Judge rules that Trump’s health secretary did not go through proper procedures when issuing declaration Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, overstepped his power when he declared that gender-affirming treatments are unsafe, a federal judge has ruled. In a blow to the Trump administration’s attempts to limit access to gender transition procedures, Judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled Thursday that Kennedy did not go through the proper procedures when issuing his 12-page declaration last December. Continue reading...

Officials warn some residents could be trapped by rising waters as Wahiawā dam on Oahu ‘may collapse at any time’ Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Towering flash floods and an imminent dam failure in the northern part of Oahu triggered evacuation warnings in Hawaii on Friday, as the state continued contending with a powerful storm this week. The waters came on quickly in the middle of the night, and videos on social media captured inundated streets and cars being swallowed by the muddy floodwaters. Continue reading...

From restaurant closures in the Philippines and petrol rationing in Sri Lanka, to Asian food production crises due to fertiliser shortages, the effects of the US-Israeli war on Iran reverberate around the world From the Philippines cutting down to a four-day week to save electricity, to restaurants in India taking gas-intensive dishes off the menu, and rents being frozen in Spain, the economic fallout of the US-Israeli war on Iran has reverberated around the world. Facing an existential threat, Tehran has retaliated by closing the vital Hormuz shipping lane and bombed its oil and gas-rich neighbours, compounding a deepening crisis abroad for businesses and families. Continue reading...

Sadler’s Wells, London Kameron N Saunders’s ambitious sci-fi-coded fable is paired with a showcase of Crystal Pite’s mastery in contrasting order with human messiness The headline news here is Taylor Swift’s star backing dancer getting a major commission for English National Ballet. If it looks nothing like a pop concert, that’s because Kameron N Saunders is a choreographer who has worked with Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet among others. He is also an early career artist, who in his piece Proper Conduct has thrown a huge amount of ideas into a high concept dance that leaves a few question marks. The first section is breezy ballet, Justin Peck style, saturated colours and sunshine. But don’t get comfortable, because Saunders is about to pull the rug. A sci-fi-voiced narrator tells us of the rot in society and it segues into nude-costumed conjoined dancers, in striking formations and fleshy connections (the dancers are excellent throughout). But then in comes an army of AI robots in Daft Punk-style visors. It’s visually impactful, with genre-fluid movement, but flails a bit in terms of conveying meaning. Is the message to beware of people who tell you how to live as they’ll steal your soul? That big tech promises to solve your problems, but will actually erase your humanity? Not sure. But Saunders’ ambition is admirable, and we will see more from this creative mind. Continue reading...

‘Teleporting is no fun,’ Gregg Phillips, picked to lead Fema’s office of response and recovery, has said on a podcast A far-right conspiracy theorist turned high-ranking official at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) claims to have once teleported to a Waffle House. Gregg Phillips, who in December was appointed to lead Fema’s office of response and recovery, has spoken on “multiple podcasts” about being teleported against his will, CNN reported on Friday. Continue reading...

Officials understood to be investigating use of visas by company linked to Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light The Home Office is investigating a company linked to a religious sect based in Cheshire over its use of immigration visas. The company under investigation is linked to the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), a sect that blends tenets of Islam with conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and aliens controlling US presidents. Followers believe the sect’s leader, Abdullah Hashem, can cure the sick and make the moon disappear. About 100 of his followers live in a former orphanage in Crewe, in the north-west of England. Continue reading...

Britain authorises use of military bases to strike Iranian missile launchers that target shipping in strait of Hormuz President Trump branded the UK and other Nato allies “cowards” on Friday amid growing anger among cabinet ministers that his war in Iran could jeopardise Britain’s fragile finances. Senior members of the government are in despair about the potential effects on the economy, with experts warning of higher energy prices and mortgage and borrowing costs. They have already begun contingency planning in case the conflict is protracted – lowering speed limits to minimise fuel consumption is among the measures that could be considered by transport officials. With conflict continuing to escalate, the UK confirmed it was now authorising the use of British military bases to strike Iranian missile launchers that are targeting commercial ships in the strait. Continue reading...

