Coventry-supporting Japanese has used his rebel streak and risk-taking instincts to spur on Oliver Bearman this season There is no one quite like Ayao Komatsu in Formula One. Haas’s Japanese team principal, a rugby-playing Coventry City fan who left his home country to escape the constraints of conformity, is F1’s rebel without a pause. As Haas enter their first home race of the season in Miami this weekend, they are on no little roll. Fourth place in the championship is the highest position held by a US team after three races in the sport’s history and Komatsu has engineered it in a sport he once viewed as his great escape. Continue reading...

Yiewsley by Daljit Nagra; Mer de Glace by Małgorzata Lebda; The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith; Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak by Rishi Dastidar; Dark Night by St John of the Cross, translated by Martha Sprackland Yiewsley by Daljit Nagra (Faber, £14.99) Given the relish with which Nagra pushes and pulls at English, it’s worth noting that Yiewsley is a real west London suburb. This location allows him to continue his career-long exploration of childhood working-class Sikh experience and, through it, wider questions of identity. But as Nagra turns 60, location is becoming increasingly a matter of time as well as space. The classic struggle of each first generation to arrive in Britain, and the pressure on its kids to make good, now sits within a 1960s and 70s time capsule. Enoch Powell and the National Front cast violent shadows, but parkas, school blancmange and cricket strike a sweeter, almost elegiac note. Mer de Glace by Małgorzata Lebda, translated by Mira Rosenthal (Fitzcarraldo, £12.99) Much as they have in prose, Fitzcarraldo are awakening British poetry publishing to the glamour of braininess. Mer de Glace is named for a dying French glacier, but the sequence is set on the 1,047km-long Polish river Vistula, along which Lebda ran in 2021. Images of fires and firesides recur: we are all of us out in a wild, vulnerable world. This is ecopoetry at its most profound and informal, challenging and pleasurable. Rosenthal’s quietly fluent translations give us “books that help us close the mouth of night”, light as “Baltic mercury” and, as the runner nears the end of her journey, a “pelvis tilting / towards the open sea”. Continue reading...

The Artemis missions are paving the way to civilizational decisions. It’s time to ask not just what we can do – but whether we should do it This month’s splashdown of Artemis II was rightly celebrated as a technical achievement. Four astronauts traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history and returned safely. It is an extraordinary thing to send people into deep space and bring them home again. Nobody should deny that. But the real significance of Artemis II lies elsewhere. Continue reading...

Myth, ritual and community are drawing new energy and believers to Devon town on edge of Dartmoor Stroll through the Devon town of Ashburton, or pop into the Old Exeter Inn on West Street, and you’re almost bound to bump into a storyteller, a mythologist, a pagan – perhaps even a friendly witch. The town on the edge of craggy Dartmoor, home to about 4,000 people, is becoming a magnet to those drawn to the old folky ways and the reimagining of 21st-century versions of earthy rural traditions. Continue reading...

New law proposes up to 20 years in prison for promoting ‘foreign interests’, and restricts those who work with or are funded by overseas partners Ugandan opposition figures, human rights organisations and legal experts have condemned a sweeping bill that proposes up to 20 years in prison for promoting “foreign interests”, and imposes restrictions on a broad range of people and organisations that work with or receive funding from overseas partners. The protection of sovereignty bill 2026 is being fast tracked through parliament, with debate expected to conclude before the presidential swearing-in on 12 May. Continue reading...

With a feral energy and a Liam Gallagher growl, the Dublin band’s beguiling music is a great evolution of a venerable genre From Dublin Recommended if you like Lankum, the Mary Wallopers, the Pogues Up next Debut EP It’s a Hell of an Age out now, playing festivals this summer and touring the UK in autumn Madra Salach means “dirty dog” in Irish, which feels about right for a group of lads bringing a feral, snarling energy to the country’s latest folk revival. Their sound builds ably on some of the architects of that resurgence – the eerie shruti box droning and carefully layered instrumentation of Lankum, the shimmering wails of Lisa O’Neill. Add a hint of Liam Gallagher to the mix – frontman Paul Banks’s voice has an astonishing force and clarity, and he affects a tempestuous, attack-and-withdraw relationship with the microphone – and you’ve got a very exciting package indeed. Continue reading...

Claire Freemantle accused of causing death and serious injury by dangerous driving when 4x4 hit school in south London Claire Freemantle, 49, has been charged with causing death and serious injury by dangerous driving after two eight-year-old girls were killed when a 4×4 crashed into a primary school in Wimbledon, south London, in July 2023. Continue reading...

