⚽ Updates from Saturday’s kick-offs in England and beyond ⚽ Live scores | Tables | Follow us on Bluesky | Email Will The beyond delightful Tom Garry has been to speak to the head honchos at Aston Villa Women. And plenty of interest in L1 and L2. Continue reading...

Six Nations updates from Dublin; kick-off 2.10pm GMT Sign up for The Breakdown newsletter | Email Alex A first Six Nations title is tantalisingly within reach – but Scotland are likely to face a familiar problem in Dublin. It doesn’t matter how good your backline is, or how well rehearsed your strike moves are if possession is cut off at source. France were curiously lacklustre in defence at Murrayfield but Andy Farrell, the Ireland head coach, has reverted to the same selection as for England at Twickenham. We know how that turned out, and no team has suffered more in the face of Ireland’s considerable power than Scotland. Continue reading...

Police find suspect after incident near course Third round began on time despite delays Police have captured a man who they say killed two people on Friday night about a mile from TPC Sawgrass. The incident led the Players Championship to delay opening the gates to the public for the third round by a couple of hours. St Johns County sheriff, Rob Hardwick, said the suspect, whom he identified as Christian Barrios, shot two people multiple times about 10:30pm on Friday in the parking lot of Walgreens in a domestic violence situation. The store is located about a mile away from the course. Continue reading...

Wife of former PM also says she is mentioned in Epstein files and coverage not focused enough on victims of abuse Peter Mandelson’s critics should remember that he is “still a human being”, Cherie Blair has said in an interview. Blair added that the former Labour minister was “entitled to a fair trial” after he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. He denies criminal wrongdoing and has been released under investigation. Continue reading...

Greenhouse gases dropped just 0.1% last year as environment minister criticises lack of improvement Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have again missed targets set by the Climate Protection Act and barely fell at all in 2025. Emissions decreased by just 0.1% last year compared to the previous year, according to data from the German Environment Agency. Continue reading...

Which supermarket Spanish omelette seems as if it’s served plump from the pan, and which is a soggy flop? • The best supermarket free-range eggs My second ever chef job was at Glastonbury in 1997, which is now famous as the “Year of the Mud”. We sliced hundreds of kilos of potatoes, peeled onions until we cried, and cracked and whisked untold dozens of eggs. Back then, you couldn’t buy tortilla in a shop, only from a tapas restaurant, but these days there’s an incredible selection in many supermarkets. I normally eat shop-bought tortilla straight from the packet, but during this taste test, I discovered just how nice it is when reheated in a pan. I tried all these tortillas hot and cold, and even the lower-scoring ones were quite enjoyable when eaten warm. I judged them on taste and texture, which varied from a dense, firmly set egg to the soft and squidgy centre I love. All were relatively minimally processed, but all lacked transparency regarding the origin of their ingredients – though, thankfully, many were made with free-range eggs, which scored them an extra star. Some were made in the UK and others in Spain, but that didn’t always equate to a better product. While supermarket tortilla can’t quite replicate the fresh-from-the-pan experience, the best come surprisingly close. Continue reading...

Demonstrators on Sunday will be arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action or intifada chants, says Met Police have warned demonstrators that they will be arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action or intifada chants at a protest on Sunday. About 12,000 people are expected to take part in the annual al-Quds Day rally in London, an international demonstration of support for Palestinian rights. The event takes its name from the Arabic version of Jerusalem and was created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution. Continue reading...

Officials sent out repayment letters to about 1,400 people relying on discredited guidance that had been scrapped Unpaid carers have been issued with demands to repay thousands of pounds for allegedly breaking benefit rules even though officials knew the decisions were based on unlawful and discredited policy guidance. About 1,400 carers are understood to have been sent letters by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in January asking them to repay sums relating to breaches of carer’s allowance earnings rules that had been scrapped four months previously. Continue reading...

Natalia Arroyo, Marisa Ewers and Maggie Murphy are savouring their autonomy in the club’s major roles and are aiming high amid tough challenges “After you,” Marisa Ewers says, as we walk through a doorway on the ground floor of Aston Villa Women’s fresh-looking dedicated women’s facilities at the club’s Bodymoor Heath training ground. It soon becomes clear that Ewers is hoping to open doors figuratively as well as literally by inspiring other female players to follow her and embark on a career in the boardroom. The former midfielder ended her career at Villa in 2022 and has progressed to become the club’s director of women’s football. As they prepare to dedicate Sunday’s home league game against Manchester City to International Women’s Day, it is noticeable that Ewers is alongside several other women in senior leadership roles at Villa. The club welcomed Maggie Murphy as managing director earlier this season and in Ewers, Murphy and the head coach, Natalia Arroyo, Villa are a rarity in having those three specific roles all filled by women, even before mentioning executive board members such as the chief people officer, Lisa Bailey, the head of football administration, Sharon Barnhurst, and the general counsel, Victoria Wilkes. Continue reading...

