⚽️ FA Cup updates from 12.45pm BST at the Etihad Stadium ⚽️ Live scores | FA Cup quarter-finals preview Arne Slot has no regrets over his treatment of Mohamed Salah and claimed it was entirely the forward’s decision to leave Liverpool at the end of the season. The Liverpool head coach declined to divulge why or when Salah decided to leave the club as he faced the media on Friday for the first time since the Egypt international’s announcement. Slot believes it should be left to Salah to explain the reasons for exiting 12 months before his contract is due to expire. Continue reading...

Carabao Cup-winning defender signed in 2022 for £12m Howe’s underperforming squad set for summer overhaul Kieran Trippier is to leave Newcastle when his contract ends this summer, heightening the sense of an era ending at the Saudi-owned club. Trippier’s arrival, for £12m, from Atletico Madrid in January 2022 proved a landmark moment in the team’s transformation following Newcastle’s Saudi Arabian-led takeover in October 2021. He has made more than 150 appearances for Newcastle, scoring four goals, and was a part of the Carabao Cup-winning team that beat Liverpool at Wembley last May. Continue reading...

The architect on a special moment he captured one hot afternoon in Spain José Luis Morales Martín took this photo from his living room window on a hot September afternoon. Martín, who lives in Las Rozas de Madrid, a short drive from the Spanish capital, had just finished his lunch when he heard noises from outside. In the communal courtyard below, two teenagers were playing basketball. “I was amazed by the light and immediately went to get my phone to capture the scene,” he says. “The geometry of the pavement pattern, the shadows of the building and the figures playing with a basketball … I just waited for the magic to appear – and then it did.” Continue reading...

Senior figures express concerns over medical union’s refusal of pay rise that is higher than offer to other NHS staff Trade unions have privately expressed qualms about the forthcoming doctors’ strikes, expressing frustration at the conduct of the talks and the demands of the British Medical Association. The BMA is pushing for a pay rise higher than the 3.5% offered to doctors by the government, with strikes planned for next week. Continue reading...

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Government accused of removing loved ones from record after report says tens of thousands lack information to be found Mothers search in the scrublands, poking the earth for signs of a corpse. Desperate pleas fill social media, crying out for clues that may bring relief. Tattered posters flutter in the wind, asking for help in the search. Often, all that is left of the missing are scattered bones bleached by the sun. It is arguably Mexico’s greatest human rights crisis. More than 130,000 people have vanished since the state went to war against drug cartels a decade ago. Now, activists and human rights experts say the authorities are trying to erase their loved ones from the record. Continue reading...

County cricket updates from 11am BST across the grounds Team-by-team guide | Send Tanya your thoughts via email The spectre of the Ashes loomed over day one of a new Championship season, every innings, every wicket, a play in one act sent straight to the laptop of Brendon McCullum. England Lion Emilio Gay won the race to the first century of the season for Durham, a classy innings, fierce on the loose ball, and in tricky conditions at Chester-le-Street. When he was finally out, a fourth catch of the day to Kent’s Zak Crawley, he had pocketed 128 from just 140 balls. Continue reading...

Exclusive: research finds Jackdaw field would provide only about 2% of current demand, and Rosebank only 1% Opening major new fields in the North Sea would make almost no difference to the UK’s reliance on gas imports, research has shown. The Jackdaw field, one of the largest unexploited gasfields in the North Sea, would displace only 2% of the UK’s current imports of gas, which would leave the UK still almost entirely dependent on supplies from Norway and a few other sources. Continue reading...

It’s wild garlic time again! Try this pesto with an aromatic chicken, fennel and potato stew, then dive into a fudgy banana cake with a tantalisingly crunchy top I love Mexican chillies for the subtle flavour they give to cooking. Take the ancho, with its sweet, earthy notes of chocolate and plum. That adds immense depth to dishes traditional and avant garde alike, and is now readily available online and in shops. In today’s one-pot, which is a near-perfect way to cook a whole chicken, the ancho adds character to a classic sofrito, while in the pudding the savoury notes and touch of heat complement the dark caramel, helping to create a banana cake that is anything but bland. If you can’t find ancho, try any other medium-heat chilli flake in its place (nora, aleppo), or simply leave it out. The results will be delicious either way. Continue reading...

It’s a world of bottom quarks and arsole compounds – so why is science still so serious? Levity can make it all a lot easier to understand Science is an infamously dry endeavour. The noble practice seeks to answer humanity’s most inscrutable questions. How did life begin? What is consciousness? Why does naming cows increase their milk yield? Within this austere framework, there is little room for levity. I think most scientists would agree there is nothing funny about bottom quarks, nor the five-membered organoarsenic compound known as arsole. So I wasn’t surprised by the findings of a recent peer-reviewed paper, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, that surveyed the use of humour across 531 scientific talks at 14 academic conferences. Stefano Mammola, from the Italian National Research Council, and colleagues found that on average scientists delivered only 1.6 jokes per presentation, of which 66% generated “only polite chuckles”. Science and comedy, it seems, don’t mix. Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of This Book May Cause Side Effects Continue reading...

