Neither marines nor national guard troops in Los Angeles have temporarily detained anyone, Maj Gen Scott Sherman says; marines to protect federal buildings and personnel
With Donald Trump’s deployment of more troops in response to protests in LA, and as plans come together for a military parade in Washington DC on the president’s birthday, journalist Judith Levine tells Jonathan Freedland why she believes the US has entered a new era of authoritarianism in this week’s edition of US Politics Weekly. You can listen here.
With predictions of as many as 200,000 attendees at tomorrow’s Washington parade, the Secret Service is preparing for protests by erecting 18 miles of anti-scale fencing and deploying drones to the city’s skies to keep watch.
Among other concerns, the US military parade will produce as much pollution as created to heat 300 homes for a year
Donald Trump’s military parade this weekend will bring thousands of troops out to march, while dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers roll down the streets and fighter jets hum overhead.
The event has prompted concern about rising autocracy in the US. It will also produce more than 2m kilograms of planet-heating pollution – equivalent to the amount created by producing of 67m plastic bags or by the energy used to power about 300 homes in one year, according to a review by the progressive thinktank Institute for Policy Studies and the Guardian.
British No 1 cannot match world No 5 who wins 6-2, 6-4
Raducanu loses after two impressive straight-sets wins
Emma Raducanu’s positive week at Queen’s came to a difficult end as she was overpowered by Zheng Qinwen, the Chinese top seed and world No 5, who produced a stellar performance to reach her first grass court semi-final with a 6-2, 6-4 win.
After two months of trying to adapt her game to slow, unfamiliar clay courts, returning to the grass-court season on home soil has provided Raducanu with a helpful boost. She put together two impressive straight-sets wins against the Spanish qualifier Cristina Bucsa and Rebecca Sramkova, the world No 41.
Opener hits century and Bavuma bats on through injury
Heartache and South African cricket have not so much gone hand in hand over the years as been married and had a litter of kids. But provided they eke out the last 69 runs of what would be an epic run chase on day four, divorce papers can be issued and the World Test Championship mace will be theirs.
At the end of a gripping third day Australia were left praying that South Africa’s habit of imploding at global events – yes, yes, the old chokers tag – might return in the morning. Guided by a sparkling unbeaten 102 from Aiden Markram, and the captain, Temba Bavuma, hobbling through a hamstring injury to finish on 65 not out, the Proteas had reached 213 for two at stumps in pursuit of 282 to win.
Israel’s assault on Iran demonstrates a ruthless combination of air power and intelligence – and a significant disparity between the two countries in a conflict that is likely to be a long one if the goal is to eliminate Tehran’s nuclear capability.
Israel’s air force undertook waves of airstrikes, beginning at about 3am on Friday, aimed, briefings indicated, first at Iran’s military leaders and intelligence in Tehran, then switching to air defence batteries, missile launch sites and, above all, the critical facility at Natanz where uranium can be enriched to weapons grade.
War is the prime minister’s doctrine. Israel’s strikes on Iran – falsely described as pre-emptive – are the latest example
Benjamin Netanyahu must be stopped. The Israeli prime minister’s lust for war as a solution to his myriad problems is nothing short of a threat to us all, one that extends far beyond Israel’s neighbors. Netanyahu knows no other way. War is his doctrine. War is his reflex. War is his answer. He believes the power of war will unite Israeli society and will stifle any American criticism of him, necessary since the machinery he needs to make his wars comes mostly from Washington. And, with his aggression against Iran, he seeks to drag the United States further into another endless military quagmire in the region and light the world on fire.
Early on Friday morning, Israel launched a series of unprovoked strikes against Iran, targeting Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, its top scientists, its military commanders, and parts of its military and civilian infrastructure. Television images show a residential building in Tehran damaged by what looks like a missile attack. Iran, which has not suffered an assault this severe since its war with Iraq in the 1980s, is reporting at least 70 people killed and 320 injured thus far. Meanwhile, Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza continues out of the public eye, as an internet blackout halted most aid operations.
