Pop star was arrested in March after she was pulled over for driving erratically on US 101 in California Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Britney Spears was charged in California on Thursday with driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, authorities said. The 44-year-old pop star was charged with a single misdemeanor count of driving under the combined influence of alcohol and at least one drug, the Ventura county district attorney’s office said. Continue reading...

Judith Alexander describes how Kentish Town house owned by the prime minister was targeted The prime minister’s sister-in-law has said she feared what might have happened had she not woken up after her home was targeted in an arson attack, a court has heard. The incident is one of a series of arson attacks that took place in May last year on property linked to Keir Starmer, which three men with links to Ukraine are accused of targeting. They deny all the charges. Continue reading...

With prime minister on shaky ground, we take a look at who could take a run at the Labour leadership As the May elections creep closer, the leadership speculation at Westminster grows more intense. Is Keir Starmer safe and, if so, for how long? When will Angela Rayner’s tax affairs be resolved, and will she return to the cabinet? Who has Andy Burnham done a deal with to get back to Westminster, and would MPs support him if he did? Why has Wes Streeting gone so quiet? To the frustration of many – not least the prime minister himself – discussions about who is up and who is down have long been a staple of Westminster life. But as the security of the prime minister’s position has ebbed and flowed in recent months, it has intensified. So where do Starmer – and his putative rivals for No 10 – stand? Continue reading...

Rightwing justices ordered Louisiana in 6-3 vote to redraw congressional maps in blow to the Voting Rights Act The US supreme court issued a landmark ruling on Wednesday, Louisiana v Callais, relating to how states draft congressional maps under the key civil rights statute, the Voting Rights Act. By a margin of 6-3, the rightwing justices who control America’s top court ordered Louisiana to redraw congressional maps that gave African Americans the chance to elect their candidates of choice proportionate to their population size. The majority dismissed this as an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander”. Continue reading...

President says decision made ‘in honor of the king and queen’ as industry officials call deal ‘significant boost’ In a gesture of diplomatic friendliness after King Charles’s visit to the White House, Donald Trump said the US would be removing all tariffs on whisky imports. “In Honor of the King and Queen of the United Kingdom, who have just left the White House, soon headed back to their wonderful Country, I will be removing the Tariffs and Restrictions on Whiskey having to do with Scotland’s ability to work with the Commonwealth of Kentucky on Whiskey and Bourbon,” Trump said in a post on social media. Continue reading...

Decision from federal appeals court comes almost 18 months after Trump appealed following 2024 election win Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox A federal appeals court has announced it will not grant a rare meeting of its active judges to hear an appeal of the $83m civil case verdict against Donald Trump for defaming magazine advice columnist E Jean Carroll over a forced sexual encounter three decades ago. The second US circuit court of appeals was divided late on Wednesday in its decision, ultimately, to reject proceeding to a so-called en banc hearing, a rare meeting of all of its judges to consider a conclusion. Continue reading...

Can LIV find new backers and what are the options for Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Lee Westwood and others? Confirmation that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will cease funding the LIV Golf tour will have huge ramifications, for the future of the tour itself, the players and across golf’s traditional heartlands. Where does PIF’s withdrawal leave them all? Continue reading...

Bipartisan measure includes funding for Secret Service and TSA, but excludes immigration enforcement operations Partial government shutdown ends after Congress votes to fund DHS The US House of Representatives has voted to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security – excluding immigration enforcement operations – and end the longest government agency shutdown in history. The deal struck on Thursday aims to draw a line under a 75-day impasse that had threatened airport chaos and exposed fresh strains within the Republican party. Continue reading...

Dozens handed life peerages in apparent concession, enabling their return to red benches Dozens of hereditary peers whose seats have been abolished have had their lawmaking powers restored as Keir Starmer seeks to accelerate changes to the House of Lords. It is understood that 15 Conservative hereditary peers, two Labour and nine crossbenchers have been handed life peerages, enabling their return to the red benches. Continue reading...

Coroner says none of the five civilians killed in incident in Belfast during Troubles should have been shot British army soldiers “lost control” and used force that was “not reasonable” in the killing of five civilians in Northern Ireland in 1972, an inquest judge has ruled. Four of the victims – two teenagers, a father of six and a Catholic priest – posed no risk when they were shot in the Springhill and Westrock areas of west Belfast on 9 July 1972, Mr Justice Scoffield said on Thursday. Continue reading...

Decision follows backlash from Italian government and European Commission The jury of the Venice Biennale has quit just days before the prestigious art exhibition was due to begin, amid a row over the decision to allow Russia to participate. The resignation of the five-member international jury was announced late on Thursday in a brief statement by the Venice Biennale organisers, and came a day after the Italian culture ministry sent inspectors to Venice in search of information about the decision to allow Russia to have a pavilion at this year’s event. Continue reading...

