Adelaide festival This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but Huppert delivers an exacting performance in Robert Wilson’s hypnotic, incantatory play Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Mary, Queen of Scots is one of those perennial figures trotted out as a universal signifier, often for femininity itself, an image of rectitude and self-sacrifice in the face of unimaginable deprivation. The problem is that the historical record doesn’t quite support this narrative: Mary possibly conspired to murder her second husband in order to marry her third, and despite protestations to the contrary, remained a serious threat to the reign of Elizabeth I until the moment she was executed. She was a political player who lost, not an ingenue caught in the crossfire of history. Famed French stage and screen actor Isabelle Huppert has worked with equally famed (and now sadly late) American theatre maker Robert Wilson twice before this collaboration, and it’s easy to see why she would come back a third time, like Mary to the matrimonial bed. Wilson’s artistic rigour was legendary, and his uncompromising aesthetic – so absolute it seems almost brutalist – frames Huppert’s singular talent superbly. She shimmers on stage, a regal pride emanating from her body and the precision of her movements. This is undeniably Huppert’s show. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Vinay Prasad to leave in April after decisions involving vaccine reviews and specialty drugs for rare diseases The Food and Drug Administration’s embattled vaccine chief, Dr Vinay Prasad, is once again leaving the agency – the second time in less than a year that he’s departed after decisions involving the review of vaccinations and specialty drugs for rare diseases. FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced the news to FDA staff in an email late Friday, saying Prasad would depart at the end of April. Makary said Prasad would return to his academic job at the University of California, San Francisco. Continue reading...

Thousands in Chicago honored civil rights ‘champion’ who ‘stepped forward again and again’, Obama said At the longtime civil rights activist’s memorial celebration on Friday, the Rev Jesse Jackson was remembered as a “champion” for the “poor and the dispossessed” – as well as “one of the most effective community and political organizers of our time”. Such tributes came from past Democratic US presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, along with former vice-president Kamala Harris, who received cheers and applause while they joined thousands of others in a Chicago church for a celebration of life for Jackson. Continue reading...

Gillian Morand, 36, died in Bexley, south-east London in 2020 after which allegations against her husband emerged A man has been charged with manslaughter over the death of a woman in 2020, in a rare prosecution of alleged domestic abuse linked to suicide, police have said. Gillian Morand, 36, died in Bexley, south-east London, and an inquest concluded she had taken her own life. Continue reading...

Manager knows his quadruple-chasers have a target on their back in their FA Cup fifth round trip to Mansfield Mikel Arteta knows the score. There is a reason why Arsenal’s trip to Mansfield Town on Saturday is the tie of the FA Cup fifth round, why it has been selected by TNT Sports for a 12.15pm kick-off. It has all the ingredients and everybody – Arsenal fans aside – is looking for an upset. Arteta was asked whether he was clear on that point. “Yes,” the Arsenal manager replied. It has always been this way when a top club visits a minnow and, to repeat, the plotlines are certainly there for this one. Mansfield are 16th in League One, too close to the relegation line for the comfort of the manager, Nigel Clough. The Stags have gone nine league matches without a win. Continue reading...

Playmaker has become peripheral as Manchester City chase quadruple and is no longer a shoo-in for the World Cup With 76 minutes gone at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday night, Phil Foden was culpable for what might prove the title race’s defining moment. With Manchester City leading Nottingham Forest 2-1, Foden lost Elliot Anderson, who ran off him and curled home a 20-yard equaliser. Sixty seconds later, Pep Guardiola substituted his England playmaker. As Morgan Gibbs-White’s first equaliser could also be traced back to a loose Foden touch, this was a miserable evening for him: City managed only a draw, and as Arsenal won at Brighton, the title race tilted the Gunners’ way. Continue reading...

Ireland 27-17 Wales Wales give Ireland a fright before hosts hang on Never in the Five and Six Nations history between Ireland and Wales have the scales been so lopsided as they prepared to play in Dublin. When referee Karl Dickson wrapped it up on a beautiful spring night those scales had shifted. Not quite enough to give Wales a win they would have celebrated like a Championship, but enough to leave their hosts as shaken as they were stirred. You couldn’t claim Ireland didn’t deserve to win given their dominance and efficiency in that last quarter of the field, but it was a battle that will force Andy Farrell to revisit the quality of Ireland’s attack. Continue reading...

