A wartime leader’s words are critically important. But Trump, contradicting himself and denying reality, is no Churchill During a White House ceremony on 9 April 1963, then president John F Kennedy bestowed honorary citizenship on former prime minister Winston Churchill, remembering how effectively Churchill inspired millions with his words during the second world war. As Kennedy put it, Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle”. The same cannot be said of Kennedy’s successor Donald Trump. Their names may be awkwardly conjoined atop the shuttered Kennedy Center, but the comparison ends there. Kennedy, like Churchill, spoke effectively, with great attention to the facts, particularly during the Cuban missile crisis, when the world’s leaders hung on every phrase and participle spoken by the leader of the free world. Continue reading...

The crime bill proposes a stronger model of consent – and with violent imagery and child sexual abuse soaring, who, really, can argue against it? Susanna Rustin is the author of Sexed: A History of British Feminism Once you stop to think about it, the need for a law to ensure that participants have consented to appear in online pornography is obvious. Egregious past failures have been well documented. They range from the New York Times’s investigation of Pornhub, which concluded that one of the world’s biggest pornography businesses hosted videos featuring underaged and sex-trafficked subjects (Pornhub subsequently removed more than half of its content) to the horrors uncovered in the trial of Dominique Pelicot. On the online chat site Coco he shared multiple videos of his then wife, Gisèle, being raped while unconscious in a chatroom called “without her knowledge” (Coco was shut down in 2024). Susanna Rustin is a social affairs journalist and the author of Sexed: A History of British Feminism Continue reading...

The R&B singer’s must-read autobiography candidly describes a life of heady highs and horrific lows Despite a 30 years-plus discography and a slew of undeniable classics (Sittin’ Up in My Room, The Boy Is Mine, modern R&B blueprint What About Us?) and deep cuts feted by the likes of Solange, Kehlani and Normani, there’s a sense that Brandy, the fan-anointed Vocal Bible, is still underrated. Her vividly told and occasionally harrowing memoir, Phases, co-written alongside Gerrick Kennedy and out on Tuesday, goes some way to explaining why that might be. As well as detailing her formative years in Mississippi and later California, where she learned her trade singing in church choirs and at youth groups, and later her meteoric rise as a teenage superstar, Phases paints a picture of a young woman whose insecurities were often exposed and abused by others. It also spotlights issues around duty of care in the music industry; in 1999, while nursing an addiction to diet pills, and juggling her role on the hit teen sitcom Moesha with a relentless recording and touring schedule, Brandy suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of just 20. Continue reading...

Surrey look well placed to reclaim the title after their runner-up finish last season while all eyes are on promotion for Lancashire Continue reading...

Teenager plays in Portugal for Valadares Gaia Lionesses face Spain and Iceland in World Cup qualifiers England have given a shock call-up to the 17-year-old midfielder Erica Meg Parkinson for April’s World Cup qualifiers against Spain and Iceland. The Singapore-born Parkinson, who plays for the Portuguese first division side Valadares Gaia, will be part of Sarina Wiegman’s senior squad for the first time, having previously featured across the Lionesses pathway. Continue reading...

Union boss says workers have received some, but not all, of their pay Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. Security lines have eased at airports, clearing the worst of the bottlenecks as Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) officers began receiving backpay for working during the government shutdown. Allegations swirl that a broker for Pete Hegseth inquired into an investment in key defense companies before the Iran war began. The Morgan Stanley broker allegedly made an inquiry with BlackRock regarding an investment into a defense-focused equity fund. The Pentagon denied the allegations calling them “entirely false and fabricated”. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill to rename the Palm Beach International Airport after Donald Trump. This would make the airport the latest in a long list of institutions, government programs, buildings and even money named after the president. The US government has directed all of its embassies and consulates to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda. Marco Rubio signed a cable on Monday directing the embassies to coordinate with the US military’s psychological operations unit to address disinformation. It suggested using Elon Musk’s social media platform X to carry out the campaign. José Guadalupe Ramos, a Mexican national, becomes the 14th known person to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since the beginning of the year. He was found unconscious in his bunk last week at the Adelanto detention center in California and pronounced dead after being taken to a nearby medical center. The army is investigating a helicopter fly-by at Kid Rock’s hillside swimming pool in Tennessee on Saturday. Two army choppers on a training run visited and hovered by the rocker’s house as he saluted them. According to the army, there was no official request for the fly-by, which triggered the administrative review. Continue reading...