Against shifting party loyalties, Gaston Browne is on course to win 15 of the 17-seat parliament Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, is set to win a fourth term in the country’s snap general election with preliminary results showing his Antigua and Barbuda Labour party (ABLP) on course to win 15 seats in the 17-seat parliament. Addressing supporters early on Friday morning, Browne said: “You have spoken, you have spoken clearly. You have indicated that the Antigua and Barbuda Labour party is the best institution to run this country.” Continue reading...

Court heard woman asked fashion boss to stop but he did not even when she started crying James Holder, a co-founder of the clothing firm Superdry, has been found guilty of raping a woman after a night out in the Gloucestershire town of Cheltenham. Gloucester crown court heard Holder, 54, had been due to get a taxi back to his mansion in the Cotswolds with a male friend. Instead, the pair got into the victim’s taxi and went to her flat, where the fashion boss raped her. Continue reading...

US president says European countries are ‘absolutely horrible’ to refuse to support operations in strait of Hormuz Europe live – latest updates Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw US troops from Italy and Spain a day after saying he was looking at reducing the number deployed in Germany. The US president’s threat to Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said America was being “humiliated” by Iran. Continue reading...

The US president said he would carry out of a review of US military presence in Europe after public criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran In more serious news, the European Union’s mammoth trade deal with South American bloc Mercosur provisionally enters into force today, despite a pending court ruling on its legality, AFP noted. The agreement to create one of the world’s biggest free-trade zones was sealed in January after more than 25 years of intermittent negotiations. Together, the EU and Mercosur account for 30 percent of global GDP and more than 700 million consumers. Continue reading...

While Charles and Camilla were on a three-line whip, MPs watched the excruciating discomfort of civil servants We don’t often get to see senior civil servants out and about in the wild. They are kept away from the public gaze, sat behind a desk trying to persuade their ministers not to do something too catastrophic to their government department. Quite why they have been been made a knight or a dame just for doing their jobs is one of life’s mysteries. The rest of us have to make do with the occasional email from the boss. But in the last week, two top civil servants have been reluctantly made to give evidence on Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador before the foreign affairs select committee and very instructive it has been, too. Not least to see how much they dislike any extra attention from the public. Their obvious discomfort at being held to account was excruciating to watch. Continue reading...

Islamabad has reportedly switched to lower-profile role but believes peace can make progress without face-to-face meetings Pakistan is passing proposals between Iran and the US to keep talks alive behind the scenes and inch towards a peace agreement, officials and experts say. Pakistani officials say that they are conscious of the fact that at stake is not only regional peace, but the health of the global economy and the livelihoods of millions of the poorest people in the world – including in Pakistan, whose monthly energy import bill has almost tripled as a result of the war. Continue reading...

(Heavenly) With strong words for Keir Starmer, the Irish rave-rap trio remain unbowed by the controversy around them – and yet this is a more ruminative record than you might expect Five tracks into Fenian, the listener is confronted by the sound of rapper Mo Chara expressing a desire to go and live off-grid outside a small village in County Meath. He does this in characteristic style – prefaced with the line “run along, fuck’s sake, I’m sick of you cunts” – but still, it comes as a surprise. After all, the tales of drugged-out madness on Kneecap’s previous album, 2024’s Fine Art, took place in an exclusively urban environment: at one juncture Mo Chara claimed that his preferred milieu was “the snug of a dimly-lit, shit, run-down pub”, presumably one like the lairy Belfast boozer in which much of the album was set. Nothing about Kneecap has given the impression of a band given to wistfully pining after a simple bucolic life. And yet, who can blame him for wanting to switch off and get away from it all? The two years since Fine Art’s release have been tumultuous for the Irish rave-rap trio, and it’s difficult to discern how much their soaring profile has to do with their music. Fine Art was warmly received – it was potent, funny and original – but quickly drowned out by the din of controversy that began when Mo Chara was alleged to have displayed a Hezbollah flag on stage at a London gig in November 2024. He was later charged with terror offences, which he denied – Kneecap said they have never supported Hezbollah and “condemn all attacks on civilians, always” – and the case was ultimately thrown out of court. In the interim, there were cancelled gigs and tours, a ban from entering Canada and Hungary (decisions Kneecap strongly opposed), and calls from both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch for Kneecap’s 2025 Glastonbury set to be dropped. Badenoch had already quarrelled with them over their lurid republicanism when she was business secretary, trying to cancel a grant they’d been given – and Kneecap prevailed in that case, too. Continue reading...

