At least three households in Barry identified as having contracted the liver infection Health authorities have asked parents and carers to be “vigilant with their children’s hand-washing” after a hepatitis A outbreak in Barry, south Wales. At least three households in the seaside town have been identified as having contracted the same liver infection, amid worries it is spreading locally, Public Health Wales said. Continue reading...

(4AD) Lyrics about naked owls and eating rocks might be irksome to some – but there’s no denying that the alt-rocker’s fifth album is beguiling, tightly written and richly melodic Aldous Harding cuts a divisive figure in the world of alt-rock. To her devotees – and there are enough of them to warrant her playing three nights at London’s Barbican later this month – she is a strange and endlessly fascinating figure. Her lyrics are mysteries to be unpicked for deeper meaning, like dreams awaiting analysis. On Train on the Island, her fifth album, you’re invited to make some kind of sense of stuff about naked owls, having your face covered with bechamel sauce, seeing “the real John Cale” silently eating rice, “Sicilians reaching over the clams”, and the imponderable lines: “I’m saving myself by eating rocks and plants / I pray for the incel.” The curious album covers; the uneasy stage presence and between-song non-sequiturs; the weird costumes; the videos filled with her pulling faces and engaging in awkward choreography; the preponderance of mannered vocal tics and funny accents when she sings, noticeable on Train on the Island’s Worms (vaguely Gallic vowel-stretching) and closer Coats (strangulated little girl voice); the halting, elliptical interviews: for fans, this is evidence of true originality in a cookie-cutter era. Continue reading...

Debate continues to rage over whether a strange carcass found in 1937 was a new species or a basking shark. Either way, the case reveals how little is known about what lies beneath the waves Its head resembled a dog’s, its downturned nose a camel’s, and at the end of its reptilian body was the tail of horse. Witnesses say it was covered in a thin white film. When the remains of a strange creature were pulled from the stomach of a sperm whale, most of those present agreed: it was a sea monster – or at least something unknown living in the depths off Canada’s west coast. Crews at the whaling station in the archipelago of Haida Gwaii assembled a platform of wooden boxes and laid out the 3-metre (10ft) carcass, using a white sheet to display the curiosity that had baffled veteran whalers. Continue reading...

What’s so life-affirming about collecting and trading miniature animals, keyrings, stickers and pins? We visit one of the 1,500 trinket exchanges to find out I’m standing, holding a thumbnail-sized glass owl, in front of a pink box filled with a boggling kaleidoscope of colours, shapes and textures. There’s a plush elephant wearing a green and pink sombrero; a rubber oval that is part doughnut with sprinkles, part frog; a bubble tea keyring; stickers and pins; a sparkly tangle of bracelets and much more. My mission? To swap my owl to experience first-hand the buzz of trading at a trinket exchange. Boxes filled with tchotchkes that visitors exchange for their own trinkets are popping up everywhere. Emerging in the US last autumn (Philadelphia had one of the first using a ready-made electrical junction box, a popular format), they’re a new iteration of a phenomenon that started with Little Free Libraries and diversified during the pandemic into myriad neighbourhood installations. Continue reading...

Bradford Bulls, York Knights and Toulouse are holding their own and the league needs more reach and diversity By No Helmets Required With the Rugby Football League’s next round of talks with the NRL due on 15 May, the decision whether Super League will remain at 14 clubs or expand again to add London Broncos is imminent. The club could squeeze into a 14-team league via the IMG gradings but that would send any club ranked beneath them down to the Championship, potentially putting newly promoted York or Toulouse in grave and unnecessary danger. That would be foolish given the unique markets those clubs represent. The three teams promoted to the expanded Super League this season have defied expectations. They have won three games each, beating champions Hull KR, Hull FC, Catalans and Wakefield along the way. They also gave Wigan, Leigh and St Helens major scares. And none of them occupy the bottom two places after 10 rounds of games. Continue reading...

Ministers to mandate use of tools that record individuals’ cumulative exposure to harrowing incidents Policing in England and Wales faces a reckoning over the levels of trauma experienced by officers and staff as “trauma tracker” tools are to be mandated by ministers to ensure the psychological toll caused by exposure to death, abuse and neglect is recorded. A Home Office white paper published in January outlined a legislative push to make trauma monitoring systems mandatory across all 43 forces in England and Wales. Continue reading...

