PSG beat Liverpool on penalties in Champions League
Slot praises ‘teams of an incredible level and intensity’
Arne Slot described Liverpool’s Champions League exit as the finest game of his career after Paris Saint‑Germain stunned Anfield with victory in a penalty shootout.
The Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma proved the decisive figure in the last-16 second leg with penalty saves from Darwin Núñez and Curtis Jones. The game had gone to extra time and penalties after Ousmane Dembélé’s winner cancelled out Liverpool’s first‑leg lead from Paris. PSG converted all four of their penalties in a flawless shootout display.
Swings between drought and floods striking from Dallas to Shanghai, while Madrid and Cairo are among cities whose climate has flipped
Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed.
Dozens more cities, including Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh have suffered a climate “flip” in the last 20 years, switching from dry to wet extremes, or vice versa. The report analysed the 100 most populous cities, plus 12 selected ones, and found that 95% of them showed a distinct trend towards wetter or drier weather.
An Australian man with heart failure has become the first person in the world to walk out of a hospital with a total artificial heart implant.
The Australian researchers and doctors behind the operation announced on Wednesday that the implant had been an “unmitigated clinical success” after the man lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor heart transplant in early March.
Luis Enrique exploded across the Anfield pitch when Désiré Doué struck the winning penalty and was still leaping on Paris Saint-Germain players and officials when they headed down the tunnel five minutes later. The reaction of someone who knows that one of the biggest obstacles to PSG’s designs on a first Champions League title is out of the way.
Liverpool suffered a role reversal in an epic last 16 second-leg tie at Anfield and their hopes of a seventh European crown are gone as a consequence. The home side were superior, profligate and lost 1-0, just as PSG did at Parc des Princes last week. The visiting goalkeeper again emerged the hero with Gianluigi Donnarumma, not Alisson, taking the acclaim after saving from Darwin Núñez and Curtis Jones in a penalty shootout. Ousmane Dembélé had levelled the tie on aggregate with an early goal but Liverpool had numerous chances to advance before the necessary spot-kicks.
Sarah Celiz wept as she sat at home watching footage from Manila’s main airport on her phone. They were tears of sadness, and of relief.
The former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, who had just landed in the capital, was surrounded by officials and being taken into custody. The international criminal court had issued an arrest warrant over his bloody “war on drugs”, in which her two sons were among the tens of thousands of people killed in deprived urban areas.
Officials at the US Agency for International Development (USAid) have begun a large-scale destruction of classified documents at their headquarters in the Ronald Reagan building in Washington DC including with shredders and using “burn bags”, according to an internal email seen by the Guardian.
The email, sent by the acting USAid secretary, Erica Y Carr, instructs staff on procedures for clearing “classified safes and personnel documents” through shredding and the use of “burn bags” marked “SECRET” throughout the day on Tuesday.
Again and again, audiences have been spoon-fed the same story: a character can only be explained by a past trauma, tantalisingly revealed in the last episode. Has the trope reached a tipping point?
You only need to look at some of the biggest stories of the past decade to realise popular culture from the late 2010s had a love affair with trauma. Online there was the personal essay boom that kept websites including BuzzFeed, Jezebel and Australia’s own Mamamia afloat. In publishing, memoirs that explored the gamut of human suffering – everything from the pampered (Prince Harry’s Spare) to the impoverished (Tara Westover’s Educated) – broke sales records. And memoirs found their fictional counterpoint in novels including Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Miranda Cowley Heller’s The Paper Palace. Even television and film were trauma-obsessed. Cue the detective who must face his own trauma before he can crack the case (True Detective, The Dry); and the advertising executive who could write perfect copy if only he could stop running from his past (Mad Men).
Our craving for tales of suffering reached a fever pitch in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. The 2015 novel follows a corporate lawyer, Jude (named after the patron saint of lost causes), as he stumbles through a glamorous life in New York, haunted by the abundance of abuse he suffered as a child. A 2022 theatrical adaptation by the Belgian theatre director Ivo Von Hove was so faithful and so bloody that when I saw it at the Adelaide festival in 2023, a woman beside me exclaimed aloud in the intermission: “Why?”
Normal service has been resumed in Germany. Perhaps it has in the Champions League, too, given Bayern Munich are in the quarter-finals for a sixth successive year. If Inter are treated with the same brutality they inflicted upon Bayer Leverkusen, whose brief spell as domestic kryptonite appears comprehensively over, they may move closer to lifting the trophy on home soil in May.
This may not have been as sedate as the walking pace at which Harry Kane nudged the opener but, in truth, it was not far off. Bayern never looked like losing even a fraction of the three-goal lead amassed in the first leg and could count once again on the England captain, whose presence on their scoresheet does not seem such a luxury any more.
The Philadelphia Eagles have confirmed they will visit the White House to celebrate their victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in this year’s Super Bowl.
The news was announced by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Tuesday, and later confirmed by an Eagles spokesperson.
15-time major winner has emergency surgery in Florida
Woods has not played on tour since 2024 Open at Troon
Tiger Woods is a near certainty to miss the Masters for just the fifth time since his debut in 1995 after confirming emergency surgery on a ruptured achilles, sustained while training at home.
Woods has not played an individual event since missing the cut at the Open Championship last summer. He is a notable absentee from the Players Championship this week, with a lack of appearances in the early part of this year partly due to the death of his mother in early February.
