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Twenty-one humanoid robots joined thousands of runners at the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing

Twenty-one humanoid robots joined thousands of runners at the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing on Saturday, the first time these machines have raced alongside humans over a 21-kilometre (13-mile) course.

The robots from Chinese manufacturers such as DroidVP and Noetix Robotics came in all shapes and sizes, some shorter than 120cm (3ft 9in), others as tall as 1.8m (5ft 9in). One company boasted that its robot looked almost human, with feminine features and the ability to wink and smile. Some firms tested their robots for weeks before the race. Beijing officials have described the event as more akin to a race car competition, given the need for engineering and navigation teams.

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© Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Ukraine says five regions damaged overnight after wave of drone and missile attacks by Russia

• Analysis: Trump team reveals lack of expertise – and patience – as it threatens to abandon peace talks

Russian troops recaptured the village of Oleshnya in Russia’s western Kursk region from Ukrainian forces, the RIA state news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Saturday.

Reuters said it could not independently verify the battlefield report.

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© Photograph: Will Oliver/UPI/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Will Oliver/UPI/REX/Shutterstock

Mary Annette Pember’s expansive and shocking book Medicine River looks at the many ways that the US has tried to dehumanise and eradicate Native families

Mary Annette Pember will publish her first book, Medicine River, on Tuesday. She signed to write it in 2022 but feels she really started work more than 50 years ago, “before I could even write, when I was under the table as a kid, making these symbols that were sort of my own”.

A citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, Pember is a national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today. In Medicine River, she tells two stories: of the Indian boarding schools, which operated in the US between the 1860s and the 1960s, and of her mother, her time in such a school and the toll it took.

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© Photograph: Photo by Father William Hughes, 1932./“Archival Collections, Raynor Library, Marquette University, Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, 9-1, St. Mary’s Mission, Odanah”

© Photograph: Photo by Father William Hughes, 1932./“Archival Collections, Raynor Library, Marquette University, Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, 9-1, St. Mary’s Mission, Odanah”

Chancellor supports economic ties with Beijing as she prepares to fly to US next week for trade deal talks

Rachel Reeves has dismissed the idea of economically disengaging from China, amid concerns the US may put pressure on the UK to limit its deals with Beijing.

The chancellor, who will discuss a trade deal with the US on a trip to Washington next week, said it would be “very foolish” for Britain to have less involvement with Xi Jinping’s administration.

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© Photograph: Danny Lawson/Reuters

© Photograph: Danny Lawson/Reuters

Rey Mysterio spoke to Fox News Digital at WrestleMania After Dark at LIV Fontainebleau in Las Vegas ahead of WrestleMania 41 and talked about his match.

The Indian photographer captures his neighbour breathing fire at the finale of a major Hindu festival

In a narrow lane in Kolkata, West Bengal, Ankit Ghosh paused for a moment to take this photo. Ghosh was among crowds attending Vijaya Dashami, the last day of the Durga Puja, a festival he describes as “cultural potpourri”. He says, “It’s celebrated all across India, but there is no other place to experience it better than West Bengal. As this was the grand finale, the atmosphere was one of joy, pride and celebration.”

The man in the photo is Ghosh’s neighbour. “He’s a fine performer of this trick, which you don’t see very often; it is generally saved up for special festivals and celebrations,” Ghosh says. “The liquid in the air is kerosene [paraffin], which is spat upwards through a lit matchstick to create these cloudy flames.

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© Photograph: Ankit Ghosh, India, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

© Photograph: Ankit Ghosh, India, Shortlist, Youth Competition, Sony World Photography Awards 2025

Michigan has reported a measles outbreak after three cases were confirmed in Montcalm County, following seven other U.S. states with marked outbreaks.

The "Minecraft" movie has dominated the box office but led to headaches for theater owners as audiences create messes for social media clout, a bad sign for society, an expert says.

Authorities did not immediately release the identities of the deceased.

An escaped California inmate wanted for killing the leader of an elite Mexican police unit while on the run was arrested in Tijuana, Mexico.