Amid closures and soaring costs, food halls are booming as a cheaper, lower-risk alternative to traditional restaurants Beeps chirp through the cavernous Cambridge Street Collective on a busy weekday, as buzzers alert the lunch crowd to collect their sushi tacos, rendang curries or Palestinian chicken musakhan. The Sheffield food hall is Europe’s largest purpose-built venue of its kind, at 20,000 sq ft, and arrived in 2024 as part of a major redevelopment of the city, which has brought in businesses including HSBC. Continue reading...

The novelist on working on a trawler, his near miss rock climbing, and being jailed for indecent exposure Born in Oslo, Jo Nesbø, 66, played for Norway’s premier league football team Molde before injury ended his career. After military service, he gained an economics degree, then worked in finance. He also formed the band Di Derre, which topped the Norwegian charts. In 1997, he released The Bat, the first of his bestselling Harry Hole novels. His work has been published in 51 languages and he has sold more than 60m books. In 2017, his novel The Snowman was made into a film starring Michael Fassbender. A new series, Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, premieres on Netflix on 26 March. He has a daughter and lives in Oslo. When were you happiest? When Molde won the Norwegian premier league in 2011, the year the club was 100 years old. Continue reading...

Fears of Easter chaos over scaling up of new EU border system are eased, with no facial IDs for Eurotunnel and Eurostar passengers Passengers crossing the Channel from the UK to France will not face new biometric checks in the coming weeks, despite an imminent deadline for the complete implementation of the EU’s entry-exit system (EES), ports say. Airlines and airports across Europe have feared chaos over the Easter holidays. Continue reading...

From sad-fishing on Facebook to sensational Substack revelations – today’s readers don’t have to look far for confessional writing. Is this the end of autobiography? Every day I meet strangers who share intimate details with me. It’s called reading. In a newspaper piece a former sex addict recalls her need for BDSM (“when a sexual partner hurt me, I felt seen”) and how she conquered her dependency. On Substack an actor describes her grief on losing a baby (“After the miscarriage, I became convinced my daughter was backstage. I would push back the costumes on the rack and almost expect to find her”). And then there are the published memoirs, first-person stories of trauma, displacement and heartbreak. It’s not just women who unburden themselves, of course. As Martin Amis says in his memoir, Experience: “We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.” Recent memoirs have upped the ante, though. What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers) is now open to anyone with a story to tell – “nobody memoirs”, the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them. Candour is the key, no matter how fraught the consequences. “Most writers I know,” Maggie Nelson writes in The Argonauts, “nurse persistent fantasies about the horrible things – or the horrible thing – that will happen to them if and when they express themselves as they desire”. But she takes that risk, addressing the book to “you”, her fluidly gendered husband Harry (who’s angry when she shows him a draft), while exploring identity, pregnancy, motherhood and sexuality. Continue reading...

Lack of regulation for specialist classes leaves UK fitness enthusiasts at risk, say professional bodies The boom in reformer pilates has created a “wild west” of studios where poor regulation has resulted in inexperienced teachers and a rise in injuries, professional standards bodies have warned. Pilates is not formally or legally regulated, and as its popularity has surged, industry experts say, so too has the growth of packed reformer-based classes often led by instructors with limited training. Continue reading...

Riccione’s leftwing mayor, Daniela Angelini, says public purchase is victory for town and ‘act of love and vision’ An Italian council has bought a villa where Benito Mussolini spent his summer holidays, partly to avoid the property falling into the hands of “fascist nostalgics”. Daniela Angelini, the leftwing mayor of Riccione, a town close to Rimini along Italy’s Adriatic coast, said the acquisition of Villa Mussolini through an auction was “an act of love and vision” and that bringing it back into public hands was a victory for the entire town. Continue reading...

Bally Bagayoko, who was targeted by racist abuse after winning Saint-Denis mayorship, vows to tackle inequality to stem deepening divisions A French mayor who faced a barrage of racist insults that are being investigated by police has called for France to urgently tackle race hatred and stem the rise of far-right ideas ahead of next year’s presidential election. “It has become a lot easier for racist views to be expressed … and unfortunately racist comments are becoming trivialised,” said Bally Bagayoko, 52, in his office at Saint-Denis town hall outside Paris, where he was recently elected mayor for the radical left. Continue reading...

