Manchester City host Arsenal as both aim to gain a huge advantage in the title race while Everton welcome Liverpool to Hill Dickinson Stadium Saturday 12.30pm TNT Sports 1 Venue Gtech Community Stadium Continue reading...

Barbican Hall, London Vilde Frang revealed the expressionistic bones of Korngold’s Violin Concerto in her performance of this 1945 work, part of a concert that included Imogen Holst’s Persephone and a drama-filled reading of Shostakovich’s 5th Persephone, which Imogen Holst wrote as a student in 1929, starts off sounding so familiar that you might think you have wandered into a concert of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé by mistake. But so what? The music that follows that opening passage of suspiciously evocative rippling woodwinds is a delectable 12-minute tone poem showcasing a composer with her own ideas about texture, colour and tonality, as well as the myth itself. Holst tells a story of rebirth, building towards a glowing culmination that references the music of the beginning. In between there’s no depiction of lustful kidnap, but a darker music takes over, the strings feeling their way into an uneasy fugue, the muted brass playing clustered chords that are then pounded out by the whole orchestra. Perhaps Holst had been listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring as well as Daphnis, but you can’t argue with those as models for a student composer in 1929 – or in fact at any time since. Continue reading...

Late-night hosts reacted to Trump’s plans for a triumphal arch, high gas prices and RFK Jr’s odd interest in roadkill On Thursday night, late night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s tense back and forth with the pope over the war in Iran, high gas prices and outlandish details from a new biography of Robert F Kennedy Jr. Continue reading...

As the president’s second term has wrought new horrors, comedians reflect on whether humor can still ‘deflate the strongman’s image’ During Donald Trump’s first term, as his lies distorted reality and gaslighted Americans, Stephen Colbert said his goal was to remind his audience: “Hey, you’re not crazy.” But watching political comedy during Trump’s second term – be it a deranged Saturday Night Live impression of a cabinet member, or a rapid-fire late-night monologue full of ICE jokes – it’s hard not to wonder: are we placating ourselves from the enormity of Trump-induced horror? Continue reading...

You can bet on it See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here Continue reading...

The Premier League has history when it comes to clashes between the two teams fighting to become champions Kevin Keegan’s swashbuckling Newcastle looked set to be runaway champions, but from 12 points clear they were slowly reeled in by Alex Ferguson’s ruthless Manchester United. When the two title-chasers met at St James’ Park in early March, Keegan’s previously irresistible attack was kept out repeatedly by Peter Schmeichel, and there was a sense of inevitability when Eric Cantona popped up to volley home the winner at the far post. Ferguson’s side travelled home a point behind Newcastle, who had been dragged into a scrap, and when he turned up the mind games in the run-in, Keegan boiled over on live TV in unforgettable fashion. How the Magpies manager would have loved it if his champions-elect had put their challengers away when they had the chance. Continue reading...

Paul Quinn’s conviction, 23 years after the attack, exposes how a victim was repeatedly failed and an innocent man wrongly jailed One of Britain’s most shocking miscarriages of justice began before dawn on a summer day in Salford more than 20 years ago. A young woman had walked the darkened streets alone for about five miles when she was honked at, wolf-whistled and was so frightened she hid for a while in undergrowth. Continue reading...

Lionesses sit top of World Cup qualifying group Saturday’s match will be 500th in team’s history Sarina Wiegman has said it is important England get the right result against Iceland in Saturday’s World Cup qualifier to make the win against Spain at Wembley on Tuesday “even more valuable”. England put themselves in pole position in their qualifying group with the tight 1-0 victory over Spain, with Lauren Hemp’s early goal the difference. The European champions have three wins from three and with only the top team from each group in League A securing automatic qualification and avoiding the playoffs, the incentive to keep winning is high. Continue reading...

Paul Quinn convicted in light of DNA evidence from 2003 attack that led to notorious miscarriage of justice A man who evaded justice for more than two decades has been found guilty of the 2003 rape for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongfully jailed for 17 years. Paul Quinn, 52, was convicted by a jury on Friday after a fresh forensic analysis found traces of his DNA on the victim. Continue reading...