Barcelona qualified for the Champions League quarter-finals in the name of Carles Miñarro, as a journey they began together continued in his absence.
On Tuesday morning a funeral was held for the club doctor who had died suddenly at the team hotel three days earlier; the same evening, the players he had cared for and who had spent the previous night at the chapel of rest paid homage the only way they really could.
Planet now has 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets in the solar system combined
Astronomers have discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, giving it an insurmountable lead in the running tally of moons in the solar system.
Until recently, the “moon king” title was held by Jupiter, but Saturn now has a total of 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets combined. The team behind the discoveries had previously identified 62 Saturnian moons using the Canada France Hawaii telescope and, having seen faint hints that there were more out there, made further observations in 2023.
The stats do not read well for Paris Saint-Germain. None of the last 15 French sides to play away from home against an English opponent in Europe have managed to win, with 14 of those ending in losses. The last victory was by PSG against Manchester United in 2020-21.
Liverpool, who have won all four of their home Champions League games this season, have progressed from their last 14 knockout stage ties in this competition. The last side to eliminate them after Liverpool took an advantage into the second leg was in 2001-02 against Bayer Leverkusen.
Trump administration has axed $400m in federal funding to Columbia and detained student activist Mahmoud Khalil
The Trump administration said on Tuesday that Columbia University was “refusing to help” the Department of Homeland Security identify people for arrest on campus, after immigration authorities detained a prominent Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate over the weekend.
The Trump White House’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday the administration had given the university names of multiple individuals it accused of “pro-Hamas activity”, reiterating the administration’s intention to deport activists associated with pro-Palestinian protests.
Jessica Brösche to join Lucas Sielaff, who is reported to have returned to Germany on 6 March
A German tourist detained by US immigration authorities is due to be deported back to Germany on Tuesday after spending more than six weeks in detention, including eight days in solitary confinement.
Jessica Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist from Berlin, will reportedly join Lucas Sielaff, 25, from Bad Bibra in Saxony-Anhalt, who is reported to have returned to Germany on 6 March, after being arrested at the Mexican border on 18 February before being detained for almost two weeks.
Books about Banksy and by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé were removed, and one of the owners detained
Israeli police have raided the leading Palestinian bookshop in East Jerusalem for the second time in a month, detaining one of its owners for several hours and seizing some of its stock.
The deputy state attorney’s office had warned police that they overstepped their authority with the first raid on the shop in February. Officers again arrived at the Educational Bookshop without a warrant on Tuesday morning, staff said.
On Manchester United’s job losses, finances and new stadium, it takes hawk-like focus to work out what the co-owner is actually saying
A core strength of Ineos is direct accountability. Matrix structures are by definition amorphous, confusing, and create places for people to hide.
Hmm. That does sound bad, Sir Jim. Talk me through it one more time, these frustrating corporate shields, these blame-avoidance tactics you’re so worried about. But first could you please just come out from behind the table. And stop doing that admittedly very good Donald Duck voice.
Suddenly the ball is in Russia’s court. The flow of US intelligence and military aid to Ukraine is to resume – and the Kremlin is being asked to agree to a 30-day ceasefire that Kyiv has already told the Americans it will sign up to.
It is a dizzying turnaround from the Oval Office row between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump and the apparent abandonment of the White House’s strategy to simply pressurise Ukraine into agreeing to a peace deal. Now, for the first time, Russia is being asked to make a commitment, though it is unclear what will follow if it does sign up.
Ukraine said it was ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia, as the US announced it would immediately lift its restrictions on military aid and intelligence sharing after high-stakes talks in Saudi Arabia.
Donald Trump said he now hoped Vladimir Putin would reciprocate. If the Russian president did, it would mark the first ceasefire in the more than three years since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Announcement comes after fatal collision between military helicopter and American Airlines jet on 29 January
Federal investigators looking for the cause of the collision between a passenger jet and a US army helicopter that killed 67 people near Washington DC in late January recommended a ban on some helicopter flights on Tuesday to improve safety.
The recommendation came after a military helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet as it approached Ronald Reagan National airport over the Potomac River on 29 January. Among the victims were 28 members of the figure-skating community.
Outsider triumphs on day one of Cheltenham festival
Constitution Hill and State Man both fall independently
Amid falling crowds, increasing numbers of odds-on shots and a relentless stream of winners from the Willie Mullins yard, it has been a popular theory in recent years that the Cheltenham festival was becoming a little too … predictable. But it was debunked in the space of four chaotic minutes of extraordinary drama on Tuesday.
Jeremy Scott’s mare Golden Ace, at 25-1, emerged as one of the most unexpected of all Champion Hurdle winners, at the end of a race in which both Constitution Hill and State Man – the champions in 2023 and 2024 respectively – were fallers.
Romania’s top court has upheld a decision to ban presidential election frontrunner Călin Georgescu from standing in a rerun of the vote in May, sparking protest in Bucharest and leaving the country’s far-right parties four days to find a candidate.
Georgescu, an anti-EU, Moscow-friendly populist, surged from almost nowhere to win the first round of the country’s presidential election last year, but the result was annulled by Romania’s top court because of suspected Russian interference.