Features woven into the fabric of platforms have been central to landmark social media harm case in US. How do they work? It was as “easy as ABC”, claimed the lawyer prosecuting a landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google which heard closing arguments this week. The defendants were guilty, said Mark Lanier, of “addicting the brains of children”. Not true, replied the tech companies. Meta insisted providing young people with a “safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work”. Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and constantly chirruping alerts woven into the fabric of online platforms were central to the six-week trial in Los Angeles, which has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s. But how do these features work and what are their consequences? Are they creating addicts rather than users or are they just giving consumers more of what they want? Continue reading...

US test of 120 umbilical blood cord samples identified 42 Pfas compounds, which do not naturally break down Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox New peer-reviewed research shows fetuses likely have much higher levels of Pfas “forever chemicals” in their blood than previously thought. Testing of umbilical cord blood typically looks for a small number of common Pfas compounds, like Pfoa and Pfos. However, thousands of Pfas exist, and a new Mount Sinai study tested 120 umbilical blood cord samples that were previously found to contain up to four compounds. Continue reading...

US workers are finding it difficult to afford basic necessities as the president claims ‘the economy is roaring back’ US workers are still struggling with the cost of living despite Donald Trump’s campaign promises to fix the US affordability crisis. The Guardian spoke to workers as an exclusive poll showed cross-party concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of the US economy. Continue reading...

Prices of crucial farming inputs such as fuel and fertiliser skyrocketed just before the spring planting season The small green oilseed rape plants are buffeted by the wind on a blustery spring day. Sown last August, the crop is starting to shoot up and should be ready for harvesting in July, when it can be turned into cooking oil or biofuel. The peaceful 230-hectare (568-acre) arable farm owned by James Cox on the edge of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire is a world away from the conflict in the Middle East. However, the consequences of US and Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s retaliation – are already rippling out to affect Cox and Britain’s other food producers. Continue reading...

After my parents split up, my older sister and I lived with our dad while the youngest stayed with our mum. It became an experiment in nature v nurture - and had a profound effect on our relationships There is a paradox at the heart of sibling relationships and it is this: that children raised in the same family are for ever bound by shared experiences, yet have different childhoods. The paradox is partly (and most commonly) explained by the topic of birth order theory – the idea that your position in the family shapes your personality and potential. Oldest children, for example, are born into an adult world, full of grown-up language and behaviour. Governed by anxious, inexperienced but still fresh parents, they bask in the glow of undivided attention. Their infancy will be markedly different to that of their little brother or sister who will be born into a family. These second-born children have a toddler as their role model/ally/nemesis, no new clothes, and they also have to share their parents’ attention. These parents are a little less fresh and little more savvy. By the time any subsequent children come along, parents are at their most relaxed and most exhausted. Youngest children get away with a lot (spoken as a true middle sibling). But neat as birth order theory may be, our place in the family roll call cannot fully account for the ways in which we grow up “together apart” as siblings. To do that, we must examine – and in some cases untangle – all of the knottiness underpinning our accepted roles as “responsible firstborns”, “problematic middles” or “spoilt babies”. We need to look at the home environment, the state of the parents’ relationship, their careers, the pressures placed on each child on account of gender or aptitude, the expectations in families where a child has additional needs – or indeed, in the worst-case scenario, where a child may not have survived – before we can begin to comprehend our brother’s or sister’s version of events. Difficulties typically arise because of the slipperiness of memory, often shot through with profound emotions – making it hard to pull together a coherent and agreed-upon story of our pasts. Continue reading...

Former Oldham East and Saddleworth MP remained in Westminster for New Labour’s entire 13 years in power Former Labour MP and minister Phil Woolas has died of brain cancer, his family and close friends announced on Saturday morning. Woolas, 66, was elected to parliament to represent Oldham East and Saddleworth as part of Labour’s landslide victory in the 1997 general election, and remained in Westminster for New Labour’s entire 13-year stretch in power. Continue reading...

First major study on ‘AI psychosis’ suggests chatbots can encourage delusions among vulnerable people A new scientific review raises concerns about how chatbots powered by artificial intelligence may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people. A summary of existing evidence on artificial intelligence-induced psychosis was published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry, highlighting how chatbots can encourage delusional thinking – though possibly only in people who are already vulnerable to psychotic symptoms. The authors advocate for clinical testing of AI chatbots in conjunction with trained mental health professionals. Continue reading...