Spinning off brands such as Hellmann’s, Knorr and Pot Noodle into $60bn entity puts core focus on beauty, personal care and home products Business live – latest updates Unilever is in advanced talks to combine its food business with US-based McCormick in a deal including $15.7bn (£11.9bn) cash that would give the Marmite-to-Hellmann’s mayonnaise owner majority control of a $60bn food empire. London-listed Unilever will control 65% of the new spin-off, which will combine brands such as Knorr and Pot Noodle with McCormick’s condiments and spices including French’s mustard, Old Bay seasoning and Cholula hot sauce. Continue reading...

Our cartoonist on the 78-year-old’s shock move to Bristol and his attempts to connect with the young ‘uns Buy a cartoon | David’s favourite works of 2025 And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now Continue reading...

Homes evacuated in Lurgan as police carry out controlled explosion on device, which man was forced to carry in ‘terrifying ordeal’ Gunmen hijacked a car, placed a device inside and forced the occupant to drive the vehicle to a police station in Northern Ireland on Monday, prompting a security alert and the evacuation of about 100 homes. Some streets in Lurgan, County Armagh, remained shut on Tuesday morning as police investigated the scene. Continue reading...

Today, the space around Earth can no longer be considered empty. More than 30,000 objects are in orbit, and that figure is rising exponentially Some reports suggest that by the end of this decade there could more than 60,000 active satellites in space. Launch by launch, what began with a handful of scientific and military spacecraft has accelerated into a constant flow of objects, publicly and privately owned, placed into different orbital lanes, each serving a variety of purposes. There is now a diverse collection of satellites spinning around the globe, ​including communication​ and weather ​satellites​, navigation satellites and Earth observation technology that takes images of the surface. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Reform UK will be ‘steering well clear’ of CPAC event in July, says a source, as will senior Tories Nigel Farage will snub a major conference of US conservatives that is being brought to the UK by Liz Truss. The short-lived former prime minister, who was accused of crashing the economy, was chosen by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to lead a version of the event in the UK in July. Continue reading...

A woman’s confession on the eve of her nuptials causes uproar in this insouciantly offensive provocation from the director of Dream Scenario • This review contains spoilers How much of your past should you reveal to your adorable fiance before the big day? Very tricky issues are probably best avoided in the run-up to the ceremony, but can still be recklessly raised by attractively naive young people who assume the worms surely can’t be that big or plentiful – or difficult to get back into the can. Such a situation is the centre of this contrived but amusing high-concept, high-anxiety movie from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli; a Euro-satire of American bourgeois aspiration that sets out to discomfit and excruciate in the spirit of Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure or Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen. Continue reading...

As Cesar Chavez Day becomes Farmworkers Day, we must remember that the hero is the movement The way we commemorate history is often – too often – by celebrating an individual with a statue, a place name, a holiday. While some have been torn down – statues of Gen Robert E Lee have given way in some parts of the US to statues of Harriet Tubman – Republicans are trying to reverse the shift in statuary. To that end, the Trump administration recently plunked down a Columbus statue on the White House grounds, a replica of one thrown into the harbor in Baltimore in 2020 as the Black Lives Matter protests addressed racism and colonialism. Still, maybe the age of individual heroes is fading. This year, Jon Wiener, a retired history professor and current Nation magazine editor, nominated Minneapolis for the Nobel peace prize for its residents’ valor and solidarity in opposing ICE and defending their neighbors. The magazine’s editors wrote: “Through countless acts of courage and solidarity, the people of Minneapolis have challenged the culture of fear, hate, and brutality that has gripped the United States and too many other countries. Their nonviolent resistance has captured the imagination of the nation and the world.” The Nobel is a longshot, but the Twin Cities – both Minneapolis and St Paul – got the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage award “for risking their lives to protect their neighbors and immigrant community members ... with extraordinary courage and resolve”. Continue reading...

