The race to succeed Gavin Newsom has teetered wildly, and with Democrats in disarray, the Republican ex-Downing Street adviser is leading in the polls. Can he really pull it off? Few political aspirations have proved more futile over the past two decades than running as a Republican for statewide office in California. Yet Steve Hilton – transplanted Brit, erstwhile business entrepreneur, a former Downing Street adviser to David Cameron and a former Fox News host who says he is friends with half of Donald Trump’s cabinet – is having a remarkably good time of it. With less than six weeks to go before a primary election that has proved to be both dramatic and wildly unpredictable, most polls put Hilton narrowly ahead of a fractured field of Democrats in the race to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor. It is an astonishing turn of events in a state where Democrats enjoy supermajorities in the state legislature and a two-to-one advantage over the Republicans in voter registration. Continue reading...

The Corsican photographer’s patience paid off when they captured this stunning silhouette of a young woman Anonymity has been an intriguing concept for ASA since they first took up photography. They shot this image in their home town of Bastia, on the French island of Corsica. This was 2018, in the height of summer, “when the sun was at its strongest. I like working when the light is very strong and the facades are burned by the sun,” ASA says. “Shadows fall very sharply, shapes become clearer, colours become stronger and people turn into silhouettes.” After positioning themselves unobtrusively on one side of the street with their iPhone X, ASA waited patiently for some time as strangers passed through their frame. “This woman was walking with a certain lightness, almost cheerful. When I looked again afterwards, I had the feeling she might be going to an appointment, maybe even a romantic one. But at the time, I simply saw a young woman moving, carried by her own energy.” Continue reading...

Spinosaurid fossil bought by Stuttgart institution in 1991 has been the subject of a long restitution campaign It is a 113-million-year-old bone of contention. After Stuttgart’s museum of natural history bought a fossilised dinosaur skull in 1991, researchers found it was the most complete spinosaurid skull known to date, belonging to a previously unknown genus of the huge meat-eating dinosaurs. Continue reading...

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Former major winner ‘committed to making team golf work’ Rebel tour now working on a junior golf initiative Bryson DeChambeau, the two times US Open champion, has denied reports he is seeking a way out of the beleaguered LIV Golf, the rebel series whose future looks bleak after Saudi Arabian backers indicated they are pulling their multi-million sponsorship at the end of the 2026 season. LIV Golf is seeking to secure fresh backers in the wake of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) decision to scrap its $5bn investment in golf, as part of a general retreat from sports sponsorship. There is a every prospect the 2026 season will prove LIV’s last. Continue reading...

PM worried about ‘cumulative’ effect of marches, as Met chief says Jewish communities facing biggest threat Some pro-Palestinian demonstrations could be stopped, the prime minister has warned, as the UK’s most senior police officer said the threat to the Jewish ­community was greater than it has ever been. Keir Starmer indicated he wanted the language expressed on some protest marches to be subjected to “tougher action” as he sought to allay the fears of British Jews after a series of attacks on their communities in recent weeks. Continue reading...

Updates from day two of the latest Championship games Sign up for the Spin | Mail Tanya or comment BTL Surrey stepped up security at the Oval following the knife attack at Golders Green as off-field decisions took the headlines on day one of round five of the County Championship. In a statement, the club said: “Surrey are in communication with the Met police and will adjust our own security measures in line with the increased threat level. We want to ensure that all staff, spectators and players feel safe and secure.” Continue reading...

Kurdish Syrian man, 26, said he fled forced conscription by YPG militia because he ‘didn’t want to kill people’ An asylum seeker sent back to France under the controversial “one in, one out” scheme faces being returned to Syria after authorities in Paris ruled it was safe to do so, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind. When the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced the “groundbreaking” deal in July 2025 to stop small boats crowded with asylum seekers from crossing the Channel – by forcibly returning one small-boat asylum seeker to France in exchange for bringing one in northern France legally to the UK – they emphasised that France was a safe country for returnees. Continue reading...

Exclusive: The collection, including donations from Paul McCartney’s brother Mike, shows band’s development in early 60s A rare set of letters and photos from the early days of the Beatles, in which they write about feeling like stars for the first time, is to go on display in Hamburg. The collection, from an influential period when the band lived in the German city, includes the only letter in existence with words from both Paul McCartney and John Lennon, which was written to the bassist’s brother, Mike McCartney. Continue reading...