Crisis in the Middle East, a sandstorm in Gaza, a blackout in Havana and the Oscars – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Continue reading...

⚽ Updates from the 8pm GMT Premier League kick-off ⚽ Things to look out for | Table | Mail Tim Andoni Iraola makes two changes to the XI that drew 0-0 at Turf Moor. Alex Jimenez replaces James Hill at right-back, while Amine Adli comes in for Junior Kroupi in the front four. It looks as if Adli will be on the left with Rayan slipping into Kroupi’s shoes as the no 10. Michael Carrick does like to keep things simple. He sticks with the starting XI that served him well against Villa, so Benjamin Sesko is on the bench again. Continue reading...

Eid al-Fitr celebrated amid political furore over claims public Ramadan prayers an ‘act of domination’ On Friday morning, little space remained in Baitul Futuh mosque as thousands of people poured in to mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The south London mosque, one of the largest in Europe, offered a glimpse of the Eid al-Fitr festivities being celebrated by millions of Muslims across the UK. This year, however, a political furore around one of the most important holidays in the Islamic calendar has divided UK party leaders, drawn warnings of bigotry and left members of the community feeling disturbed and disappointed. Continue reading...

Forces have been stripped back since the cold war but political stasis is dangerous in the face of growing global threats It will have been more than three weeks since the US and Israel first attacked Iran when the first British warship finally arrives off the coast of Cyprus, a belated defensive deployment that has highlighted the lack of military capacity available to the UK. Nominally, HMS Dragon was one of three destroyers available out of six. In reality the warship has had to be hauled out of dry dock, prepared and then, after launch, tested for several days in the Channel. Its arrival date is still unconfirmed. Continue reading...

Veteran broadcaster interviewed prominent female leaders including Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton The former BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray has died at the age of 75. Murray, who joined the programme in 1987 and left in 2020, established a reputation as a formidable presenter, conducting interviews with prominent female figures including Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton. Continue reading...

This frightening outbreak is not yet over, and serves as a reminder of why plans to manage infectious diseases exist The public health measures taken in response to this month’s meningitis outbreak in Kent so far appear to be working. Two young people have tragically died – one a sixth-former in Faversham, the other a student at the University of Kent. In the Canterbury area, where cases have been identified at four schools and two universities, thousands of lives have been disrupted and many people are understandably afraid. With 18 confirmed cases, and 11 others being investigated, this is the largest cluster of UK cases in a generation. The genes of the meningitis B (MenB) strain of bacteria behind this outbreak are being examined in laboratories. In Kent, they appear to have caused septicaemia, or blood poisoning, as well as infection of the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord. Scientists do not fully understand what causes meningococcal bacteria – which are present in one in 10 people’s bodies without causing illness – to become invasive. Meningitis remains a mysterious as well as a frightening illness, due to its sudden onset and the risk of death. Continue reading...

Our fascination with the ‘real’ identities of artists and writers is revealing about attitudes to fame and authorship This week, contemporary art’s worst-kept secret was exposed when street artist Banksy was revealed to be 52-year-old Robin Gunningham, thanks to an 8,000-word investigation by Reuters. This would have been big news had the Mail on Sunday not got there first nearly two decades ago. Still, it made headlines. The previous week, thousands of book lovers expressed their grief at the announcement on X of the death of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, supposedly by her translator Ann Goldstein. In fact, it was the work of infamous Italian hoaxer Tommaso Debenedetti, who had set up an account in Goldstein’s name, and who pulled the same trick in 2022. Continue reading...

