Tulsi Gabbard and the CIA director say Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘destroyed’, amid reports of White House efforts to limit sharing of classified information with Congress
Donald Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.
The growing row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the Associated Press.
More than 80% of China’s rare earth reserves are located in Baotou, an industrial hub of 2.7 million people that abuts the Gobi desert
Central Baotou, an industrial hub of 2.7 million people that abuts the Gobi desert in north China, feels just like any other second-tier Chinese city. Large shopping malls featuring western chains including Starbucks and KFC stand alongside street after street of busy local restaurants, where people sit outside and children play late into the evening, enjoying the relative relief of the cooler temperatures that arrive after dark in Inner Mongolia’s baking summer.
But a short drive into the city’s suburbs reveal another typical, less hospitable, Chinese scene. Factories crowd the city’s edges, with chimneys belching white plumes of smoke. As well as steel and silicon plants, Baotou is home to China’s monopoly on rare earths, the metallic elements that are used in oil refining equipment and car batteries and that have become a major sticking point in the US-China trade war.
Skilful guitarist and songwriter with the bands Mott the Hoople and Bad Company
In 1974, Bad Company hurtled to the top of the US chart with their eponymous debut album, which also reached No 3 in the UK. Featuring former members of Free, Mott the Hoople and King Crimson, they were rock’s latest supergroup, their pedigree confirmed by the fact that they shared a manager with Led Zeppelin, the formidable Peter Grant. Bad Company was also the first act signed to Zeppelin’s Swan Song label.
While the singer Paul Rodgers was the voice of Bad Company, the band’s guitarist and songwriter Mick Ralphs, who has died aged 81, was a vital ingredient in its success. Though modest about his own accomplishments, he was a versatile and skilful guitarist who could play anything from crunching power chords to delicate acoustic picking, and was also a major songwriting contributor.
18-year-old had brilliant college career with Duke
Mavs only had 1.8% chance of winning No 1 overall pick
The Dallas Mavericks did what everyone knew they would on Wednesday when they selected Cooper Flagg as the No 1 overall pick in the NBA draft.
“I’m feeling amazing. It’s a dream come true, to be honest,” Flagg said after he was selected, surrounded by his family. “I wouldn’t want to share it with anybody else.”
The Dune, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 director – and ‘die-hard Bond fan’ – will helm next movie in the spy franchise with Amazon MGM Studios
Denis Villeneuve will direct the next James Bond film, Amazon MGM Studios has announced.
The Oscar-nominated Canadian film-maker most recently directed the hugely successful blockbusters Dune and Dune: Part Two, as well as Arrival, Sicario, Blade Runner 2049 and Prisoners.
Greek island has been battling several wildfires that broke out at the same time on Sunday and have so far ripped through an estimated 40,000 hectares
A Georgian woman accused of accidentally igniting one of several wildfires that have raged relentlessly across the eastern Aegean isle of Chios will appear in court to face charges of unintentional arson.
Greek fire brigade officials said the woman, employed as a housekeeper on Chios, the ancestral home of some of Greece’s wealthiest shipping families, had “confessed” to triggering the blaze when she negligently discarded a cigarette.
Too many Democratic party leaders would rather be the captains on a sinking Titanic than change course
The Democratic party is at a crossroads.
It can continue to push policies that maintain a broken and rigged economic and political system and ignore the pain of the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. It can turn its back on the dreams of a younger generation which, if we don’t change that system, will likely be worse off than their parents.
Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and ranking member of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress
UK health officials launch study into side-effects of weight loss drugs after increased reports of acute pancreatitis
Hundreds of people have reported problems with their pancreas linked to taking weight loss and diabetes injections, prompting health officials to launch a study into side-effects.
Some cases of pancreatitis reported to be linked to GLP-1 medicines (glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists) have been fatal.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army kills 15-year-old boy amid a surge of violence between settlers and Palestinians
Dozens of Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian West Bank town, sparking a confrontation that ended with Israeli forces killing three Palestinians.
In a separate incident, a 15-year-old boy was killed by the Israeli army in the northern West Bank town of Al-Yamoun, amid a surge of violence and near-daily confrontations between settlers and Palestinians.
Stewed apples with sultanas, brown sugar and butter, or honey, bananas and chia seeds. Here’s how the pros add crunch and sweetness to their cooked oats
The cookbook author Elizabeth Hewson cherishes her winter breakfast routine. She creeps downstairs before sunrise, while her husband and children are still sleeping, to make herself a bubbling pot of porridge.