This time around, Liverpool made no mistake at Molineux. They remain on the road to Wembley, and thanks to two players signed in 2017, two time-honoured club legends with now uncertain futures. Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah scored the goals that took the game away from Wolves to soothe the pain of Tuesday’s Premier League defeat. Curtis Jones’s strike completed a Friday night of far greater comfort, as Wolves crashed back to the reality of nine remaining Premier League matches before the drop comes. Their goal from Hwang Hee-chan, a substitute, came far too late. While Arne Slot had expressed disappointment at the Premier League’s entertainment levels, a verdict hostage to fortune three days previously, his starting selection suggested an FA Cup exit could not be countenanced. Winning the trophy will not offer total job security but losing twice at the Premier League’s bottom club in the space of a few days might well have been a felling blow. Continue reading...

Loud applause greets volunteers carrying Ukraine flag Iran’s solitary athlete unable to safely leave his country The Russian flag was flown at an international sporting event for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine on Friday night, an act met largely by silence, as the Winter Paralympic Games got under way with a high-end opening ceremony in Verona. Dance, music and visual art combined in a beguiling hour-long performance, celebrating the Paralympic movement and stressing the importance of physical access for people with disabilities, all in a Roman amphitheatre made accessible just for the event. But the eyes of the crowd and a global audience were on the parade of athletes passing into the Arena di Verona. Continue reading...

Exclusive: MoD-contracted workers assisting Ukrainians in a way ‘no other nation has been willing to do’, says minister In an unmarked and undisclosed location in western Ukraine, British and Ukrainian engineers work side by side to fix damaged military hardware, crawling under the chassis of artillery systems and pulling apart the insides of British-donated howitzers. Until now, the existence of this facility, along with three other similar sites inside Ukraine, has been kept quiet, buried in neutral language to avoid drawing too much attention to the sites, given the sensitivities of all military-linked work inside Ukraine. Continue reading...

As the Winter Paralympics begins with a spectacular opening ceremony in Verona, we take a look at the best images Continue reading...

British No 1 snaps losing streak with 6-1, 6-3 victory Former coach Mark Petchey returns to her corner Emma Raducanu enjoyed a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Anastasia Zakharova to reach the last 32 in Indian Wells. Raducanu arrived at the WTA 1000 tournament on a three-match losing streak and eager to rediscover form after her January split from coach Francisco Roig. Continue reading...

James Robinson, husband of Gloria De Piero, says police visited their home with a warrant but he has not been detained or questioned The husband of former Labour MP Gloria De Piero has confirmed his home was searched on Wednesday as part of a police investigation into an alleged Chinese spying ring. James Robinson, a former aide to the ex-Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, issued a statement confirming the raid on the home he shares with his wife, but said he had not been detained or questioned by police. Continue reading...

Lawyers for magician, who plans to unveil new project, said in 2024 he was ‘at most acquaintances’ with Epstein Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox David Copperfield has announced that he is performing his last show at MGM Grand in Las Vegas next month, an announcement that comes weeks after documents released in the Epstein files revealed new details about how the FBI viewed the illusionist’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender. The announcement that the 69-year-old illusionist’s last show would be held on 30 April appears to have been made suddenly. In a statement praising and thanking Copperfield for his 25-year stint at MGM, the company said in a statement that it would automatically refund tickets for shows that were booked after that date. Continue reading...

Six Nations updates from the 8.10pm (GMT) kick-off Sign up for The Breakdown newsletter | And mail Lee It’s Friday night in Dublin and Ireland welcome Wales to the Aviva Stadium. What a difference a week made prior to their performances in the previous round of matches; so imagine what the fortnight since could deliver. That will be the hope of the respective fans in anticipation of the game to come. Continue reading...

Crisis in the Middle East, Ramadan in Gaza, a blackout in Havana and Stella McCartney at Paris fashion week – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Continue reading...

⚽ FA Cup fifth round news from the 8pm (GMT) kick-off ⚽ Live scores | Follow us on Bluesky | And email Scott Wolverhampton Wanderers: Johnstone, Mosquera, Bueno, T Gomes, Tchatchoua, A Gomes, J Gomes, Bueno, Bellegarde, Mane, Arokodare. Liverpool: Alisson, Jones, Gomez, van Dijk, Robertson, Mac Allister, Gravenberch, Jones, Szoboszlai, Salah, Ngumoha. Continue reading...

