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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Semi-finalists have shown progress under new captain after avoiding basic errors of previous tournaments If the first months of Harry Brook’s captaincy of England’s white-ball teams have taught us anything, it is that Joe Root knows him well. Looking back now at the teams’ progress since he took over, the run to the T20 World Cup semi-finals, and also at the scandal caused by his notorious drunken escapade in Wellington, the words of Brook’s Yorkshire teammate soon after his appointment seem more astute than ever. “He’s still an idiot, that’s not changed,” Root said. “But as much as he’s an idiot, and I can say that because I’ve known him forever, he’s very cricket intelligent. He might not always be the most intelligent away from cricket, but he understands the game exceptionally well and that’s why he’s so consistent as a batter, and I think that’s what will make him a really good leader.” Continue reading...

Syndicat de la Librairie Française accused online retailer of trying to ‘flood the market with fake AI-generated books’ Amazon has withdrawn from the Paris book festival after a boycott by France’s booksellers’ association prompted a row over the company’s sponsorship of the event. The festival, due to take place from 17 to 19 April, will now go ahead without the backing of the US retail company, after a mutual decision by organisers and Amazon to end their partnership. Continue reading...

Woods says he has PGA commitments but knows he would be up against a detail-obsessed Luke Donald in 2027 Chatter on the Bay Hill range this week has suggested the prospect of Tiger Woods making a return to competitive action at next month’s Masters may actually be more than a tale of fantasy. There is even the suggestion Woods could test his competitive ability at a senior, Champions Tour stop between now and Augusta National. If nothing else, the mere discussion keeps sponsors happy. One never really knows with Woods, whose schedule was always mysterious by design, but his addition to the Masters field would naturally turn heads. Having not played a mainstream tournament since the Open of 2024 – and with an injury record as long as the Trans-Siberian railway – Woods will presumably at some point have to prove he can either remain a relevant part of majors or succumb to the kind of sad, hard-to-watch existence that has befallen scores of sportsmen before him. It is at least fair to say he does not have many Masters left. Continue reading...

The intensified use of artificial intelligence, and rows over its control, demonstrate the need for democratic oversight and multilateral controls “Never in the future will we move as slow as we are moving now,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned this week, addressing the urgent need to shape the use of artificial intelligence. The speed of technological development – as well as geopolitical turbulence – is collapsing the distinction between theoretical arguments and real world events. A political row over the US military’s AI capabilities coincides with its unprecedented use in the Iran crisis. The AI company Anthropic insisted that it could not remove safeguards preventing the Department of Defense from using its technology for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. The Pentagon said it had no interest in such uses – but that such decisions should not be made by companies. Outrageously, the administration has not just fired Anthropic but blacklisted it as a supply-chain risk. OpenAI stepped in, while insisting that it had maintained the red lines declared by Anthropic. Yet in an internal response to the user and employee backlash, its CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that it does not control the Pentagon’s use of its products and that the deal’s handling made OpenAI look “opportunistic and sloppy”. Continue reading...

Publishing has failed to deliver on its promises after Black Lives Matter. True diversity requires a lasting shift A World Book Day question: which children’s author is name-checked in Stormzy’s song Superheroes (and appears in the video for Mel Made Me Do It) and Tinie Tempah’s Written in the Stars? The answer, as a generation of readers will know, is former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman. Her groundbreaking novel, Noughts & Crosses, turns 25 this year. Set in a dystopian Britain (Albion), in which racial hierarchies are reversed, this story of star-crossed lovers was one of the first young adult novels to tackle racism and class directly in the UK. It was written in response to the death of Stephen Lawrence; 20 years later, Endgame, the last in the series, was finished as the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd. Noughts & Crosses was voted one of the UK’s all-time favourite books, and has been adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company and for TV by the BBC, with a cameo from Stormzy. Continue reading...

PM justifies position in social media post on US-Israel war on Iran using Dire Straits song Money for Nothing Keir Starmer has been accused of trying to mimic Donald Trump’s social media output after posting a TikTok about the crisis in the Middle East overlaid with the prime minister’s voice and the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing. The video opens with footage showing Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters flying over his head before cutting to British military jets in action and a drone being destroyed, as Starmer’s voice states the position he has taken on the conflict. Continue reading...