Resurgence of 90s minimalism has caused an explosion in the popularity of denim, but can a pair ever be worth £800? Denim mania is surging across the fashion spectrum. At one end is luxury brand Alaia with an Aegean blue, comfortable yet flattering £800 pair. At the other is JW Anderson’s collaboration with high street brand Uniqlo and a £34.90 pricetag. Both are proving wildly popular. Alaia’s line has only just launched, so there are no sales figures yet, but demand for their Japanese denim is such that customers are “advised” to reserve certain styles in-store, or call ahead before visiting. At Uniqlo, the straight cut are “the most popular”, on the front row of the most recent fashion weeks, and routinely sell out online. Blame the resurgence of 90s minimalism. Continue reading...

Some fear a fragmented field of hopefuls from Labour, the Conservatives, Greens, Reform and Independents could leave city ungovernable Paul Tilsley was 23 when he was first elected for the Liberal party in Birmingham’s 1968 council elections. At the time, the UK had an unpopular Labour government facing an economic crisis, tensions around immigration and US pressure to back military action abroad. Such a backdrop may seem familiar, but this May, the all-out local elections in Birmingham could not be more different. Tilsley, now a Lib Dem, faces a fragmented field with candidates from Labour, the Conservatives, Greens, Reform and Independents all competing for his seat and no party expected to win an overall majority at the council. Continue reading...

UK Health Security Agency says cases have been treated successfully and antibiotics are being given as a precaution Three cases of meningitis B have been confirmed in the south-west of England, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), as young people in the area have been offered vaccinations against the disease. The cases, which have all been confirmed to have occurred between the 20 March and 15 April in Dorset, have been treated. Those affected are said to be recovering well, according to the UKHSA. Continue reading...

From next-day delivery to kids’ TV shows on demand, have we forgotten how to wait for … anything? The good news is that patience is a skill that can be cultivated – by parents and children alike. Here’s how Your kids want to know why their new book (ordered 18 hours ago) is “taking so long” and need you “NOW” because Netflix “isn’t loading” (it “tu-dums” milliseconds later). For parents who had dial-up internet, endless TV adverts and long car journeys soundtracked by Dad’s AM Test cricket, modern kids’ inability to be patient can feel galling. Except, with our Deliveroo habit and boiling-water taps (who has time for a kettle?), we can be just as bad. “Our environment and culture has trained our nervous systems to expect immediacy,” says Anna Mathur, psychotherapist and author of How to Stop Snapping at the People You Love (As Well As the Ones You Don’t). “The issue is our brains are plastic; they adapt to the level of easy dopamine we’ve got at our fingertips.” Our brains are changing, confirms child psychologist Dr Michele McDowell: “A recent study indicated the brain instantly responds to notifications and takes seven seconds to refocus. Consequently, the brain is becoming overstimulated and is increasingly more responsive. Over time, this erodes the brain’s capacity to tolerate waiting and to be patient. So each time your phone pings, it’s reshaping your mind’s ability to wait.” Continue reading...

These days, I’m feeling more aligned with Catholicism than I have since my first communion. I’m not alone in that I’ve had my ups and downs with the church of my childhood. On the one hand, as a “cradle Catholic”, I’ve received the sacraments, often get to Sunday mass, and am the product of a Catholic education, right through Georgetown University, with its Jesuit history. My father was a “daily communicant” – he received the Eucharist every morning before heading to his law office; his sister, my aunt, was a nun, a Sister of Charity with a PhD in classic languages. Continue reading...

