Quirky crime series Death Valley is back with its unlikely detective duo. Plus: Australian thriller The Family Next Door. Here’s what to watch this evening 8.15pm, BBC One Continue reading...

May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, and now perhaps Starmer: each one was brought low for a reason. But what if the deeper problem is the office itself? They were times in which prime ministers seemed to be on their way out as soon as they’d arrived. The big strategic decisions the country faced were ducked or postponed. The public finances repeatedly wobbled, yet efforts to rationalise the tax system faltered in the face of vested interests, including farmers. Reforms to social security were trumpeted before being diluted. The whole business of politics was animated by rancour and rivalry, rather than practical action. All the while, populists waited in the wings. This is not a sneak peak into a future history book about today’s Britain, but a description of the French fourth republic, which staggered after a difficult birth in 1946 until 1958, when the exhausted regime ceded the authority to create a new order to Gen Charles de Gaulle, effectively putting itself out of its misery. Continue reading...

Experts say the unseasonably hot weather across south Asia shows the impact of the climate crisis An intense and prolonged heatwave has been causing misery for millions across Pakistan and India. In southern Pakistan throughout April and May, temperatures have risen far above seasonal norms. In Sindh, daytime temperatures have frequently crossed 44C to 46C, forcing residents indoors during peak afternoon hours and severely affecting outdoor labourers, transport workers and farming communities. Continue reading...

Plummeting approval ratings for these three poisonous comrades-in-arms show voters are demoralised and tiring of forever wars – the west could soon breathe again Feeling depressed about the state of the world? Worried about the future? You’re not alone. Pessimism about politics is the new normal among the peoples of the west. Major conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and the harms caused by right-left extremism, stagnating economies, inequality, corruption, terrorism, racism, big tech, mass extinctions and the climate crisis make for shared nightmares. Growing numbers of people simply refuse to personally engage with current events via the news media, finding them too anxiety-inducing (so they probably won’t be reading this). In a Reuters Institute survey last year, 40% of respondents in about 50 countries said they sometimes or often avoid the news altogether, a rise of 29% on 2017. Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator Continue reading...

Your mother expects to be taken on holiday and your siblings aren’t pulling their weight, so you’re right to be angry as things clearly aren’t fair For years, it has fallen to me and my sister to take my mother on holiday. Now, she has a big birthday coming up and wants me to arrange a trip abroad. I have three other siblings, who have never taken her on holiday, so to prod them into action I spoke with one of my brothers, who expressed disbelief at my mum’s request and told me I was a fool for going along with it. I can’t decide if he’s being mean (our father died a few years ago and she doesn’t have friends to go with) or if I am the fool in the family. I have young kids and a tight budget, but our holiday has to be arranged to suit “Granny”, so it ends up being a less adventurous, more expensive trip than my siblings take with their kids. Continue reading...

As is the peril with most small plates restaurants, this meal is more a collection of loose ideas than a coherent dinner Auguste, a brand spanking new Italian restaurant in Hackney, east London, is named, loosely, after a clown. The Edward Hopper painting Soir Bleu hangs on the wall, depicting a tragic sort in a whiteface mask sitting forlornly in a cafe surrounded by hipsters. The clown’s light veneer of calm, it seems, masks his bare tolerance of both his life and his fellow customers. Hopper painted it in 1914, and now, more than a century later, this same sad clown feels more than a little symbolic of all those who have chosen a life in hospitality at this time. Paint on a smile! Get out there! Make the crowds happy! If only business rates could be paid with a bucketload of glitter … Auguste’s owners, chef Mike Bagnall and general manager Dylan Walters, have taken over the 32-seater premises formerly known as Papi, which recently upped sticks and moved on to a much larger site at The Golden Tooth in Newington Green. The space has been transformed from its Papi days as an extremely hip, European-influenced, irreverent, small plates, low-intervention wine and hyper-cool spot, to its new incarnation as, well, an extremely hip, Abruzzo-influenced, irreverent, small plates, low-intervention wine and hyper-cool spot. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, you might be thinking, but pas exactement! The room now has white tablecloths and the big draw on Auguste’s menu are its skewers or, to be precise, arrosticini. Think tiny mini kebabs with the meat cut into 1cm cubes, then grilled over something called a furnacella. The live-fire craze among London hospitality’s menfolk shows no signs of abating. Man make fire. Fire good. Continue reading...