The extradition of the former president of the Philippines on an ICC warrant is an affirmation of the principles of international justice
After his arrest on an international criminal court (ICC) warrant on Tuesday, the former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, demonstrated an uncharacteristic concern for due legal process. A petition was unsuccessfully filed to his country’s supreme court to stay his extradition, as lawyers challenged the ICC’s jurisdiction, and pleas were made for any trial to take place in a Philippine court.
The relatives of those butchered during Mr Duterte’s brutal and lawless “war on drugs” will struggle to sympathise. Notoriously, many of its victims never got near a courtroom of any description. In 2016, months into a presidency in which thousands of Filipinos suffered summary executions, Mr Duterte readily acknowledged an indiscriminate dimension to the lawless carnage he had unleashed. The deaths of innocents and children, he told reporters, amounted to inevitable “collateral damage” in his mission to clean up the streets.
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Investigators will look into reports deck of cargo ship Solong was unmanned when the catastrophe took place
In the North Sea, about 12 miles off the coast of East Yorkshire, the smouldering wreck of a 183-metre tanker is being kept in place by tugboats.
The central part of the vessel has been caved in, with water gushing from a hole in its side. Sections are covered in black soot, evidence of the raging blaze that engulfed the ship when it was struck by a smaller cargo ship on Monday morning, with the flames from multiple explosions only just dying down on Tuesday afternoon.
Players believe current rules are not fit for purpose
Jay Monahan says Tour committed to making changes
The PGA Tour may be unable to conclude a deal to unify professional golf but there is, finally, progress on another key issue for spectators: slow play. Speaking ahead of the Players Championship, the Tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, revealed the imminent arrival of new sanctions which could include the naming and shaming of offenders.
The two-time major champion Collin Morikawa had already made clear that the PGA Tour’s current pace of play policies – which only occasionally sees golfers fined – are unfit for purpose. “I think you just have to start stroking guys and giving guys actual penalties, whether it be strokes or FedExCup [points],” Morikawa said. “What I’ve learned is that monetary fines are useless. We make so much money and some guys frankly could not care less.”
The European Commission has outlined proposals to increase deportations of people with no legal right to stay in the EU, but critics said it had opened the door to “prolonged detention” of people with plans for offshore detention centres.
The plans for a European returns system published on Tuesday came after EU leaders demanded “innovative solutions” to deal with undocumented migrants, in response to gains made by the far-right in last year’s European elections.
RFK Jr’s ‘Maha’ giving fresh momentum to longtime efforts to outlaw additives, which is now a bipartisan movement
At least a dozen US states – from traditionally conservative Oklahoma to liberal-leaning New York – are rushing to pass laws outlawing commonly used dyes and other chemical additives in foods, citing a need to protect public health.
In one of the most far-reaching efforts, West Virginia last week advanced a sweeping ban on a range of common food dyes that have been linked to health problems, particularly for children, with overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats.
A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) must comply with transparency laws and release its internal documents, finding the secretive operation exercises “substantial independent authority” that cannot be shielded from public scrutiny.
In a 37-page opinion issued on Monday, US district judge Christopher Cooper ordered Doge – which took over what used to be the White House’s US Digital Service (USDS) – to begin a “rolling” production of records within weeks, rejecting the Trump administration’s attempts to position it beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
Tiny bits of plastic can end up in water and soil at alarming levels, said lead author of University of Missouri paper
Fertilizers that shed microplastics are increasingly spreading on America’s cropland, research shows, raising new worry about the soil contamination and safety of the US food supply.
A peer-reviewed University of Missouri paper found common types of controlled-release fertilizers are often encapsulated with plastic and can be so small that they could be considered microplastics. Those are designed to break down into even smaller pieces of plastic once spread in fields.
Mayor who rose to president bragged about a violent past and revelled in attacks on women and the press
As Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte was notorious for his boasting.
With cowboyish bravado, he bragged about a past when he cruised around on his motorbike looking for suspected criminals to kill, or at age 16 stabbed someone to death. In 2016 he joked about missing out on the chance to rape an Australian missionary before she was murdered in jail in 1989.
Lamine Yamal and Raphinha put on an attacking masterclass in the first half to swat aside Benfica and make it to the quarter-finals
Barcelona get the ball rolling. The city so beautiful in the background. Ah, memories of the diving at the 1992 Olympics.
The teams are out. Barcelona are in their famous blaugrana, Benfica in third-choice white/silver/grey with neon yellow trim. A crackling atmosphere at the Olímpic Lluís Companys despite the place not yet totally full, as per Steve McManaman. We’ll be off once a poignant moment is taken to remember Carles Minarro Garcia.
Attack on Moscow as peace talks began was designed to reinforce Kyiv’s proposal for an air truce with Russia
Ukraine’s decision to launch a drone attack into Russia as the next phase of peace negotiations involving delegations from Washington and Kyiv began is a clear demonstration that its military capacity has not yet been significantly dented by Donald Trump’s decision to withhold military intelligence last week.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had attacked with 337 drones, 91 of which were aimed at Moscow and the surrounding region. Three people were reported to have been killed, all four of the Russian capital’s airports had to be closed, and local air defences were not entirely effective in repelling the assault.