There has been much talk of the long-awaited sequel making the most of body diversity. The reality seems to be one plus-size actor and gags worthy of the 00s During the two-month endurance test that was The Devil Wears Prada 2’s global press tour, Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway hinted that the long-awaited sequel to the 2006 hit would champion body diversity. In interviews, both actors explained that while attending Milan fashion week they were surprised by how “alarmingly thin the models were”. As a result, Hathaway made “a beeline to the producers”, Streep said, to ensure that “skeletal” models wouldn’t feature in the film. At one premiere, Hathaway said she “thought the scene would be so much more enjoyable for the audience if we had just a wider range of bodies on display”. Spoiler alert: only 15 minutes into the sequel the first weight gag lands, and it becomes clear that all the chatter around size inclusivity was, in fact, just simple size-washing. That means there’s just enough for the producers to tick the inclusivity box – mainly in the casting of the comedian Caleb Hearon as Miranda Priestly’s second assistant, and a quick glimpse of a couple of plus-size models including Ashley Graham in a catwalk montage – but not enough for any actual credibility. Then there are several wisecracks about weight, although remarkably only one reference to the weight-loss drug Ozempic. Now, that is groundbreaking! Chloe Mac Donnell is the Guardian’s deputy fashion and lifestyle editor Continue reading...

Belting out terrace anthems is part of the experience of watching a match, but why do supporters do it? And would I be able to get a chant going? A notification on my smartwatch warns me that I’m in a loud environment, and I’m not surprised. Casemiro just played an impudent no-look pass into the penalty area. His Brazilian compatriot, Matheus Cunha, receives the ball on the half-turn and wallops it with a vengeance into the top corner. I’m at Old Trafford, and Manchester United just went 2-0 up against Fulham. The match-day crowd has become a sea of twirling scarves and flailing limbs, and I’m swept along with it, hugging strangers while shredding my vocal cords. As the celebrations die down and the teams head to the centre circle for the restart, a momentary lull falls over the Stretford End. There’s a popular song that fans at Old Trafford sing at glorious times like this. It goes: “We’ve seen it all, we’ve won the lot, we’re Man United, and we’re never gonna stop.” Continue reading...

The actor on struggling with body image, her U-turn on marriage and her obsession with Instagram dogs Born in Essex, Juliet Stevenson, 69, studied at Rada and made her film debut in Drowning By Numbers. Her other film work includes Truly, Madly, Deeply and Bend It Like Beckham. On stage, she has performed for the RSC and the National. She received an Olivier in 1992 for her role in Death and the Maiden and the 2019 Critics’ Circle best actress award for The Doctor. She is current touring By a Lady, a show about Jane Austen which is at the Buxton Opera House 10 May. She is married with two children and lives in London. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I talk too much. Continue reading...

Italian driver lost both legs in high-speed cart race crash Went on to win four Paralympic gold medals Alex Zanardi, the former Formula One driver who lost both legs in a racing crash and went on to win Paralympic gold medals, has died at the age of 59, his family said on Saturday. Zanardi, from Bologna, made his F1 debut in 1991 and later achieved success in the cart series in the United States, winning back-to-back championships in 1997 and 1998. His life took a dramatic turn in September 2001 when he was involved in a high-speed crash during a cart race in Germany that led to the amputation of both legs. Continue reading...