“It’s that small moment of peace before the day gets going,” she says. “The rhythm of standing at the stove stirring is one of those quiet rituals that I love.”
Russian-born Kseniia Petrova, conducting cancer research for Harvard’s medical school, indicted on three new counts
A Harvard University researcher detained by Ice for months after being accused of smuggling frog embryos into the US was indicted on Wednesday on additional criminal charges.
Kseniia Petrova, a Russian-born scientist conducting cancer research for Harvard Medical School, was indicted on Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Boston on one count of concealment of a material fact, one count of false statement and one count of smuggling goods into the United States. She had originally been charged with smuggling in May.
Commons review into handling of motorcyclist’s death will not scrutinise actions of US authorities
A parliamentary review into how the UK’s Foreign Office handled the death of the teenage motorcyclist Harry Dunn will not include scrutiny of the role or actions of the US government, it is understood.
The 19-year-old’s family met senior officials at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on Wednesday where they were told the probe will be led by former chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers.
The review is expected to examine the support the FCDO offered the Dunn family after Harry was killed by a former US state department employee in a road crash in 2019 in Northamptonshire, the PA news agency reported.
The American driver, Anne Sacoolas, had diplomatic immunity asserted on her behalf after the incident outside RAF Croughton before a senior Foreign Office official said they should “feel able” to put her on the next flight home.
PA understands the review, which is scheduled to last for three months, is also set to look at the actions taken by the Foreign Office in the months after Harry’s death and the nature of internal decision-making.
It will also look to identify lessons to be learned for the FCDO for comparable future situations.
The involvement of the US government, which asserted diplomatic immunity on behalf of Sacoolas, will not be examined alongside any issues covered in previous court hearings.
The Dunn family’s spokesperson, Radd Seiger, told PA: “I think overall the family are feeling that we are going to leave a legacy for Harry, which is that no family should ever be treated the way this family were by their own government.
“The American government really were stepping on their rights; nobody really from the government stepped forward to help them.
“Dame Anne is going to look into all of this and make a series of recommendations to David Lammy that should this ever happen again, whether here or abroad, that they will get the support and representation of the government that they need. So we are very, very pleased.
“The reason we got justice for Harry in the end was no thanks to the United Kingdom government; it was thanks to the British public and the media on both sides of the Atlantic, who spoke truth to power and made sure that we held them to account.”
Last week, Northamptonshire police apologised for “clear and significant shortcomings” in its investigation into Dunn’s death after a review found the force “failed his family on a number of fronts”.
Italian club progress to knockout round with 2-0 win
Fluminense complete a full Brazilian contingent in round of 16
Inter Milan scored twice in the last 18 minutes to beat River Plate 2-0 and progress to the knockout stage of the Club World Cup as Group E winners and send the Argentine side home.
Francesco Pio Esposito scored Inter’s first goal seven minutes after River had been reduced to 10 men by the dismissal of Lucas Martínez Quarta, and Alessandro Bastoni added the second in stoppage time.
Double champion unlikely to be at SW19 this year but is enjoying helping Britain’s next generation of tennis players
Andy Murray has always had a way of creating alchemy on a tennis court. But, even in retirement, he is discovering new tricks. For more than an hour he has little kids from West Byfleet junior school transfixed as he coaches them through the joys of mini-tennis. There are swings and wild misses, gentle advice and high fives. In fact Murray is so locked in, he even makes his familiar power-exhale noise while he gently lifts the ball over a tiny net.
In short, he is a natural – even if he doesn’t quite see it that way himself. “I think they were just buzzing to get a few hours out of the classroom to be honest,” he says, typically self-effacing, as he chats during a quick break. “But it’s great. I love seeing kids on a tennis court having fun.”
Lee Carsley is confident that England’s Under-21 side have the belief to retain their European title after Harvey Elliott’s double against the Netherlands secured a place in Saturday’s final.
A superb piece of improvisation from the substitute Noah Ohio cancelled out the Liverpool forward’s opener in the second half but it was Elliott who had the final say five minutes before the end to take his tally in this tournament to four goals.
