Residents describe the constant disruption of life under fire and whether military action should wind down It is a day after Israel killed more than 300 in a ceasefire-defying attack in Lebanon, and five miles from the border, at kibbutz Cabri in northern Israel, the quiet of the early Thursday evening has been disrupted. Three times, as the Guardian tries to leave, air raid sirens sound, and twice Iron Dome interceptors are launched. The last of the rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon is sufficiently close that the Moria family and their visitors head promptly to a reinforced safe room, shutting a heavy metal door behind them. The family dog is there too, knowing the drill. Continue reading...

Archaeological record suggests hunter gatherers were playing games of chance at the end of the last ice age Native American hunter gatherers were using dice for gaming and gambling more than 6,000 years before the practice appeared anywhere else, a new study argues. It says dice were being made and used on the western great plains of North America at the end of the last ice age, more than 12,000 years ago. Continue reading...

Iran war drives demand for solar panels, heat pumps and EVs, with energy bills expected to rise 18% from July British households are turning to green home energy upgrades in record numbers to try to keep bills down as the Iran crisis sends global oil and gas prices soaring, data from leading energy suppliers suggests. Figures show demand for solar panels, electric vehicles and heat pumps in Great Britain has leapt since the war began on 28 February, as households brace for a sharp increase in monthly payments when the next energy price cap takes effect in the summer. Continue reading...

Amid death, threats, obliterated buildings and wasted money, the administration’s remarks have been head-spinning to witness Trump threatened to commit genocide and Iran came to the table. A little threat – plus the deaths of thousands of Iranians and 13 Americans, the obliteration of schools, homes, hospitals and mosques, the waste of $40bn by the US and losses to the Gulf nations of as much as $200bn – is all it took. Ergo: threatening genocide works. That, anyway, is what the “secretary of war”, Pete Hegseth, strongly suggested in a press briefing on Wednesday, the day after the president vowed to wipe Iran’s “whole civilization” off the map and then a few hours later announced a ceasefire, obviating the need to wipe Iran’s civilization off the map, at least for two weeks. Continue reading...

A Guardian investigation reveals how the prediction market can shape news – and how it rules on ‘the truth’ “Horekunden” was rapidly losing patience. His frustration was with the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank which produces a daily map of the frontline in Ukraine. Continue reading...

As a young mother, Tareena Shakil fled with her toddler from the UK to Syria and joined Islamic State. Now she’s giving dating advice on TikTok. How did she get here? If you met Tareena Shakil today, you would have no idea that the person in front of you had served time in prison for terrorism offences and holds the dubious distinction of being the first British woman convicted of joining Islamic State. Now 36, Shakil is glamorous, heavily made-up with long, tousled hair. When we meet at a plush hotel in Birmingham, she wears a sharply tailored dress, waist cinched in with a wide leather belt, and carries a Louis Vuitton handbag. She is bubbly and warm, with a disarmingly open demeanour. In short, this isn’t what springs to mind when you hear the words “terrorism conviction”. What Shakil actually looks like is an influencer – which is fitting, because that’s what she is trying to be. She has gained most traction on TikTok, where her profile has about 50,000 followers. She gives relationship advice, usually sitting in her car and talking straight to camera. Her content is a mix of humour (“Muslim men who go to the gym while fasting – brother, the world needs more people like you”) and advice about the dating game (“Men are natural born hunters … they love the chase” in one video; “When they block you, it’s a punishment because they know it’s going to hurt you” in another). In among this are videos that hint at something darker (“If your partner hits you, you must leave, it doesn’t matter how much they cry or say they’ll never do it again”). She never directly references her own complicated past but, she tells me: “There’s an element of my own experience in most of the videos I make.” Continue reading...

The Bombay Beach Biennale started as an intimate event and has grown dramatically – but some question whether it sustain its DIY atmosphere It is hard to imagine a stranger place for a large outdoor art festival than Bombay Beach – a tiny, visibly impoverished California desert town over 150 miles east of Los Angeles and 235ft below sea level. The heat is scorching even in March, and the smell of decay wafts over from the nearby Salton Sea; a dying inland lake created by an irrigation engineering disaster over 100 years ago. But the Bombay Beach Biennale is not your ordinary art festival. Continue reading...

⚽️ Updates from around the grounds on a busy day of action ⚽️ Live scores | Latest table | Follow on Bluesky | Mail Andy To paraphrase the Titanic old lady, it feels like it’s been 84 years but after a 19-day intermission, the Premier League was back with a bang last night. We’ll have all the reaction to West Ham’s 4-0 win over Wolves, lifting themselves out of the relegation zone and putting Tottenham Hotspur into the bottom three. Your move, Roberto De Zerbi. Continue reading...

