, are Self Esteem and 10 dancers. They are not dancing. It’s a tense, delicious contradiction. The company stand stock-still for what feels like ages, clad in bonnets, collars and black gowns – half convent, half Gilead.
When they do move, it’s just their heads at first, glaring accusatively at one spotlit audience member. Gradually, these halting and jerky gestures become spasms, which become seizures, until finally the tension is released into something akin to dancing.
Connexion