The singer on a precious photograph of his mother, losing his brother and the wonders of cooking with butter

Born in California, Gregory Porter, 53, released his Grammy-nominated debut album, Water, in 2010. He went on to receive best jazz vocal album Grammys for Liquid Spirit in 2014 and Take Me to the Alley in 2017. He sang for Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee and was the first celebrity to sing a lullaby on CBeebies Bedtime Stories. Next week, he begins a UK tour. He is married with two children and lives in California.

What is your greatest fear?
Immunity to cruelty.

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© Photograph: Erik Umphery

© Photograph: Erik Umphery

Bryce James is the second and youngest son of LeBron James.

News outlets pull articles featuring ‘psychologist and sex adviser’ Barbara Santini amid doubts over her credentials

Over the past couple of years, the Oxford-educated psychologist Barbara Santini has been widely quoted as an expert. She has contributed thoughts on everything from the psychological impact of the Covid pandemic to the importance of vitamin D and how playing darts can improve your health.

However, her pronouncements have begun to disappear from articles after concerns that Santini may not be all that she appears. Major news outlets have removed entire articles featuring Santini, or comments made by her, after a series of questions were raised over her qualifications – and even whether her entire identity could be an elaborate hoax.

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© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Thirty years ago on April 19, 1995, a truck bomb detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people in the deadliest homegrown attack on U.S. soil.

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"The Dukes of Hazzard" is currently being honored at a new exhibition by the Hollywood Museum titled "Iconic Rides," where the General Lee is displayed.

The writer’s previously unpublished notes from her sessions with a psychiatrist offer an incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression and creativity

Last month, the New York Public Library opened the doors on one of its most thrilling acquisitions of recent times: the archive of Joan Didion and her husband and collaborator John Gregory Dunne. After two years of preparation, both scholars and anyone with a library card can arrange a visit to pore over the material contained in a total of 336 boxes of correspondence, photographs and screenplays from the couple’s joint projects, which included the 1976 version of A Star Is Born and the film that in 1971 provided Al Pacino with his first leading role, The Panic in Needle Park.

Alongside material evidence of two long writing careers, there is much that is deeply personal: paperwork recording the naming of orchids in honour of Didion, Dunne and their adopted daughter Quintana, the couple’s only child; kitchen notebooks and lists of party guests; the handmade cards and pressed flowers that the young Quintana made for “the best mom ever”. But it is infinitely more troubled times that are the subject of a new book drawn from the archive, Notes to John – accounts of Didion’s sessions with psychiatrist Roger MacKinnon at the turn of the century, in which she discussed her daughter’s struggles with alcohol addiction and depression and the writer’s attempts to excavate the roots of their relationship in her own formative years.

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© Photograph: John Bryson/Getty Images

© Photograph: John Bryson/Getty Images

Social media is turning the spring festival into yet another opportunity for lavish spending. What’s in your #EasterBasket?

As a child, I was keenly aware of the inequitable practices of the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the so-called Easter Bunny. How could it be that my teeth were less valuable than Abbie Smith-Arthur’s? Why was my stocking sock-sized, and the Walter boys next door had novelty sacks the size of their sofa? For what reason did I get but one big Easter egg, and Bethany down the road got 11?

If I was a child today, I would be even more confused (and radicalised), thanks to the relentless rise of “Eastermas”. More than quarter of British adults now buy Easter presents, giving their loved ones not only chocolate but flowers, toys and clothes. On TikTok, videos tagged #EasterBasket show the headphones, trainers, face creams, keyrings, hoodies, teddies and concert tickets that parents bestow upon their children – in short, more gifts than most people receive at Christmas. I won’t deny that it is nice to give each other nice things, but I fear the trend puts pressure on parents, and normalises a level of consumption that would perhaps have been unthinkable even a decade ago.

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© Photograph: Elisabeth Mandl/Reuters

© Photograph: Elisabeth Mandl/Reuters

A poet’s memoir of family, trauma, and Virginia Woolf pulses with feeling and intelligence

Like most kids, Heather Christle was drilled about “stranger danger”. Like some, she had a family codeword designed to show that an adult picking them up from school when her mother was busy could be trusted. But, in her American home town in the 1980s, no other kid’s word was a bygone British sweet. And so “Dolly Mixture” joins the growing list of things learned from her English mother that Christle, looking back, finds out of place. Things such as dining etiquette, cardigans, M&S outfits, margarine. But also bigger stuff: beliefs and behaviours. Assumptions. Silence. Shame.