A new season of Netflix’s dating show about neurodivergent singletons is a welcome antidote to grim reality TV headlines Logan is a big fan of Hannah Montana and Spongebob Squarepants. He loves model trains and watches videos of them crashing, because that way he knows that no one was hurt. His favourite desert is cheesecake. These are touchingly pure interests from a 25-year-old man who lives in the hedonistic capital of Las Vegas. “I describe myself as trying to be well-groomed, very patient, not lazy and always punctual,” he says. “Classy, fancy, romantic – wait, romantic? Is that the word?” Logan is one of the new participants on Netflix’s Love on the Spectrum: a series that follows a group of neurodivergent young people as they search for a romantic connection, which returns this week for its fourth season. Unlike other dating shows, such as Love is Blind and Love Island, the stars of this show don’t seem to be motivated by fame and the promise of a Boohoo discount code in their name. In fact, Love on the Spectrum is the antidote to the reality TV of today, which often revolves around controversy and conflict. Watching these young people and their families navigate their search for love isn’t merely wholesome, it makes for life-affirming TV. Continue reading...

A death rate of up to 90%, attributed to warming seas, is threatening the trade in Hiroshima prefecture, which produces most of the country’s farmed oysters The Kure oyster festival is doing a brisk trade in beer and grilled meat on sticks. But the longest queues are in front of the oyster stalls, where chefs shuffle piles of mottled shellfish across griddles, waiting for their hinges to ease and reveal their fleshy interiors. Nobuyuki Miyaoka, who is attending the festival with his son, daughter-in-law and their young children, likes his oysters steamed with sake and served with a few drops of tangy ponzu sauce. “The local oysters were fine until this year,” he says. “They used to be a lot bigger … look how small they are.” Chefs prepare oysters at the Kure oyster festival. This year, local businesses and consumers say the shellfish have been scarce and smaller than usual Continue reading...

Louis Mosley says government should resist calls to trigger break clause in £330m deal with US analytics company UK politics live – latest updates Palantir’s UK boss has urged the government not to give in to “ideologically motivated campaigners” as government ministers explore a way out of a £330m NHS contract with the tech company. Ministers have sought advice on triggering a break clause in Palantir’s deal to deliver the Federated Data Platform (FDP), amid questions over the company’s presence in the public sector. Continue reading...

Pre-game incident has gone viral online and plays directly into broader debate of how the sport wants to be perceived No prizes for guessing the most viewed rugby clip at the weekend. The number of views on X has long since passed three million and – spoiler alert – people were not studying the finer detail of Gloucester’s defensive effort at Villa Park on Saturday. Leicester’s Geoff Parling used to be just another stern-faced Prem coach; suddenly he is an unlikely global social media star. For those who missed it – and here’s hoping you enjoyed your mini-break on Jupiter – here is a potted summary. The TNT Sport presenter Craig Doyle and a new colleague, Liam MacDevitt, were on the pitch before the game, with MacDevitt being urged to take a kick at goal as part of his on-screen Prem initiation. All seemed OK right until the moment an angry Parling loomed into shot. Continue reading...

I’m not saying I paid for all of it. But I probably should have flossed more I was at the dentist’s, because that’s where I always am at the moment, lying there, mouth full of stuff, thinking: “This is just a phase and not the new normal.” The conversation is one-sided by necessity, which is the only saving grace of being there at all, that window into a world where I’m not constantly talking and get to find out what other people are interested in for a change. No, there’s one other saving grace: I still have teeth. And maybe it’s part of the training, or maybe he’s just a very cheerful guy, but the dentist is an enthusiast. He loves all the seasons and the way a composite filling can stave off recession around the upper canines. He loves tea, coffee, red wine and turmeric; he loves fizzy drinks of all kinds, as a relatable prelude to the news that I have to stop consuming them. It would be hard to be warned off those things by someone who didn’t understand how nice they were. He determinedly never talks about the events of the world, but he doesn’t like a lot of silence, either, and that’s how we landed on the topic of the time he bought a Ferrari. Continue reading...

The 19th composer John Field was the first to name his gentle and delicate piano pieces ‘nocturnes’. The word – and the genre of ‘sleep music’ – it presaged, is ubiquitous today One of the most familiar topics of our time is the trouble many of us have in winding down at the end of the day. Insomnia is rife: crossing the threshold between day and night has become a challenge for many of us. Music is often recommended as a way to help us relax, and there are countless sleep music playlists on streaming sites to lull us into unconsciousness and bear us towards morning on a current of soothing sounds. Max Richter’s Sleep, “an eight-hour lullaby”, a set of musical episodes that mirror what’s happening in our brains during the various phases of sleep, is, 11 years after its release, currently No 2 in the official classical artist albums chart. It’s been performed all over the world, with audience members provided with camp beds, blankets and pillows and gently serenaded through the night by live musicians playing Richter’s meditative score. Musing over photos of slumbering audiences, I started to wonder about the history of music being used as an aid to sleep. The lullaby must be as old as humanity, but lullabies are essentially vocal. Their words often work against the grain of the music, sometimes conjuring up some very non-soothing images: “When the bough breaks, the baby will fall / Down will come cradle, baby and all.” Lullabies are a strange hybrid, musically comforting yet often expressing a vein of underlying anguish. Sleep music, on the other hand, tends to be purely instrumental. The absence of a voice makes it more abstract; without words, the meaning of the music remains open and listeners are free to connect however their imagination suggests. Continue reading...

