Katseye blends US sensibilities with the hard-hitting choreography, branding and relentless perfectionism of Korean pop music – and ‘Eyekons’ can’t get enough Ten-year-old Luna and 12-year-old Asha were among the first Eyekons – the noun for Katseye fans, à la Swifties and Beliebers – to arrive at Sydney’s Luna Park on Wednesday after their parents drove two hours from Wollongong. While they hadn’t won tickets to the girl group’s first Australian appearance – a Q&A for fans at the park’s Big Top on Wednesday night – they came anyway, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourite artists. Continue reading...

Article about second-tier rugby club last December piqued interest of American private equity firm “I think my family already thought I was crazy so this is nothing new,” says Kenn Moritz from his home office in faraway Pittsburgh. The Moritz family may have a point. Given all those baseball, football, ice hockey and basketball franchises in the United States, why opt instead to invest in a second-tier English rugby club in Cornwall that almost folded less than two years ago? The catalyst turns out, ahem, to have been your correspondent’s article about the Cornish Pirates in the Guardian last December. Moritz was sitting where he is now, trawling through his trusted worldwide news sources when he stumbled across the Pirates’ quest for fresh investment. Somewhere inside him a light flicked on. “Without that article I wouldn’t have called,” says Moritz, the president of the private equity firm Stonewood Capital. “It gave me an insight into what was going on in English rugby and piqued my interest.” Continue reading...

The gentle French garment is now as cursed as the infamous megacorp, which has accumulated $80m in government contracts in Australia alone It’s taken me years to find a chore coat with a cut that flatters my big tits but, now that I finally own one, I want to incinerate it. Such is the power of brand contamination; infamous data surveillance megacorp Palantir, has decided to bang a logo on a chore coat to sell as corporate merch. Continue reading...

French rider takes victory on opening day in Bulgaria Jonas Vingegaard among those held up by late crash Paul Magnier won the opening stage of the 2026 Giro d’Italia on Friday in a bunch sprint, after a late crash left most of the peloton out of contention. The Frenchman Magnier pipped Tobias Lund Andresen in a frantic finish after 147km of largely flat racing from Nessebar to Burgas, in the first of the three opening stages in Bulgaria. Continue reading...

The theme of earth’s biggest art extravaganza – spiritual rest – felt wildly wrong for our crisis-hit planet. Thank goodness for the pavilions, from fake babies to hi-tech sperm banks to a chocolate Russell Crowe It was almost over before it even started. This year’s Venice Biennale has been tearing itself apart for months: countries not showing up, artists getting fired, exhibitions being cancelled, funding getting pulled. There were petitions and protests months before a painting was on the wall. The jury quit in the days leading up to the opening, then Iran quit, then the European Commission quit. There were protests against Israel and Russia during the preview, artists went on strike, and artworks were replaced with installations of Palestinian flags. The whole thing was a massive mess of conflicting politics, personal tragedy and unresolvable ideological differences from the very beginning. And all this without even mentioning that the curator, Koyo Kouoh, died last year and wasn’t able to see her artistic vision through to completion. In a sense, the 2026 Venice Biennale never stood a chance. Continue reading...

Harassment reported by 35% of students at ‘high tariff’ institutions compared with 17% at those with lowest entry grades Students at England’s leading universities were more than twice as likely to experience sexual harassment than those at “lower tariff” institutions, according to analysis. Data from a national survey of undergraduates shows that 35% of students at “high tariff” universities – those requiring the highest A-level grades for entry – reported experiencing sexual harassment, compared with just over 17% of those at universities requiring the lowest grades for entry and 26% of those at “medium tariff” institutions. Continue reading...

Plaid Cymru set to take power in Wales and SNP to retain it in Scotland, but Reform made big gains in both nations Election 2026 live: latest news updates Full results from England, Scotland and Wales The polls were terrible, the predictions dire and even one of his predecessors as Labour leader, Ed Miliband, had reportedly told Keir Starmer he should set a timetable for his resignation. But for the prime minister, as polls closed in Wales, Scotland and many regions of England, there would be no consideration of such a course. “To all the Labour members and volunteers who have supported local campaigns across the country: thank you,” he posted on X late on Thursday. “Together we will build a stronger and fairer Britain.” Continue reading...