Some feel optimistic change will come, but for many it’s business as usual for the movement Hugo Chávez started When Ángel Linares heard a strange buzz followed by an explosion, his first thought was that neighbours were setting off fireworks to celebrate the new year. Then his windows shattered, the building’s walls shook and its facade was ripped off, sending him flying on to the ground of an apartment suddenly reduced to rubble. His 85-year-old mother, Jesucita, feared Venezuela’s northern coast had been devastated by an earthquake, like the one she remembers from 1967. Continue reading...

The flight from Melbourne to Dallas was forced to land temporarily in Tahiti due to the alleged disruptive behaviour A passenger has been banned from future Qantas travel after a plane travelling on a long-haul flight from Australia to the US was diverted at the weekend after the man allegedly bit a flight attendant. The QF21 flight left Melbourne at 2.30pm on Friday en route to Dallas and was diverted to Papeete in Tahiti seven hours later when the behaviour of the disruptive passenger forced it to land. Continue reading...

Proposal to fund $1bn in security additions for White House campus and president’s new ballroom fails to meet procedural rules A US Senate official on Saturday removed security funding that could be used for Donald Trump’s planned $400m White House ballroom from a massive spending package, Democratic lawmakers said, imperiling Republican efforts to devote taxpayer money to the contentious project. The decision by the Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, deals a blow to Trump and his administration, which has sought the money for security purposes related to the ballroom. Continue reading...

Unlike its Nordic neighbours, finding a place in the Swedish capital to bada bastu is hard, with years-long waiting lists at member clubs There is little doubt that Stockholm is a city of sauna-goers. All year round, from early morning to late into the night, the city’s residents can be seen emerging from wooden huts, a trail of woodsmoke coming from the chimney, and lowering themselves into the deep brackish waters of the Swedish capital’s shoreline. But, for locals and visitors alike, getting access to one of these saunas can be a bit like getting into the world’s most exclusive private members’ clubs: the most popular waterside venues have years-long waiting lists of thousands and when new places open up they disappear in minutes. While a proportion of spots are sometimes bookable to non-members, they are difficult to come by. Continue reading...

From an elevated heart rate to weakened immunity, experts explain the hidden physical costs of chronic stress – and why our bodies aren’t built to stay on high alert You wake up later than planned, so it’s a rush to get everything sorted out ahead of the school run. While you’re waiting for the toaster, idiotically, you check your phone. Something has happened, and your timeline is a scalding-hot mess of the worst takes imaginable. One of your children has left their shoes somewhere unfathomable, and there’s an envelope on your doormat scolding you for driving in a bus lane. You’re undeniably stressed, and your body’s likely to respond by ramping up the same biological systems that evolved to deal with inter-tribe disputes and mammoth attacks. But is there a downside to being stressed – and having these systems switched on – all the time? Take a calming breath, and let’s dig into the science. Continue reading...

He gets slammed as an entitled nepo baby, and just keeps doing what he enjoys, unruffled. Here are five things I’d do, if only I had his confidence Nepo babies provoke a unique brand of ire. Fittingly, they seem to bring out the toddler in many of us; a foot-stamping tantrum sense of but that’s not fair. These privileged golden children are born into guaranteed luxury and opportunity they haven’t worked for, and – we are convinced, despite never having met them – do not deserve. Some nepo babies attract fury by lazing around on constant holidays, or securing starring roles far beyond their skill set, others because they indulge in wild-eyed, consequence-free party lifestyles. Brooklyn Beckham does it by making sandwiches. Continue reading...

Cassidy’s bid to win nomination for third term was imperiled by his vote to convict Trump after January 6 insurrection The Republican senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary on Saturday, as voters in Louisiana opted instead to advance two challengers to a runoff election after an extraordinary intervention by Donald Trump to oust the incumbent. Cassidy’s bid to win the Republican party’s nomination for a third term in the deep-red state was imperiled by his decision to vote in favor of Trump’s conviction after the January 6 insurrection. In what was widely seen as an effort to rehabilitate his standing with the president, Cassidy last year cast the deciding vote to advance vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, flying in the face of the senator’s support for immunizations and training as a physician. Continue reading...

For years, I polished the brass plaques in front of my apartment dedicated to a Jewish mother and daughter who were murdered by the Nazis. Then a message out of the blue connected me to a surviving child … At the grand, biblical age of 102, Sonja Ibermann Cowan has zero interest in wasting her time. There are delicious great-grandbabies to be serenaded, uproarious meals to share with her three beloved daughters, and meaningful celebrations of the high holidays to mark with her Melbourne rabbi, who makes house calls. Five years ago, she decided to invest some of that precious time in what became a friendship with me, across the world in Berlin, her birthplace. The boredom of the pandemic certainly played a part. Cooped up at home under much stricter Covid-19 restrictions than we had in Germany – Sonja joked about being “eingesperrt” (locked up) – she and her extended close-knit family started turning their attention to the past. Her grandson Benjamin Preiss, a journalist at the Australian newspaper The Age, embarked on an  ambitious research project to uncover the mysteries of Sonja’s life and her mother’s and sister’s murders in the Holocaust. Continue reading...