With her mother in her 70s and their relationship strained, Christle, a poet and academic, embarks on a quest for new understanding – of her mother, of “Englishness”, and of herself. In a memoir that pulses with feeling and intelligence, she excavates the past to expose difficult truths. As she proved with her acclaimed 2019 cultural history of tears, The Crying Book, she excels at facing the unfaceable, weaving her personal experience into the wider tapestry of science, history, politics and other people’s lives.

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© Photograph: The National Trust Photolibrary/Alamy

© Photograph: The National Trust Photolibrary/Alamy

A California trial lawyer breaks down an analysis of what the judge in the Menendez brothers resentencing hearings is considering when factoring in a potential prison release.

Lara Valkyria and Dakota Kai give advice to the female stars who will perform at NXT Stand & Deliver Saturday in an interview with Fox News Digital.

Orange Crush is expected to draw tens of thousands of people to Tybee Island, Georgia, this Easter weekend. Event organizers promise to keep the event safe and clean.

Americans take to social media to sound off about the REAL ID requirement starting May 7 in order for U.S. air travelers to fly domestically. A TSA spokesperson shared updates.

After Iran’s declaration that it will not make concessions on its illegal nuclear weapons program, a second round of talks between the U.S. and Tehran get underway in Rome.

Our writers made their predictions with the NBA postseason tipping off in proper on Saturday afternoon

Absolutely not. Could it stand to be a little shorter? Sure. Do the referees need to be more judicious with when they intervene? I’d argue they do. But the real problem the NBA faces is, in my opinion, a PR one. Its loudest voices should spend less time pearl-clutching and more time celebrating. Claire de Lune

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© Composite: Getty Images

© Composite: Getty Images

“Real Time” host Bill Maher is not rallying behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, as the Democratic nominee in 2028. Maher began the panel discussion Friday by pointing to how the prominent “Squad” member and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have been getting large crowds at their “Fight Oligarchy” rallies across the country, prompting one audience member to loudly...

After seeing the footage, a school board member called Karly Anderson's alleged actions "deplorable" and "disgusting."

The suspect in the arson at the Pennsylvania governor's mansion allegedly made a 911 call after the incident in which he explained that he was motivated by the war in Gaza.

Statistics can help assess a potential recruit’s emotional control and leadership, while highlighting red flags

“The players didn’t show enough fight.” Listen to any pundit’s post-match reaction and you will hear variations of that soundbite. But can you analyse an athlete’s state of mind, based on their on-pitch body language?

In an era when football is increasingly leaning on data to demonstrate physical attributes, statistics offering an accurate indication of a player’s psychological qualities, such as emotional control and leadership, are harder to come by. But Premier League clubs including Brighton are using a technique intended to help in that regard with selection and recruitment.

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© Composite: Guardian pictures

© Composite: Guardian pictures

Nayib Bukele has shown how brutal control can be sustained not just through force, but by raising the cost of speaking out

The Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) maximum security prison in El Salvador is the crown jewel of President Nayib Bukele’s efforts to quash not only criminal gangs, but also criticism and political opposition to his government. The “mega-prison” is also one of the more visible destinations in the emerging map of American deportations – a sprawling archipelago that includes conservative US districts, the Guantánamo military base and Central American waypoints connected by a tangle of military and charter flights.

That the two states have connected their penal architecture is no coincidence. Donald Trump’s aggressive policies towards foreigners build on Bukele’s infamous iron fist crackdown against criminal gangs: it’s a political toolkit that leverages anti-establishment anger to justify an authoritarian slide. In deploying strongman tactics to address social concerns, both leaders also cultivate a chilling culture of fear.

Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She edits the Latin America Daily Briefing

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© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Coconut yoghurt basmati with a lemony finish, served with fried spiced potatoes

These “pickled” potatoes are for anyone whose mouth waters at the idea of dousing chips in salt and vinegar, as mine does. They’re not actually pickled, but cooked in a similar way to the Indian achar style of cooking that uses particular spices alongside an acidic ingredient, such as lemon juice. They go really well with a typical south Indian curd (yoghurt) rice and a fiery little shop-bought pickle.