Local elections appear to signal end of two-party politics with five parties in the game in England It all panned out pretty much as everyone had expected. Nigel Farage was insufferably pleased with himself. Keir Starmer looked hunted while insisting he was going to remain prime minister for ever. Longer possibly. Kemi Badenoch grinned wildly, saying the Tories were back in the game as they slumped to insignificance everywhere but the south-east. Ed Davey became supreme leader of the People’s Republic of Richmond upon Thames where the Lib Dems won all 54 seats. Zack Polanski chose not to make an appearance before lunchtime. And Huw Irranca-Davies, Labour’s erstwhile deputy first minister in Wales, conceded defeat before a vote had been counted. Business as usual. Except it wasn’t. These were the local elections that appeared to signal the end of two-party politics. There were now five parties in the game in England. That’s before we had got to Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland. And by the end of the night, Labour and the Conservatives were lying in ruins. Their only consolation being that their losses weren’t even worse. If their election campaigns had taught them anything, it was how to manage expectations. Continue reading...

Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, concedes his party was comprehensively beaten John Swinney, the Scottish National party leader, has declared victory in the Holyrood elections after only a handful of results confirmed Labour had been comprehensively beaten. Speaking to the BBC after holding his own seat of Perthshire North, Swinney said he was “absolutely certain the SNP is going to be the leading party coming out of this election”. Continue reading...

Keira Alexandra Kronvold’s daughter Zammi was forcibly removed from her when she was two hours old A Greenlandic woman whose newborn baby was forcibly removed by Danish authorities as a result of controversial parenting competency tests has won a landmark case in the high court ruling that their actions were illegal. Keira Alexandra Kronvold’s daughter Zammi was taken away from her when she was two hours old and placed in foster care in November 2024 after Kronvold was subjected to so-called FKU (parental competence) psychometric tests. At the time she was told that the test was to see if she was “civilised enough”. Continue reading...

Star Wars actor later deleted post and apologized, saying president should live ‘long enough to be held accountable’ US politics live – latest updates The White House has branded Star Wars actor Mark Hamill “a sick individual” after an AI-generated image showing Donald Trump in a shallow grave, with the words “If Only” as an overlay was posted to one of star’s social media accounts. Hamill, who played the lead character of Luke Skywalker in six movies of the iconic science fiction franchise and is a longtime critic of the US president, apologized and removed the post from his Bluesky account on Thursday. Continue reading...

Claims of nimbyism are a misunderstanding: the movement is about whether regular people have a say in fundamental decisions Since the surreal scene at the 2024 presidential inauguration, when a row of big tech titans took their VIP seats and signaled their new alliance with Maga, the Trump administration has rolled out the red carpet for Silicon Valley’s AI ambitions and shareholder priorities. Washington has doled out billions in lucrative federal subsidies and contracts to the cash-rich sector, bloating an AI bubble that experts warn may imperil the entire economy while prohibiting any guardrails on the fast-moving technology. Continue reading...

Beauty products have never been more advanced. But as people layer them up, experts have seen a rise in perioral dermatitis. What is the too-much-skincare rash, and what can you do about it? It often starts innocuously: a small cluster of spots around the mouth, easily dismissed as a hormonal breakout or a reaction to something you have eaten. But this is how perioral dermatitis shows up – quietly, persistently and seemingly more frequently. “It’s quickly become one of the most common inflammatory conditions I treat,” says Dr Anjali Mahto, a consultant dermatologist and founder of the Self London clinic. Reddit threads on the subject run to thousands of posts, TikTok is awash with people documenting flare-ups, and actor Amanda Seyfried has spoken publicly about dealing with it. A recent report in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology confirmed the condition is on the rise. Meanwhile, the global market for perioral dermatitis treatments is growing. Continue reading...

As the Trump administration stokes anxiety about US birthrates, Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller have touted motherhood as the ultimate ‘blessing’ On a Sunday in late March, dozens of White House staffers dressed in florals and pastels gathered at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia to celebrate the impending arrival of Karoline Leavitt’s second child. “I feel blessed to have so many strong and loving women in my life,” the White House press secretary would later post on Instagram, “and can’t believe we will welcome our little lady into the world in a few weeks.” The vibes of the pink-themed baby shower, as documented in a New York Post exclusive, were soft, bordering on twee – a sharp contrast to the professional persona of a woman the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán once joked about hiring after witnessing her cage matches with the press. Continue reading...