The wild child ‘gabber pop’ rapper was booted off last year’s song contest. But his song Europapa eclipsed the winner’s – and he’s about to tour the world in his gigantic shoulder pads
Joost Klein is arguably the first artist to triumph at the Eurovision song contest without actually performing in the final. In May last year, the 27-year-old Dutch wild child “gabber pop” rapper was disqualified from the world’s largest live music event just hours before he was due to perform Europapa to 170 million TV viewers around the globe.
This song – a chaotic but catchy ode to the father he lost as a teenager, and to the free movement of people ethos his father instilled in him – was touted as a favourite. But instead of gearing up for his big moment, Klein spent seven hours that day sitting in his changing room in a reflex-blue, Ursula-von-der-Leyen-meets-Vivienne-Westwood suit with gigantic shoulder pads, fearing he was about to be arrested – on live TV – over a “backstage incident” after the semi-final the previous evening. Swedish host broadcaster SVT filed a police complaint accusing Klein of “threatening behaviour” by pushing a female camera operator’s equipment. Entertainment careers have been cancelled for less.
SXSW film festival: The Oscar winner’s first film role for six years shows his undeniable magnetism but squanders it on a baggy mix of tones and genres
In the past six years, the Academy award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, the reigning prince of Austin, Texas, has kept busy. He raised his three kids in the city, written and released a bestselling memoir on “easy-livin’” (“because life is a verb”), taught in the film department at the University of Texas at Austin, pleaded for gun control at the White House after the horrific school shooting in his home town of Uvalde and “seriously considered” running for governor of Texas. But he has not acted on screen – relegating his last two film roles, underwhelming romps in Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum and Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, to the distant memory of a pre-pandemic 2019. With the end of the 2010s, the energy of the McConnaissance went elsewhere.
That is, until Monday, when McConaughey returned to red carpet promotional duties for the premiere of The Rivals of Amziah King, his first film role in six years, to a very friendly hometown crowd at SXSW. Atypically for a non-director, McConaughey introduced the movie himself with typical folksiness, in a stump speech worthy of someone still mulling a run for political office. “I thought I’d been busy,” he said as explanation for his absence from the screen. But the writer-director Andrew Patterson courted him back to acting with this “love story of a whole bunch of misfits and underdogs coming together”.
The Rivals of Amziah King is screening at the SXSW film festival and will be released at a later date
Since pontiff was hospitalised conspiracy theories have swirled online claiming he has died
While Pope Francis was being treated for double pneumonia, Italian TikToker Ottavo made his way unchallenged into a ward at Gemelli hospital in Rome, followed by a camera. His aim was to bolster a conspiracy theory circulating on social media for weeks: that the 88-year-old pontiff was dead “and the Vatican refuses to tell us”.
“There’s no security at all – nothing whatsoever,” he told his 10,000 followers in the video. “I would never have been able to get this far if he were there. For that reason, in my opinion, Pope Francis passed away.”
Donald Trump said he is buying a “brand new Tesla” and blamed “Radical Left Lunatics” for “illegally” boycotting Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company. The announcement came a day after Tesla suffered its worst share price fall in nearly five years.
Later, the president also said he would label violence against Tesla showrooms as domestic terrorism. Trump was responding to a question during a Tuesday press conference, in which a reporter said, “Talk to us about some of the violence that’s been going on around the country at Tesla dealerships. Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists.”
One simple exercise proved older adults can build and retain muscle – and caused a paradigm shift in science
In 1988, 712 people lived at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged, a Boston nursing home affectionately named “Hebrew rehab” by its residents and staff. The residents’ average age was 88, and three-quarters of them were women. Every resident had multiple medical conditions. Almost half required help to engage in the essential activities of daily life: getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, bathing, walking, eating. But they were survivors. Some had survived the Holocaust. Others fled the Cossacks. They all lived through the Great Depression.
They were idealresearch subjects for Maria Fiatarone, a young doctor and faculty member in geriatric medicine at both Tufts and Harvard. In terrible shape, with lifetimes of practice overcoming great challenges: to Fiatarone, they were perfect.
Police launch criminal investigation while local leaders call on Starmer to prevent environmental catastrophe
Police have detained the master of the container ship Solong as experts voiced growing fears over the environmental impact of the collision in the North Sea.
The 59-year-old was arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter after the search was called off for a sailor onboard the Solong, which drifted ablaze off the coast of Yorkshire on Tuesday.
Donald Trump has announced he is doubling tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% as a retaliation for the province of Ontario’s imposition of a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to several US states, in a dramatic escalation of the trade war between the two ostensibly allied countries.
“Based on Ontario, Canada, placing a 25% Tariff on ‘Electricity’ coming into the United States, I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to ad [sic] an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Former Barclays boss told Jeffrey Epstein suspicious withdrawals from his account were being investigated
The former bank boss Jes Staley pushed JP Morgan to keep Jeffrey Epstein as a client despite human trafficking concerns and told him suspicious withdrawals from his account were being investigated, a court has heard.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) put the allegations to the ex-chief executive of Barclays during his second day of witness testimony at the upper tribunal in London.
The Columbia University graduate’s arrest is an attempt to destroy free thinking while murdering due process
Forced disappearance, kidnapping, political imprisonment – take your pick. These terms all describe what has happened with the Trump administration’s first arrest for thought crimes, something that should never happen in a democracy.
