Repairs will be slow and costly, pro-Russian bloggers complain; Ukraine’s president says Iran war is benefiting Moscow. What we know on day 1,503 Continue reading...

Japan’s ban on married couples having different surnames has prompted an event to highlight people’s reluctance to change their name At the very least, the three men and three women calming their nerves on a Friday evening at a venue in Tokyo know they have one thing in common. Spaced out across booths, they will soon be placed in pairs and given 15 minutes to get to know one another. Continue reading...

People encouraged to ‘come forward as normal’ when BMA members begin industrial action over pay on Tuesday The NHS is urging patients not to put off seeking the care they need when resident doctors press ahead with strike action from Tuesday, a stoppage that the health secretary has called “disappointing”. Tens of thousands of resident doctors in England are to stage a six-day strike after the government took a key part of its offer off the table. Continue reading...

Councils urged to crack down on misuse of parking permits that help people with disabilities and health conditions Councils in England have been urged to crack down on the misuse of blue badge parking permits – legitimate and counterfeit – as the proportion of people holding them has reached one in 15. The AA called for more to be done to detect offences such as people using fake or stolen badges. Continue reading...

Announcement of eight young futures hubs made as concerns grow over the number of knives on the streets Eight young futures youth hubs aimed at giving young people support towards work and away from street crime are to open across England, ministers have announced. The youth centres are supposed to help people aged up to 18 with employment advice, health and wellbeing, and are also aimed at preventing them from falling into a life of crime. Continue reading...

Club in FA Cup last four after shootout win at West Ham ‘I feel humble. You can see how much it means to them’ Daniel Farke promised that Leeds fans will take over London after their side secured an FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea thanks to a breathless win against West Ham on penalties. Leeds appeared to be cruising to an easy victory at the London ­Stadium, only for West Ham to force extra time by fighting back from 2-0 down with stoppage-time goals from Mateus Fernandes and Axel Disasi. Continue reading...

The familiar London Stadium rush for the exit has never been so misjudged. A lot of West Ham fans decided they had seen enough when Dominic Calvert-Lewin put Leeds within touching distance of a first FA Cup semi-final since 1987, but how wrong they were. The non-believers reckoned without their side forcing extra time with a wild fightback from 2-0 down and were not allowed back in to see a ridiculously game go the distance. It ended with Finlay Herrick, a 20-year-old goalkeeper whose experience of senior football extended no further than 10 games during a loan spell with National League side Boreham Wood earlier this season, coming on for his West Ham debut after Alphonse Areola went down injured. Talk about a baptism of fire. Soon West Ham’s No 4 goalkeeper was in a penalty shootout. To add to the mix, it took place at the West Ham end amid unconfirmed suggestions that those in charge of stadium security did not want the kicks taken in front of the 9,000 travelling Leeds. Continue reading...

The quadruple dream may be dead but Arsenal are now just four games from achieving an unprecedented nonruple And then there were two. As the clock ticked down at St Mary’s Stadium on Saturday night even the stray yellow balloons on the pitch had begun to take on a weirdly mocking quality. The balloons were almost too much, like metaphors-for-hire in an arthouse film, popping up in shot every time Arsenal tried to transform another spell of mechanical pressure into creative, incisive football. Your dreams? Your dreams are just air inside a polymer shell. Your dreams are a squeaky veneer. Even when you try to take agency over your dreams, or at least stamp on them before a set piece, they will scoot away and bobble about annoyingly near the corner flag. Continue reading...

For his centenary special, the naturalist stays close to home – who could blame him? – and reveals a magical world teeming with cuteness He’s nearly 100 years old and has spent more than half that time showing us the entire Earth, so it feels fair enough that David Attenborough has scaled back and stayed at home for this centenary year’s bundle of natural history wonders. There he is, in the sunshine in the middle of England, ambling past a shed. “Across the British Isles, there are magical places,” he says, whispering through the purple alliums. “Our gardens!” Secret Garden’s conceit is to bring the super-high-res cameras and patient filming techniques that are usually deployed in the Amazon rainforest or the plains of the Serengeti and see what they can capture in British back yards. “Many of us are completely unaware of the wild world right under our noses,” adds Attenborough. “Some British gardens are almost as diverse as a tropical rainforest.” Continue reading...

Brighton two wins away from first major trophy Liverpool edge out Charlton in extra time Arsenal made a surprise exit at the quarter-final stage of the Women’s FA Cup for the second successive season as Brighton stunned the record 14-time cup winners at Borehamwood. Liverpool managed to avoid it becoming a day of shocks as they struck late in extra time to eventually find a way past a stubborn Charlton Athletic side, but they was no such joy for Arsenal, who paid the price for a performance that was well below their best. Continue reading...