This Florida-set revenge thriller swings between being boring and ludicrous. It’s riddled with awkward dialogue and convenient plotting Miami, Florida is the US at its extreme. Ostentatious wealth is everywhere, some legal, some very illegal, most of it in a grey area between the two. All of it is propped up by the hard work and cherished dreams of immigrants, people whose fight for a better life is getting harder – those few who make it to the top having to decide if, now they are no longer being exploited, they are willing to exploit others. All that provides the serious subtext for MIA, a new drama created by Bill Dubuque (Ozark). But any thoughtful treatment of the immigrant experience it might have to offer is overwhelmed by the sheer silliness of the main story, a revenge thriller starring Shannon Gisela as Etta Tiger Jonze, a woman in her early 20s whose entire family is slaughtered by a drug cartel. Raging with grief and with nothing to lose, Etta restarts from zero, lying low in Miami’s Haitian community while plotting to kill precisely 12 gangsters: the bad guys she witnessed murdering her loved ones. Continue reading...

Sadler’s Wells East, London Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel conjure a bleak world of excess, ritual and power in a visually striking but limited piece of dance-theatre It’s like the aftermath of the bleakest office party. A giant boardroom table, a naked man on the floor, another with his suit trousers round his ankles and someone urinating into a whisky glass. What follows feels like a surreal, less glossy version of the TV show Industry: menacing games of power and domination in a coldly lit, hollow-feeling place. Meanwhile, a cleaner arrives to mop up the body fluids then sings Ave Maria. This is a wildly unpredictable world from Bullyache, the creative duo of Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel (plus five dancers on stage), who make darkly intense dance theatre. The set by Tor Studio has a wall of broken glass, as if someone has driven a truck through it, but it turns out A Good Man Is Hard to Find is about the people who drove a truck through the global economy in 2008. Halfway through, in a sudden mood switch, it turns into a gameshow and tells us these wasted cretins are the bankers who caused the financial crisis. What will their fate be? The piece is inspired by the secretive San Francisco institution Bohemian Club, a gathering of rich and powerful men who take part in various rituals including the cremation of care, where members cast off their worries – or, in Bullyache’s eyes, absolve themselves of guilt. The reference isn’t explicit in the show, but there does follow a Rite of Spring-ish ritual, set to Shostakovich’s chamber symphony in C minor, the grim mood shot through with classical leaps and Latin American swivel and a bit of punchy folk dance plus quasi-religious imagery. Continue reading...

Whether it’s the Met Gala or the start of holiday dressing, May is big news in the fashion world • The best wedding guest dresses for every budget May starts with a bang, in fashion. The Met Gala, which happens on the first Monday in May every year, is the most outrageous, most high-concept red carpet of the year. The Met looks don’t offer much in the way of real-life style, but they are a nice reminder that fashion in the summer should be fun. Bank holiday weekends are the perfect time to road test your holiday-season style, and longer evenings make a breezier kind of dressing up feel doable. There are some gems out there right now: read on for the Cos trousers that might just be your new wardrobe staple, and the high-street flats that I’ve had compliments on every time I’ve worn them. Continue reading...

New leader urges Hungarians to help him end illiberalism as he faces calls to investigate years of corruption Inside Hungary’s dazzling neo-Gothic parliament, the scenes will be solemn on Saturday as the new leader, Péter Magyar, is sworn in. Outside is where the party is expected to unfold, as people pour in from across the country to mark a pivotal moment: the formal end of Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power. It comes weeks after Magyar and his opposition Tisza party won a landslide victory in a result that rattled the global far right, reset Hungary’s long-strained relationship with the EU and set off all-night celebrations along the banks of the Danube River. Continue reading...

Barrie and Scott Drewitt-Barlow charged by Essex police Trafficking charges relate to sexual exploitation Two co-owners of the non-league football club Maldon & Tiptree have been charged with human trafficking for sexual exploitation as well as rape after an investigation by Essex police. Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, 57, was charged with multiple offences on Friday alongside Scott Drewitt-Barlow, 32. Both men, of Southwood Chase, Danbury, Essex, will appear at Chelmsford magistrates court later. Continue reading...