People tell of scenes of panic during airstrikes on Iran’s capital, with several saying they feared they would die Middle East crisis – live updates Sleeplessness, fear and exhaustion gripped residents of Tehran as successive waves of strikes struck the Iranian capital, judging from messages sent by people in the city after the latest overnight onslaught, which several described as the worst bombardment in six days of war. With the Iran imposing a near-total internet blackout, information emerging from inside the country is fragmentary and difficult to verify. But in a series of accounts sent through proxy connections, and calls with friends abroad, Tehranis described a night of intense explosions. Continue reading...

With one text message, Israel made half a million people homeless, leaving the city’s southern suburbs a ghost town The ding of half a million phones, a pause and a collective gasp: in an instant, more than 500,000 people had just been declared homeless. Shooting in the air, panicked phone calls and honking filled the streets of Beirut as people began to flee. Thousands abandoned their cars and began the slow march to the sea, desperate to escape the Israeli bombs which they knew would soon fall on their homes – whether they were in them or not. Continue reading...

Landmark ruling in Celia Ramos case finds 310,000 women, most Indigenous, were targeted in brutal 1990s campaign The highest human rights court in Latin America condemned Peru on Thursday over the death of its citizen Celia Ramos, who died at the age of 34 in 1997 after undergoing sterilisation “under coercion”. The landmark ruling by the inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) is the first on Peru’s forced sterilisation programme, which operated between 1996 and 2000 and was directed against poor, rural and Indigenous women. Continue reading...

Sales of products made the traditional way dropped 7% in three months to 25 January while nitrite-free sales rose 20% UK supermarkets have been hit by a “bacon backlash” as consumers fear that chemicals used to preserve it increase the risk of cancer. Campaigners against the use of nitrites in meat production claimed the fall in sales showed that a “consumer revolt” against the traditional, nitrite-cured form of bacon was gathering pace. Continue reading...

Readers respond to the dilemmas facing Europe and Keir Starmer with the Iran conflict International law has evolved a lot since the 17th century, when sovereign nation states became the agreed structure of Europe. The United Nations charter, agreed after the second world war, aimed to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. While some European leaders still mention it in their social media posts and it gets a tick‑box mention in many official statements, clearly international law is today in critical condition. Continue reading...

Readers respond to Charlotte Higgins’s article on the National Year of Reading Charlotte Higgins makes a powerful point (The National Year of Reading celebrates the ‘joy’ of books. But let’s not forget they can also be deeply troubling, too, 28 February). As she argues, reading can do much more than bring pleasure. It can help us share sorrow, endure pain, satisfy (at least temporarily) curiosity, prompt inventiveness, escape fear, enlarge our worlds, understand ourselves and others, and share in others’ pain and pleasure. It can also help us control ourselves. It can make us less self-centred. And it can certainly enlarge our vocabulary. But first, there must be delight. Pleasure is nearly always the way in: tales that entrance you, through the same words on each rereading. Phrases that echo in your mind, such as: “Rolled their terrible eyes” (Maurice Sendak); “We’re going on a bear hunt” (Michael Rosen); and “Green eggs and ham” (Dr Seuss). Many of these crucial lessons come from early experiences of being read aloud to as a child. This instils the idea that reading opens up a box of delights. Continue reading...

Readers respond to Gaby Hinsliff’s defence of first past the post, and Polly Toynbee’s call for electoral reform Gaby Hinsliff (Nobody wants to defend Britain’s voting system any more – but here’s why I will, 26 February) writes that proportional representation (PR) “doesn’t guarantee that we could all just vote for what we want instead of endlessly against what we fear (ask the French)”. Yet France does not use PR, which is precisely why tactical blocking occurs there. Indeed, there is overwhelming cross-party support in France for moving towards PR. Under first past the post (FPTP), whoever wins the most votes takes the seat, even without a majority. That means a majority of voters in a constituency can end up unrepresented, as in Gorton and Denton, where six in 10 votes were not represented. The debate becomes not who can best represent you, but who can most likely beat someone else. Much of the byelection became precisely this: Labour and Green supporters second-guessing the “anti-Reform” candidate rather than voting for what they actually wanted. Continue reading...