Thousands of No Kings events will be fueled by anger over ICE violence, the Epstein files released and a war in Iran. These protests have power Things have changed since the last major No Kings protests, in October 2025. Back then, an estimated 7 million people poured into the streets to protest the Trump administration; this Saturday, at more than 3,000 events planned nationwide, the crowds are likely to be even bigger. In part, that’s because the Trump administration keeps pursuing more and more unpopular agendas, often with a sadism and indifference to popular opinion that becomes prominent in the news. In January, ICE agents in Minneapolis killed two protesters – first Renee Good on 7 January, and then Alex Pretti on 24 January – who were in the streets trying to obstruct the agency’s kidnappings and voice their opposition to the Trump administration’s ethnic cleansing program. The two dead Americans were among the thousands who have become enraged at ongoing revelations of the extent and cruelty of Trump’s mass kidnapping, detention, and ethnic cleansing program, which has swept up tens of thousands of men, women and children. Continue reading...

The author on the Steinbeck novel that moved him to tears, how becoming a father inspired him to reread Marilynne Robinson, and the culinary comforts of James M Cain My earliest reading memory When I was eight, my mother bought me Stanley Bagshaw and the Short-sighted Football Trainer by Bob Wilson. I grew up thinking he was the same Bob Wilson who played in goal for Arsenal and presented sport on ITV. That wasn’t true, but it has never dampened my appreciation of this brilliant rhyming picture book, which ought to be reissued to inspire more kids to read. My sons adore it. My favourite book growing up The Red Pony by John Steinbeck had a profound effect on me in secondary school. I was amazed by how vividly a writer could evoke a landscape in words. It was also the first novel that moved me to tears, and stories that can do that will always stay dear to me. Continue reading...

Girlguiding’s response to last year’s supreme court ruling is not the humane option – and changes the organisation’s identity Great work, Guides; you’ve taken some members you had no idea even existed, and expelled them from your organisation with effect from September. This gives trans girls a humane half-year to extricate, because that’s definitely what kids want: to participate for six months in a uniformed, voluntary, social organisation that has explicitly kicked them out, while they look for somewhere more welcoming. “Like every charity, we have to follow the law,” Girlguiding says in an online info pack whose FAQs are almost comically Stasi-lite. “Will volunteers be expected to carry out additional checks or ask for proof?” (The good news, folks, is that they won’t; the mind boggles at what those additional checks might be that didn’t breach at least some safeguarding protocols.) “How should volunteers check that trans girls have left?” (Some sort of dunking stool? In actuality, again, they won’t check.) Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here Continue reading...

Conserving the watershed of the Tana and improving farming methods is securing water supplies and livelihoods alike in a changing climate When in 2017 David Nyoro became one of the first farmers to partner with Africa’s first water fund to conserve the watershed of Kenya’s biggest river, he received 180 high-value avocado seedlings. The 67-year-old’s farming methods had been dominated by annual crops that left large sections of his five-acre piece of land bare, increasing soil erosion and contributing to river sedimentation. “We used to lose a lot of topsoil to the river. Such loss of soil nutrients and poor farming practices meant we had less farm produce,” he says. The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings (about £11,500 at today’s exchange rates), with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg (154lbs) annually. He introduced cover crops to improve soil health and reduce soil erosion and sediment loads. Continue reading...

Yousef Pezeshkian’s daily social media posts reveal no state secrets, but expose questions dominating Iranian society An Iranian keeping a diary expressing his doubts about the war’s outcome, even shedding a tear over its impact on his grandmother, might not seem extraordinary but for the fact the diarist is the son of the president. Apart from fierce loyalty to his father, Masoud Pezeshkian, the former heart surgeon elected to the presidency in 2024 who he says he has not seen since the war started, Yousef Pezeshkian’s daily reflections on social media chart how the war effort is going, its impact on ordinary Iranians and how he believes the fight could be made more effective. Continue reading...

Show up, speak up … and just be nice. Here is one anonymous server’s advice for a happy meal Hospitality is in a right state at the moment, what with the seemingly never-ending shitshow of rising rents and rates, extortionate VAT, higher staffing, produce and utility costs, and all those other well-documented socioeconomic pressures (don’t mention the Bre*it word, please). So the last thing those of us who work in this beleaguered industry need right now is to be kicked in the proverbials by the very people we rely on perhaps more than anyone. And, yes, by that I mean you, our lovely customers. So here is some advice on how to avoid infuriating your serving staff. Turn up … Pre-Covid, most restaurants didn’t have the balls to take card details or charge for late cancellations and no-shows, but that’s all changed now (thank God). If you buy a ticket to the football or a gig, say, you’ll be out of pocket if you can’t be arsed to turn up. Why should restaurants be any different? What’s more, even if we have charged you a cancellation fee, remember that we’ve still lost out on drink sales and service charge. As told to Bob Granleese Continue reading...