But it has, to Mahmoud Khalil, a recently graduated master’s student from Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs. And for each minute that Khalil is held in detention, every one of us should feel like our own individual rights in this country are being shredded. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is a barefaced attempt by the Trump administration to destroy free thinking while murdering due process and free speech along the way. This is an ominous development.
On the podcast today: Manchester City part ways with Gareth Taylor just days before their League Cup final against Chelsea, with Nick Cushing stepping in as interim manager. What went wrong, and what does this mean for City’s season?
In addition to layoffs and hiring freezes, a ‘God squad’ can effectively veto ESA protections for endangered species
Donald Trump’s administration, backed by House Republicans and Elon Musk’s Doge agency, are carrying out an attack on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and federal wildlife agencies that, if successful, will almost certainly drive numerous species into extinction, environmental advocates warn.
The three-pronged attack is designed to freeze endangered wildlife protections to more quickly push through oil, gas and development projects, opponents say.
Baloch Liberation Army claims to have killed 30 military personnel after blowing up tracks in Balochistan region
A separatist militant group in Pakistan’s south-western Balochistan province says it has taken 214 hostages including military personnel after hijacking a train, as the country’s security situation continues to decline sharply.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) blew up the tracks and fired on the Jaffar Express train as it travelled through a tunnel in a remote and mountainous area, bringing the train to a halt.
They won a Grammy, risked being shot in the US and were adored by Bob Marley. As they go on tour, the band look back on half a century of being a voice for the voiceless
In the late 1970s, whenever young Birmingham reggae band Steel Pulse performed their song Ku Klux Klan, the group’s vocalists would theatrically wear white KKK hoods onstage to illustrate the song’s lyrics, which excoriated the Klan’s violence, racism and cowardice. British audiences loved it and understood the power of a black band making such a striking visual statement, but in America it was different.
“American audiences were sort of dumbstruck and flabbergasted,” says lead singer David Hinds, now 68, remembering their first US visit, in 1981. “They told us they didn’t even know there were black people in England, let alone would do a song like Ku Klux Klan. In Boston a white guy jumped out of the audience and started a struggle onstage. In the end the police came and dragged him off. Our elderly African American T-shirt seller said he was scared for us every time we went onstage. He’d say ‘You don’t know America. This place is something else.’”
Building and Wood Workers’ International makes claim
Stadium in question is Azteca in Mexico City
Fifa has been accused of reneging on a commitment to ensure workers’ safety on World Cup projects by refusing inspectors access to observe conditions inside Mexico’s Azteca Stadium.
Representatives from the trade union the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) say they were told on Monday before a planned visit that they would not be allowed access to the 80,000-capacity venue, which is being renovated for the 2026 World Cup.
Several hundred student protesters have blocked Serbia’s public television station building in Belgrade as tensions soar days before a large rally planned for the weekend that is billed as the climax of months of anti-government demonstrations.
The students, who first blocked the TV building in the capital’s city centre late on Monday, gathered again in their hundreds on Tuesday after announcing that their blockade would last for at least 22 hours. A similar blockade was organised in the country’s second-largest city, Novi Sad.
The cookbook designer and former owner of Shop Ate Cafe & Store on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula shares his seasonal, Australian take on his Sicilian heritage
Many of my favourite recipes come from Sunday pranzo – lunch – at our family farm on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, surrounded by Italian flavours. The food I love to eat and make is layered with Sicilian heritage and history.
On paper, Don Siegel’s 1971 southern gothic melodrama The Beguiled appears the perfect candidate for a remake: a critical and commercial failure in its own time, its infamous reputation helped it linger in the margins of popular consciousness. Sofia Coppola would have thought as much when she directed her own take on Thomas P Cullinan’s source novel in 2017. While Coppola’s version is full of distinct beauty, Siegel’s original stands alone in its unyielding thorniness.
That may have seemed like a career misstep for star Clint Eastwood upon its initial release but it now stands clearly as one of the most potent subversions of the masculine archetype he helped popularise.
Trans people are twice as likely as US adults overall to serve in the armed forces. But we’re regularly told our careers and lives aren’t worth saving
Late last month, the Trump administration moved to fire transgender people serving in the armed forces.
This includes those who have honorably served for for 19 years (one year short of retirement) those who have served honorably in combat situations, and those in whom the military has already invested millions of dollars in training.
A run on gold in the US – fanned by fears of a global trade war – has given Australia its first trade surplus with the US in decades, undermining the government’s key argument for exemption from Donald Trump’s impending global tariff regime.
Australia will reportedly be included in a comprehensive global tariff regime of 25% on aluminium and steel imports from Wednesday, which is set to expand to other sectors, such as agriculture and pharmaceuticals, in coming months.
World cuisines that use curd cheeses frequently sub in cottage cheese, even in sweet dishes – read on for inspiration
Why is everyone talking about cottage cheese, and can you make anything that’s actually good with it? “I’ve never understood why cottage cheese has such a bad rep,” says Tommy Banks, chef/director of The Black Swan at Oldstead, Roots York and The Abbey Inn in North Yorkshire, who is a big fan of the white stuff. “It’s deliciously creamy and so versatile; I use it in both sweet and savoury dishes at home, where it’s a staple.” And he’s not kidding: Banks has it for lunch just about every weekday, either with scrambled eggs or tinned fish. “It’s a great, affordable, high-protein quick-fix.”