⚽️ News and buildup before Manchester City v Liverpool ⚽️ Get in touch via email or post your thoughts BTL Let’s start with that Chelsea story. Ben Bloom was at the Liam Rosenior press conference while Jacob Steinberg has analysed the latest Cobham crisis. Good morning, football. Happy Easter, you happy eaters. We’re up for the FA Cup, and it’s the last eight, with a huge game between Manchester City and Liverpool starting the weekend’s quartet of matches. Perhaps that’s not as amped up as it might have been, with both teams having tough seasons by contrast to previous successes but: City won the Carabao Cup in style and Liverpool look to rescue something from their season. Manchester City v Liverpool, 12.45pm Chelsea v Port Vale, 5.15pm Southampton v Arsenal, 8pm Continue reading...

Relations with Britain have improved again since Brexit, but battles over Irish history remain visible in Stormont’s endless feuding Rory Carroll is the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent and author of A Rebel and a Traitor: A Fugitive, the Manhunt and Birth of the IRA More than a century after he was marched to the gallows, there is still something radioactive about Roger Casement, a name that continues to emit a faint crackle in British-Irish relations. He was knighted in 1911 by King George V for distinguished imperial service, but then embraced radical Irish nationalism and sought German help for the 1916 Easter Rising. Rory Carroll is the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent and author of A Rebel and a Traitor: A Fugitive, the Manhunt and the Birth of the IRA Continue reading...

A distant relative found a family link to the football prodigy, as they are both related to George Male, the first player to win six English top-flight titles Dave Male could have had no idea that his decision to attend a match while he was on holiday in Spain two years ago would uncover a remarkable family link to one of English football’s brightest young prospects. The retired teacher was staying just down the road from the Pinatar Arena in Murcia and went along to watch England Under-16s in a friendly against Italy. “I was looking at the team sheet and that’s when the name Dowman hit me straight away,” Male recalls. On the pitch that day was a 14-year-old Max Dowman, already standing out as England claimed a 2-1 victory. But for Male, it wasn’t just the performance that caught his attention. It was his name. Male, a keen genealogist, recognised it instantly from his own family history. Continue reading...

The US-Israeli war will have a lifelong impact on millions of children across the Middle East Millions of children have been plunged into crisis by the war in the Middle East, with reports of child soldiers in Iran, mass forced displacements in Lebanon and the killing of hundreds of minors. According to the UN agency for children, Unicef, more than 340 children have been killed and thousands injured since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, which has retaliated with bombings across the region. Continue reading...

Arsenal meet Brighton with their sights set on reaching a second semi-final while Tottenham could be facing Chelsea at just the right time Riding high after their Champions League quarter-final win over Chelsea, Arsenal are ready to push on in the FA Cup. The WSL title may be almost certainly out of sight following Manchester City’s impressive victory over Manchester United, but the chance to go for a European and domestic cup double is very much there. Brighton stand in the way of securing a second cup semi-final within six days. Last weekend Dario Vidosic’s side earned a first WSL win since their 23 January defeat of Everton, securing a 1-0 win over bottom-placed Leicester. The Seagulls sit sixth in the WSL, eight points behind Tottenham and only ahead of London City Lionesses on goal difference. They are seven points off of last season’s total with four games remaining. However, those four games are against Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal and Spurs and inconsistency has blighted their campaign. The hope will be that they face a tired Arsenal after their Champions League exploits, with the 1-0 second-leg defeat to Chelsea a frantic and exhausting match. That is perhaps an ambitious ask given the depth at Arsenal’s disposal and the form they are in, Wednesday night’s inconsequential defeat being their first loss since 21 January. Continue reading...

Goalkeeper on representing Israel, learning from Manuel Neuer at Bayern and targeting an FA Cup upset A few days after returning from international duty, there is only one place to start with Daniel Peretz: his pride at representing Israel during the unsettling and tense backdrop of war and geopolitical conflict. His excitement at facing Arsenal in the FA Cup quarter-finals can wait. Almost all of his family are in Tel Aviv, where wailing air raid sirens have become a staple of the mood music. “Unfortunately, it has become a bit of a routine,” says the Southampton goalkeeper, who is on loan from Bayern Munich. When they sound, his loved ones head to the nearest bunkers and safe rooms. “It’s not always easy to do this separation in life and you are worried a lot about what’s happening,” he says. “But they are always following the instructions and I’m always in touch with them. We speak regularly to check everything is OK. Continue reading...

Two people in police custody after a fatal incident in Cudworth area on Friday evening Two people have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a man died after a collision in the Cudworth area of Barnsley. Emergency services responded to reports of a collision between a Volkswagen Touareg and a pedestrian on Rose Tree Avenue about 4.55pm on Friday, South Yorkshire police said in a statement. Continue reading...

The key takeaways for who is eligible and how to seek redress from the new FCA motor finance scheme Complain now to be at the front of the queue. That is the message from the City regulator and the consumer champion Martin Lewis as a scheme gets under way to pay out about £7.5bn in total to millions of motorists mis-sold car loans. More information emerged this week about how much money the different categories of people might get and how it will all work after Monday’s announcement that an industry-wide compensation scheme for victims of the UK’s car finance scandal is definitely going ahead. Continue reading...