ICA, London Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the 80s and endured the financial crash as they set out as artists – their fury is intoxicating This is a bitter, resentful exhibition by a handful of bitter, resentful artists. Americans Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the mid-1980s, coming of age in a world at its financial peak, but becoming adults just as the 2008 financial crash turned everything to crap. They saw a land of opportunity and boundless possibility, and then had it all kicked out from under them. Of course they’re resentful; we all should be. Jenna Bliss’s first video here sets the mood. Shaky, handheld images of the New York skyline and public artworks in the city’s financial district are overlaid with text such as “We survived Y2K but now the real world source code is malfunctioning” and “Save the banks to save us all”. That’s the vibe: millennial despair at a world built to keep the banks rich and the rest of us placid. Continue reading...

You’ll need a large area and a sunny aspect, but this plant is a true delight when homegrown If you read my recent piece about celeriac, you’ll know that I’m trying to make an effort to write about crops that I don’t actually grow myself – this is my next instalment. Unlike celeriac, which I don’t like, I don’t grow sweetcorn because I simply don’t have the right space and conditions. So if you’re fortunate to have the room and sunny aspect for it to thrive, I’m jealous. When freshly plucked and shucked, homegrown sweetcorn is beyond delightful. As you might suspect, sweetcorn grows best during long, hot summers – so get your seeds started now as they’ll want some warmth to germinate (in a propagator ideally) and pleasant weather as they get growing. As with so many of the best summer crops, it likes fertile and moisture-retentive soil, and as much sun as the summer days have to offer. Seedlings more than 8cm tall are ready to be planted out, but resist putting your seedlings into the ground until the days are warm and the risk of frost is well passed. And keep some fleece handy to throw over them should the temperature drop unexpectedly. Continue reading...

The Mets have the second-highest payroll in baseball. They also own the worst record in the major leagues A franchise once known as baseball’s lovable losers are, for the moment, merely baseball’s most expensive losers. The New York Mets wrapped a shocking April by losing 5-4 to the Washington Nationals on Thursday, dropping to a major league-worst 10-21 and burrowing even deeper into last place in the National League East – making them somehow even worse than their old rivals the Philadelphia Phillies, another wealthy-yet-terrible team. The Mets will (probably) not play at their current 52-win pace all year but their sordid first month has done immense damage to their postseason hopes. Their chances at October baseball were 87% on Opening Day, according to the analytics site FanGraphs. They are now less than three-in-10 to make the playoffs, and that projection seems pretty generous for a team who have lost 17 of their last 20 games. Continue reading...

Esther Cohen was removed as Greene county’s poet laureate just weeks after the appointment. It’s ‘emblematic of the assault on the arts writ large’, some say In 1985, just before the poet Esther Cohen, her husband, and two friends bought a house in Greene county, their realtor warned them not to: it was too “wild” and different from what they knew. To Cohen, that sounded ideal; she has lived in the same rent-stabilized Upper West Side apartment since 1973 and loves the city but longed for an escape from her bubble of leftist and liberal Jewish urbanites. Greene county is 120 miles north of New York City. The birthplace of the Hudson River School of Art, it has waterfalls and majestic views of the river and the Catskill Mountains – the perfect place for a writer to find quiet in the summertime and on other occasions throughout the year. She made local friends quickly. “I went to the farmer’s wife at the farm stand nearby and said, ‘I want to have a potluck. Will you come and host it with me?’” Cohen said in an interview in her Upper West Side apartment. She’s been hosting big summer potlucks ever since for a “big mix” of neighbors: “Everyone comes who is around. And everyone is welcome.” In January, Create, a local arts council partly funded by the Greene county legislature, appointed Cohen the county’s first-ever poet laureate. She recalls thinking Greene county, with its overwhelmingly Republican legislature, might not want to be represented by a Jewish transplant from New York City. But she was encouraged by community members to apply and was delighted when she won. She signed an agreement with Create and asked that the ceremony in her honor take place in April, as part of National Poetry Month. As laureate, her job would be to promote poetry in the county and participate in local literary events. She would earn an annual $1,000 honorarium. Continue reading...