German defence minister responds to US president’s announcement that 5,000 US troops will leave bases in Germany Hello and welcome to our live coverage of events in the Middle East. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said that it was “foreseeable” that the US would withdraw troops from Europe, after the Pentagon announced it would pull thousands of American soldiers from Germany. Trump said he is “not satisfied” with a new proposal from Iran on ending the war, as peace talks remain stalled despite a weeks-long ceasefire. Iran delivered the proposal text to mediator Pakistan on Thursday evening, Iranian state news agency Irna reported, without detailing its contents. The US state department said it was approving military sales totalling more than $8.6bn to Middle Eastern allies Israel, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. It came as Washington warned European allies including the UK, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia to expect long delivery delays for US weapons as it scrambles to replenish stockpiles depleted by the Iran war, according to a report in the Fianancial Times citing multiple sources. In Lebanon, 12 people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south, Lebanon’s health ministry said, including in the town of Habboush, where the Israeli army had issued an evacuation order despite the continuing ceasefire. Israeli warplanes “launched a series of heavy strikes … less than an hour after” the warning, the state-run National News Agency said. The US Treasury Office warned that any shipping companies that paid tolls to Iran for passage through the strait of Hormuz, including charitable donations to organisations such as the Iranian Red Crescent Society, would risk punitive sanctions. Tehran has proposed charging fees on vessels passing through the strait, as part of a deal to end the war. Trump wrote to US lawmakers on Friday declaring hostilities with Iran “terminated”, despite no change in the US military posture, as he faces continuing pressure at home to seek congressional authorisation for the war. The state department’s announcement on Friday included approving military sales to Qatar of Patriot air and missile defence replenishment services costing $4.01bn and of advanced precision kill weapon systems (APKWS) costing $992.4m. They also included approval of the sale to Kuwait of an integrated battle command system costing $2.5bn and to Israel of APKWS costing $992.4m. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei urged his people to wage economic battle and “disappoint” its enemies, as the war and years of sanctions take a toll. In a written statement he also said “the owners of damaged businesses should avoid, as much as possible, layoffs and separation of their workforce”. Continue reading...

Her philosophical approach to therapy has become a global phenomenon, and inspired a new book. Could a session with her change Sophie McBain’s life? The existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen moved to the UK inspired by RD Laing, the Scottish anti-psychiatrist who said insanity is a “perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. It was 1977 and Van Deurzen, who is Dutch and had studied philosophy and psychology in France, found work with the Arbours Association in London, a therapeutic community based on Laing’s ideas, in which people in crisis, psychiatrists and therapists lived together as equals. It was a rude awakening. Arbours aimed to create space for people to “explore their madness”. “Now that was a very interesting idea,” Van Duerzen says, “but in practice it meant that people self-medicated, with alcohol and pot, and it was not a happy situation.” The residents were often very depressed or psychotic, and it was common to be woken up at night because someone was seeing things or had become suicidal. Van Deurzen came to believe that anti-psychiatry had “lost courage”: it had proposed a different way of thinking about madness, but having released people from asylums and taken them off neuroleptic drugs, it was “kind of leaving them to it”. “And this is what I realised wasn’t good enough,” she says. When people are experiencing a mental health crisis, they need help to make sense of what has happened to them, and to find their way to healing. “From that moment on I just knew: nobody’s doing this. I’m going to have to do it myself,” she says. Continue reading...

As a Mast of Fraternity and Memory is unveiled in Nantes, calls are growing for Macron to announce framework for discussions In the French port city of Nantes, once France’s largest departure point for ships that trafficked enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, a new wooden mast rises 18 metres into the sky from the waterside. The Mast of Fraternity and Memory, inaugurated this month, marks a turning point in France’s complicated relationship with the legacy of its history of enslavement – just as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, comes under pressure to make key announcements on a process of reparatory justice. Continue reading...

⚽ All the latest ahead of a pivotal day’s football action ⚽ Ten things to look out for | Fixtures | Tables | Mail David Good morning everyone (shuffles papers and looks into camera while staff mill around in the background) and welcome to matchday live! We’re at the stage of the football season when every day seems significant, make-or-break, do-or-die. And that’s absolutely the case this very Saturday with three teams – Ipswich, Millwall and Middlesbrough – all having a shot at clinching the second automatic qualification spot from the Championship to the Premier League. At the very summit of the pyramid, Arsenal have the chance to pull six points clear when they host Fulham this evening. So there’s that and, quite frankly, an awful lot more. Let’s do this and, as always, get in touch with via the email at the top of the page! Continue reading...

The 34-year-old midfielder will leave Old Trafford after conclusively proving high-profile doubters wrong It was two years ago that Jamie Carragher offered Casemiro a rather withering piece of advice: “Leave the football before the football leaves you.” Fast forward to this season and the Brazilian’s record for Manchester United reads: nine goals (second only to Benjamin Sesko), two assists, and 2,417 minutes played in 31 starts from a total of 32 appearances, with 13 games finished, including seven of the past nine. Consider, too, how the January announcement of Casemiro’s departure from United at the end of the current campaign has led to supporters pleading with the 34-year-old to stay, and that Casemiro is again a midfield first-choice for his national team in the buildup to a World Cup. Continue reading...

