Russian crew member attempting to fix a worsening leak of air on its portion of the orbital laboratory, NASA said The astronauts ordered by NASA to prepare for a possible evacuation on Friday are part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission. American astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and Russian Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev make up the 12th crew rotation with SpaceX for NASA’s commercial crew program. Continue reading...

Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Works about infatuation and deep feeling were fitting choices with which the Ryan Bancroft bid a celebratory farewell to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales Back in 2018, Ryan Bancroft jumped in as a last-minute replacement for a BBC National Orchestra of Wales tour. By September 2020, the US-born musician was principal conductor. In his six-year tenure, he has always been a vibrant and quietly forceful presence on the podium, amply demonstrated in this, his last Cardiff concert in the role. He opened with Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale, the symphonic poem fashioned from music originally an opera and ultimately a ballet choreographed by Balanchine. Hans Christian Andersen’s story, set in imperial China, allowed Stravinsky to conjure exotic sounds, including gong and celeste. But it’s the poignancy of the emperor’s fate, symbolised by his infatuation first with a real nightingale – made suitably enchanting by Matthew Featherstone’s flute – who is then usurped in his affection by a mere mechanical version, that colours the score. Continue reading...

Nasa says Russian crew trying to fix worsening air leak in its portion of orbital laboratory Astronauts onboard the International Space Station have been ordered to shelter in their spacecraft and prepare for potential evacuation as a Russian crew attempts to fix a worsening leak of air in its portion of the orbital laboratory, Nasa has said. More details soon … Continue reading...

Ferrari last won race at Mexican GP in 2024 Scuderia’s car should suit narrow streets of Monte Carlo Lewis Hamilton was circumspect about Ferrari’s chances in the buildup to the Monaco Grand Prix but, on paper at least, this weekend is perhaps his best shot at a debut victory for the Scuderia to end their win drought that stretches back to the Mexican GP of 2024. Mercedes have dominated the season thus far, with Kimi Antonelli leading the championship by 43 points from teammate George Russell but the strengths of their car will be somewhat negated on the slow corners of the twisting street circuit in Monte Carlo, which should suit Ferrari’s SF26. Continue reading...

The decision not to test all men and only screen the most at risk, including black men, is fact-based. Yet it’s been called ‘two-tier’ – and labelled as misandry If the country seems to be slipping away from reason and trust in science, blame usually falls on modern phenomena such as social media and its fantastical influencers. Or on the US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s bizarre anti-vaccine, anti-fluoride, anti-evidence lunacy. But campaigns against the UK national screening committee’s decision to limit prostate cancer testing have been run by British bastions of the sort laying claim to “common sense”. They include two Tory ex-prime ministers, David Cameron and Rishi Sunak (who see themselves as sensibles, unlike Boris Johnson and Liz Truss), joined by their Tory/ Reform media, especially the Mail and the Telegraph, plus a host of distinguished campaigners such as Stephen Fry, fount of QI knowledge. The national screening committee (NSC) has for a long time resisted a call for universal testing of all men for prostate cancer, though it kills 12,000 men a year in the UK. I was on the committee in the 1990s, and it was besieged by demands for screening for prostate cancer and numerous other conditions. These were often refused for unreasonable cost, but this decision is about harm to men, not about money. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Allan Leighton on government help, talk of a reheated merger with Sainsbury’s – and the vital role of bananas “It’s not bloody inevitable,” that Asda will be overtaken by Aldi as the UK’s third biggest supermarket, Allan Leighton roars as the veteran retail boss insists his turnaround of the ailing business is on track. Leighton, the chair of Asda, who returned to lead the business after 20 years in November 2024, is attempting to defy the critics and revive Asda for the second time in his career. Continue reading...

Request for evidence to support claims of reputational and financial harm from Panorama documentary dismissed as ‘fishing expedition’ Donald Trump’s legal team has rejected a request by the BBC to hand over financial information as part of his $10bn defamation case against the broadcaster. The US president’s lawyers accused the BBC of a “fishing expedition”, according to court filings, after the broadcaster’s representatives asked for details to get evidence on Trump’s claims he suffered reputational and financial damage by a Panorama documentary centred on the US Capitol riots. Continue reading...

Paul Quinn, 52, to serve 24 years for attack that led to one of worst miscarriages of justice in modern British history A man who evaded justice for nearly two decades has been jailed for 24 years for a “savage” rape for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongly imprisoned. Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty of the 2003 attack in Salford after a fresh forensic analysis found traces of his DNA on the victim’s clothing. Continue reading...