Healthy crowds, a five-way title race and some stunning action give NRL executives plenty to be encouraged by Super League’s possible takeover by the NRL could gather pace in the coming weeks as executives head to the UK for talks to thrash out a deal. Had the NRL’s chief executive, Andrew Abdo, or anyone associated with the game in Australia watched watched the last few days, they would have been mightily impressed with matters both on and off the field. The overriding mood in recent months as speculation rises over a partnership between rugby league’s two premier competitions has been that Super League is in desperate need of help. A league in crisis, sinking without a trace unless the sprinkling of magic that follows the NRL at every turn steps in and saves the day. Continue reading...

Don Garber spoke to reporters at Miami’s stadium debut ‘It’s going to be a premier event and premier pricing’ The commissioner of Major League Soccer, Don Garber, said Fifa has been “smart” about its ticket pricing strategy for this summer’s World Cup, the effect of which has raised prices significantly across all games of the tournament to be held in the US, Mexico and Canada this summer. Garber made the comments in Miami, where he attended the inaugural fixture at Inter Miami’s Nu Stadium and spoke to reporters before kick-off. Asked by the Guardian whether high prices resulting from Fifa’s dynamic pricing model undermined the domestic league’s efforts to grow the game and attract new fans, Garber reasoned that the cost attached to tickets matched the event’s exclusivity, and said Americans were used to that. Continue reading...

Incident prompts political scrutiny across Hungary as Viktor Orbán trails in polls before next Sunday’s election Serbia has said it found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond, sparking claims by Hungary’s leading opposition candidate of a possible “false flag” operation aimed at influencing the country’s elections. On Sunday, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said he had been informed by Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, of the discovery near an extension of the TurkStream pipeline, which transports Russian gas through the Balkans to central and eastern Europe. Continue reading...

PM also criticises business figures and opponents of changes, many of which come into force on Monday • Workers, pensioners and children: all better off. Ignore the critics – we really are standing up for working people Keir Starmer has used a raft of new workers rights that come into force on Monday to attack the Green party, saying a vote for Labour’s rivals puts such progress on sick pay, parental leave and zero-hours contracts at risk. The prime minister also took a swipe at business figures and opponents of what he described as the biggest strengthening of workers’ rights in a generation, dismissing “vested interests” who had warned against them. Continue reading...

Day-one rights to statutory sick pay and paternity leave begin on Monday, and that fits the pattern. From my own life, I know people’s anxieties, and I will respond Starmer attacks Greens, saying vote for Labour rivals puts new workers’ rights at risk This week 27 years ago, a Labour government introduced the minimum wage. At the time, the voices of the status quo lined up against it, but Labour made a choice: to stand up for working people. My government is doing the same. On Monday, the biggest strengthening of workers’ rights in a generation comes into force. For the first time, workers gain day-one rights to statutory sick pay and paternity leave. No one should be forced to choose between their health and their wages, or miss those first precious days with their child because of insecurity at work. Keir Starmer is the UK prime minister Continue reading...

Readers respond to a piece by Priti Ubhayakar about people mispronouncing her name Priti Ubhayakar’s article resonated with me because of my non-English surname (A moment that changed me: for the first time in my life, a stranger pronounced my name correctly, 1 April). I grew up in the 1950s on a very English council estate. Most other kids were a Brown, Smith, Jones, etc, but I was an Uszkurat. My lineage is complex on my dad’s side, with a Lithuanian grandfather whose original name was changed to Uszkurat by, I think, German authorities. My dad was born in a part of Europe that was German until the Treaty of Versailles made it part of the new Poland. Like many other Polish ex-servicemen, my dad became a British citizen after the second world war. My first day at junior school is memorable for one thing: the teacher insisting that I was spelling my surname incorrectly. Three times I was given a new workbook on which to write my name, and each time I did not use what I knew to be the incorrect spelling being insisted on by my teacher. Continue reading...

Readers respond to a letter by the GB News co-owner, in which he argued that calling for an end to fossil fuels is impractical Last week I was among 120-plus Christian leaders who, in an open letter covered by the Guardian, challenged Sir Paul Marshall – a professing Christian, hedge fund manager and owner or part-owner of prominent media properties, including GB News – about climate misinformation on his news channel (Church leaders criticise Christian owner of GB News over channel’s climate attacks, 26 March). The letter also called for transparency regarding any financial interests in fossil fuels that Sir Paul may have, as well as transparency from GB News presenters and guests. However, rather than address calls for transparency related to any financial interests in fossil fuels, Sir Paul has now written to the Guardian, claiming that the “net zero consensus is crumbling” (Letters, 30 March). Continue reading...