The Story of a Heart, which won this year’s award for nonfiction, tells how one child saved the life of another. The author talks about the amazing families involved, campaigning for a better NHS, and how being a doctor frames the way she writes
To read Rachel Clarke’s The Story of a Heart, which has won this year’s Women’s prize for nonfiction, is to experience an onslaught of often competing emotions. There is awed disbelief at the sheer skill and dedication of the medical teams who transplanted the heart of nine-year-old Keira, who had been killed in a head-on traffic collision, into the body of Max, a little boy facing almost certain death from rapidly deteriorating dilated cardiomyopathy. There is vast admiration for the inexhaustible compassion of the teams who cared for both children and their families, and wonder at the cascade of medical advances, each breakthrough representing determination, inspiration, rigorous work, and careful navigation of newly emerging ethical territory. And most flooring of all is the immense courage of two families, one devastated by the sudden loss of a precious child, the other faced with a diagnosis that threatened to tear their lives apart.
To write such a story requires special preparation. “I was full of trepidation when I first approached Keira’s family,” Clarke tells me the morning after she was awarded the prize. “I knew that I was asking them to entrust me with the most precious thing, their beloved daughter Keira’s story, her memory.” The former journalist trained as a doctor in her late 20s, and has spent most of her medical career working in palliative care. Subsequently, she has also become an acclaimed writer and committed campaigner, publishing three memoirs: Your Life in My Hands, Dear Life and Breathtaking. She turned to her medical training for guidance when writing The Story of a Heart. “I said to myself, my framework will be my medical framework, so I would conduct myself in such a way that they would, I hoped, trust me in the same way that someone might trust me as a doctor. And if at any point they changed their mind, then they could walk away from the project.”
The hugely popular reality competition series has led to a string of similarly devious yet undeniably lesser copycats
This is a punt, but Fox might have started to commission new shows via the power of online thesauruses. Take its new reality show The Snake. It’s a game of secrets and betrayal, of feigning one emotion to gain trust while you stab your new friends in the back. In other words, it’s basically The Traitors.
I don’t know whether any of you have ever searched Merriam Webster for synonyms of ‘traitor’, but ‘snake’ is literally second on the list. And this laziness is indicative of the show itself, which is such a painfully halfhearted retread of The Traitors that it ends up being exhausting to watch.
The winner of this year’s fiction prize on growing up as an outsider, why we’re all guilty of complicity, and using her acceptance speech to reveal that she is intersex
It has been a dramatic couple of years for 37-year-old Dutch author Yael van der Wouden: her first novel, The Safekeep, a love story that deals with the legacy of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, was the focus of a frenzied bidding war and shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. Last night it won the Women’s prize for fiction.
“I wrote this book from a place of hopelessness,” she says when we meet. “I was looking for a ray of sunshine.” This morning in London the sun is blazing. She could never have expected that her novel would see off shortlisted authors including Miranda July (of whose work she is a big fan) and Elizabeth Strout.
Everyday people taken by surprise by overnight strikes and left wondering how to prepare for what may come next
As dawn broke over Tehran, firefighters and other rescue workers saw for the first time the full extent of the damage done by overnight Israeli strikes.
Among the first locations reached by responders in the capital was a 12-storey block of flats looming above a road junction and a shopping mall in the northern suburbs. A huge blast at around 4am had gutted two upper levels, showering debris into the street below.
Exclusive: Pass to be presented to playwright’s grandson after original cancelled over conviction for gross indecency
The British Library is to symbolically reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader pass, 130 years after its trustees cancelled it following his conviction for gross indecency.
A contemporary pass bearing the name of the Irish author and playwright will be officially presented to his grandson, Merlin Holland, at an event in October, it will be announced on Sunday.
Ye, as he is now known, was asked if he was at the courthouse to support Combs, to which he responded ‘yes’
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, briefly came to the New York sex-trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs on Friday to support the hip-hop mogul, a longtime friend.