At least 80 deaths reported in Congo’s Ituri province while Uganda reports spread from travellers from the DRC The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda a “public health emergency of international concern”. The WHO on Sunday said the outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency. Continue reading...

No renewal notice posted on US Treasury website so far for waiver that had allowed countries such as India to buy Russian seaborne oil. What we know on day 1,544 The Trump administration on Saturday allowed a sanctions waiver to lapse that had previously allowed countries including India to buy Russian seaborne oil after a month-long extension aimed at easing oil supply shortages and high prices due to Iran’s closure of the strait of Hormuz. The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, had previously said he would not renew the general licence allowing the purchase of Russian oil stored on tankers. As of early afternoon Washington time on Saturday, no renewal notice had been posted on the Treasury website. Two top Democratic US senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren, on Friday urged the Trump administration against renewing the waiver because it was providing revenue to Russia to aid its war in Ukraine, but said there was no evidence it was bringing down fuel costs for American consumers. An unexploded projectile was discovered on a property in south-eastern Romania near the EU and Nato member’s border with Ukraine on Saturday, its defence ministry said. Romania shares a 650-km (400-mile) land border with Ukraine. Russian drones attacking Ukraine’s ports on the Danube river have repeatedly breached Romanian airspace and fragments have sometimes fallen on its territory as Ukrainian forces shoot them down. An unguided reactive projectile was found in the yard of an uninhabited house in the village of Pardina in Romania’s Tulcea county, the ministry said without indicating its suspected origin. Last month, an explosive drone landed in a back yard in the city of Galati, marking the first time since the start of the Ukraine war that such an incident had damaged property in Romania. The leaders of Nato’s 14 eastern flank nations this week said Russia’s repeated violations of their airspace underlined the urgent need to consolidate the alliance’s air defences against missiles and drones. Several Russian and Ukrainian drones have crashed in Latvia since Russia invaded Ukraine, stirring public disquiet in the small former Soviet republic that is now a member of Nato and the EU. Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics on Saturday proposed opposition lawmaker Andris Kulbergs as the next prime minister after Evika Silina resigned. Silina stepped down triggering the collapse of her coalition after she dismissed defence minister Andris Spruds because Ukrainian drones strayed into Latvia and exploded at an oil facility. The Latvian army said it failed to detect the drones as they crossed from Russia. Silina blamed Spruds for not developing anti-drone systems quickly enough. In response, Spruds’ Progressives party withdrew support from Silina’s government on Wednesday, leaving her without a parliamentary majority and exposed to a no-confidence vote. Continue reading...

If case is settled for full amount Trump is requesting, a $10bn payment would more than double his family’s net worth – key US politics stories from Saturday, 16 May at a glance Donald Trump may agree to drop his massive $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the launch of a $1.7bn fund to compensate people he says were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, according to reports. The case is the latest example of how Trump has taken over the justice department – which typically operates at arm’s length from the White House – and deployed it for his own ends. Continue reading...

Johan Cruijff Arena, the Netherlands Styles’ first stop in his Together, Together tour, which will see him perform lengthy residencies around the world, is a reminder of how talented he is Midway through the opening night of his world tour, Harry Styles asks where the audience in the Johan Cruijff Arena have come from. To judge by their response, residents of Amsterdam are vastly outnumbered by those who have travelled vast distances to be here: further investigation on the part of the singer reveals audience members from Switzerland and Ireland. It’s evidence of what – to use a modern term – a huge flex the Together, Together tour is. There are doubtless sound reasons for performing lengthy residencies at single venues rather than dutifully dragging yourself around the globe – Styles’ 10 shows in Amsterdam are the only gigs he’s playing in mainland Europe, followed by similarly lengthy sojourns at venues in London, São Paulo, Mexico City, New York City, Melbourne and Sydney – but it also helps underline the enormity of the former One Direction star’s solo success. Twelve consecutive nights at Wembley is a feat not even Taylor Swift’s Eras tour could match. Here, it suggests, is a man who’s not only pulled off one of the hardest tricks in pop – the journey from manufactured boyband member to respected solo artist is a notoriously thorny one – but done it with an almost unparalleled degree of aplomb. You’d have to look back to George Michael’s post-Wham! career to find even a vague equivalent. Continue reading...