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© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food Styling: Emily Kydd. Prop Styling: Jennifer Kay. Food Styling Assistant: Laura Lawrence.

© Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food Styling: Emily Kydd. Prop Styling: Jennifer Kay. Food Styling Assistant: Laura Lawrence.

City residents are working out how to fill their streets with trees as evidence grows of their benefits

“I wanted to do something that would benefit as many people from the community as possible,” says Chloe Straw, pointing at a small but promising sapling visible through the window of her local cafe.

In 2023, Chloe began chatting to her neighbours in Haringey, north London, about trees. “I thought it’d be really nice to raise some money for trees on the main road. Everyone uses West Green Road, regardless of whether you have a lot of money or not, regardless of your background.”

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© Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

© Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Chicken chain has been buying up art since 2004, which it displays on walls of its restaurants

On a weekday lunchtime the Nando’s restaurant in Maponya Mall in Soweto, the sprawling former Black township on Johannesburg’s outskirts, was busy with couples, white-collar workers and older women dining alone. Behind them, a vivid graffiti portrait of a young Black woman filled the wall.

The mural, by the Cape Town artist Kilmany-Jo Liversage, is part of one of the largest private art collections in the world and, its curators believe, potentially the largest on public display.

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© Photograph: Spier Arts Trust for Nando’s Art Collection

© Photograph: Spier Arts Trust for Nando’s Art Collection

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© Illustration: Tom Gauld/The Guardian

© Illustration: Tom Gauld/The Guardian

Most working people can be put into one of three categories, from idealistic yet unambitious to greedy and immoral. But there is another option …

Of all the things wasted in our throwaway times, the greatest is wasted talent. There are millions of people around the world who could help make the world a better place, but don’t. I’m talking about the ones who have got the power to shape their own careers, though you would never know it from their utterly unsurprising résumés. About the talented folks with the world at their feet who nonetheless get stuck in mind-numbing, pointless or just plain harmful jobs.

There’s an antidote to that kind of waste, and it’s called moral ambition. Moral ambition is the will to make the world a wildly better place. To devote your working life to the great challenges of our time, whether that’s the climate crisis or corruption, gross inequality or the next pandemic. It’s a longing to make a difference – and to build a legacy that truly matters.

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© Illustration: Bruno Mangyoku/The Guardian

© Illustration: Bruno Mangyoku/The Guardian

Sonia Bompastor has her shot at ending the European champions’ reign and moving Blues step closer to history

As Chelsea’s quest for a quadruple enters its final month, there is no more imposing obstacle to navigate than this. Barcelona, the European champions in three of the past four campaigns, are once again standing in the way of the English champions as Chelsea strive to lift the only major trophy that has eluded them, and there could be no more worthy adversary.

There is more than a hint of deja vu about this semi-final. Not only because the first and second legs are taking place on the same dates, 20 April and 27 April, as they did last season, but also because it is the third straight year in which they have gone head-to-head at this stage, which both clubs can feel a touch unfortunate about. Once was tantalising. The rematch was welcome. The trilogy sounds enthralling but comes with a lingering sense that it might have been the final.

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© Composite: Guardian Sport/Shutterstock/UEFA/Getty

© Composite: Guardian Sport/Shutterstock/UEFA/Getty

Dear Abby gives advice to a parent whose mother is having difficulty picking up and taking care of her granddaughter.

“Beautiful Things” singer Benson Boone trolled the crowd at Coachella after they had an underwhelming reaction to his special guest, Brian May, last week.

The mysterious death of an artist causes havoc among siblings in a novel that astutely observes family dynamics

What would writers do without problematic patriarchs? From King Lear to Logan Roy, they are the linchpins of countless family dramas: adored fathers who dominate and damage their children in equal measure.

The new novel from Rachel Joyce, bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Miss Benson’s Beetle and others, revolves around one such man: Vic Kemp, a successful artist with four grown-up children. Vic is a widower who raised his offspring alone, and the story begins with him summoning them to a noodle bar to announce that he’s in love with a twentysomething called Bella-Mae he met online. He’s also the proud owner of a goatee, a surefire sign of an identity crisis. The offspring are aghast. “If he’s so lonely, he could get a cat,” says one.

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© Photograph: Pål Hansen

© Photograph: Pål Hansen