Ye, dressed in white, arrived at Manhattan federal court before noon while the trial was on a break.
Airline’s maintenance regime will also be scrutinised as experts offer theories for cause of disaster
The official investigation into Air India flight AI171 is focusing on the Boeing 787’s engine thrust, wing flaps and landing gear, with the airline’s maintenance regime also coming under scrutiny.
With one black box now retrieved from the wreckage of the plane, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is looking at whether the plane’s engine thrust and wing flaps failed, and why the landing gear remained open.
Slovenian ‘super happy’ after beating Jonas Vingegaard
World champion now holds 43-second lead overall
Tadej Pogacar soloed to victory in the sixth stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné on Friday to reclaim the yellow jersey and put himself firmly in contention for overall victory.
With this 97th victory of his career, the Slovenian, who cruised in 1min 1sec ahead of Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard, becomes the active rider with the joint-most victories – on a par with French sprinter Arnaud Démare. Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who was leading the overall classification, finished fifth at 1min 50sec.
Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington on Friday cheered Israel for carrying out long-threatened strikes on Iran, but several Democrats accused that country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of deliberately sabotaging talks to resolve the question of Tehran’s nuclear program peacefully.
Iran has few friends within the American political establishment, while Israel retains widespread support in Congress, even as some Democrats publicly condemn its conduct in the war in Gaza. Republicans lined up behind the president in praising the attack, which seems certain to put an end to weeks of thus-far fruitless negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
Percival Everett, Simone Biles, Kermit the Frog and Donald Trump deliver words of wisdom, and a few of grotesque stupidity, at commencement ceremonies across US
America’s higher education may be under attack from the federal government – but students from the class of 2025 still have to graduate. And so commencement season, somehow, occurred, with the world’s best and brightest politicians, entertainers and athletes, plus a frog, presenting their hard-earned wisdom. From Percival Everett to Simone Biles to President Trump himself, here are 10 lessons we’ve learned from the year’s graduation speeches.
Protest actions like ‘Hands Off’ and ‘No Kings’ are sweeping across the US. But the media are barely paying attention
When hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered across the US on 5 April for the “Hands Off” events protesting Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s governmental wrecking ball, much of the news media seemed to yawn.
The next day, the New York Times put a photograph, but no story, on its print front page. The Wall Street Journal’s digital homepage had it as only the 20th-most-prominent story when I checked. Fox News was dismissive; I stopped counting after I scanned 40 articles on its homepage, though there was a video with this dismissive headline: “Liberals rally against President Trump.”
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
The Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division strives to provide ‘full sensory experience’ in country’s national parks
The Trump administration appears poised to cut the US Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division (NSNSD), a little-known office that works to rein in noise and light pollution in national parks, a task that is seen as a vital environmental endeavor.
Advocates say the division’s work is quiet but important – many plants and animals rely on the darkness, and light pollution is contributing to firefly and other insect die-offs. The office led efforts to reduce light pollution at the Grand Canyon and snowmobile noise that drowned out sounds emanating from the Old Faithful geyser, among other initiatives.
Fee of £100m plus £16m add-ons is possible British record
Coveted playmaker will seal move when window reopens
Liverpool have agreed a club-record deal to sign Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen. The Premier League champions will pay a guaranteed £100m for the coveted Germany international, plus potential add-ons of £16m that would make Wirtz the most expensive British transfer of all time.
Richard Hughes, Liverpool’s sporting director, has been engaged in negotiations for the attacking midfielder for several weeks and a deal was finally struck on Friday morning. Leverkusen had wanted €150m (£127.6m) for the 22-year-old, who had also attracted interest from Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Real Madrid, but made it clear to the German club that Anfield was his preferred destination. He will undergo a medical in the coming days and finalise the transfer once the window reopens next week. Personal terms have already been agreed, with Wirtz understood to have rejected more lucrative offers from elsewhere.
The escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, the focal point of global oil production, prompted a sharp increase in wholesale prices. Brent crude surged by more than 7% after news of the attacks broke, briefly moving above $75 (£55) a barrel to its highest level since April.
They were impossibly glamorous, fatally flawed and turned up at every significant moment of the 20th century, but underneath it all is a highly relatable family drama – without the infamous friends
The rise and fall of the Mitford sisters is like one of those earthquakes we’re due on a regular rotation: eight years out from Gucci’s much-documented Never Marry a Mitford jumper, four years after the BBC drama The Pursuit of Love, a new TV show appears fortuitously to bring them back into the public consciousness again.
Here they come, out of the mists of time, the seven children of a minor member of the House of Lords: Nancy, of course, the author of Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love and probably the most famous in her own right; followed by Pamela, the least famous and fond chiefly of chickens and horrible men; then Tom, the only boy, with a weakness for the Nazis and, as far as history is concerned, no personality.
Thomas Frank could move for former club’s main strikers
Spurs file legal claim against Ineos over sponsorship deal
Tottenham have held initial talks about signing Bryan Mbeumo from Thomas Frank’s former club Brentford and are also interested in bringing his strike partner Yoane Wissa to north London.
Frank was confirmed as Ange Postecoglou’s replacement on Thursday and is targeting the duo that contributed 39 Premier League goals last season for Brentford as he attempts to strengthen the Spurs squad. Mbeumo is also wanted by Manchester United, who had an offer worth up to £55m for the Cameroon forward rejected last week and are expected to return with an improved bid.
Israel has eliminated many of the brains behind Tehran’s nuclear programme. But don’t expect the regime to back down
This is a war 30 years in the making. Benjamin Netanyahu was talking about the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb back in the 1990s and he has scarcely let up since. For decades he has believed that a nuclear Iran would represent the one truly existential threat to Israel and that military force is the only sure way to prevent it. Several times during the many years in which Netanyahu has sat in the prime minister’s chair, an all-out strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities has been weighed up, debated and planned for. In the early hours of this morning, it finally happened.
Netanyahu will be pleased with the early results, including the elimination of key Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists. But the ultimate consequences could look very different. By his actions, he may only have accelerated the very danger he has feared for so long.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The sloppy sartorial style of political insiders, from Musk to Dominic Cummings, reveals who has the privilege to be scruffy – but it may also signal their undoing
In case you missed it, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have fallen out.
For some – and in particular anyone looking at the tech billionaire’s White House wardrobe – this will come as little surprise. Long before anyone hit send on those inflammatory tweets, or tensions spilled out over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), Musk’s political downfall was written in the stitching.
In this week’s newsletter: Happy 20th birthday to the forum that reshaped fandom and is one of the internet’s most eccentric collaborative spaces
It only ended a few years ago, but Westworld already feels a bit of a TV footnote. A pricey mid-2010s remake of a 70s Yul Brynner movie few people remembered, HBO’s robot cowboy drama lumbered on for four lukewarm seasons before getting cancelled – with few people really noticing.
Still, when it premiered, Westworld was big news. Here was a show well-placed to do a Game of Thrones, only for sci-fi. Its high production values were married to an eye-catching cast (Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright) and it was run by the crack team of Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, who promised they had a playbook for how the whole show would shake out. This, of course, was an important promise in that immediate post-Lost period, where everyone was terrified that they would be strung along by a show that was “making it up as they went along” (as a Lost defender, I have to say at this point that they weren’t “making it up as they went along”, but that’s an argument for another newsletter).
Kilmar Ábrego García, the man returned to the US last week after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, pleaded not guilty on Friday to criminal charges of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants into the United States.
The Maryland man, 29, entered the plea at a hearing before US magistrate judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee.
Chartered spaceflight for India, Poland and Hungary’s first astronauts in decades delayed indefinitely
A chartered spaceflight for India, Poland and Hungary’s first astronauts in decades has been delayed indefinitely because of leak concerns at the International Space Station.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) said on Thursday that it had postponed the Axiom Mission 4 to the ISS to monitor the cabin pressure on the Russian side of the orbiting lab before accepting visitors. Officials stressed that the seven astronauts currently at the space station were safe and that other operations up there would not be affected.