Rum is having a Renaissance. Whether you want spiced, fruity or flavoured, here are the best bottles from our taste test of 30 small-scale and indie labels • The best gins for G&Ts, martinis and negronis Shaking off its whitewashed island vibes and kitschy pirate associations, rum – like gin and tequila before it – is having a revival. With UK rum sales reaching £1.1bn at the end of 2023, and the category expected to rise by 3% annually by 2027, rum is among the few spirits bucking the global downward trend. It’s also experiencing the same appetite for “premiumisation” as the rest of the spirits industry: less of the poor-quality punch spirit and more high-quality artisanal or luxury-branded rum. What is rum? Basically, it’s a spirit made from sugar cane, either in the form of cane molasses or fresh sugar cane juice, which is then fermented and distilled. The liquid can then be aged in oak barrels, matured in ex-liquor casks – such as sherry or bourbon – or infused with flavourings (the best rums use natural botanicals rather than synthetic extracts). White rum is made by taking the virgin distillate and bottling without ageing, while golden or aged rums will take on colour and flavour from time in barrels or casks; dark rums may also have extra molasses added at a later stage. Spiced or otherwise flavoured rums are usually white rums that have been flavoured after distillation. Continue reading...

70 Up to conclude long-running show following group of children into adulthood, revisiting them every seven years Asif Kapadia will bring the long-running and influential ITV documentary series Up to an end, with a concluding instalment that will air later this year. The series, which began in 1964, was voted the most influential UK TV show of the last 50 years in 2024, followed a group of children from infancy via their teen years to adulthood, and now revisits them as they approach old age. Continue reading...

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

(Pentatone) This thoughtfully curated programme of work by three British composers explores the guitar’s expressive potential, and new arrangements of Harrison Birtwistle’s piano originals are a revelation On his new album, Sean Shibe surveys the guitar’s expressive potential through the lens of three British composers. There are interlocking themes here – Spain, 20th-century painters, antique musical forms – but this thoughtfully curated programme can be equally enjoyed piece by piece as a series of mind-expanding flights of fancy. Thomas Adès’s Forgotten Dances pays homage to the baroque dance suite, the composer’s quirky titles imbuing traditional forms with an additional imaginative layer. Overture, Queen of the Spiders, for example, combines stately harmonics with sneaking slides and the occasional pounce (“fatal for the fly!” in the composer’s words). Barcarolle – The Maiden Voyage is a nostalgic lapping gymnopedie; Carillon de Ville a pealing tribute to the guitar-playing Hector Berlioz. In Vesper (for Henry Purcell), Adès reimagines the consolation of the older composer’s Evening Hymn. Shibe’s playing throughout is acutely articulate and technically impeccable. Continue reading...

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Nottingham Forest’s quest to emulate Tottenham continues. For all of Spurs’ ongoing misery, they remain something of a model club: Forest’s quarter-final victory against Porto on Thursday night keeps that twisted dream alive, to finish 17th in the league and lift Bigger Vase. Naturally, Ange Postecoglou started the run, getting a point at Real Betis in September before passing the baton to Sean Dyche, who did most of the group-stage slog. He then handed over to Vítor Pereira for the knockouts. Should Forest go all the way, they’ll need to cut the manager’s medal into quarters; Nuno Espírito Santo was the man who got them into Europe. Yes, what a healthy way this is to run a football club. Continue reading...

But Labour’s ‘halfway house’ approach risks losing support from progressives and ‘red wall’ voters, experts say UK politics live – latest updates Support for rejoining the EU rather than simply rejoining the single market is growing among British voters, with more than 80% of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green party supporters favouring this option, research mapping voter attitudes 10 years after the Brexit referendum shows. But Labour’s “muted” approach means it now risks losing support among progressive voters and in “red wall” constituencies, experts have said as part of a research by Best for Britain. Continue reading...

There has been a steady succession of departures by ministers and senior officials in the last two years The exit of top civil servant Olly Robbins from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is the latest departure of an official or minister under Keir Starmer’s two-year tenure as prime minister. Here we take a look at some of the most high-profile resignations since Starmer came to power. Continue reading...

