The 40th edition of the EFL playoffs started not so much with a bang, but with the kind of tension-filled evenings we have come to expect from the business end of the season. And at the end of a gripping evening in East Yorkshire, the respective Premier League dreams of both Hull and Millwall remains alive before rivalries being renewed in south London on Monday night. At half-time in two-legged ties like these, it is perhaps common to take stock and assess who is better placed to get the job done and reach the final. The smart answer here would be Millwall, given they head back south level at 0-0 in the tie and they have the chance to get the job done in front of their own fans. Continue reading...

Head coach Álvaro Arbeloa is facing the bitterest of ends as faint hopes are set to be extinguished by fiercest rivals The vice-captain was taken to hospital for stitches having been laid out by his midfield partner. Another midfielder said he wouldn’t play any more; as if he was going to play anyway. The manager wasn’t asking for much, just that they didn’t swan out there as if wearing tuxedos, and that’s still asking too much. The centre-back hit the left-back. The winger fell out with the last coach. The captain fell out with this coach. And the superstar, already accused of not caring, swanning off to Sardinia, drives out of the training ground, past the cameras and away from the whole sorry mess, laughing his head off. Now here’s Barcelona. You think things can’t get any worse but things can always get worse. The most painful week anyone could remember, maybe the biggest, most public crisis they have ever had, concludes with Real Madrid travelling to the Camp Nou on Sunday for the clásico. If they don’t win, and few believe they can given the football they play and the faultlines that run through their dressing room, they will watch Barcelona become champions with three games left, going down as the flames go higher and history is made. It would be the first time in 94 years a meeting of sport’s great rivals decides the title – only this title has long been decided, both cause and consequence of the turmoil Madrid are in. Continue reading...

Whimsical film shows relay of animals carrying centennial card from Balmoral Castle to naturalist in London King Charles has featured in a surprise birthday tribute to David Attenborough, with a cast of wild animals helping to relay his handwritten congratulatory centenary card. The whimsical film, A Very Special Delivery, begins with the king writing his tribute in the library of Balmoral Castle. Charles, wearing an animal-themed tie featuring elephants, reflects on more than 60 years of friendship with the renowned naturalist. Continue reading...

Djokovic loses in three sets to Dino Prizmic in Rome ‘Not ideal preparation’ for French Open later this month Novak Djokovic believes he must accept the “new reality” of his continuous physical struggles in the latter part of his career as his return to competition after an injury-ravaged clay-court season ended in a second-round Italian Open loss to the young Croatian qualifier Dino Prizmic, who recovered courageously from a set down to topple his idol 2-6, 6-2, 6-4. Djokovic has not competed since the Indian Wells Masters event two months ago, his only other tournament since his spectacular run to the Australian Open final. As the fourth seed in Rome, he received a first-round bye. Despite starting the match positively, the 38-year-old was outplayed by his 20-year-old opponent, who wore the Serb down physically and played bold tennis to escape with the greatest victory of his career. Continue reading...

Brooklyn Storehouse, New York City The viral star electrified Brooklyn with winking visuals, self-aware humor and a slew of special guests From the look of the crowd at PinkPantheress’s show in Brooklyn last night, you’d be forgiven for thinking that King Charles had extended his recent trip to New York. The crowd that snaked its way through a never-ending circuit of cracked asphalt and grimy water on their way to Brooklyn Storehouse wore union jacks and tartan miniskirts, which you could imagine would be in line with royal protocol for how to dress when a sovereign visits a warehouse rave. PinkPantheress is certainly royalty among a vast swath of young, terminally online people; a pop princess who is mainstream enough to clinch top billing at Coachella and perform on primetime TV, but whose taste has always leaned more niche and left-field than anything that would ever go platinum. Or would it? Pop music is always in a state of flux but we’re living through an interesting period of realignment. Chalk it up to AI backlash, a floundering music industry or fatigue with chart-gaming reindeer games, but lately a raft of musicians who’d played nice for years have seen big rewards going for broke with wildly adventurous work. Performers like Slayyyter, Zara Larsson and Jade, who’d once been siloed off as “pop’s middle class” or incarcerated in the “Khia asylum” have swung big and struck gold, and been rewarded twice over for their boldness with both critical acclaim and charting hits. PinkPantheress is something of a figurehead among these artists and one of its brightest hopes. Her show last night at Brooklyn Storehouse doubled as a flex of her star power and a mini-music festival highlighting a wave of like-minded musicians who are just as poised to break-out. Continue reading...