Home hope surges to six under thanks to round of 68 Rahm among five on four under; McIlroy is three under The leaderboard was spinning like a tombola at Aronimink on Saturday, where at one point or another just about every player in the field had a birdie putt to take a share of the lead and then a bogey putt to let go of it again. When the drum finally stopped turning, Alex Smalley, a 29-year-old from North Carolina who has never won a professional golf tournament, was top of the leaderboard on six under, two shots clear of a five-way tie for second. No disrespect to Smalley, the world No 78, but the field are queued up like bowling balls on the rack waiting to take a run at him on Sunday. Philadelphia loves an underdog, but it’s probably best if the trumpeter waits another day before he strikes up the opening notes of the Rocky theme. Continue reading...

The UK finished last as the contest, held in Vienna, saw five countries boycott it over the participation of Israel Bulgaria has won the 2026 Eurovision song contest after singer Dara swept to victory with the song Bangaranga. The 27-year-old singer’s triumph is a first victory in the 70-year history of the song contest for Bulgaria, which only joined Eurovision in 2005 and sat out the last three editions. Continue reading...

Asylum seekers express dismay at continuation of scheme agreed last year that has failed to stop crossings in Channel The Home Office is extending a controversial scheme to stop asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats, the Guardian has learned. The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, signed a deal they hailed as “groundbreaking” last July, known as “one in, one out”. Continue reading...

Met police say they pursued vehicle believed stolen before it collided with another vehicle in Ilford Nine people have been injured after a car being pursued by police crashed in east London. The Metropolitan police said officers had tried to stop a vehicle they believed had been stolen. Continue reading...

The person was on board the MV Hondius, the center of the outbreak that has claimed three lives Canadian officials said on Saturday that one of the four Canadians currently quarantining in British Columbia after being exposed to the hantavirus while on board the cruise ship where the outbreak occurred has presumptively tested positive. Speaking at news conference, Dr Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s provincial health officer, said the individual developed mild symptoms, including fever and headache, two days ago, and that the individual and their partner, who had also been on board the cruise ship where they had been isolating together, were transferred to a hospital in Victoria for assessment and testing. Continue reading...

For Evan Lewis and Dat Tien Lewis, a cycling odyssey was a test of their relationship. A quiet whisky session would reveal how far they’d come Find more stories from the moment I knew series I met Dat in San Francisco in 2015. I had recently left a tourism consulting role in China and moved to the US to start my own Mongolian vodka product. Dat was a specialised nurse. He loved being a nurse. They say opposites attract and I think that rings true for us. He had this way of calming a room. Dat would arrive at a party and somehow the volume in the room would come down a little bit. He did the same with me. It was a very busy time trying to build my business but he was always there – very supportive and curious about what I was doing. We moved quite quickly into the relationship and spent a lot of time together. Continue reading...

The Wolves probably won’t win a title without big roster changes, but their postseason run made their case as one of the league’s most entertaining teams The Minnesota Timberwolves are out of the NBA playoffs. It’s a miracle it took this long. In their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets, they saw two starters and another key reserve suffer significant injuries. The Nuggets entered the series on a 12-game winning streak and were favored from the jump. After somehow winning that series in six games, finding Denver’s weak points and pummeling them until they broke, the Wolves met an even more daunting opponent in the San Antonio Spurs. Though they’d have been forgiven for tiredly accepting a sweep, the Wolves swiped Game 1 on the Spurs’ home floor, then a close Game 4 at home. After that, the tank finally ran empty. But even in the losses – including Friday night’s in Game 6 – the Wolves found ways to frighten. They’d go down 18-3 and then tie the game by the end of the first quarter. They’d tighten a 29-point deficit to 12 entering half-time. The tenacity and spite they played with was a finite resource, but at times this postseason it was potent enough to convince me otherwise. The Wolves were not the deepest team in these playoffs, nor the most consistent. They may lie closer to the bottom of those categories than the top. After their elimination, coach Chris Finch and players alike admitted they’d failed to take the regular season seriously enough, failing to set themselves up well for the high-stakes games of April and May. (My old teachers probably shared a similar sense of disappointment in me before finals.) And yet this odd bunch regularly play some of the most soulful basketball in the NBA. Anthony Edwards can take over a game at any time, either by shooting deep threes or acrobatic layups. French albatross Rudy Gobert anchors the defense, which the team plays with astonishing vigor at its best. The best athletes are sometimes so clinical that they produce a rather emotionless watching experience, but certain passages of Timberwolves basketball inspire in me feelings of pure glee. Continue reading...