There’s no denying that the diet food from the 1980s is experiencing something of a revival, thanks to videos of ice-cream, flatbread and pancakes made from the curds and whey receiving millions of views on TikTok over the past year or so. However, it is also a good alternative to urda, a Balkan cheese made from leftover whey that, when Irina Janakievska moved to the UK 20 years ago, was impossible to find here. “I started using cottage cheese instead,” says the author of The Balkan Kitchen. “And while it isn’t a direct substitute, it is versatile.” For a riff on a Balkan-style filo or hand-stretched savoury pastry (“such as gibanica, banitsa or burek”), Janakievska combines cottage cheese, fried leeks and blanched and roughly chopped greens (spinach, chard, sorrel, nettles, say), then binds them with an egg before swaddling in filo and baking.
It’s great for those who enjoy a punch-up on the right, but as the zealots duke it out, think of the voters who trusted them
How soon before one of Reform’s MPs starts touting himself as the reform Reform candidate? A negative amount of time, it seems, with Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe already relieved of the whip for saying that Reform is currently “a protest party led by the Messiah”. Yep: Jesus Christ Superkings.
Anyway, Nigel Farage has taken all this as well as you might expect. In terms of what’s happened since, with even Nigel judging that “things have got a little bit out of control”, I’m finding it quite hard to immerse myself fully in every angle. Mainly because I’m worried it’s going to be one of those stories that demeans men – and I’m a passionate supporter of their involvement in politics, whatever people are saying about DEI nowadays.
From Jason Isaacs’ shocking flash to Theo James wearing a prosthetic he described as ‘ginormous’, the luxury resort drama is packed with male nudity. Why are so many men going full frontal?
Lucius Malfoy just showed us his wand. In the fourth and latest episode of The White Lotus, viewers saw more of actor Jason Isaacs than they expected. Several inches more. We screamed in unison with his character’s grossed-out children. You didn’t get that at Hogwarts.
As wealthy patriarch Timothy Ratliff, he has been steadily coming off the rails at the five-star Thai resort. The dodgy dealings upon which he built his high-finance empire have been uncovered by journalists in the US. The feds are closing in. Assets have been seized. He is desperately trying to cover his tracks to avoid jail time, while hiding the scandal from his dysfunctional family, who were forced into a digital detox upon arrival at the spa. Safe to say they will have a fair few notifications when they switch their phones back on.
Trump is expected to privatize the USPS, where Black people make up 29% of the staff, and cut down on the number of jobs
In recent weeks, the fate of the United States Postal Service (USPS), a revered and vital public institution, has been uncertain. Since the start of his second presidency, Donald Trump has launched major changes to the federal government. Along with billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the president has carried out widespread layoffs at agencies such as the Small Business Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with the purported goal of cutting costs and boosting efficiency. Now, Trump is turning his focus to the post office, an agency he has long been critical of and one that he may be privatizing.
In addition to delivering upwards of 343.5m pieces of mail and packages a day, the post office is responsible for administering official government forms such as passport applications, and providing banking services, such as money orders. As of 2025, it employs 640,000 people. Black people, in particular, make up 29% of its staff, while making up just 12% of the national workforce overall.
Fashion week also brings Louis Vuitton showcasing cinematic romance of train travel
Chanel came gift-wrapped in black ribbon at Paris fashion week. The ribbon was made of steel, not silk. It was the width of a city street and 368 metres long, soaring skywards beside the long catwalk like very pretty scaffolding. The message: the house of Chanel is as tough as it is chic.
New designer Matthieu Blazy is expected to take up his role next month, by which time Chanel will have been without a creative lead for almost a year. This design vacuum poses a challenge for the house, but Chanel still has a star designer – albeit one who has been dead for 54 years.
It’s tough being a nepo baby – especially when your daddy suddenly loses his influence
Poor Hunter Biden. His dad, who issued him an unconditional pardon as one of his last acts as US president, saved him from the justice system – but it’s quite apparent no one is coming to save his art career.
You may have had other things on your mind lately, so let me remind you about the trajectory of one of the US’s most controversial artists. Just a few years ago, Joe Biden’s troubled son, who had previously earned megabucks sitting on various boards doing mysterious board things, was enjoying remarkable success as an “emerging” artist. His paintings were being exhibited in a fancy New York gallery and selling for large sums. Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer and friend of Biden, reportedly bought 11 works for a total of $875,000 (£690,000). Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a Democratic donor, bought two paintings, for $42,000 and $52,000. All in all, Hunter sold art for about $1.5m between 2021 and 2024. Not too shabby for someone considered an amateur.
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The social, educational and financial impact is still making itself felt, especially for those who continue to mourn
Five years ago, on 11 March 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. In the intervening years, more than 7 million people worldwide have been reported to have died from Covid. For most people, life as they remember it before the outbreak has returned to the way it was before. However, respondents to a Guardian callout reflect a more complex picture for those who are still affected.
While many reported feeling happier that working from home has allowed for a more flexible work-life balance and that eating more healthily and exercising has become a priority, many others described how they still live with what happened.
President sacks Alusine Kanneh after video of him with Johannes Leijdekkers, one of Europe’s most wanted
Sierra Leone’s president has fired the head of the immigration service days after footage was published showing him receiving a birthday gift from a fugitive Dutch drug kingpin.