It’s the Royal Albert Hall birthday party for Britain’s most beloved broadcaster. Which big names will do the speeches? What will the orchestra play? And will it all be overshadowed by the great man’s TV clips? Follow along here Welcome one and all to The Guardian’s liveblog of David Attenborough’s 100 Years on Planet Earth. You will be pleased to know, as I certainly am, that this is not a century-long liveblog. Instead it exists to cover the 90-minute Albert Hall spectacular that BBC One is airing tonight. You may already be aware that today is Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday, and so this is an extremely fitting tribute. Our greatest living national treasure is the subject of what’s being billed as “a journey of exploration and discovery through the prism of Sir David’s extraordinary life and career.” In short, there will be music, there will be film, there will be recollections and, if we’re lucky, there will be cake. Continue reading...

Senior Labour MPs urge prime minister to step down within year as party suffers loss of hundreds of English council seats and humbling in Wales Election 2026 live: latest news updates Full results from England, Scotland and Wales Keir Starmer is under pressure to set out a timeline for his departure after a crushing defeat in elections across Britain prompted senior Labour MPs to call for him to step down within a year. In a disastrous set of results, Labour lost hundreds of council seats in England, many to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which made big gains across the Midlands and the north as well as taking seats from the Tories in the South. Nigel Farage said a “truly historic shift in British politics” had occurred after Reform UK won hundreds of seats and control of more councils in England. The gains included Essex where the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, has her constituency and which the Conservatives held for 25 years. Plaid Cymru became the largest party in Wales, beating Reform into second place, after Labour admitted it was on course to lose control of the Senedd for the first time since devolution. Morgan, the first woman to lead the Welsh government, became the highest-profile casualty and called on Labour to “go back to being the party of the working class”. The SNP leader, John Swinney, declared victory in the Holyrood elections – though was expected to fall short of an outright majority. The Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, conceded defeat saying his party had failed to counter “national dissatisfaction” with Starmer. The Greens gained their first two directly elected mayors – in Hackney and Lewisham – although they missed out on some more ambitious targets in London, as their leader, Zack Polanski, declared Britain’s two-party politics “dead and buried”. They also won three councils: Norwich, Hastings and Waltham Forest. The Tories were on course to lose hundreds of seats – both to Reform and the Liberal Democrats – across the south of England. However, they won back the flagship Westminster council in central London, with Badenoch announcing it meant the party was “coming back”. Labour appeared to be struggling in its London stronghold, despite early indications that its vote was holding up, unexpectedly losing control of Brent. Party insiders were closely watching councils including Lambeth, Lewisham and Haringey. Continue reading...

Keir Starmer’s party lost out to Reform and the Greens, with no respite in Scotland, Wales or England. These maps show the scale of the historic results Election 2026 live: latest news updates Full results from England, Scotland and Wales Labour has suffered heavy losses across England, Scotland and Wales, losing ground to opponents on the left and the right in a fragmented political system. The graphics below show where Labour’s losses were most severe, and how the electoral landscape has changed as a result. Continue reading...

Reform makes gains in Labour’s working-class heartlands while Greens chip away at party’s progressive base Keir Starmer hates to lose. Unsurprisingly, he refused to walk away and end his premiership as Labour’s local election losses began to trickle in on Friday morning. Upon entering Downing Street in July 2024 after leading Labour to a historic general election victory, Starmer promised the public that his government would “fight every day until you believe again”. Now, Starmer is faced with the uncomfortable truth that the frustrated yet united coalition that brought him into No 10 hoping for change is completely fractured and its discontent cannot be dismissed as early midterm blues. Continue reading...

US president posts on Truth Social ceasefire will include suspension of all ‘kinetic activity’ and prisoner swaps Donald Trump has announced on social media that there will be a three-day ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine from 9 to 11 May. The US president said the ceasefire would include a suspension of all “kinetic activity” and a prisoner swap of 1,000 prisoners from each country. Continue reading...

England captain took new ball along with two victims in 11 overs in Championship comeback for Durham against Worcestershire To little fanfare, Ben Stokes has slipped out of the shorter formats. His last one-day international was at the 2023 World Cup, his last Twenty20 international helped England win its equivalent a year earlier. His most recent white-ball match of any description came during the Hundred in 2024, a tournament he has since shouldered arms to. Red-ball cricket is the thing that gets the England captain’s juices flowing these days and had he not fractured his cheekbone in the nets back in February, the plan was to be available for Durham from the start of the season. Fair play, given the additional money he could earn by diversifying in his final years. Continue reading...