Martinez Lake, about 145 miles west of Phoenix, reached 110F (43.3C) on Thursday amid scorching south-west heat Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox A small community in the Arizona desert has broken a record for the highest March temperature ever recorded in the US, as the south-west bakes in a blistering late-winter heatwave. The astonishing temperature was recorded just outside Martinez Lake, Arizona, which reached 110F (43.3C) on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. Continue reading...

Jonathan Wheatley set to make switch to troubled team Aston Martin have had a disastrous start to the season Jonathan Wheatley has left his role as Audi team principal with immediate effect, the Formula One team has confirmed, paving the way for his anticipated switch to the same role at Aston Martin. Wheatley’s arrival would allow current Aston Martin principal, Adrian Newey, to return his focus to the technical and design areas in which he excels after the team endured a disastrous start to the new season. Continue reading...

Too many want to cast acts of violence and antisemitism as blows against Israel’s government. But the fear and terror land on real people, thousands of miles away Let us begin with a brief exchange on GB News, confirmed this week as the TV arm of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Following an attack on a synagogue last week in Michigan, in which a gunman drove a car packed with explosives through the entrance to the building before opening fire, a pundit on the channel sought to clarify what the attacker actually meant by his actions. “This was an Israeli temple,” she explained. “It was aligned with Israel.” By way of evidence, she cited the name of the synagogue – Temple Israel – apparently unaware that Jews have referred to themselves as “the people of Israel” for millennia, long before there was a state of that name, and that there are, for that reason, countless synagogues in the US called Temple Israel. No, for her, the Michigan house of worship, with its on-site school where more than a hundred children were in lessons that day, was a de facto embassy of the Israeli state and therefore an understandable, if not legitimate, target. Hold that episode in your mind. 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. Continue reading...

Bill Ready pointed to Australia’s social media ban for under-16s as a model, though it does not apply to his company Pinterest’s CEO called on world leaders to ban social media for youth under 16 in a LinkedIn post on Friday. “We need a clear standard: no social media for teens under 16, backed by real enforcement, and accountability for mobile phone operating systems and the apps that run on them,” Bill Ready wrote. Pinterest, an image-sharing platform, has seen a surge in young users over the past year but has disappointed Wall Street with its quarterly financial reports of late. Continue reading...

The actor’s martial arts skills saw him rise to fame in the 70s, but he found his groove – and legions of fans – destroying furniture, revving muscle cars and firing heavy artillery in the 80s • Chuck Norris, prolific action star and martial arts champion, dies aged 86 • Chuck Norris – a life in pictures When Chuck Norris fought Bruce Lee in The Way of the Dragon in 1972, it looked like the clash of two mythic archetypes. For all his power, Lee appeared boyish and almost slight, his body as smooth as marble and clenched with defined muscle like an anatomical illustration – the ascetic young master of Asian fighting philosophies. Norris was bigger, bulkier, shaggier and hairier, and basically more American; he was just as fast as Bruce (or almost), a master of taekwondo and jiujitsu and his own discipline of Chun Kuk Do, but with a body that looked as if an ounce or two of old-fashioned fat – the byproduct of the odd porterhouse steak – would be neither here nor there (although in later years Norris dialled down the red meat). Norris was a rip-roaring action hero in the stacked form also popularised by Sly, Arnie and later Jason Statham; he was basically in the tradition of occidental action, a western-style fighting man who had also absorbed the eastern arcana of unarmed combat into a persona that was also confident with heavy weaponry. The combination made him a lead like Clint Eastwood’s man with no name (and in fact his 1985 actioner Code of Silence, about a cop on the edge, was originally developed as a Dirty Harry vehicle). But Norris had something rangier and less enigmatic: you could call him the master of his own kind of whitesploitation ass-kicking spectacular. Continue reading...