⚽️ Premier League news from the 12.30pm BST kick-off ⚽️ Live scores | Latest table | Follow on Bluesky | Mail Barry Mikel Arteta was coy on the the fitness concerns surrounding his squad during his pre-match press conference but said “there will be changes” to the team that started against Sporting. He did assure reporters that Eberechi Eze is available for selection. “The will that he’s shown from day one to get back as quick as possible, how he’s pushed the medical staff and himself to be there, it’s just great to watch,” he said. Continue reading...

All the latest horse racing updates on Grand National day Guide to all of the runners | ‘TikTok effect’ brings sellout Welcome to Aintree on Grand National morning, where a sellout crowd is gathering to witness one of the most historic and compelling spectacles in sport as 34 runners and riders line up for the big race at 4pm BST. An early smattering of rain is clearing away, there’s a brighter forecast for later in the afternoon, and the betting market for the National is already heating up with an early gamble on Jagwar, one of just three seven-year-olds in the field. Panic Attack, the only mare in the field, is popular too, even though the last female (horse) to win was way back in 1951, and has just taken over at the top of the market at 8-1, while Jagwar is top-priced at 17-2 and yesterday’s favourite, I Am Maximus, has drifted out to 9-1 in a place. Continue reading...

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The language teacher was running in the desert in Arizona when he saw this enormous, oddly human-looking plant Joseph Cyr works as a language teacher at an American secondary school. He was born in South Korea, and spent his childhood living across Germany and the US, in Georgia and Arizona. “As an adult I have lived in Seattle, Paris and Nicaragua before moving back to Arizona,” he says. “I took this in Saguaro national park, on the edge of Tucson. It’s about an hour north of the US-Mexico border.” It was a school holiday, so Cyr was doing a trail run when he took this image. His route was quiet; he saw only a few people on horseback and this saguaro cactus. The largest cactus in the US, it grows only in the Sonoran Desert, where the Saguaro national park lies. Continue reading...

As the president spirals over his disastrous war, his threats have escalated beyond the red line of international law Donald Trump has hung nine glowering portraits of himself throughout the White House, each one projecting a variation on the theme of intimidation. But gazing into his narcissistic pool of grimacing images has not calmed him when in his mind’s eye he stares into the abyss of the worst failure of his life. Trump’s fiasco has inspired him to heightened performances of profane, vile and vicious threats. His grammar of atrocity has escalated from hateful rhetoric to threats of war crimes. What might have initially appeared as rage-quitting the video game that the White House communications department makes of his Iran War has crossed an inviolable red line of international law. His pouting and foot stomping have led him into the gravest territory. Continue reading...

Updates from the second round of Championship games Sign up for The Spin newsletter | Mail Tanya or post BTL Good morning! After yesterday’s hundred-fest and Sonny Baker’s three-wicket over, things might be a bit damper today – with cloud and rain lurking. Play (might) start around the grounds from 11am BST. Do join us. Continue reading...

Former Ukrainian major general says 4kg of material found in Serbia was attempt to influence Hungary’s election Hungary elections explainer The amount of explosives discovered in Serbia last week would not have been enough to destroy the Balkan Stream gas pipeline, prompting an expert to conclude it was probably a Russian intelligence plot aimed at influencing Hungary’s impending election. A former Ukrainian major general and a munitions specialist told the Guardian calculations made by his company showed the 4kg of explosives recovered by Serbia’s military security agency in Kanjiža could not have seriously ruptured the pipe. Continue reading...

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The biggest names in and out of Hollywood are choosing to be interviewed by their peers rather than journalists, leaving many more revealing questions on the table We live in a time where ultra-rich businesspeople have accrued more wealth and power than ever, creating a growing sentiment that they ought to be held to account, no doubt exacerbated by the fact that a wealthy businessman is in his second self-enriching term in the US presidency. So naturally, CNN, Donald Trump’s supposed nemesis, has figured out the best way to use their resources to better interrogate this elevated class: by letting them interview each other about their businesses. The 1 on 1 is named not for an actual journalist going up against a major business leader; they would probably never agree to that. So instead, CEOs can “grill” each other about whatever they mutually agree are the correct things to ask fellow elites. A spokesperson says these conversations will be “refreshingly direct”. Refreshing to who, exactly, is not specified, but you can take a guess. This is disappointing but also inevitable. Interviews, especially on-camera interviews with people not directly involved with politics, have increasingly become all-subject, no-perspective affairs, starting from the ground zero of the entertainment industry – a leader in content-light mutual admiration. For a splashy new Vogue piece, for example, the journalist whose byline is affixed to a conversation featuring Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour, tied to the release of The Devil Wears Prada 2, takes the fly-on-the-wall version of journalism to an extreme: the “moderator” of this conversation is Greta Gerwig, Streep and Wintour’s fellow celeb. Chloe Malle, the writer and Wintour’s successor as Vogue editor, meanwhile, compares herself to a “court stenographer” without mentioning that in courts, typically the lawyers and judge aren’t all on the same team. There’s no byline at all on the introduction to another recent piece where Marc Jacobs – finally, a leg up for this underappreciated figure! – interviews Sabrina Carpenter. Presumably someone else was actually in the room with them – unless Jacobs brought his own recorder, did his own transcriptions and anonymously wrote that intro. Journalists, apparently, should be neither particularly seen nor heard. Continue reading...