Former Chelsea forward is thriving on the south coast and targeting victory over Liverpool in the Women’s FA Cup Fran Kirby knows what she brings. She always has. The Brighton forward is not young for a footballer but, at 32, she’s not old either and, injury free, is reminding people she still has it. “I know I am not the same player that I was when I was 25, I’m not naive,” she says. “That’s not who I am anymore, but I know what I can bring and that is creativity, the passes that other people won’t try. I’ve always said it: I will always try a pass, even if it doesn’t come off. That’s how I play. I play with risk. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes it does.” That eye for a pass is regularly on display. A recent standout was Kirby’s assist for Kiko Seike in Brighton’s thrilling 3-2 win over Manchester City. The obvious move was to play a pass into Seike’s feet; instead Kirby squeezed the ball between two defenders, taking them out of the action, and into space for her Japanese teammate to collect and fire in. It was vintage Kirby and, after her Chelsea career was blighted by injuries and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart lining), it is wonderful to see a woman who earned 77 caps for England playing at such a level. Continue reading...

The club chair said the move to the London Stadium showed they were not a ‘tinpot club’ but now relegation threat looms When David Sullivan was pressed on why West Ham bothered to move to the London Stadium, the lack of substance to his argument offered a window into the club’s dysfunction. “I just think we feel like a big club,” Sullivan said in an interview with the Guardian in December 2017. “Not a tinpot club. When players come to look at West Ham, they look at where you play.” Look deeper, though. Analysing the club chair’s answer nine years on, the conclusion is that this is an owner whose desire to win is cancelled out by his listlessness. Feeling like a big club, after all, is not the same as being a big club. It is a decade since West Ham departed from Upton Park, their tinpot home, and told their fans that doing so would take them to the next level. “A world-class stadium with a world-class team,” was the infamous sell from Karren Brady, the recently departed vice-chair, to which the best retort may be that line in the club’s recent accounts “forecasting a liquidity shortfall in summer 2026”, as well as the “severe but plausible scenario” of relegation causing an even bigger financial crisis three years after victory in the Conference League was followed by the £105m sale of Declan Rice to Arsenal. Continue reading...

Our correspondents look at how the clubs – who meet on Saturday – got where they are and what must happen next Liverpool: Not at all. Hindsight offers a few portents, such as the extent of last summer’s upheaval and Arne Slot’s insistence that it was a necessary response to Liverpool’s form towards the end of last season. It was strange to hear a title-winning coach in effect play down his team’s achievement. There was also the tragic death of Diogo Jota to deal with. Only Jota’s teammates and colleagues know the toll that has taken on them individually. But when the transfer window closed on 1 September with the £125m signing of Alexander Isak, taking the summer spend to almost £450m and expectations through the roof, the question asked was whether Liverpool would clean up given the resources at Slot’s disposal. Continue reading...

Keir Starmer has vowed to fight on after Labour suffered substantial losses in local elections, while Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and the Green party saw major gains. So is the era of two-party politics dead? And can the Prime Minister cling on? Lucy Hough speaks to political correspondent Alexandra Topping. Continue reading...

US energy department says 13.5kg of uranium taken from reactor in Caracas – a fraction of the 408kg held by Tehran Donald Trump has succeeded in removing a country’s stash of highly enriched uranium – although that country is not Iran. On Friday, the US Department of Energy announced that “thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership” 13.5 kilograms (about 30 pounds) of uranium had been removed from a legacy research reactor in Venezuela. Continue reading...

⚽ Championship news from the first leg; kick-off 8pm BST ⚽ Forty years of playoffs | Follow on Bluesky | Mail Simon Well, after 46 games the Championship is over. Now for the important bit. At the end of the regular season Millwall and Hull were separated by precisely 10 points, with the Londoners ending up just a couple away from skipping the playoffs entirely by coming second, and Hull also two away from skipping the playoffs by finishing seventh. That despite Millwall scoring just 64 goals, the fewest in the top eight – and, indeed, not as many as Sheffield United, who finished 13th. Continue reading...