In this deeply moving and cathartic film, the presenter confronts his father’s death by going on a holy pilgrimage … and ends up releasing his soul in the sacred river. Beautiful
Three years ago Amol Rajan’s father died unexpectedly of pneumonia. Ever since, as the BBC journalist and broadcaster puts it at the start of Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges, “I’ve been in a bit of a funk.” I get it. As a fellow second-generation kid of Indian immigrants (and journalist from southwest London to boot) I, too, have been in a funk since my mother died (two years before Rajan’s father, at the same age, 76, as him). In Rajan’s case, his grief plunges him into a search for belonging and an attempt to reconnect with his Hindu roots. Where might such a quest take him? To the largest gathering of humanity on earth. The Kumbh Mela, where over 45 days at the start of this year half a billion Hindus gathered on the sacred banks of the Ganges. The question Rajan poses, and it’s a pertinent one for many, is whether “an atheist like me can benefit from a holy pilgrimage”.
This is the deeply personal premise of what turns into an intimate, moving, entertaining yet oddly depoliticised documentary considering both the day job(s) of its presenter and the fact that the Kumbh Mela is the world’s biggest Hindu festival, funded by a prime minister whose success is built on his identity as a Hindu nationalist strongman. Only once is Narendra Modi mentioned, halfway through, and it’s in the context of his government investing £600m in the biggest Kumbh Mela to date: a mega-event owing to a specific celestial alignment that occurs once in 144 years. We know, watching Rajan’s film in the aftermath, that at least 30 people were killed and many more injured in terrifying crowd crushes. As much as he is spiritually shaken, even altered, by the experience, he’s also traumatised by what he sees. “The people in front of me were just stepping on women,” Rajan says after he and his fixer are forced to turn back due to reports of a stampede 800 metres ahead. “Lots of very poor, very old, very fragile, possibly quite sick women … they were like human debris on the floor. Kids as well.”
Last year, the Oscar-winning writer revealed he was working on a film that would revisit the subject of Facebook, and Deadline has now reported that The Social Network Part II is in development at Sony Pictures yet isn’t a “straight sequel”.
Second lady says on Meghan McCain podcast she is ‘not plotting next steps’ and is just ‘along for the ride’
Usha Vance learned her husband, JD, had been selected to be Donald Trump’s running mate “maybe five minutes” before the news was made public – and just about an hour before he was formally nominated.
“It really was like a bolt of lightning,” Vance said during an interview on Meghan McCain’s podcast, Citizen McCain. Nearly a year later, seated in the vice-president’s residence on the grounds of the US naval observatory, Vance reflected on how significantly her life has changed in ways big and small. “People call you ma’am,” she said. “No one’s ever called me ma’am before this.”
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer wins £2,025 for ‘compelling tale that, like all good stories about robots, is ultimately about the human condition’
A novel told from the perspective of a robot girlfriend has been named winner of the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction.
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer is “a tightly focused first-person account of a robot designed to be the perfect companion, who struggles to become free,” said chair of judges, the academic Andrew M Butler. The speculative novel follows Annie, the narrator, programmed to cater to the needs of her boyfriend/owner Doug, who treats her in a way that would be abusive if she were human.
At hearing, US attorney general claims she’s unaware of reports that officials have hid their faces during roundups
The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.
Challenged at a Wednesday Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing by Gary Peters, a Democratic senator for Michigan, Bondi, who as the country’s top law officer has a prominent role in the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, implied she was unaware of plain-clothed agents concealing their faces while carrying out arrests but suggested it was for self-protection.
Australian batting ripped apart by Shamar Joseph and Jayden Seales
Houston can’t help in this case, but Australia has a problem. When the top order batting sets itself for launch of late, the results tend to be less Nasa, more SpaceX. Which is to say, the whole thing blows up. Ten days after scraping past 200 in both innings of the World Test Championship final, the specialist bats had another rapid unscheduled disassembly in Bridgetown, bowled out by West Indies for 180 to start the first Test. No Australian team in the Caribbean has ever made so few after choosing to bat.
You can trace a line back to the last time Australia played West Indies, in Brisbane. That first month of 2024, Shamar Joseph tore them up for 209 and won the match. In the 18 months since, Australia have been bowled out for 164 in Wellington, 256 in Christchurch, 104 and 238 in Perth, 234 in Melbourne, and 181 in Sydney. The fact that they managed to come back and win most of those Tests is impressive, but has relied on late-order runs and late-game rallies. It shouldn’t disguise the fact that the batting hasn’t delivered.
Victoria Amelina wins with her unfinished book Looking at Women Looking at War while Donal Ryan takes the award for political fiction with an intimate portrait of an Irish town
A novelist killed in the Ukraine war has won the Orwell prize for political writing.
Victoria Amelina, who died in July 2023 from injuries sustained in a Russian bombing of a restaurant in Kramatorsk, won the prize with her unfinished book Looking at Women Looking at War.