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Ukrainian-Russian photojournalist Arthur Bondar has amassed a huge collection of pictures from often unknown photographers After pulling on white cotton gloves, Arthur Bondar carefully takes a handful of 4cm by 9cm negatives from an old cigarette box and holds them up to the light of his study window. Inverted images of a woman on a horse, a group of women tending cabbages in a field, laughing figures at the seaside, a woman posing as a military ship sails by, hover in front of him, almost ghostlike. Although they are tiny, he is able to make out key details such as the insignia on a uniform, or the name of a ship, that trigger his curiosity and give him a starting point for his research. Arthur Bondar examines some of his negatives. Photograph: Oksana Yushko/The Guardian Continue reading...

Yara’s Svein Tore Holsether says it would be ‘catastrophic’ if the strait of Hormuz was closed for a year The boss of one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies has said global food supplies could be badly damaged this year if the Iran war becomes an extended conflict. Svein Tore Holsether, the chief executive of Norway’s Yara International, has called on global leaders to consider the impact that soaring food prices will have in some of the world’s poorest countries “before it is too late”. Continue reading...

A Ford Cortina the colour of the sky against brightly coloured houses in Cape Town was a gift to the Scottish photographer Edinburgh native Robby Ogilvie was visiting South Africa when he took this image. “I’d spent the first week in and around Kruger national park, photographing the culture, landscapes and wildlife, before moving on to Cape Town.” Along with a friend from South Africa, Ogilvie visited the neighbourhood of Bo-Kaap. “The area is known for its brightly coloured houses, but it also carries a rich and complex history. There was a real feeling of community, and many of the houses felt like open studios; artists had taken over spaces to exhibit and sell their work.” Continue reading...

Erratic rhetoric, shifting goals and mixed signals leave allies, foes and voters unsure what the president wants from war “Mr President,” said a reporter. “You’ve said the war is ‘very complete’ but your defence secretary says, ‘This is just the beginning’. So which is it?” Donald Trump’s eyes darted left and right then down. “Well, I think you could say both,” he parried. The confusing answer at a press conference in Doral, Florida this week did not befit a wartime leader armed with stirring rhetoric and a lucid plan. But it was entirely on brand for the 47th US president. The tumultuous style that Trump brings to election campaigns, dealing with Congress and global trade relations has now been imported to the theatre of war. Continue reading...

Communities displaced and destroyed while death toll rises faster than during any previous war in Lebanon For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday’s iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, was special. For a week, they had eaten to the sounds of bombs in their home in Arab Salim. Hamdan eventually decided to leave for Al-Nimiriya, the sleepy town where she had grown up. Surrounded by her parents and siblings in the family home, she hoped they could finally enjoy the festive mood of Ramadan. Continue reading...

He is stuck in a quagmire. His goals are elusive. His bombing does not force a surrender. He has no exit strategy. Good morning, Vietnam Donald Trump is lost in his fog of war. He compounds confusion with improvised fabrications as his naive expectation of a lightning victory has been sunk in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, he felt certain, would easily follow the “perfect scenario” of Venezuela, accede to naming a leader who would instantly do his bidding, and there would be no disruption of the oil markets – “a strong game plan”, stated Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, who defends each of his changeable excuses with equal ferocity. There may be few if any facts underlying the delusions upon which Trump constructs his vapid explanations and evanescent strategies. The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel hopelessly sensible people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness. Continue reading...

The author on failing at atheism, why she lost her place at Cambridge, and bringing back Hilary Mantel Born in Essex, Sarah Perry, 46, studied English at Anglia Polytechnic University and worked as a civil servant before taking a PhD in creative writing and the gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was published in 2014. Her second, The Essex Serpent, was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016, a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and adapted for television. Her other works include Melmoth and Enlightenment, the latter of which was longlisted for the Booker prize, and Death of an Ordinary Man, which won the 2025 Nero Non-Fiction Book award. She is married and lives in Norfolk. What is your greatest fear? Not being loved. Continue reading...

For these art forms to thrive, they need to attract young people. The Oscar contender’s comments are just the conversation starter they need Rebecca Humphries is an actor and author Timothée Chalamet thinks no one cares about opera or ballet. He told Matthew McConaughey so. Also, the entire world. “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more’,” Chalamet said in a recorded conversation for Variety. Rebecca Humphries is an actor and author Continue reading...