Dramatising Onjali Q Raúf’s refugee tale The Boy at the Back of the Class brought cheers and boos from a young audience – showing they can handle the truth I’d never heard of The Boy at the Back of the Class before I was asked to adapt it in 2023. My son had just turned one when Onjali Q Raúf’s novel came into my life. While I could have recited every Julia Donaldson book in my sleep at the time, this would have been a little advanced for his reading age. Since then, I have of course read the book and its impact is extraordinary. It follows a young Syrian boy, Ahmet, who arrives in the UK without his parents. He joins a school and befriends a group of kids who hear that the government is going to “close the gates”. They don’t fully understand what it means other than that Ahmet’s parents, who must be looking for him, won’t be able to get into the country. So they decide, in a beautifully innocent way, to go to the most powerful person they can think of – the queen! – and ask for help to find Ahmet’s parents and keep the gates open. There is a wonderful simplicity to the whole thing. Continue reading...

In refusing to sing the national anthem these athletes have placed themselves in grave danger while Gianni Infantino sides with the American war machine A small but telling detail from a vast and baffling chain of events. You probably saw the footage of Donald Trump’s declaration of war on Iran two weeks ago, a piece of history played out in real time, a moment where the inevitable violent deaths of thousands of people were in effect announced. In the video Trump is shown propped up at his plinth, using that sing-song intonation he employs to appear cod-statesmanlike, faux-grave, but sounding instead like a semi-sentient robot vacuum cleaner in the seconds before it runs out of battery life. To the great people of Iran. America is backing you. Don’t go outside. It’s very dangerous out there. We will for the foreseeable future be bombing you to freedom. Continue reading...

Stephen McCullagh also covertly recorded ex-girlfriend’s counselling sessions after loss of a baby A man accused of murdering his pregnant girlfriend in Northern Ireland beat a previous partner, a court has heard. Stephen McCullagh also covertly recorded the counselling sessions of the woman, just months before he met and allegedly killed Natalie McNally, Belfast crown court was told on Friday. Continue reading...

The women in their 40s, 50s and 60s are suspected of facilitating alleged abuse by the late Harrods owner Three women have been interviewed under caution on suspicion of facilitating one of Britain’s worst sexual abuse scandals involving the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed and his alleged attacks over four decades. Scotland Yard said the number of victims had reached 154 women, feared to have suffered rape and sexual assault by Fayed, or sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Continue reading...

US president again calls on Iranian people to overthrow government or face ‘absolutely guaranteed death’ Middle East crisis – live updates Donald Trump has said only Iran’s “unconditional surrender” will bring an end to the joint US-Israeli offensive launched seven days ago, as the two powers’ warplanes carried out some of the heaviest bombardments so far in the spiralling conflict. “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Friday, when US strategic bombers were in action over Iran and intensive Israeli strikes in Lebanon forced more than a million people to flee their homes. Continue reading...

Donald Trump has fired his controversial US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, after weeks of bipartisan complaints about her leadership. As the public face of an aggressive immigration crackdown that prompted lawsuits and nationwide anti-ICE protests, Noem’s year-long tenure was plagued by multiple controversies, including accusing two US citizens killed by immigration agents of ‘domestic terrorism’. What exactly led to Noem’s firing and what do we know about her replacement? Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Guardian US live news editor Chris Michael Continue reading...

Styles will perform new album in full at Co-op Live arena show, with tickets being traded for well above £20 face value More than 20,000 fans from all over the world flocked towards the Co-op Live arena in Manchester on Friday to watch Harry Styles perform his first concert in two and a half years – some waiting 48 hours for a place down the front. Styles will perform his new album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally in full, after its release earlier today. Anticipation for the show had been high since tickets went on sale for £20 in early February, which, barring a performance of the album’s lead single Aperture at the Brit awards – which took place at the same arena a week earlier – will be Styles’ first time on stage since closing out a tour in Italy in July 2023. It has been marketed as a homecoming show for the pop star, who was raised outside the city in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire. Continue reading...

Rule changes will affect driver style and car performance with world champion Lando Norris already under scrutiny With the long and increasingly febrile buildup almost at an end, Formula One is finally ready to go racing into the sport’s new era. Whether it will prove a success is one of many questions that will be answered at the season-opener in Melbourne this weekend, as will the most pressing concern: which team and driver enter this brave new world on top of the pile? In the paddock at Albert Park this week, teams and drivers increasingly had an air of the stony-faced stare-down of a cold war summit amid caginess about their prospects. No one wanted to give anything away nor make predictions. Continue reading...