Retail sims aren’t my thing, but the tactile, nostalgic pleasures of hit indie title Retro Rewind have me yearning for the era of physical media, smoking indoors and uncomplicated geopolitics It’s early doors, but 2026 may be the biggest bin fire of a year in my lifetime. Wars starting, then ending, then starting again in the course of a week. People running their cars on hopes and dreams because a tank of petrol costs more than the vehicle. Manospheric morons making millions. Several depressing celebrity deaths before I’ve so much as eaten my first Creme Egg of the year. I had no idea that the antidote to my anxiety and rage would be a cheap little title, made by two French blokes, in what I usually regard as the most turgid gaming genre. Retro Rewind is the moment’s indie darling, selling more than 100,000 copies on Steam in a week. In it, you run a video rental shop in the 90s. You need to buy videos. Display them well. Drop flyers. Serve your customers. Buy more stuff. It’s no different from any other retail sim out there, and I normally shun them because I play video games to escape the boring world of work and into an exciting one of dragons, aliens, and being brilliant at sports. Continue reading...

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Former talent agency boss had closer relationship with sex offender than thought, and supported him after 2009 arrest A female executive at the top of the modelling industry had a close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and introduced him to women on the agency’s books, a Guardian investigation has found. Until last November, Faith Kates ran Next Management modelling and talent agency, which has represented the likes of Alexa Chung, Milla Jovovich and Billie Eilish, a position she held for decades as the founder of the business. She stepped down quietly just weeks before the first major Epstein files were released, saying she intended to focus on charity work. 18 July 2009 10.18am I am and will always be your friend...Unconditionally...will always be there for you. 5 September 2009 7.47pm Thinking of you a lot and hoping you are finally enjoying some please [sic] and quiet..know you are always in my thoughts and prayers. You are a good friend my dear friend.. 5 September 2009 7.54pm thanks,, lets get back to work. Continue reading...

His remarks come as foreign secretary Yvette Cooper meets her counterparts at a G7 meeting in France Hello and welcome to the UK politics blog, follow along to get the latest updates. Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper is in France today for the meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Vaux-de-Cernay, near Paris, where she is expected to speak with US secretary of state Marco Rubio. On top of the agenda is the conflict in the Middle East, with reports suggesting Rubio will ask ministers for help reopening the strait of Hormuz. Starmer is visiting a school in London this morning, as new government guidance advices parents to limit screen time for children under the age of five to one hour a day, while under-twos should not be watching screens alone. Peter Mandelson will reportedly be asked to hand over messages from his personal phone as part of the government’s disclosure of documents related to his appointment as UK ambassador to the US. The government has so far only had access to his work phone. Starmer told Sky News that he “beats himself up” over Mandelson’s appointment, saying it was a mistake he would never repeat. Continue reading...

⚽ All the latest football news going into the weekend ⚽ Results and reports | Today’s matches | Mail Luke Australia and Cameroon have just kicked off in a friendly encounter in Sydney. Martin Pegan has the latest here: Continue reading...

Lots of us aren’t very keen on bats. But the more we find out about them, the more amazing they turn out to be Bats have a bad rep: in a recent survey by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), 46% of people expressed negative feelings about bats. But just look at them! Bat carer Liz Vinson, a volunteer with the BCT, calls them “little furry humans with huge jazz hands. They have individual characters: some are divas; some are bone idle.” Shirley Thompson, BCT’s honorary education officer, has been championing bats since the 1980s. “I still think they’re magic,” she says. “The more you find out about them, the more you realise what amazing creatures they are.” Continue reading...

Musician urges public to send clear message at what is expected to be UK’s biggest ever multicultural rally Billy Bragg has encouraged people to send a clear message to those seeking to divide the country by turning out to support what is expected to be the biggest multicultural march in UK history on Saturday. Speaking to the Guardian before the Together Alliance’s march against the far right in central London, the musician and political activist said participants hoped to “send out a message to our fellow citizens that we are willing to take a stand against [the politics of hate] being imported into the UK”. Continue reading...