Mamdani signifies a generational change and rebuke to a party establishment grown complacent and hypocritical
The party was on its knees. It failed to beat Donald Trump, a twice impeached convicted felon, and lost both chambers of Congress. Since November, Democrats have been searching for a path out of the wilderness. On Tuesday, they found one.
But instead of celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s apparent victory in the New York mayoral primary election, the first major Democratic contest since Trump’s win, many in the party establishment went into panic mode.
Messi’s salary more than the payroll of 21 MLS teams
Complete MLS salary figures released on Wednesday
Lionel Messi is the highest-paid player in Major League Soccer for the third straight year with total annual compensation of $20,446,667 – an amount greater than the entire payroll of 21 MLS teams.
Messi’s base compensation is $12m the Major League Soccer Players Association said on Wednesday. His total figure of $20.4m covers his MLS deal, which runs through the 2025 season, and includes any marketing bonus and agent’s fees. They do not account for any additional agreements with the team or its affiliates, or for any performance bonuses.
Police clashed with people marching in Nairobi and other areas to honour those killed in protests last year
At least 16 people have been killed and 400 injured in Kenya as a nationwide demonstration to honour those killed during last year’s anti-government protests turned chaotic, with police clashing with protesters in different parts of the country.
Amnesty Kenya’s executive director, Irũngũ Houghton, said the death toll had been verified by the government-funded Kenya national commission on human rights. “Most were killed by police,” he said.
Defending champions to face either France or Germany
There is something about Lee Carsley and this competition. Just when it looked like England were heading for a nervy period of extra-time in their semi-final against the Netherlands after Brighton’s James Beadle had been embarrassed by Noah Ohio’s brilliant equaliser, a stunning winner five minutes from full-time by Harvey Elliott – his second goal of the evening and fourth in total in Slovakia – means the dream of winning successive European Under-21 tournaments is alive and well.
It is a reflection of what a cool customer Carsley is these days that while other members of the England bench looked shellshocked after Ohio had come off the bench to cancel out Elliott’s opener, he refused to panic. But while the Liverpool forward was the toast of Bratislava as England’s place in the final against either Germany or France was confirmed, his manager greeted the full-time whistle by gently embracing his assistant, Ashley Cole. The job is clearly not done yet as Carsley attempts to emulate the feat of Dave Sexton’s sides in 1982 and 1984.
Dr Michael Ross was involved in multiple private healthcare firms and withdrew after a review of financial holdings
A member of the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s newly overhauled federal vaccine advisory panel withdrew after a conflict of interest review, a spokesperson has told the Guardian.
Dr Michael Ross, who was involved in multiple private healthcare companies, withdrew after review of his financial holdings.
In the first of our exclusive Euro 2025 interviews, the midfielder talks about France’sbelief and being a role model
Grace Geyoro has suddenly become one of the most experienced players in France’s squad for the Euros. Last month the head coach, Laurent Bonadei, made the controversial decision to drop the captain Wendie Renard, the vice-captain Eugénie Le Sommer, who also happens to be the most capped female player in France of all time, as well as Kenza Dali. Geyoro was left standing and the Paris St-Germain midfielder is going into her sixth major tournament with the national team and has a clear objective: “To win.”
As we sit down for an exclusive interview in Nancy as the Euro preparations get underway she says she is optimistic about France’s chances in Switzerland. “We have a great team, we have young players, we have more experienced players,” says the 27-year-old, who has 98 caps and 19 goals for her country. “We score goals, we win important matches. We have players who have won titles this season, in England for example.”
Five-year £1.25bn pledge to Gavi is 40% cut in real terms, which experts say will cost lives in developing countries
The UK has cut its funding to a leading global vaccination group by a quarter, a move that experts say will directly lead to the avoidable deaths of many thousands of children in developing countries.
The Foreign Office billed the £1.25bn commitment over five years to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) as a major boost to the group’s work as well as to the UK’s status as a developer of vaccines. A series of aid agencies praised the decision.
Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in a Hamas attack in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said on Wednesday, one of the deadliest incidents for the force in months. Meanwhile, Israeli attacks have killed 74 people in the Palestinian territory over the past 24 hours, according to local health authorities.
The seven Israeli soldiers, in the 605th combat engineering battalion, were killed on Tuesday after militants planted a bomb on their vehicle while they were driving in Khan Younis, causing it to catch fire. Hamas later claimed responsibility for the attack.
