Rapper who has previously made antisemitic remarks responds to criticism over his booking at London festival The rapper formerly known as Kanye West has broken his silence and offered to “meet and listen” to members of the UK’s Jewish community after a fierce backlash over his booking at London’s Wireless festival. West, who is legally known as Ye, has been criticised for making antisemitic remarks including voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler. Last year he released a song called Heil Hitler, a few months after advertising a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website. Continue reading...

François Ozon’s adaptation of the 1942 novella L’Etranger passionately honours the original text while bringing a contemporary perspective to its themes of empire and race A heatstricken reverie of violence and mystery unfolds in this film, a numb ecstasy of the inexplicable, as experienced by a sensitive white European under the unbearable noonday sun. Set in 1940s French Algeria (and filmed in Morocco), François Ozon’s lustrously beautiful and superbly realised monochrome version of Albert Camus’s novella L’Etranger has an almost supernaturally detailed sense of period and place. It amounts to a passionate act of ancestor worship in honour of a renowned French artwork, though by making changes that bring a contemporary perspective on the book’s themes of empire and race – changes that include a critique of the original text – this adaptation perhaps loses some of its source material’s brutal, heartless power and arguably some of the title’s meaning. An archive reel introduces us briskly to Algiers and its casbah, with a hint of Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko; then we are shown our antihero Meursault, remanded there on trial for the capital crime of murder, played with many an unreadable moue of listless unconcern by Benjamin Voisin. Flashbacks show us his dull office job in Algiers, where he turns down a promotion and transfer to Paris, one of his many shrugging gestures of indifference to his own interests. Continue reading...

The US vice-president and Hungary’s prime minister will hold a joint press conference later today Meanwhile, the opposition leader Péter Magyar has responded to JD Vance’s visit rejecting what he described as “interference in Hungarian elections.” He said: “No foreign country may interfere in Hungarian elections. This is our country. Hungarian history is not written in Washington, Moscow, or Brussels – it is written in Hungary’s streets and squares. Continue reading...

The health secretary and the BMA trade accusations over who bears responsibility for the collapse of talks Good morning. Resident doctors in English hospitals started a six-day strike at 7am this morning. Many of them will continue to work, but there will be enough of them joining the strike to have a significant impact on the care hospitals can deliver. It is the 15th resident doctors (who used to be known as junior doctors) have been on stage since they launched a campaign in 2023 to get their pay back to the equivalent level it used to be before austerity kicked in after the financial crash. This morning Wes Streeting, the health secretary, deployed a new statistic in his PR battle against the BMA, the doctors’ union organised the strikes. He confirmed a figure highlighted in the Daily Mail’s splash saying strikes by resident doctors have now cost the country £3bn. We think that strikes cost £50m a day. And so that is, an accurate reflection of the cost of these strikes. What is true is that in order to deliver a full pay restoration back to 2008 levels, using the RPI account of inflation, it would cost in the order of £3bn a year. Let’s then assume that other NHS staff would understandably demand the same. Then that cost would be more like £30bn a year. That is more than the entire cost of the Ministry of Justice’s entire budget for running the criminal justice system. Continue reading...

Billionaire claims world’s biggest music company has suffered due to postponement of US listing Business live – latest updates Billionaire Bill Ackman’s hedge fund has offered to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) in a deal that values the world’s biggest music company at more than €50bn (£44bn). Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has offered to buy the business, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John, in a cash and stock deal. Continue reading...

The ‘bank is closed and the door is locked’, says Zia Yusuf as calls grow for compensation to remedy historical wrongs Reform UK has said it would stop issuing visas to any person from a country which continues to demand compensation from the UK for its role in the transatlanctic trade in enslaved people. Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, told the Daily Telegraph that the call for reparations was “insulting”. Continue reading...