Please let us know and we’d love to see your pictures too Socks, trainers, sofas, cushions, the entire contents of your fridge - the list of things dogs will attempt to eat their way through is endless. And sometimes it gets weird. We want to hear from people who’ve witnessed their dog try to chew their way through the remarkable, the bizarre, the seemingly impossible – and lived to bark the tale! Pictures are a must. If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here. Continue reading...

EU’s Maroš Šefčovič says summit will ‘probably’ be in July but sources say it could be put back as talks deadlocked UK politics live – latest updates The EU has said Keir Starmer’s upcoming summit “resetting” the UK-Europe relationship may still happen in July, amid growing fears it could be postponed to the autumn as talks over youth mobility remain deadlocked. “The summit is supposed to be mid-July but at the moment it could be put back to after the summer,” said one EU diplomat. Continue reading...

Republican states rebrand June as ‘nuclear family month’ or ‘fidelity month’ in latest attack on LGBTQ+ communities June is widely marked as gay Pride month – when LGBTQ+ communities march to protest discrimination and celebrate their identities in the month that the modern US gay liberation movement was born out of the 1969 uprising at New York’s Stonewall Inn – although not so much in certain Republican-led states this year. Some Republican governors have suddenly come up with alternative labels for the month, which both supporters and opponents view as counterprogramming. Continue reading...

From France’s catwalk looks to Virgil van Dijk’s classic approach, these are the teams and players to watch The 2026 World Cup may not kick off until Thursday, but the fashion tournament has already begun, as teams arrive at training camps across the US. Fashion moments range from the outfits players wear to get to training, to the suits worn on planes and their training gear. The French team’s training camp in Clairefontaine became something of a catwalk this week thanks to the style of players such as Jules Koundé and Kylian Mbappé. Meanwhile, brands including Loewe, Gabriela Hearst, Patta and the rapper Drake’s Nocta have worked with teams on suiting and training gear. Continue reading...

Royal Court, London Teenage girls discuss the horrors they have seen via their phones as Georgie Dettmer’s reckoning with internet culture is brutally realised by director Jess Edwards Georgie Dettmer’s gaze is unflinching. Nothing is held back in Are You Watching?, her fury-filled interrogation of our twisted relationship with sex and violence, and the emotional distance we hide behind when we watch them both through a screen. This bluntness can feel unsubtle, but it’s also admirably unafraid. Two teenage girls (Kosar Ali and Abby McCann) perch on a bunk bed, talking about the worst things they’ve ever seen. Across the rest of the traverse stage, those stories are smashed into sharp, rapid-fire scenes, flicked between as if scrolled through on a phone. Under Jess Edwards’ direction, the depths of the internet are hurled across the stage (by an excellent multi-rolling cast including Lucy McCormick and Maimuna Memon), while the two girls watch from the safety of their duvets. Continue reading...

Former Channel 5 chief is tipped to ‘break things that need to be broken’ as new chair of Arts Council England When Dawn Airey ran Channel 5, she famously described the channel’s core strengths as the three Fs: “films, football and fucking”. The comment by the veteran television executive, who has just been appointed chair of Arts Council England (Ace), set the tone for a career defined by boldness and commercial instinct. Continue reading...

The Men Who Saved the World, the Pulitzer winner’s lost manuscript found in Yale archives, appears in Strand magazine A never-before-published short story by Edith Wharton, the first female Pulitzer prize winner, who encapsulated the so-called gilded age of US society in bestselling novels including The Age of Innocence, received a first public airing on Friday. The Men Who Saved the World, discovered in the author’s archives at Yale University, appears in the Strand, a quarterly magazine that has previously turned up lost or previously unknown works by literary luminaries such as Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene and Tennessee Williams. Continue reading...

Campaigners say supreme court judgment on deprivation of liberty safeguards introduces ‘regressive legal standard’ Severely disabled people will be at heightened risk of abuse in care homes and hospitals after the biggest upheaval in disability law in a generation overturned “vital” legal safeguards, campaigners have warned. They said a supreme court judgment that potentially strips the right of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people to independent checks on the safety and appropriateness of their care “devalues the dignity of disabled people”. Continue reading...