The footage of Alusine Kanneh being handed a present by Johannes Leijdekkers – which has not been independently verified by the Guardian – was published by the investigative outlet Follow the Money and the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on Friday.
Senior US and Ukrainian officials are meeting in Saudi Arabia for crunch talks focused on ending the war with Russia, aiming to build confidence despite a personal crisis between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Although the two presidents will be absent, Zelenskyy has sent his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, while Trump dispatched his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, to Jeddah.
Cameron is pulling out all the stops to promote Avatar: Fire and Ash, by telling the world that it reduced Suzy Amis Cameron to tears for four hours
Can you feel it? If you’re paying enough attention, and you have your spirit tuned to the frequencies of the planet, then you’ll be able to sense that the old Avatar machinery is starting to crank up again. The third instalment of the series, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is set for release in December. And this means that James Cameron finds himself saddled with a familiar task; in just nine months he has to try and motivate people to see a film from a franchise that they’ve already forgotten about twice before now.
The bad news is that these are incredibly expensive films to make. So expensive, in fact, that Cameron previously stated that the second film needed to be the third highest grossing movie of all time just to break even. And, just to compound things, that film was such an incomprehensible mishmash of confused mythology, nondescript motivation and vague characterisation that this one needs to be something really special to get bums on seats.
NFL star Odell Beckham Jr has denied any wrongdoing after saying he was named in a lawsuit that alleges Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs initiated a gang-rape against a woman in California.
In an initial lawsuit filed in October, Ashley Parham claims she was lured to an apartment in Orinda, California, and assaulted by multiple men. She alleges the assault was watched by Combs, who she had claimed had played a part in the killing of Tupac Shakur. An amended lawsuit filed on Friday is understood to have named former Beckham as one of her attackers.
Hannah Jones says she considered quitting last year
WRU allegedly threatened pulling out of World Cup
The Wales captain, Hannah Jones, has said that the squad’s experience in a contract controversy last year was “disgraceful” and made her contemplate international retirement.
Allegations emerged in October that the Welsh Rugby Union had threatened to withdraw from the 2025 Rugby World Cup if the women’s team did not sign new contracts on offer. Jones says the negotiations last year were difficult “from day one” and that communication with the WRU was a “big issue”, with some of her players “becoming unwell physically and mentally” because of the process.
Westchester county has laws limiting cooperation, but Ice has accessed trove of data that holds license plate readers
As Donald Trump’s administration ramps up its crackdown on undocumented immigrants to the US, advocates are increasingly worried immigration agents will turn to surveillance technology to round up those targeted for deportation, even in so-called “sanctuary cities” that limit the ways local law enforcement can cooperate with immigration officials.
That’s because US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (Ice) in past years has gained access to troves of data from sanctuary cities that could aid its raids and enforcement actions. Among that information is data from the vast network of license plate readers active across the US, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.
As mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, Randall Woodfin is trying to tackle a murder epidemic. He’s all too familiar with the pain of losing a loved one to violence
It was past midnight on 27 May 2012 when Randall Woodfin, an early-career public prosecutor, received a call about his older brother. “Ralph’s been shot,” he was told, abruptly. “You need to come.”
He jumped in a car, and raced across the city of Birmingham, Alabama, running every red light along the way. He made it to the police perimeter. It was a block and a half from his grandmother’s old home, at a public-housing project in the city’s south, where the two brothers – eight years apart – had spent much of their childhood.
Oscar Jégou’s fine Dublin performance brings into focus the potential impact of forwards who can play anywhere
The Six Nations title is still theoretically on the line entering the final weekend. But, let’s be honest, if France display the same power against Scotland as they did against Ireland in Dublin there is only one probable outcome. Even minus the unfortunate Antoine Dupont, now facing a long lay-off because of damaged knee ligaments, France have frightening reserves of strength and depth.
How good, for example, was the young back-row forward Oscar Jégou after he arrived off the bench to replace the centre Pierre-Louis Barassi? The 21-year-old from La Rochelle did not simply make a try-scoring impact; he made every specialist centre in the competition shift uneasily in their seats. Why bother with a subtle, ball-playing 12 or 13 when you have a 6ft 3in Superman who makes old-school positional orthodoxies redundant?
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From The White Lotus to Industry, hedonism is everywhere on TV at the moment. Actors, and the ‘wellbeing facilitators’ tasked with keeping them safe, reveal the trick to acting under the influence
“Iam not a big drinker, I don’t do drugs, I don’t smoke,” says Sagar Radia, best known as the ruthless, potty-mouthed trader Rishi Ramdani in the HBO/BBC banking saga Industry. “But when friends and family watch, they’re like: ‘You look like you do know what you’re doing.’”
Nowhere was this more the case than in season three’s White Mischief, an episode focused entirely on the character’s grim descent into gambling addiction, inflamed by booze and cocaine. Previously described by a colleague as “the ghost of Margaret Thatcher in a handsome Asian kid”, here Rishi starts to look more like a disgraced Tory MP in the 90s, as he binges on shots and coke in a seedy casino. At first he’s euphoric – dancing like a drunk uncle at a wedding – but soon his behaviour becomes erratic, his movements shaky and impaired, his legs unsteady. Despite rising debts, he gambles away all he has, and even seems to consider pawning his wedding ring for a few, long seconds. The next morning, we see him stagger into work on a comedown – bloody cuts and bruises all over his face.