(ECM) Jack DeJohnette and Michel Portal – both of whom died recently – are phenomenal foils for the Weather Report alumnus’s classical-influenced jazz Czech double bass virtuoso and composer Miroslav Vitous must by now have shrugged off any residual irritation about the oft-circulated fact that he was a founding member of the legendary jazz-rock fusion band Weather Report in 1970. Vitous’s dislike of the band’s drift away from improv toward electric music and popular global funk saw him leave as their star was rising. His CV would turn out just fine: Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Jan Garbarek, John Surman and Jack DeJohnette were among his many classy playing partners. Seven years in the making, with Vitous now 78, Mountain Call reflects a lifetime’s immersion in classical music alongside jazz, and the balance of spontaneity, nuance and cinematic atmospherics that offered him. Across multiple improv dialogues and two suites (all short, Vitous being no fan of loquacity), the set prominently features DeJohnette, who died in October, with Esperanza Spalding, saxophonist Bob Mintzer and the phenomenal French clarinettist Michel Portal, who died in February. Eight duo tracks for Vitous and Portal (mostly all-improvised) are worth the album alone, for their ever-shifting mix of mellow lyricism and challenging curiosity. In four improvisations on a standard clarinet, Portal segues graceful swoops, plaintive queries and staccato punctuation against Vitous’s turbulent undercurrent of muscular plucked runs and percussive accents. On bass clarinet, the Frenchman sweeps from resonant deep sounds to breathtaking glissando ascents hurtling to the upper register. Continue reading...

This kindly and companionable story of a man returning to 50s England after living in Canada offers a colourful evocation of the times Towards the end of Love Lane, elderly protagonist Harry Cane becomes a figure of twinkly-eyed mischief. Gossiping with his granddaughter Pip, he advises her that “people without secrets … are like people with very tidy houses: usually not worth knowing”. Dangerously buried secrets are very much the order of the day in Patrick Gale’s 18th novel. We start as we mean to go on: Love Lane opens with a recounting of the clandestine relationship between widower Harry and his bachelor brother-in-law Paul Slaymaker, Englishmen who separately emigrated to Canada around the turn of the last century. We first meet them as homesteaders in the unforgiving Saskatchewan wilds; Gale aficionados who encountered Cane in 2015’s A Place Called Winter remember the dark cloud of scandal that hastened his departure from Britain. The “steady tenderness” between Harry and Paul, which is passingly reminiscent of Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, gives the men succour as their neighbouring farms weather the bitter economic vicissitudes of the 1920s and 30s, but their wordlessly powerful bond is for ever altered by the arrival of Dimpy, a woman down on her luck, and her hard-hearted son, Davy. Continue reading...

After a nine-year come-up, the self-described ‘worst girl in America’ is having a breakthrough For the past several months, nothing has gotten me through this brutal New York winter quite like Crank, a fiendishly chaotic concoction by the electropop artist Slayyyter. The track is deliriously over-stimulating; the singer tweaks out over record-scratches and squelches and ferociously barrels through a chorus that sounds – and I mean this as a sincere compliment – like a plane crash. In these times of global catastrophe, I have found this soothing. Slayyyter’s new album Worst Girl in America scratches a similar anarchic itch. Immediate, vertiginous and diabolically cheeky, the after-hours record finds her channelling a ferality that feels rare in our slopified pop culture (cue the rock-tinged Cannibalism), and has garnered breathless hype among those in the know. All five singles released from the project to date have the jet propulsion of someone fueled on years of pop star study and frustrated by, as she bluntly puts it, “my ninth year on the up-and-coming list”. Continue reading...

Leonardo DiCaprio lights up Martin Scorsese’s Wall Street drama, which has the most swears of any Hollywood movie. Plus: Oscar-winner Michael B Jordan stars in and directs the ever entertaining Rocky spin-off Perhaps the greatest of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s six (and counting) collaborations, this financial crime caper is based on the memoir of large-living New York City stockbroker Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio). We follow Belfort’s rise and fall through the Black Monday crash and the 1990s boiler room boom, but there’s also time for memorable turns from a magnetic Matthew McConaughey as his mentor, and Margot Robbie in her breakthrough role as the seductive second wife. Just don’t be tempted to down a tequila shot for every f-bomb: it holds the current Guinness World Record for most swears in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Friday 3 April, 10pm, BBC Two Continue reading...