Ancient Egypt finally carries owner’s hopes at Epsom three years after huge spending spree at the Sales Many great gambles have been landed in the Derby down the years, from John Bowes’ bet on his horse, West Australian, in 1853 that won the equivalent of more than £5m today, to Raymond Guest’s £500 each-way on Sir Ivor at 100-1, a few months before his victory in June 1968 as the 4-5 favourite. And the 247th running of the Epsom Classic on Saturday could see another spectacular payoff – albeit without a bookie on the other side of the bet. Twenty months on from his three-day, £24m spending spree on yearlings at Tattersalls’ Book 1 sale in Newmarket in October 2024, the football “super-agent” Kia Joorabchian will be at Epsom to watch two of his big-money buys, Poker and Ancient Egypt, go to post for the premier Classic. Continue reading...

Anwar Ashraf, 39, forced his way into building in Whiteley, where Carla Skeites was working A man has been jailed for 26 years for attempted murder after he stormed into his ex-partner’s office building and stabbed her 17 times in front of colleagues. Anwar Ashraf, 39, forced his way into the office in Whiteley, Hampshire, where Carla Skeites was working, having bombarded her with messages demanding her to go outside to speak to him. Continue reading...

The Mobo founder, who has died aged 57, had an unprecedented vision: to give Black British music a glitzy and joyful awards ceremony. But her impact went well beyond it • News: Kanya King, founder of Mobo awards for Black British music, dies aged 57 I first met Kanya King in the mid-1990s, when I was still reeling from the failure of my own attempt to target the Black audience via my newspaper, Black Briton. Kanya came along a couple of years later and showed how it should be done. In framing her awards as “music of Black origin”, she not only connected with the relatively small Black British population, but brought in a whole new audience, too, who acknowledged its oversized influence. Back then, the word diversity was hardly known. We were in the era of “equal opportunities”, which was taken seriously only by Labour-run local councils, and labelled “loony left” by most of the media. Britain had been dominated by more than 15 years of Thatcher-inspired government. Stephen Lawrence had been murdered, but the inquiry that identified “institutional racism” was still years away. Continue reading...

Compare his response, or lack of, to three murders over the past decade – Jo Cox, Sarah Everard and Henry Nowak Which murder victim’s ambulance does the would-be statesman chase? Can you be said to “speak for England” if there are other times you wimp out on speaking at all, either out of self-preservation or moral smallness, or just not actually giving much of a toss? The questions arise after Nigel Farage moved himself into pole position with an explicitly incendiary speech in the wake of the appalling murder of Henry Nowak. The good news for Nigel is that he has struck political gold: increased numbers of people saying “I don’t like him, but I agree with him on this”. The less good news for the nation he’d like to lead is that, when dealing with murders that rightly horrify and outrage the country, you can’t be sure which Nigel Farage will turn up. If, indeed, he turns up at all. Today, I’d like to look at three murders spread evenly over the past decade – all of which caused national outrage – and how Farage conducted himself in the wake of each. Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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Shoppers turning to online options also affects BHF, which has carried out review of retail arm The British Heart Foundation is to close about 150 shops and cut jobs, as rising costs and the shift to online shopping makes about a quarter of the charity’s high street locations commercially unsustainable. The charity carried out a review of its retail arm, which employs almost 3,700 staff, after net profit across its 640 UK stores plunged from £18.8m in 2024 to £3.6m in the year to 31 March 2025. Continue reading...

Buxton Opera House Villages appear out of thin air, broomsticks take flight and owls turn into people in a truly enchanting showcase of theatrical storytelling If you catch a young audience member at just the right moment, when they are old enough to be fully engaged but not so old that the sharp edges of teenage cynicism have begun to slink into view, you can make them truly believe in the magic of theatre. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the kind of show that will make them – and possibly some adults – believe in magic. To begin by praising the lighting design may seem odd, but this is one of the most effectively lit pieces of theatre you might see. Lighting designer Simon Bond’s barn doors, gels and gobos are integral to creating the many illusions on the stage. Director Paul Bosco McEneaney was a magician before turning his hand to theatre directing and he empties out a bag of tricks on to the stage of the jewel-like Buxton Opera House. Continue reading...

Bayern midfielder to be No 1 target in summer window Olise was watched by potential new manager Mourinho Real Madrid will launch a €150m (£130m) bid for Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise if Florentino Pérez wins re-election as the club’s president. The election is being held this weekend and Pérez is expected to beat his rival candidate Enrique Riquelme, whose promise to sign Erling Haaland has prompted a threat of legal action from Manchester City. Continue reading...

Proponents say scheme could generate up to £2.7bn in five years by making travel around north of England easier A proposed travel card for northern England modelled on London’s Oyster system could save commuters up to £276 a year, data shows. Users would tap in and out across different transport networks and fares would be automatically capped at the cheapest available rate. Continue reading...