Guardian photojournalist Sean Smith has been following the Reform UK leader as he criss-crosses the country on a busy schedule of walkabouts and meet-ups with prospective councillors and supporters before the May elections Nigel Farage and Reform are campaigning around the country in the local elections and consistently polling higher than the other parties. Reform’s campaign started with a series of rallies for supporters and candidates, where they asked attenders who were not already members to join the party and put their names forward as candidates. Now Farage is on a busy schedule of walkabouts and meet-ups with prospective councillors and supporters around the country. Nigel Farage shows his colours. Continue reading...

The patriarch of the Weasley family in seven wizarding films has also been prolific as a small screen detective and comedy catchphrase master. Assuming it suits you, he’ll be here with answers Twenty-five years have now passed since the first Harry Potter film and, with the HBO reboot due out this Christmas, Warner Bros is ramping up the celebrations. Key among them is the unveiling of a new feature at the studio tour showcasing key moments, costumes and props from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. And this is why Mark Williams is now taking your questions – although, as Potter purists will know, his character doesn’t actually appear in the first film. Arthur Weasley does, however, play a pretty big role in the other seven movies, so let’s muggle through regardless. Continue reading...

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Updates from seven County Championship matches This week’s Spin | comment BTL or email Tanya Good morning! May has landed like a gentle kiss on the back of the neck, and with it round five of the Championship. There are seven games today, with Gloucestershire and Lancashire – who will lose Daniel Gidney at the end of the season (retirement) but gain Chris Green early – sitting this one out. Jamie Smith will keep wicket for Surrey against Sussex after Ben Foakes injured himself bowling in the dying dregs of the game against Essex. And Kent must plough on Continue reading...

Pop psychodrama Mother Mary might look and sound the part but it’s the latest failed attempt to turn the life of an arena-touring singer into a compelling movie For anyone with even the slightest interest in Hollywood, it is not entirely surprising that Anne Hathaway recently appeared on Popcast, the New York Times critics’ podcast that has become a premier destination for music promotion. After all, the actor – whose last appearance in a musical bagged her an Academy Award – is a major part of one of the best recent movies to show pop stardom on screen. No, it’s not Mother Mary, the new A24 psychodrama for which Hathaway is making the press rounds as a world-famous diva in the midst of a spiritual and sartorial crisis. I’m thinking of The Idea of You, the improbably glossy 2024 romance in which Hathaway’s 40-year-old divorcee hooks up with a much-younger singer who looks suspiciously like Harry Styles. The Idea of You successfully conveyed the idea that Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) was the breakout star of a crushable 2010s boyband with a feral fanbase called August Moon. And by “successfully conveyed”, I mean the film remixed a string of One Direction-esque iconography – the jaunty rock-lite choruses, fizzy cheerfulness and class clown antics – into actual music videos and convincingly banal bops. The bar is low; many, many films have created bespoke pop stars and/or music for alternate cultural histories, but vanishingly few transcend pastiche. To be an echo is, generally, enough. Continue reading...

The American author on the magic of Yasunari Kawabata, the hidden layers of Henry James and coming late to the genius of Muriel Spark My earliest reading memory I remember reading throughout my childhood, but it’s hard to identify my earliest memory of reading. In a lot of ways, it’s as if my childhood began when I learned to read. I do remember taking a copy of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons off the shelf when I was maybe 10 or 11 – far too young to be reading it. I was suitably scandalised and excited by it. My favourite book growing up I read a lot of Theodore Dreiser growing up, for reasons that are mysterious to me now. I don’t know how I came to him: he wasn’t assigned in school and no one in my family was reading his books. But his focus was on female characters and perhaps even then, that felt notable. I started with Sister Carrie, then read Jennie Gerhardt and An American Tragedy, but Sister Carrie was the one I returned to again and again. Continue reading...

Americans are fed up with an establishment that has abandoned the working class. It’s time to organize for change On Friday, more than 3,000 May Day protests will take place across the United States – more than double last year’s number. Workers, students and families are calling for a strike: no school, no work, no shopping, and an end to billionaire rule. I’m headed to the streets with members of my own union, the United Auto Workers, in New York City. Americans are fed up – and not just with Donald Trump. People are angry at a Democratic party establishment that has abandoned the working class, that treated the labor movement like a turnout machine instead of the pillar of democracy it is, that funded a genocide in Gaza while ignoring a cost of living crisis, and that took its own base so completely for granted that it pushed millions out of the political process entirely. Claire Valdez is a New York state assemblymember, union organizer, and Democratic socialist running for Congress Continue reading...