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Jack Furness’s unconventional staging for Welsh National Opera sees the orchestra play up a storm under Tomáš Hanus in Wagner’s legend of the man condemned to sail the oceans for eternity In 1839 the 26-year-old Richard Wagner almost drowned during a perilous voyage across the Baltic from Riga. It was this experience that he claimed inspired The Flying Dutchman, the legend of the man condemned for eternity to sail the oceans in his ghost ship gave him the narrative for his first mature opera. Wagner thought of his libretto as a poem, and it certainly grapples with some of the epic questions: birth, life, love and death. Welsh National Opera’s new staging, directed by Jack Furness, begins with a woman in childbirth, the wild and stormy surges of the overture coinciding with her contractions. So Senta is born, destined, as a small child, to see her mother die, whisked away on her hospital bed into the great abyss. Senta will be a damaged soul, obsessed to the point of derangement by the story of the Dutchman, whose single hope of redemption, the love of a true woman, becomes possible only on touching land once every seven years. Backstories seem to have become a necessary accompaniment to any opera’s overture, which anyway spells out the whole trajectory in its leitmotifs. The strength of this intervention is visual, in the widely sweeping circles run first by Senta the young girl, then as a young woman, a parallel to the Dutchman’s septennial cycles, their dresses symbolic of the blood-red sails of his ship, all metaphors which later return. Continue reading...

When it comes to theology, Donald Trump’s vice-president clearly knows best. Are we about to see an American break with Rome? The battle to be the absolute worst Trump henchman can feel so closely fought. But in the end, it’s always JD Vance, isn’t it? You would say Stephen Miller, but Miller’s too hidden to qualify as a front-of-house henchman among the US president’s court of grotesques. Stephen’s clearly been judged so wantonly horrifying that the administration must keep him out of public view. If you enter the store, Miller is the only-for-the-initiated entity alluded to in a whisper by the oleaginous sales assistant. “We do have something in the back – off-the-books, as it were – if sir is after something a little more … specialist.” But Vance? Vance besets us like the 11th plague – the plague of media appearances. For the next South Park season, I hope the creators give their brilliantly ghastly little vice-president avatar a papal mitre to wear. After all, here we have a man whose pick-me book on his journey to Catholicism has yet to even be published. That tome currently lies in the rectum of HarperCollins, ready to be excreted in June – yet inevitably, Vance is already giving menacing doctrinal advice to the pope as part of the multi-theatre fallout of Operation Epic Facepalm. Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Kieran McKenna’s team face a crunch clash with Middlesbrough but charging Southampton loom large At the end of July, Ipswich and Middlesbrough reached an agreement. If the Boro midfielder Hayden Hackney agreed personal terms he could join the Suffolk club, freshly relegated and awash with ready funds, for a Championship record fee of around £20m. Kieran McKenna knew he would be getting the best schemer in the division if his target said yes; a player who could make the difference in a 46-game grind. Perhaps with half an eye on Premier League interest, Hackney heard Ipswich out but turned the transfer down. He would end up staying on Teesside and propelling an often exhilarating promotion chase. There is little chance of a mutually beneficial outcome when the sides meet at Portman Road on Sunday. Hackney has missed the past four games with a calf injury and it is unclear whether he will be ready in time for a game of potentially seismic consequence. Boro, out at the front with Coventry for so much of the season, have faded without their talisman and drifted to fifth. Their hosts, slow starters but menacingly consistent since September, occupy second place and have played a game less. Goal difference also works in Ipswich’s favour and the equation is simple: Boro must become one of vanishingly few visiting sides to win in Suffolk if they are to retain realistic hopes of going up automatically. Continue reading...

Autotrader says average EV cost is £785 cheaper, in an important milestone in the move away from fossil fuels Business live – latest updates The price of new battery electric cars has fallen below petrol cars in the UK for the first time ever, according to the car sales website Autotrader, in a significant milestone in Britain’s transition away from fossil fuels. The average price of a new electric car listed on the website was £42,620, compared with £43,405 for a new petrol model – making the former £785 cheaper based on advertised prices after discounts. Continue reading...