(Atlantic) The lyrics may argue the dancefloor is dead, but this funny, wilfully plasticky new single isn’t the total about-turn from Brat that fans expected Last month, Charli xcx began the media campaign for her seventh studio album by giving an interview to Vogue magazine. The ensuing feature caused an impressive degree of online consternation, not because the 33-year-old star had said anything particularly controversial, but because she had suggested that the follow-up to 2024’s Brat would sound markedly different to its predecessor. “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she said, not unreasonably declining to chase Brat’s vast success by attempting to replicate it. (Although, in fairness, you could have probably worked that out from House, the noisy, experimental collaboration with John Cale she released at the end of last year as the first single from her soundtrack to Wuthering Heights.) She also played the interviewer a track that contained both “heavily processed guitars” and the lyrics “I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we’re making rock music”: Vogue duly ran with the idea, trumpeting Charli xcx’s “rock reinvention” in both the headline and on its cover and other news outlets picked up on the story – “CHARLI XCX CONFIRMS ROCK ALBUM”. What one journalist tactfully called “heated discourse online from some fans and artists within the music industry” followed, eventually prompting the singer to respond, posting “a video of me making a song called Rock Music that is not actually rock music which is funny because I never said I was making a rock album”. Continue reading...

Former David Cameron adviser says a vote for him will make California ‘Califordable’ – not everyone is convinced He “knows how to wind people up like Trump”, according to friends, and made his name in the UK with zany policy ideas including making the country sunnier using state-owned cloud busters. Now the controversial strategist Steve Hilton, named the “pint-sized Rasputin” of Conservative politics, has become an unlikely frontrunner in the primary race for California governor. Continue reading...

Rumens, whose column ran for nearly 20 years and developed a loyal readership, died this week aged 81 Carol was an excellent commentator on poetry, shrewd and deep-thinking but able to express her thoughts in plain English rather than academic jargon. Her taste in poems was eclectic and very original; one didn’t always share it, but it was never predictable or dull. Sheenagh Pugh, Shetland Continue reading...

After months of protest, crackdown and war, on-the-ground reporting is more impossible than it has ever been. These challenges shape every aspect of how we report on what is happening in the country Support independent journalism today Iran is among the world’s most repressive countries for press freedom. But in recent months, I have seen first-hand how the work of telling the truth has grown more fragile, more improvised, and more dangerous than ever. We have been cut off from our sources. After the authorities imposed a nationwide communications blackout, the already fragile infrastructure of reporting has all but collapsed. Even when we can make contact, we are careful; a phone search at a checkpoint could put them in danger. We cannot cross-check events through local coverage or rely on familiar verification channels. Instead, we wait for the rare, precious moments when a reliable contact inside Iran manages to get online, navigating VPNs or risking Starlink, which the authorities have criminalised. The Guardian is committed to helping journalists inside repressive regimes across the world to share their stories. As part of our annual support campaign promoting the defence of the free press please consider backing our work today – or consider backing another independent outlet whose work you value. We’re hoping to get 60,000 new supporters, or acts of support by 21 May. Continue reading...

Reform leader irritated when asked about money from Christopher Harborne on day of party’s election gains Election 2026 live: latest news updates Nigel Farage has repeatedly refused to answer questions about a personal gift of £5m he received from the billionaire Christopher Harborne, as the Reform UK leader sought on Friday to focus attention on the party’s election gains. Farage was clearly irritated when asked on a number of occasions on Friday about the money, which the Guardian revealed he had received shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 general election and which was not declared. Continue reading...

The long-suffering saga has been kept alive this decade by TV alone – but even that will perish if the new movie fails to extend its universe Star Wars has always been big on prophecy. Yoda peers into the future like Nostradamus with messed-up syntax, the Emperor cackles that everything is proceeding exactly as he has foreseen, Darth Vader breathes doom through the front grille of his shiny death helmet. And yet not even the most omniscient of Jedi could have predicted that the franchise responsible for practically inventing the modern Hollywood blockbuster would end up as a TV-centric operation with only occasional forays on to the big screen. Which is why it comes as a genuine shock to realise that, ahead of the release of new movie The Mandalorian and Grogu later this month, it has been more than six years since Star Wars last hit the multiplex. Then again, perhaps the real humdinger is that it hasn’t been longer. The most recent Disney Star Wars film, JJ Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker, did not so much conclude the long-running space saga as destroy several decades of perfectly serviceable mythology and ruin all sense of congruence with previous films. It was frantic, weirdly apologetic (about previous instalment The Last Jedi) and overstuffed with dodgy fan service. It was essentially a $590m act of narrative panic. Continue reading...