Sir Keir Starmer faces a deepening crisis of authority as election losses suggest disappointment with Labour has already curdled into cynicism If you are Sir Keir Starmer, the results of the local and devolved elections make for grim reading. Thursday’s ballot gave almost two-thirds of Britain’s electorate the chance to vote. Fragmentation is no longer the future of British politics. In many places it is its present. After a quarter-century in which Labour and the Conservatives dominated electoral life, both parties suffered heavy losses in their traditional strongholds. Politics since the turn of the century has been upended: Reform UK seized the Tory bastion of Essex, home territory for Kemi Badenoch; the Greens wrested mayoral power in London’s Hackney and Lewisham from Labour; and Plaid Cymru routed Labour in Wales’ Senedd. This looked like more than the familiar midterm backlash, whatever the party in power. Clearly Sir Keir was on the ballot paper – and was roundly rejected by the voters. The question is whether the prime minister is listening to the electorate – or hearing what suits him. Many voters appear unconvinced that the government represents a meaningful break from the Conservatives. The prime minister said that people had “sent a message that the change that we promised isn’t being delivered in a way they can feel”. Change exists, says Sir Keir, but people don’t perceive it. This message risks patronising voters – or at worst gaslighting them. These elections suggest that disappointment with Sir Keir has already curdled into cynicism. Continue reading...

Michael Frayn and Julian Barnes have announced that they won’t be writing any more books. It is a hard habit to kick “Retirement is the ugliest word in the language,” Ernest Hemingway said. Writers, like artists in general, aren’t the retiring sort. And what does it actually mean? As the playwright, novelist and former Guardian journalist Michael Frayn quipped 20 years ago, “Nobody comes in and gives you a clock.” Frayn was 72 at the time. Since then, he has added a further novel (Skios), a play (Afterlife) and two memoirs to a backlist that includes the hugely successful plays Noises Off and Copenhagen (a revival of which has just finished at the Hampstead theatre in London). Now, at 92, that clock has caught up with him. “Sadly it’s over,” he told Radio 4 this week. “Writing has been my life.” Continue reading...

Party has success in Labour and Tory heartland areas but one pollster says results suggest Reform may have peaked Elections 2026 – live updates Full results from England, Scotland and Wales Nigel Farage hailed sweeping election wins for Reform UK as a “historic shift in British politics” on a day when the populist party made gains at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives. Reform made advances in heartland areas of both parties, clocking up substantial early results in the English local elections by taking control of Essex county council, Havering, its first London local authority, and Sunderland city council. Continue reading...

Formidable and popular council leader who served the city of Newcastle for more than 50 years, committed to raising standards of living Jeremy Beecham, who has died aged 81, was an outstanding figure in local government as the Labour leader of Newcastle city council from 1977 to 1994. He built on the work of his immediate predecessors in restoring faith in the integrity of the council following the corruption of the T Dan Smith era, and guided it through the unfamiliar territory of collaboration with the new Tyne and Wear county council. Continue reading...

First time Welsh nationalist party has enough support to run Wales, while also blocking momentum of Reform UK Election 2026 live: latest news updates Full results from England, Scotland and Wales Plaid Cymru is on course to declare victory in the Welsh Senedd elections, a result that would simultaneously end nearly 30 years of Labour dominance in devolved politics in Wales and block the momentum of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. By early Friday evening, with 14 of 16 constituencies declared, the centre-left Welsh nationalist party appeared poised to win enough support to lead the nation, replacing Welsh Labour, which had won the largest vote share in every electoral contest in Wales for more than 100 years. Continue reading...

Badenoch’s statement came after the Conservatives won back Westminster and Wandsworth councils in London Elections 2026 live: latest news updates Full results from England, Scotland and Wales Kemi Badenoch has claimed that the Conservatives are “coming back” after winning back Westminster and Wandsworth councils from Labour in London, despite her party suffering significant losses throughout England in Thursday’s elections. The party also saw off a threat from Reform in Bexley. But the Tories suffered a series of losses in Essex, where Badenoch herself is an MP, losing 13 seats while Reform gained 52. It held on to Harlow, securing all 11 district council seats available. Continue reading...

Alex Jenkinson, 39, from Suffolk is expected to stand trial in July, with the former Duke of York giving evidence A man has denied threatening Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after reports the former prince was accosted near his Sandringham home earlier this week. Alex Jenkinson, 39, pleaded not guilty at Westminster magistrates court on Friday to using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause fear or provoke unlawful violence against the former Duke of York. Continue reading...

‘Unprecedented operation’ under way to receive MV Hondius off Tenerife to assess and repatriate those onboard • What is hantavirus? • Where did the cruise ship hantavirus come from and what happens next? The evacuation of the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship must be completed within 24 hours of the vessel reaching Tenerife on Sunday or face days or even weeks of delay because of bad weather, authorities in the Canary Islands warned on Friday. The Dutch-flagged vessel, which was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde, is due to arrive in the Spanish archipelago this weekend, triggering what Spain’s health minister has termed an “unprecedented operation” to receive, assess and repatriate the 149 passengers and crew members onboard. Continue reading...