European markets have risen and the euro gained against the dollar to the highest level since the US election, as the greenback sank against other leading currencies amid mounting “Trumpcession” fears.
The euro rose sharply, breaking above $1.09 for the first time since early November, when Donald Trump’s election victory sent the dollar soaring. That “Trump trade” has unwound, as new US tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China, and the threat of more levies against European trading partners, have triggered fears of an American recession.
The movement unites ‘family values’ conservatives and tech bro rightwingers. Will this incoherent coalition hold?
In his first address to the United States after becoming vice-president, JD Vance stood on stage and proclaimed: “I want more babies in the United States of America.” Weeks later, Donald Trump signed an executive order pledging support for in vitro fertilization, recognizing “the importance of family formation and that our nation’s public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children”.
In late January, aDepartment of Transportation memo directed the agency to prioritize projects that “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average”. And last week, it was reported thatElon Musk, the unelected head of the government-demolishing “department of governmental efficiency” and a man who has said that the “collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far”, hadbecome a father of 14.
The Guardianas del Conchalito ignored chants of ‘get back to your kitchens’, determined to protect the environment and create a sustainable shellfish operation
Ahead of the small boat, as it bobs on the waters near La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California, is a long line of old plastic bottles strung together on top of the waves. Underneath them are as many as 100,000 oysters, waiting to be sold to the upmarket hotels down the coast.
Cheli Mendez, who oversees the project, pulls a shell up from below, cuts it open with a knife, and gives me the contents to try: a plump, tasty oyster. Mendez is one of a group known as Guardianas del Conchalito, or guardians of the shells, and theirs is the first oyster-growing business in the region run entirely by women, she says.
The women dug a channel with shovels and pickaxes to allow seawater to reach the mangroves
Highly toxic jet fuel leaking from oil tanker threatens local ecosystems as investigations begin into collision’s cause
Leaking fuel from the collision between a cargo ship and oil tanker in the North Sea would have a “devastating” impact on marine life, experts have said, as investigations began into the cause of the incident.
Fires continued to burn onboard both vessels 24 hours after the Stena Immaculate tanker and cargo ship Solong collided off the coast of Yorkshire on Monday morning. A search for a missing crew member was called off overnight.
Notorious for his drug-fuelled literary experiments and the fact that he shot his partner, beat writer Burroughs also made art inspired by the climate crisis
One day 51 years ago, out in the wilds of New Mexico, Kathelin Gray asked a question of her hero, the writer and artist William S Burroughs, whom she had just met. “William, I have read your books and I must know: what is your attitude to women?”
The question had been eating away at Gray for the best part of a decade. As a teenage babysitter, she read Burroughs’ novel The Naked Lunch and was blown away by it. “The very yuckiness of the imagery, the critique of predatory capitalism, the degrading sex and violence – all that spoke to me,” she says.
Seven health professionals who worked with football legend in days before his death face trial in Argentina
An Argentinian neurosurgeon and six other medical professionals have gone on trial in Buenos Aires over the death of the legendary footballer Diego Maradona.
Ardent admirers of the World Cup-winning star, who died in November 2020 aged 60, gathered outside the courtroom to demand punishment for the people they blame for Maradona’s premature death.
Hassan Diab, who maintains innocence in 1980 Paris attack, fears extradition fight as rightwing media seizes on his case
Until recently, Hassan Diab’s life in Ottawa had begun to settle back into a quiet suburban routine: spending his days teaching sociology part time at Carleton University, taking his two youngest children to the park to play football, or going for an afternoon swim.
It had been well over a year since he was convicted in absentia for carrying out a deadly bomb attack on a Paris synagogue in 1980, and the media attention had largely quieted down. He was trying to move on with his life.
Twenty-five years after her debut album, the star is still loving life as a ‘continual working girl’. She talks about menopause, mastectomy and her bizarre failure to crack her native America
After Anastacia had a double mastectomy in 2013, she began to joke about it. “It was wild to look at myself. I said: ‘My boobs look like this!’” She peers at me with her eyes screwed shut. We are sharing a sofa in a photographic studio in London. I’m not sure what she means, but she belts out, “No eyeballs!” (Typically, nipples come towards the end of reconstructive surgery.) Even in hospital, “I would make jokes and be funny,” she says. “I’m lucky.” Lucky isn’t how many people would feel after getting breast cancer for the second time, but preventive surgery was her choice and, she says, “I can accept it when I find humour in it. Being able to take the mick out of myself and my toxic titties!– See! There you go! – it takes the sting out of it.”
Anastacia has always been like this, she says. Back when she used to break her older sister Shawn’s dolls, “cos the arms didn’t go in a certain direction”, her mum tried to punish her. She gave Shawn brand new dolls, and Anastacia the broken ones. But Anastacia was in her element. “I played hospital. I was like ‘Whee! Whee!’” she says, bouncing her hands, busily working imaginary dolls. She made them have a great time despite their mutilations, scribbled-on faces and brutally cut hair. “Which is constantly how my life is. I was born with that in me, and it amplified as I got older and realised: ‘Oh yeah, that’s a better way to live than worrying about things.’”
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