The ugly side of chess is pored over in this Netflix documentary, looking at how lurid online gossip led to a lawsuit, conspiracy theories and a bitter rivalry. Sadly, there’s little new here ‘Every conversation I have about chess”, says Hans Niemann, “leads to anal beads.” In any other context that might seem something of a non-sequitur. But in the context of Niemann, it makes a lot of sense. For the uninitiated, Niemann was the chess prodigy accused in 2022 of cheating against world champion Magnus Carlsen – some said by using a vibrating sex toy to direct his play, leading him to a shock (pun intended) victory. As ridiculous as it sounds – the sort of thing that would be laughed out of the Black Mirror writers’ room – the theory gained ground online, and in the press. This Netflix one-off draws heavily on archive footage ridiculing the incident, featuring everyone from Piers Morgan to Trevor Noah, who quips that, with anal beads, “even if you lose, you still kinda win”. Continue reading...

Concern over MPs’ competence is one thing, but this is silencing opponents’ voices by character assassination, and it leads to a dark place Stella Creasy is the Labour and Cooperative MP for Walthamstow The slogan “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” holds new meaning in a world where an MP simply singing along to Robyn is labelled a sign of national decline. A tweet celebrating a Saturday night in my own constituency has now been viewed by almost 1 million people – and many more have offered an opinion. Egged on by political opponents and the presenters of GB News, these have included death threats, vile commentary on my appearance and accusations that I’m not fit for office, all because I went to a silent disco. Such a barrage is wearing and worrying in equal amounts – but such attacks are not unique to me, nor are they accidental. Joy is now seen as something that should shame politicians – as though having frazzled and miserable people in our parliament is good for decision-making. Underlying this is more than just embarrassment about seeing a middle-aged MP dance, it’s a concerted attempt by some to drown out their opponents’ voices through character assassination. Continue reading...

The Sweden striker’s goals had inspired Sporting for two years but in Colombian Luis Suárez they have found an equally prolific target man In Portugal, two of the most familiar sayings claim that “green is the colour of hope” and that “hope is the last thing to die”. For Sporting, a club draped in green, those proverbs are not merely poetic – they are operational. After a humiliating 3–0 defeat in Norway by Bodø/Glimt in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie, logic suggested it was all over. Sporting disagreed. Backed by about 50,000 supporters, the team surged with belief and delivered a 5–0 victory that carried the club to their first quarter-final in the tournament in 43 years. Arsenal come next, as does an old question: is hope a cultural relic or Sporting’s most powerful ally? Continue reading...

As the most played fixture in European competition looms once more, we look back on 50 years of thrills and spills The Champions League’s answer to el clásico resumes in Madrid on Tuesday. Real Madrid v Bayern Munich is the most played fixture in European competition: 28 matches and counting, including 13 knockout ties. Here are six of the best. Continue reading...

No phones, no littering, no cheering bad shots – ‘patrons’ face strict rules at Augusta, but what a contrast to last year’s disgraceful Ryder Cup It is easy to poke fun at the prissy traditions of the Masters. Golfers, never mind spectators, enter a state of panic over what horrible fate may befall them should they break the rules inside Augusta National. It is preposterous in so many ways; adults consumed by fear over missteps at a golf tournament. People do not typically feel this way inside the Sistine Chapel. This year, there are reasons to be grateful for Augusta’s unapologetic approach. The Masters provides a welcome break from the ear-bashing noise of the modern world. The United States is an especially fractious place. This major also offers a timely escape from the racket within golf itself. Brief serenity should be appreciated. Continue reading...

Petr Vlachovsky’s non-contact sexual abuse has had long-term effects and could finally be the catalyst for safeguarding policy change for women and girls in the sport Kristyna Janku answered the phone to a police officer, not sure what she was going to hear. She had heard the rumours, the gossip, and was not sure what was true and what was not. The defender’s former coach Petr Vlachovsky, who coached women and girls at FC Slovacko for almost 15 years and was once voted the best women’s football coach in the Czech Republic, had been arrested and she was about to find out why. Continue reading...