House of Representatives still needs to act before funded agencies such as airport security can reopen, CNN reports The US Senate has passed legislation that will finance most of the Department of Homeland Security but withhold funds from ICE and part of Customs and Border Protection, the office of the Senate Democratic party leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a statement. The agreement would fund DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration and US Coast Guard, the statement said. CNN reported that the House of Representatives will still need to act before funded agencies within the department can reopen. Continue reading...

Undercover reporter gets a taste of the sprawling fraud industry in which cryptocurrencies play a crucial role Five firms including Autotrader and Just Eat investigated over fake review failings The holiday flat near(ish) the Roman ruins of Pompeii was “disgusting”, and smelled of “a mix of dampness and sewage”, according to one reviewer on Google Maps. I never visited, but I gave it five stars. I did the same for an DoubleTree by Hilton hotel across the Thames river, Ibis budget hotel in east London, that is part of the Accor group, a central Travelodge and the nearby Hyatt Place – some of the best-known hotel brands in the world. Scattered in there were requests for reviews for hostels and B&Bs in Genova, Naples, Maastricht, Krakow and Brussels. For a few days I had a new job: writing fake reviews on Google Maps in exchange for cryptocurrency. Continue reading...

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said to view US-Israeli war as ‘historic opportunity’ to remake Middle East Middle East crisis – live updates Saudi Arabia has urged the US to ramp up attacks on Iran, a Saudi intelligence source has confirmed, while it is weighing a decision on whether to join the fight directly. The Saudi source confirmed reporting in the New York Times, which said the kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has urged Donald Trump not to cut short his war against Iran, and that the US-Israeli campaign represented a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East. Continue reading...

CMA also looks into Pasta Evangelists, funeral operator Dignity and review company Feefo in latest crackdown The UK competition watchdog has launched investigations into five companies including Autotrader and Just Eat over concerns they have not done enough to tackle fake and misleading online reviews. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has previously investigated the tech companies Amazon and Google, said its latest crackdown includes the funeral services operator Dignity, the review company Feefo and the restaurant chain Pasta Evangelists. Continue reading...

In Mexico and Spain, leaders who have capped public costs have been rewarded at the ballot box. As another cost of living surge arrives, it may be a policy our leaders are unable to resist Politicians are not supposed to meddle with prices. Even though much of politics is about whether voters can afford things – especially in an era of recurring inflationary shocks – ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union’s planned economy four decades ago, the orthodoxy across much of the world has been that only markets should decide what things cost. As the hugely influential Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek argued, in a complex modern society, information is too dispersed among potential sellers and buyers of goods or services for government to make informed and correct decisions about the prices of those goods. Hence, his disciples say, the inefficiency of state-run economies, from post-colonial Africa to the eastern bloc. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

(Nonesuch) Imaginative interpretations of Funkadelic and Frank Ocean sit alongside starry collaborations and gorgeous instrumentals on the bassist’s brassy side project While some rock musicians fill the boredom of long tours with nefarious activities, bassist Flea spent Red Hot Chili Peppers’ global jaunt of 2022-24 practising the trumpet, an instrument he first played as a child before funky rock pulled him away. Now, the 63-year-old’s daily routine and open spirit has produced his own deeply meditative and groovy jazz odyssey. Named after a family member, Honora brings together a star-studded cast of peers and LA jazz and experimental luminaries for 10 tracks spanning Flea-penned instrumentals, chanted mantras and imaginative reinterpretations. The bassist doubles as narrator for spirited track A Plea, a yelled call for sanity (“Live for peace! Live for love!”) amid global madness and takes his trumpet to Eddie Hazel’s famous guitar solo on a beautifully plaintive remodel of Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain. Continue reading...

The US legend declined a $25,000 offer from shoe firm Clarks to meet the cream of England’s juniors The nine-round Reykjavik Open, which began on Wednesday afternoon at the Harpa Conference Centre and which continued with two rounds on Thursday, is an iconic event. It was first played as an all-play-all in 1964, when Mikhail Tal won, and is close to the Hotel Reykjavik Natura, formerly the Hotel Loftleidir, which featured prominently in the epic Bobby Fischer v Boris Spassky match of 1972. The top seed in the capacity entry of 422 players is Iran’s Amin Tabatabaei, the only 2700-rated player in the field, with Romania’s Bogdan-Daniel Deac (2655) next, and the veteran Ukrainian Vasyl Ivanchuk (2624) the fourth seed. Continue reading...