Open letter sent to members ahead of AGM ‘The club has been poorly led for too long’ A group of past Middlesex players led by Mike Gatting, the former England captain, has delivered a withering assessment of the county’s leadership on the eve of the new season and warned the club risks “drifting towards irrelevance”. In an open letter to members – a clarion call ahead of the club’s annual general meeting on 15 April – Gatting and his co-signatories have highlighted a lack of transparency and called the cricket set-up “a mess”. Desmond Haynes, the former West Indies opener, and England’s Mark Ramprakash are among others to have put their names to the letter. Continue reading...

Even old pennies corrode too slowly to be useful. You’d be better off saving them up and buying proper plant feed The problem If a plant looks a bit yellow or drooping, someone might suggest putting a penny in the pot. The idea is that the copper will leach into the soil, liven up the plant and maybe even ward off fungi. It is one of those tips that refuses to die, passed on like family folklore. The hack The promise is simple: pop a coin in the compost and let chemistry do the work. Supposedly, the copper acts as a mini-fertiliser and a mild fungicide. Continue reading...

A tribunal verdict on the term is revealing about the complexities of having multiple cultural identities – and western attitudes to ageing It should be uncontroversial to state that what we want to be called – or do not want to be called – should be respected. This simple enough principle is what defined the grievance between NHS co-workers Ilda Esteves and her colleague Charles Oppong. Last week, an employment tribunal ruled in Esteves’ favour, agreeing she was subjected to harassment from Oppong for his repeated references to her as “auntie”. The healthcare assistant was awarded £1,425 in compensation. Continue reading...

Clustered together in the area of Cheetham Hill are more than 50 shops specialising in vapes and vaping paraphernalia. How can they all make a living – and for how much longer? I meet Ali outside his tiny wholesale business, Fly Vape – the store name combined with the image of a vape bookended by angel wings appears on the shopfront. In place of a halo is a cloud of vapour. The softly spoken 40-year-old says that working in the vape trade is “OK, better than nothing”. He opened Fly Vape just over two years ago, selling vaping products to small retailers such as convenience stores. Candy-coloured boxes bursting with fruity flavours line the shelves, although body sprays, soft drinks and a plentiful selection of bongs are available too. His customers come “from all around the UK”, he says, although he names only “Leeds, Bradford, Hull”. He shrugs at the fact that, compared with his neighbours, his sales are modest. He is not one of the “big men” here, he grins. Ali’s store is in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, where two adjoining litter-strewn back streets near Manchester prison (formerly Strangeways) have emerged as a surprising industry hub in recent years. Ali’s is one of more than 50 outlets specialising in vapes and their accompanying products in an area that has been dubbed Britain’s “vape capital”. Most appear to be wholesalers; there are few passersby and some doors bear signs stating “trade only”, “not open to the public”. Continue reading...

Heathrow wanted changes to fund multi-billion pound upgrade, but airlines had warned steep rises would be passed on to passengers Business live – latest updates The UK aviation regulator has partially rejected plans by Heathrow to significantly raise its landing fees to fund a multi-billion pound upgrade, arguing the airport can still invest without steep hikes to ticket prices. The Civil Aviation Authority said the average charge per passenger should rise from £28.40 to £28.80 between 2027 and 2031. Continue reading...

Former Radio 2 presenter reportedly investigated over relationship with teenage boy but case closed through lack of evidence Scott Mills was questioned over allegations of serious sexual offences against a teenage boy in 2018 but the case was later closed due to lack of evidence, it has emerged after he was sacked with immediate effect for his personal conduct. Mills, who hosted Britain’s most popular radio breakfast show on BBC Radio 2, was taken off the air last week and on Monday the BBC announced his contract had been terminated with immediate effect. Continue reading...