As he dropped off his only daughter at Ahmedabad airport, Suraj Mistry seized the opportunity to take one final family selfie before she went back to London. Kinal Mistry, 24, had laughed lovingly at her father as he made her promise that they would meet again soon. “Yes, Daddy, very soon,” she said.
Instead, the photo – of Kinal smiling beside her mother and father – would commemorate the last time his family was a whole. In scenes of horror that have since reverberated around the world, just a few minutes after the flight took off from Ahmedabad airport on Thursday morning, it plummeted from the sky, exploding in an inferno of fire and black smoke. Only one of the 242 people onboard survived.
US appeals court denies challenge after 2023 civil jury trial found Trump sexually abused Carroll then defamed her
Donald Trump has lost his latest legal attempt to challenge the $5m in damages awarded against him for defaming E Jean Carroll, the New York writer who a jury found was sexually abused by the president in the 1990s, before he embarked on his political career.
A US appeals court in New York City on Friday denied Trump’s request to reconsider its decision in December to uphold the jury’s award of $5m to Carroll. The court was divided in its opinion, with two Trump-appointed judges, Steven Menashi and Michael Park, dissenting.
Simone Biles has apologized for making personal remarks about Riley Gaines in a heated online exchange over transgender athlete participation in sports, even as conservative media figures continued to attack the gymnast.
The most decorated gymnast in history, Biles had called Gaines “truly sick” and a “sore loser” in a viral social media post after Gaines misgendered a Minnesota high school softball player who is transgender. Biles later said her frustration was directed at the system that puts athletes in difficult positions and that singling out an underage player crossed a line.
Trepidation mixed with triumphalism in Israel on Friday, after an unprecedented attack on Iran’s military and nuclear programme brought ordinary life to an abrupt halt.
The country’s main airport was closed “until further notice” with no flights expected for days and hospitals began moving hundreds of vulnerable patients to emergency underground facilities and sending home anyone who could be discharged.
In justifying Israel’s attack on Iran, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had acted to pre-empt a secret Iranian programme to build a nuclear bomb, claiming Tehran already had the capacity to build nine nuclear bombs. Israeli officials also claimed to have presented information to the US that Iran had recently made the necessary technical breakthroughs.
Netanyahu’s critics are saying he acted to pre-empt something else: a diplomatic agreement between the US and Iran on its civil nuclear programme, or even the demise of his own government. They point out that Israel has been saying for 20 years that Iran is on the brink of building a bomb.
There are people all around Australia whose hearts beat in unison with the rhythmic swells of the sea; people who have found solace in the ocean. Life Around the Sea is an odyssey around Australia and an exploration of remarkable individuals who have been transformed by the sea. This book will transport you to coastal villages, hinterland hideaways, remote beaches and solitary bays that form the backdrop to these unique lives. Their personal stories, told by surf writer Alex Workman and captured by Russell Ord’s evocative and breathtaking photography, are a testament to the boundless beauty, mystery and inspiration of the ocean
Nations across the Middle East have condemned the Israeli strikes on Iran, calling for urgent de-escalation amid concerns that tit-for-tat retaliation could lead to a wider war with regional fallout.
Israel carried out hundreds of strikes across Iran, killing top military and nuclear officials and targeting nuclear facilities – the most serious Israeli attack on Iran ever. Iran responded by launching at least 100 drones and ballistic missiles in Israel’s direction, most of which were shot down, according to the Israeli military. Iran has vowed revenge, with the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatening “severe punishment”.
Craig Williams and 14 others appear in court over allegations of cheating by betting on 2024 election date
A former Conservative MP and 14 other people facing allegations of cheating by gambling on the date of last year’s general election are to go on trial.