The AI boom is worsening a global memory chip shortage, which Samsung predicts will continue into 2027 Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported record quarterly profit driven by a 49-fold jump in chip income, saying it expects a severe supply shortage to deepen next year as clients spend on AI, driving up prices of its memory chips. A boom in the construction of AI datacentres has spurred Samsung and chipmaking peers to allocate production capacity to advanced chips that Nvidia uses in its so-called AI accelerators. Even so, chipmakers are struggling to meet demand while the move also squeezes the supply of conventional chips. Continue reading...

Brendan Carr claims agency’s renewal order is strictly related to investigation into network’s DEI initiatives Brendan Carr, the Trump-picked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), denied speculation that the agency is forcing ABC to apply early to renew licenses for its eight owned and operated local television stations as punishment for an ill-timed joke made last Thursday by late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel. The decision drew backlash from industry group National Association of Broadcasters, whose chief executive called it “nearly unprecedented”; from Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who said the agency should not operate as “the speech police”; and from press freedom organizations that have derided it as an example of a disfavored network being punished for editorial purposes. Continue reading...

The stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, north-west London, has become the latest in a series of antisemitic attacks. So is rising antisemitism now a national emergency? And is more security for the Jewish community really the answer? Helen Pidd is joined by columnist Rafael Behr Continue reading...

The German artist lived through Nazism and communism – and his horrific, shaming works, including a masturbating Hitler, forced his country to face its past. Yet in later life, he beautifully captured human frailty, portraying himself and his wife nude Georg Baselitz was a living thread of history and his death robs us of the truth he knew when we need it more than ever. He was one of the only two people I have spoken to for whom Nazi Germany was a living memory: Baselitz was born in 1938, making him far too young to bear any personal guilt but old enough – seven when the Third Reich fell – to retain direct experience and images of it. In his art, he cut those images up, gored and eviscerated them in paintings of uniformed young enthusiasts with blood spurting from mangled limbs or entire bodies fed through some hellish grinder and roughly remade. Into the woods they went, these ironically titled “Heroes”, chopping and being chopped in the guilty depths of the German forest. Continue reading...

Share prices of United Utilities and Severn Trent show investors seem keen to throw capital at the right firms Thames Water, with occasional cameos by ugly little siblings Southern Water and South East Water, grabs most of the attention in the sector for obvious reasons. So it’s easy to overlook what’s happening further north. Short answer: the new era of higher bills and higher spending on water infrastructure will feel splendid if you’re United Utilities, licence-holder in north-west England, or Severn Trent, operating in the Midlands. The former’s share price surged 11% on Thursday, the sort of thing that shouldn’t happen at a utility where success is meant to be defined in terms of dull predictability. And it’s definitely unusual to see a one-day valuation jump of that size when the company is issuing £800m-worth of new shares. Indeed, there was a mini-stampede for UU’s equity after Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, Future Fund, and the global infrastructure investor Atlas grabbed half the allocation in the placing as “cornerstone” investors. Continue reading...

Researchers say results mark a ‘profound change in technology that will reshape medicine’ From George Clooney in ER to Noah Wyle in The Pitt, emergency department doctors have long been popular heroes. But will it soon be time to hang up the scrubs? A groundbreaking Harvard study has found that AI systems outperformed human doctors in high-pressure emergency medicine triage, diagnosing more accurately in the potentially life and death moments when people are first rushed to hospital. Continue reading...

Jews in Britain are facing a wave of hate spread by hostile states, and some homegrown. We can only tackle it by working together Another week, another attack on British Jews; and rather than synagogues being petrol-bombed in the middle of the night, now it is ordinary Jews being stabbed in broad daylight. It’s been described as this country’s biggest national security emergency for almost a decade by the UK’s terrorism watchdog. Finding a solution will mean some hard questions, not just for government and police but for wider society too. The immediate move is, of course, more policing and more funding for security. The first job of government is to protect its people, and this should be done without question. Prosecutions should be expedited through the courts, as they were with the riots that followed the Southport attack. But physical protection is, in a way, the easy part. Dave Rich is director of policy at the Community Security Trust and the author of Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism is Built into Our World – and How You Can Change it Continue reading...

Policing and government policy are essential, but not sufficient to address rising hate crime against Jews The stabbing of two men in north-west London on Wednesday by an attacker described as seeking anyone “visibly Jewish” would be horrifying under any circumstances. That it comes amid rising antisemitic crime in the area, in the UK and around the world makes it all the more frightening. A community persecuted throughout history faces a fresh wave of hatred and abuse. Shock and grief are mixed with fear, with some British Jews asking whether they can be safe in the UK. This is the third attack in five weeks in the same part of Golders Green alone. Last October, two people were killed in an attack on a synagogue in Heaton Park, Manchester, on Yom Kippur. In December, two men were found guilty of plotting to infiltrate and open fire on a march against antisemitism in the same city. That month, a pair of gunmen killed 15 people at a Hanukah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney. 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...