Breton brewer forced to stop selling craft beer after Beatles singer’s widow registered lemon name to stop him being mocked A Brittany brewer is in a squeeze after Yoko Ono ordered him to stop selling a bestselling craft beer labelled John Lemon. The Japanese-American artist and widow of the Beatles star John Lennon claimed it was a breach of a trademark she had registered a decade ago to stop her late husband being mocked, his name misused and his reputation sullied. Continue reading...

England head coach survived Ashes review but going missing for 43% of the county season is straight out of Seinfeld George: Right now I just sit around pretending I’m busy. Jerry: How do you do that? George: I look annoyed. Think about it. When you look annoyed all the time, people think you’re busy. [Rolls his eyes, slaps his forehead, does look busy.] Does anyone remember Brendon McCullum? You know. Baz. It was a thing. People said “Bazball” in parliament. It was probably in the dictionary, one of those new zeitgeisty words, like rofl. Distinguishing marks? Hat. Jawline. A way of standing. Sports socks provocatively splayed on an ornate balcony. Look, it doesn’t really matter. But has anyone actually … seen him? Continue reading...

The once inexorable rise in retiree living standards since the second world war has broken down. Can we keep the dream alive for future generations? When you think of retirement, what comes to mind? Perhaps it is images of older people enjoying a well-deserved period of leisure and comfort in the final stretch of their lives. Cruise ships, garden centres, golf clubs and bungalows by the sea. The truth is that this image is now, in large part, the artefact of a bygone age. A long and comfortable retirement starting at 60 or 65 is beginning to look like a collective social experience whose moment has passed. The political and economic forces it relied upon appear to have run their course – and it’s time to start thinking about what comes next. Retirement in Britain has a surprisingly short history, underpinned by dramatic improvements in older people’s quality of life over the past 50 years. Large public and private bureaucracies first started to enrol long-serving employees into pension schemes from the mid-19th century. In 1909, Britain was the first country to pioneer an old age pension, funded by the state and targeting the poorest, who could claim it from the age of 70. But it was only after the second world war that a period of leisured old age become an ordinary expectation for most British workers. Helen McCarthy is a historian and the author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood Continue reading...

Midfielder broke a Barça Dutch record last week and is potentially one win from a third league title with team he visited as a teenager for fun A warm sun bathes the Barcelona training ground as Frenkie de Jong arrives to chat. The midfielder’s work is done for the day and the Netherlands international is in his comfort zone here, the first team’s longest-serving player, a regular captain and effortlessly fluent in Spanish. It is a far cry from the day just over 10 years ago when he visited the Camp Nou. In late December 2015 De Jong made the most of the Eredivisie’s winter shutdown to take a city break in Barcelona with his now wife, Mikky. He was 18 and days from linking up with Ajax, who had signed him four months earlier but loaned him back to Willem II, and he managed to get tickets for Barcelona v Real Betis. It is an occasion that stuck in his mind. Continue reading...

‘Targeted support’ means certain banks and financial institutions can offer free extra help with investments and pensions Many Britons are daunted by the world of investing, but new City rules mean certain banks and financial institutions can offer free extra help with investments and pensions. Last month marked the launch of “targeted support”, a new regulated service that permits companies to suggest investments and pension products to customers that might provide a better return. Continue reading...

Company had struggled to increase post-pandemic demand before war in Iran pushed up jet fuel costs Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Spirit Airlines has announced that it has gone out of business after the low-cost airline ran out of cash and a rescue attempt by the Trump administration appeared to stall. The airline that once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people said that after 34 years it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately”. Continue reading...

Three Australians among 175 activists taken by Israel from ships attempting to transport aid to Gaza say they have launched a hunger strike Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Three Australian activists say they have launched a hunger strike in Crete, after being left there by Israeli authorities following the interception of a flotilla attempting to transport aid to Gaza. Ethan Floyd, Neve O’Connor and Zack Schofield – three of six Australians released after their ships were intercepted on Wednesday – said they and their colleagues were subjected to mistreatment while held for two days onboard an Israeli vessel. Continue reading...