Craig Williams, who was the MP for Montgomeryshire and a senior aide to the then prime minister, Rishi Sunak, appeared in the dock at Westminster magistrates court on Friday after charges were brought by the Gambling Commission.
Jamie Varley and co-accused John McGowan-Fazakerley were in process of adopting 13-month-old Preston Davey
A secondary school teacher has appeared in court accused of the sexual assault and murder of a 13-month-old baby boy he was adopting.
Jamie Varley, 36, who was a head of year at a school in Blackpool, is also accused of a number of counts of assault, cruelty and taking and distributing indecent images relating to Preston Davey.
After years of existing only as a fever dream inside the shiny, spacious cranium of Fifa’s greatest showman, Gianni Infantino, the first edition of an expanded, summertime Club World Cup that nobody asked for is finally here. Infantino’s most ambitious vanity project to date is about to collide with reality, and as students of the Swiss school of football farce, we’re excited. It’s not so much a question of what will go wrong over the next 30 sun-baked days in an increasingly dystopian USA USA USA, but what might actually go right. Saturday’s opener pitches Egyptian giants Al-Ahly (who qualified by winning the 2021 African Big Cup) against MLS middleweights Inter Miami (who qualified by having Lionel Messi in their team) at the 65,000-capacity Hard Rock Stadium. Fifa has denied reports that fewer than 20,000 tickets have been sold for the game in Miami, but the tournament’s dynamic pricing model is trending in one direction: from $349 in December, some tickets are now cheaper than $60.
The time has come for me to move on. But, even as I leave, I know I have left a big piece of my heart at Brentford, not just at the football club but with the community and, of course, the incredible and loyal supporters. For my family and I, it has been a privilege to be allowed to be part of such a special community – it’s an experience and adventure that we will cherish for life” – Thomas Frank pens a love letter to Brentford fans after racing round the North Circular for a different kind of adventure at the Cirque du Spurs.
On the dawn of the ‘it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s a disgraceful monstrosity that shouldn’t exist’, can I make a plea that we just ignore it? I mean, I know any reputable sports writer, or someone who has to knock out The Daily, can’t, because of journalism etc, but surely, the 1,057 can keep the letters section free of any mention of the wretched thing. C’mon folks, pedantry, nostalgic whimsy, godawful puns and lengthy diatribes about the state of it all suffused a sense of powerlessness and angst. We’ve got this. Maybe still go easy on the puns” – Jon Millard.
Good luck to Crystal Palace fans, if Woody Johnson does buy John Textor’s shares (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). The Jets are an absolute clown show and have been so forever. Johnson is generally regarded as the stupidest owner in the league, and there’s admittedly tough competition. So, yeah, could be fun in south London” – Joe Pearson.
Re: Trent Alexander-Arnold’s fluent unveiling (yesterday’s Football Daily). I assume Florian Wirtz will be busy reading and learning his scouse in time for the new season” – Kevin Quinn.
When the new manager of Spurs inevitably reproduces his appalling starts suffered at his previous clubs, will the headline be ‘Frank’s side bottom’, accompanied by an image of Thomas’s spherical fibreglass head?” – Peter McHugh.
A second federal judge has rejected parts of Donald Trump’s executive order on elections, dealing another blow to his directive that would require proof of citizenship to vote in US elections.
The order, described in March by the White House as “the farthest-reaching executive action taken” in the nation’s history, quickly led to multiple lawsuits. In April, a federal judge in Washington DC ruled against the order in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic party and voting rights groups, blocking its implementation.
Travel operator hits back at Airbnb’s claim that it is being made a ‘scapegoat’ for problems in some holiday hotspots
Europe’s biggest travel operator, Tui, has hit back at an accusation by Airbnb that “overtourism” is the fault of the hotel industry, arguing that short-term home rentals companies are instead to blame.
Tensions have risen between rivals in the tourism industry after protests by local people against overcrowding, rising housing costs and bad behaviour by tourists in some holiday hotspots across the continent.
Connexion