By attacking the basic settlement between scientists and the state, the US president has proved that experts can’t avoid these fights Donald Trump’s war on science has been vicious and hugely damaging, but it is worth noting that he has lost some of its biggest battles. Last year, Mr Trump demanded that US federal scientific and medical research funding be cut by about half. But the budget Congress passed in February actually delivered a slight increase in overall funding – although specific Trump targets such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were cut. He also continues to chip away at science in other ways such as dismissing the board overseeing the National Science Foundation this week. Maga’s attacks on science have been nakedly political. Its defeats have been politics of a different sort, showing that the bipartisan pro-science consensus is still intact, and for the moment has the power to hold Mr Trump in check. Scientists themselves appear to be waking up to the potential of such politics. The organisation 314 Action, which supports Democratic scientists running for office, reported that more than 700 candidates – vying for local, congressional and gubernatorial positions – have sought its support ahead of the midterm elections this year, three times the usual number. Many gave the White House’s war on science as the reason for their political turn. 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...

Senator Jack Reed says at hearing that defense secretary failed to give Trump accurate picture of war in Iran US politics live – latest updates Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email Pete Hegseth has failed to give Donald Trump an accurate picture of the war on Iran while resorting to “dangerously exaggerated” statements to create an inaccurate picture of a US military triumph, a senior Democrat told a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, told Hegseth, the defense secretary, that far from victory, US citizens were having to bear the cost of a war they did not support in the form of increased fuel prices. Continue reading...

Keir Starmer met with boos and jeers as Nigel Farage tells crowds the PM has been ‘weak’ on pro-Palestinian marches Word had spread by mid morning on WhatsApp groups and social media accounts that Keir Starmer would be visiting the headquarters of the Jewish-led Hatzola ambulance service in Golders Green in north London. The organisation’s members had only been informed that a senior cabinet minister was on their way after the stabbings of two Jewish men in the area on Wednesday and so the gathering crowd was something of a puzzle to those inside. “I didn’t even tell my children,” said one. The protesters knew. By the time the prime minister arrived at midday there were about 200 people gathered to make their feelings heard, many holding up freshly printed posters bearing the words: “Keir Starmer Jew harmer”. They had been distributed by a direct action group opposed to the continuation of the pro-Palestinian marches, called Stop the Hate. Continue reading...

⚽ Conference League semi-final updates, 8pm BST kick-off ⚽ Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa – live | Scores | Mail Taha Yes, the one in Nottingham is a tantalising fixture … but this’ll be good, too, promise. Oliver Glasner has entered the final weeks of his spell at Crystal Palace with a prize still available; the club who took 120 years to win their first major trophy could make it two in two. They’re in Krakow after sweeping aside Fiorentina in the quarters, a 3-0 win at home in the first leg allowing for a 2-1 loss in the second. In the other corner, Arda Turan’s Shakhtar Donetsk. The former Atlético Madrid and Turkey midfielder is on his way to a league title in his first season at the helm, with Shakhtar eyeing up their second European trophy – they won the Uefa Cup in 2009, right before the Europa League rebrand. His side are here after a 5-2 aggregate victory over AZ Alkmaar. All of their Conference League “home” games this season have been played at the Henryk Reyman Municipal Stadium, owing to obvious reasons. “There is war in Ukraine and yet people live their lives,” said Turan. “Every day shows that this nation never gives up.” We get going at 8pm BST. Continue reading...

⚽ Europa League semi-final updates, 8pm BST kick-off ⚽ Shakhtar v Palace – live | Latest scores | Mail Daniel An affirming feature of Cup competitions is getting to enjoy clubs, players, managers and supporters enjoying and detesting their biggest game in generations. But what is much rarer is to have two teams, from neighbouring regions, competing against each other in a contest which means that much to both, and is vitally important in its own right. The specific dynamics of our match this evening are also special. Villa are the superior team, fifth in the league having spent much of the campaign higher – there was, briefly, talk of a title challenge – but they’ve struggled in recent months and arrive at this evening in spotty form. Forest, meanwhile, are the inferior team, 16th in the league having spent much of the campaign lower – there is, still, talk of a relegation battle – but they’ve improved in recent weeks and arrive at this evening in top form. Continue reading...

Lambeth council candidates Saiqa Ali and Sabine Mairey understood to have been detained over social media posts Two women standing as Green party candidates in the local elections have been arrested over alleged antisemitic social media posts. The women, running in seats for Lambeth council, south London, were arrested by the Metropolitan police on Thursday morning. Continue reading...