UN assists in emergency vaccination drive as country battles worst surge in cases in years amid fall in vaccination rates Bangladesh is battling its worse measles outbreak in years, with more than 100 children dead amid a rise in unvaccinated infants. The government, in partnership with the United Nations, has begun conducting an emergency measles-rubella vaccination drive for children across the country, after more than 900 cases were confirmed since March. Continue reading...

Experts have been alarmed at the growth of deep misogyny dressed up as self-help on social media. We profile seven men from across the continent who are gaining traction It is not just Europe and the US that are grappling with a growing landscape of misogynistic influencers online. While Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, Sneako and other voices grow in toxicity in the manosphere of the west, across Africa – which has more than 400 million people aged between 15 and 35 – several individuals are gaining traction. The manosphere is a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles such as dating and fitness, but often promote harmful misogynistic attitudes. Sunita Caminha, who leads UN Women on ending violence against women and girls in east and southern Africa, first started noticing its presence in Africa about five years ago, and believes it is on the rise. “Research and data that keeps coming out is very consistent [in] showing this is an alarming issue in different countries and contexts across the continent.” Continue reading...

Ancient hill carvings of horses, crosses and crowns have fascinated artists, writers and travellers for centuries. I went in search of their stories In the churchyard next to Wilmington Priory in East Sussex, I found a yew so ancient and stooped that its trunk had eaten half a gravestone. Its boughs were supported by long poles, a creepy sight that made me shudder. I had come here to see something just as strange, but more benign than this folk-horror vision – the figure of the Long Man of Wilmington on the hillside opposite, on the steep scarp of the South Downs. He treks over the hill, a stave clasped in each hand. Climbing Windover Hill, just beneath the South Downs Way, I saw that while he was once a chalk giant, his lines are now marked with concrete blocks. The Long Man may be Anglo-Saxon in origin – the shape is similar to the design on a buckle discovered in Kent in 1964 by the archaeologist Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, which probably represents the god Odin (or Woden); but he may be a much later adornment for the hillside, made to be viewed from the priory. His form entranced the photographer Lee Miller and her husband, the artist Roland Penrose, who lived close to the Long Man. Penrose painted a surrealist representation of the Long Man on the inglenook fireplace at Farleys, their home – for them the figure was a protective spirit. It also inspired the Black composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor, the folk collective the Memory Band, and Benjamin Britten picnicked at its feet. Continue reading...

Through no fault of their own, she faces repaying £100 a month until she is 93 or face legal action My 66-year-old mother has been told that she has been overpaid her civil service pension by £40,000 and must repay it, or face legal action. Once the tax she’s paid on the income is deducted, she owes £32,000. Her monthly pension payments have now been cut, which means her annual income will fall from £19,700 to £12,000, and she was, additionally, ordered to repay £496 a month for five years. This was later reduced to £100 a month, and a charge was put on her house as security. She’s been told she will have paid everything she owes when she’s 93. Continue reading...

DC Universe supremo Gunn’s thinly conceived debut feature gets a glossy repackaging for seemingly no other reason than his later success This grotesquerie-heavy exercise in comic body horror was writer-director James Gunn’s first feature in 2006; a commercial flop at the time, it was Gunn’s crack at the big time, made long before he went on to direct the likes of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, the most recent iteration of Superman and take over as head honcho for the DC cinematic universe. His subsequent success (apart from that time he got briefly cancelled for ill-advised tweets) might partially explain why this early work is getting a glossy repackaging now. It’s the film industry equivalent of a reputational glow-up, as if a flawed, underwhelming early work should now be considered a misunderstood work of genius. Sadly, Slither is by no stretch of the imagination a work of genius. Its science fiction elements are thinly conceived, while the use of rubbery practical effects and lame jokes feel much closer to the work of the Troma brand where Gunn got his training wheels. The main conceit here is that an alien lifeform, whose larvae look like flaccid phallic worms with severe sunburn, crash lands on Earth via an asteroid and then proceeds to take over a small South Carolina town. The first to be possessed is Grant (Michael Rooker, a Gunn regular ever since), a good ol’ boy with a unhealthy obsession with his wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks, displaying her typically professional comic chops); she still has a soft spot for local head of police Bill (Nathan Fillion). One by one, members of the town are penetrated through various orifices by the worm larvae, some of them becoming evil minions and some, like unlucky area woman Brenda (Brenda James), turning into hideously swollen incubators for further larvae. Continue reading...