Soon, thanks to the advance of robots, the only reason left to send humans to the moon will be as an ultra-expensive sport Martin Rees is the astronomer royal and a former president of the Royal Society; Donald Goldsmith is an astrophysicist and science communicator The 2020s has seen a revival of the “Apollo spirit”. The US and China are seemingly in a race to send humans to the moon by the end of the decade – and thereafter, perhaps, even to Mars. Nasa astronauts have just returned from a 10-day journey looping around the moon. Although they arrived back safely, Nasa accepts that the lack of data makes it impossible to quantify the risks involved – this represents only the second launch for the Artemis system and the first to carry astronauts. To date, estimated expenditures on the Artemis programme are close to $100bn (£75bn). The “one big beautiful bill” that the US Congress passed in July 2025 allocates $9.9bn for the Artemis IV and V missions. Still greater expenditures are envisioned for a well-developed lunar base. Continue reading...

Arsenal defender on embracing her England chance, maintaining self-belief and sharing training tips with her cyclist partner, Tao Geoghegan Hart Lotte Wubben-Moy pauses, then says: “I’d be lying if I said there weren’t doubts.” The Arsenal and England defender has just been asked whether, during her stop-start journey, she had questioned herself or her chances of getting to show what she can do. Wubben-Moy has had to bide her time with club and country. Having made her debut for England in February 2021, she has picked up only 16 caps despite being almost ever-present in the squad. Even when left out, her lack of game time at Arsenal an obvious issue, she has often found herself called back in because of injuries to others and, regardless of minutes played, her value to the squad and environment is often talked about. Continue reading...

The actor on the killer T rexes he’d like to meet, a 90% life lesson, and an awkward moment with Amy Adams Born in Maryland, Richard Schiff, 70, came to fame when he was cast in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film The Lost World: Jurassic Park. From 1999 to 2006 he played Toby Ziegler in the TV drama The West Wing, receiving an Emmy for his performance. Other work includes the series The Good Doctor and Ballers, and the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. He stars in Copenhagen at Hampstead Theatre until 2 May. He is married with two children and lives in Montana and New York City. What is your greatest fear? People finding out my greatest fear. Continue reading...

Chris Kempczinski’s taste test was mocked online, to which he said his mother had taught him: ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full’ The chief executive officer of McDonald’s recently blamed etiquette guidance from his mother for a February on-camera taste test that made him a target for ridicule – and summarily recorded another video of him eating one of the fast-food giant’s offerings in a manner potential consumers found awkward. Chris Kempczinski suggested to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) earlier in April that he was simply heeding maternal advice to never talk with his mouth full when he took the humorously small bite at the center of a viral video which depicted him discussing and sampling the new Big Arch burger from McDonald’s. Continue reading...

Officials accept that time has run out to pass law after US dropped its support for plan The UK government has been forced to shelve its legislation to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, after the US dropped its support for the agreement. On Friday, UK government officials acknowledged that they had run out of time to pass legislation within the current parliamentary session, which ends in the coming weeks. Continue reading...

Temporary limit in England and Wales won’t stop many facing higher charges from autumn due to jump in inflation from Iran war Government caps some student loan interest at 6% Some students and graduates are likely to pay slightly less interest on their student loans than expected as a result of action taken by the government this week. But while many higher earners will benefit from the news that interest will be capped at 6% for the 2026-27 academic year, many others are likely to have more interest added to their student loan from this autumn than is being applied at the moment. For that, they can blame Donald Trump. Continue reading...

An unmissable book for every year of your early life – with recommendations from Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Katherine Rundell and more The news about reading in general, and childhood reading in particular, is not good. Last year a National Literacy Trust survey of more than 100,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 18 discovered that the number of children who read for pleasure is the lowest since records of this sort began. Only about a third of children say they actively enjoy reading, and the number who report reading daily in their free time is has halved over the last two decades. It’s down to less than one in five. Whether we blame this on screens, social media, or on a renewed enthusiasm for healthy outdoor activities, the facts are clear. Children are reading less, taking less pleasure in doing so, and there’s already talk of the dawning of a “post-literate age”. Yet books make available the best, wisest and most beautiful things that humankind has conceived, and children’s literature offers a host of classics, old and new, to be introduced to new generations of readers. Continue reading...

Voters will head to the polls on Sunday in what is seen as Europe’s most consequential election of the year. The Guardian's Jakub Krupa and Flora Garamvolgyi speak to Hungarians in Budapest before the vote Continue reading...