Andrew Copson of Humanists UK says we must recognise non-religious people as a community with a positive, ethical worldview that deserves equal standing in the public square The retraction of the Bible Society’s report on Gen Z church attendance (YouGov withdraws survey said to show rising church attendance in England and Wales, 26 March) is a welcome moment of clarity, but the “fraudulent” data identified by YouGov only tells half the story. The report’s central premise, that young people are flocking back to the pews, was always an outlier when measured against the gold-standard British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey. Our new analysis of the BSA data shows that six in 10 people aged 16 to 34 identify with no religion. Furthermore, this is not a “phase” of youthful rebellion; 94% of those raised without religion remain non-religious as adults. For this generation, the search for meaning is not found in dogma, but in the humanist values of reason, kindness and personal responsibility. Continue reading...

Dr Mireia Galian argues that paid, protected time off for fertility assessment and treatment should be standard across women’s sports As you report, changes to insurance cover for female athletes following the Carney review are welcome (Landmark changes to insurance cover for female athletes to be implemented, 30 March). Addressing contraception, pregnancy, menopause and other health conditions disproportionately affecting women is long overdue. Yet one crucial blind spot remains: fertility. Elite athletes push their bodies to extremes, often with low body fat and intense training, which can disrupt hormones and menstrual cycles. Nearly two-thirds experience irregular or absent periods, which can affect fertility. Continue reading...

Bordeaux 64-14 Leicester Bégles set up Toulouse quarter-final next weekend Even at full-strength, Leicester would have struggled against the most potent attack in Europe. But without a string of first-choice forwards, including Ollie Chessum, Joe Heyes, Tommy Reffell and Nicky Smith, the result at a sun-drenched Stade Chaban-Delmas was never in doubt. So it proved as Bordeaux Bégles tore their English guests to shreds, registering nine tries to underline their status as continental champions with a 64-14 win. A quarter-final against their domestic rivals, Toulouse, will be required viewing next weekend. Continue reading...

A professed desire to protect the country’s Christian identity is cover for a divisive politics which ignores the central message of the gospels In an interview conducted a few days after the beginning of Lent, Reform UK’s Muslim home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, outlined a new policy to prevent churches being converted to mosques. This was an “incendiary” issue relating to Christian heritage, Mr Yusuf claimed, which was causing anxiety across the United Kingdom. Subsequent analysis by the Times – which conducted the interview – concluded that instances of churches becoming mosques were in fact extremely rare, adding up to less than 0.09% of the 47,000 churches active in the 1960s. Mr Yusuf’s solution to this alleged crisis – which involved granting automatic listed status to churches, and changing planning laws to restrict change of use – was also widely questioned. For many churches struggling to fund repairs through the contributions of thinned-out congregations, the onerous bureaucratic obstacles posed by listed status would only be another expensive headache. Continue reading...

Ultra-low rates turned the yen into easy cash for bankers. But the carry trade now binds global markets to decisions in Tokyo In 2015, Clyde Prestowitz’s book Japan Restored imagined a Japanese century emerging from upheavals such as an Israeli attack on Iran. While conflict now grips the Middle East, there are few indications of the revolutionary change the former US national security official foresaw. But in one crucial respect this already is a Japanese century – thanks to the yen’s role as easy money for global finance. The Bank of Japan’s loose monetary policy has turned the yen into the world’s cheapest and most reliable funding currency. By suppressing yields on public debt to keep Japan’s domestic economy afloat, the BoJ effectively created a publicly subsidised funding pipeline for bankers. They can make a quick buck by borrowing cheaply in yen and investing in higher-return assets, such as US equities. The “yen carry trade” surged after the pandemic, with speculators betting $435bn in the two years to 2024 out of the estimated $1.7tn worth of yen supplied. The profits for global investors are reckoned to run into tens of billions of dollars. Continue reading...

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PSV hold 17-point lead to clinch title with five games left Second-placed Feyenoord draw 0-0 against Volendam PSV Eindhoven were crowned on Sunday as Dutch champions for the 27th time, with five matches left of the season, after second-placed Feyenoord’s 0-0 draw with Volendam. PSV hold an unassailable 17-point lead at the top of the table after bouncing back from successive defeats with a 4-3 victory against Utrecht on Saturday. Continue reading...

Protesters held on Sunday after joining a Lakenheath Alliance for Peace encampment outside airbase in Suffolk Seven people have been arrested under suspicion of supporting banned group Palestine Action after a protest in Suffolk. They were arrested on Sunday morning after joining a peace encampment to create a blockade outside the main gate of Lakenheath airbase. Continue reading...