CBI figures showing surprise jump in financial sector’s growth will be welcome news for Rachel Reeves Britain’s financial services companies have reported a strong recovery in activity at the start of the year, in a surprise boost to the government after a gloomy end to 2025. Banks, insurers and investment managers said their businesses were growing, with a positive balance of nearly two-thirds noting an expansion, according to a long-running survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), a lobby group. That contrasted with the negative balance of 38% in December, despite the start of the US-Israel war on Iran. Continue reading...

It’s all about the austere beauty of concrete in photographer Paul Tulett’s starkly stunning shots of the country’s jaw-dropping, rapidly evolving architectural highlights Continue reading...

Exclusive: Health secretary says industrial action in England also threatens to derail NHS progress on waiting times Wes Streeting has accused resident doctors of “torpedoing” their own pay rises and training jobs by walking out on strike again, as tens of thousands of doctors began a six-day stoppage in England. The health secretary said there was a “legitimacy” to concerns over jobs and wages but that the British Medical Association had scuppered any chance of a breakthrough when it rejected what he said was a serious offer from the government to transform medics’ conditions. Continue reading...

The former member of Migos is in a stable condition after being shot on Monday, with police detaining two people The rapper Offset is in a stable condition in hospital after he was shot outside a Florida casino on Monday. The former member of the Atlanta hip-hop trio Migos, whose real name is Kiari Kendrell Cephus, was shot in a valet area outside the Seminole Hard Rock hotel and casino, Offset’s spokesperson confirmed to media. Continue reading...

Lorenazo Ligas is a brilliant but flawed hero in fun new series Ligas. Plus: Do you have OCD? Here’s what to watch this evening 9pm, Sky Atlantic Lorenzo Ligas (Luca Argentero) is a debauched genius, a lawyer whose brilliance is matched by his capacity for self-sabotage. This trope isn’t original, but there’s a certain freewheeling relish to the Italian drama. As it begins, Ligas is defending a gone-to-seed pop star accused of murdering a cop. But the clock is ticking. Can our maverick hero exonerate his client before he destroys his own career prospects? Flashy, flimsy fun. Phil Harrison Continue reading...

Exclusive: Call for nudity-detection tech on phones as number of under-18s reporting blackmail attempts rises by 34% • ‘I felt ashamed and scared’: how an online friendship became a sextortion nightmare Children are reporting online sextortion attempts in record numbers in the UK, as campaigners urge tech companies to do more to stamp out the crime. The Report Remove service, which allows children to flag intimate images or videos of themselves that have appeared, or could appear, online, said it received 394 reports from under-18s last year of blackmail attempts after sending sexual images to predators. The figure is 34% higher than in 2024. Continue reading...

Withdrawal of additional speciality training roles amid strike deadlock has left some doctors with uncertain future After almost two years on the NHS frontline as a resident doctor, Heather Gunn says she is bracing herself for unemployment. Like many of her colleagues, she was desperate to secure one of the up to 4,500 additional training posts the government agreed to introduce in England over three years to help doctors progress into more specialised fields. The posts were promised in negotiations between the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), and the government in a long-running dispute over resident doctors’ pay and job security. Continue reading...

Signed acoustic guitar used on (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – the bestselling album of the 90s – could fetch up to £60,000 at Sotheby’s Incredibly, some critics were lukewarm about Oasis’s second album, with one calling it “laboured and lazy” and another dismissing it as a “marginally less hook-laden reprise” of their debut. But (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? went on to become the bestselling British album of the 90s and a guitar Noel Gallagher used to write it will, Sotheby’s has announced, be a star lot of its April rock and pop sale. Continue reading...