Tania Warner and Ayla, her seven-year-old with autism, sent to notorious Texas detention center and told to ‘self-deport’ Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox A Canadian woman and her seven-year-old daughter with autism who have been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for nearly a week have been transferred to a notorious detention center and asked to “self-deport”, according to her husband, who said the pair had been “traumatized” by the experience. Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Luca, originally from British Columbia, moved to the US five years ago, when Warner married Edward Warner, a US citizen. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

Scientific advisory committee to examine impact of offering routine MenB jabs to wider range of people The Kent meningitis outbreak: what is happening and why? Experts are considering expanding the meningitis B vaccination eligibility in response to the fatal outbreak of the disease in Kent. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s review comes after the health secretary, Wes Streeting, asked it to to “re-examine eligibility for meningitis vaccines” for a wider range of people than those who currently qualify. Continue reading...

Airbrush artist who created iconic posters for A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket, as well as artwork for Pulp and the Rolling Stones One of the best-known British film posters of the 20th century began life in the Borehamwood house of Stanley Kubrick, in a sketch drawn by the airbrush artist Philip Castle, who has died aged 83. Then a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, who had advertised his services in the Daily Express, Castle was invited to meet the director at his home, where Kubrick played him a rough cut of his new film, A Clockwork Orange, without sound, and asked him to create a poster for it. “It was just incredible,” Castle told the Times in 2000. “My favourite film was Dr Strangelove, followed by 2001 [A Space Odyssey]. I was just the biggest fan.” In the director’s home theatre, he drafted images in his notebook of Malcolm McDowell, who played the gang leader Alex DeLarge in Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel. McDowell stares menacingly out of the page, holding a knife, with a floating eyeball nearby. This notebook – shown at two recent exhibitions in London, Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick at Somerset House (2016) and Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition at the Design Museum (2019) – holds most of the elements of the finished film poster, before Castle filled the final image with paint from an airbrush. This was the tool that allowed him to develop his distinctive style. Continue reading...

Manager believes league has left itself open to criticism Anger at Everton over perceived double standards David Moyes has called on the Premier League to provide a fuller explanation of why Chelsea were not deducted points for breaking its financial rules under the ownership of Roman Abramovich. Everton were deducted 10 points in November 2023, reduced to six on appeal, plus a further two points later that season for breaches of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR). Nottingham Forest were deducted four points that season for a PSR breach. The Premier League had argued for a 12-point deduction for Everton over the first offence – a breach of £19.5m over a three-year period – and an eight-point deduction for Forest. The Premier League announced on Monday that Chelsea had received a record fine of £10.75m, a suspended transfer embargo and a nine-month academy transfer ban for engaging in “deception and concealment” when making illicit payments totalling £47.5m to sign players during a seven-year period under Abramovich. In the written reasons for the “sanction agreement”, the Premier League stressed that Chelsea would not have breached PSR rules and frequently commends the club’s new owners, Clearlake Capital, for self-reporting the breaches. A points deduction in this case “was not appropriate”, according to the agreement signed by Premier League chief executive Richard Masters. There is anger and dismay at Everton over the perceived double standards at play in the Premier League’s disciplinary system. Moyes, who was West Ham manager when Everton broke financial rules and received the points deductions, believes the league has left itself open to criticism with the explanation given for Chelsea’s fine. “I would actually like to hear a bit more about it,” the Everton manager said. “I’m expecting more of the details and why – and this isn’t against Chelsea as I wasn’t at Everton at the time we were deducted a huge points number. I don’t think they have explained it well enough in the reasoning what the fine was and why it was. I think it would be good if we heard a little bit more how they got to that decision of fine with Chelsea rather than a points deduction, for example.” Continue reading...

Across south-east Asia, governments are scrambling to find ways to conserve energy and shield the public from soaring costs, as war in the Middle East causes huge disruption in the global oil market. In Thailand, news anchors are ditching their jackets after orders to reduce air conditioning use, while government workers in the Philippines are operating on a four-day week. Asia relies heavily on imported energy, much of which passes through the strait of Hormuz, and officials have warned further measures could be considered if the energy crisis worsens. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s south-east Asia correspondent, Rebecca Ratcliffe. Continue reading...