Lee Saunders and Randi Weingarten say party not standing up for working people amid ‘existential battle’ under Trump
As the Democratic party fights to rebuild from a devastating election defeat, the abrupt exit of the presidents of two of the nation’s largest labor unions from its top leadership board has exposed simmering tensions over the party’s direction.
Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders quit the Democratic National Committee, saying it isn’t doing enough to “open the gates” and win back the support of working-class voters. Ken Martin, the new DNC chair, and his allies told the Guardian that the party was focused on doing exactly that.
7 min: Valente, who appeared for Italy’s youth teams as a teenager owing to his Italian father, sets Netherlands off on a brilliant counter-attack, skipping through a couple of challenges on the edge of his own box and releasing Poku expertly down the left. Poku, who scored the winner against Portugal, is frighteningly quick and beats Quansah for pace before another low cross into the box, but it is just behind Van Bergen.
4 min: England go close! Hutchinson, playing down the left, does a nifty stepover and gets to the byline. It’s a hopeful low cross but into a good area, which comes all the way across to Elliott at the far post … the Liverpool midfielder is all alone and shoot to the near post but Roefs flies across his goal, sticks out a left boot and clears the ball off the line!
Nato’s spending splurge has made Babcock hot – a sign fundamental change in dull income defence stocks is happening
It’s a miracle. Babcock International, the defence contractor with a specialism in kitting out the UK’s nuclear submarines, has emerged from the depths. After about half a decade in which the story was mostly about cost overruns, acquisition indigestion, accounting woes, pension deficits and too much debt, Babcock is suddenly back in the FTSE 100 index and is a hot stock. The share price has more than doubled this year.
Of course it’s not really a miracle because the performance is easily explained. A fix-the-basics strategy was started in 2020 under ex-Cobham boss David Lockwood and has worked. The last of the badly performing major contracts – to build first-of-a-kind Type 31 frigates for the Royal Navy – is no longer spitting out provisions.
Donald Trump upholds the alliance for now, but the era of confidence in US security guarantees is over
There is more to Nato than article 5 of its founding charter, but the alliance depends on that commitment to mutual assistance. Enemies are deterred because an attack on one is understood as an attack on all. That is why Donald Trump’s record of ambivalence has been so destabilising.
Nato leaders, gathered for their annual summit in The Hague this week, were heartened to hear the US president say he is “with them all the way”. It was a stronger affirmation of the alliance’s purpose than the one he had given the previous day. Asked about his commitment to article 5, Mr Trump equivocated, saying: “It depends on your definition.”
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The surging export of hides created domestic tensions – and shows how globalisation plays out in unexpected ways
What can help to protect women’s health, boost the incomes of impoverished families and thus allow girls to avoid early marriage? What – when it disappears – can set back children’s education, damage mental wellbeing, drive conflict within communities and become a vector for racial hatred?
The humble donkey has rarely been in the spotlight. Yet Chinese demand for its skin proved so destabilising that African governments agreed to a continent-wide ban on the slaughter of the animal for its hide last year. This week, officials are meeting in Ivory Coast to discuss implementation.
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Company’s Starbase launch site in Texas near the Mexican border has seen test failures resulting in large explosions
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has threatened legal action over falling debris and contamination from billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket launches across the border in the United States.
Mexico’s government was studying which international laws were being violated in order to file “the necessary lawsuits” because “there is indeed contamination”, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference on Wednesday.
About 200 people were brought to the country in February under an agreement with the Trump administration
A court in Costa Rica has ordered authorities to release foreign migrants who were locked up in a shelter after being deported by the US, according to a resolution issued on the eve of a visit by the US secretary of homeland security.
About 200 people from Afghanistan, Iran, Russia as well as from Africa and some other Asian countries, including 80 children, were brought to the Central American nation in February under an agreement with the US administration of Donald Trump, a move criticized by human rights organizations.
Shows such as Sirens, The Better Sister, And Just Like That and Your Friends and Neighbours have found little to say about the uber-wealthy
As fun as it was, Mountainhead seems to have broken something in quite a lot of people. For some, it was simply too timely. After all, it’s one thing to release a film about tech billionaires fighting over the remnants of a world ravaged by war and AI, but quite another to do it while that exact thing was really happening.
For others, Mountainhead marked the point where ultra-rich antiheroes reached full saturation. Writing in the AV Club last week, Saloni Gajjar made the argument that – between Mountainhead, Your Friends & Neighbors, The White Lotus and Nine Perfect Strangers – we have now arrived at a moment where television seems unable to tell stories that are about anything but the badly behaved rich.
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