There’s no better way to stay relevant than to stop looking over your shoulder and instead live for the present. Unfortunately my mindset is the complete opposite An eminent talent agent and manager, Professor Jonathan Shalit OBE, was asked how he kept his company successful over so many years in the ever-changing world of show business. I’m sure the reasons are many, but the one he advanced on this occasion was his loathing of a particular bit of stinking thinking. He said that if anyone in a meeting said anything along the lines of “The business isn’t what it was” or “Things aren’t like how they were”, he would bring the meeting to an end. I loved this. What better way to stay relevant, stay positive, than to waste no time lamenting a past that may or may not have been any better in the first place. What’s the point? What actually is the point? Yet so many of us think of nothing else. Life was better then, the world was better then, I was better then, blah blah blah. No wonder so much political discourse seems to echo this. Continue reading...

Suspect, 28, accused of enrolling under false identity before arrest, in case echoing similar US incidents A 28-year-old woman pretended to be age 16 and enrolled at a Bronx high school under a false identity before New York City police jailed her recently, according to officials. Kacy Claassen pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal impersonation in the second degree as well as trespassing on 28 April, the day after her arrest, Bronx court records show. Continue reading...

Powerful radar system is providing new data on city’s subsidence, which experts hope will draw more attention to it Walking into Mexico City’s sprawling central Zócalo is a dizzying experience. At one end of the plaza, the capital’s cathedral, with its soaring spires, slumps in one direction. An attached church, known as the Metropolitan Sanctuary, tilts in the other. The nearby National Palace also seems off-kilter. The teetering of many of the capital’s historic buildings is the most visible sign of a phenomenon that has been ongoing for more than a century: Mexico City is sinking at an alarming rate. Continue reading...

Bigger vehicles including electric can cause multiple harms, yet resistance to rise of SUVs and trucks has had mixed support On a brisk winter’s evening in Europe’s automotive heartland, a cyclist who had pushed for safer streets went out on his bike for a final time. Andreas Mandalka had documented dangerous driving and shoddy cycling infrastructure for years, measuring the margins at which cars zipped past him and posting videos of blatant violations. While quick to remind readers that only a small proportion of drivers behaved badly, the 44-year-old blogger in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, had grown frustrated with authorities for failing to act. He felt they viewed him as a nuisance. As he cycled down a straight stretch of renovated road that runs parallel to a forest path he had flagged for poor quality, lights bright on his bike and helmet firm on his head, he was fatally struck from behind by a car. Continue reading...

Theatre Royal, York Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s story of high competition in a long family line of female stage tricksters loses its powers as it goes on Sheila Gold, supposedly Britain’s most accurate psychic, wants to be taken seriously by her new clients. “This is not theatre,” she warns them, as she lights seven candles for a seance. This is an insider joke. Theatre is exactly what it is. Continue reading...

700 riders will be in initial testing pool for weekly race Testing is part of wider programme of integrity measures First came the boom in virtual cycling, with thousands of people from across the globe competing against each other. Then came cash prizes. Now one major online platform has taken the next logical step by launching anti-doping testing for e-racers. MyWhoosh, which hosts the UCI Esports World Championships, has told the Guardian that the top riders in its weekly Sunday Race Club competition will now face random drug tests after they compete. Continue reading...

Prices will rise by 3% next season but frozen for 2027-28 Liverpool fans directed yellow cards against owners Liverpool supporters have achieved a significant victory in their protests against ticket costs at Anfield after the club scrapped plans to increase prices for the next three seasons. Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group (FSG), went against the wishes of their Supporters Board in March by announcing general admission tickets would rise by the rate of inflation, capped to 3%, in each of the next three seasons. Following widespread protests organised by several Liverpool supporters groups, the club have now confirmed those tickets will rise by 3% next season but will be frozen in 2027-28. Further discussions with the Supporters Board will be held over ticket prices for future seasons. The Premier League champions made record revenues of £703m in the year ending 31 May 2025 and ticket prices rises were costed to be worth an extra £1.2m. The club claimed the increases were necessary due to rising operational costs at Anfield. Continue reading...

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Jamaica striker decides to go when contract ends in June City could not match other offers to the 29-year-old Khadija “Bunny” Shaw has decided to leave Manchester City this summer at the end of her contract, the Guardian understands, after extensive talks over a new deal concluded with her opting to pursue a new challenge. The Jamaica striker, who is on course to win the Women’s Super League’s Golden Boot for a third consecutive season, was close to agreeing a new deal in March and is understood to have told City she wanted to stay, but negotiations on the finer details hit a number of stumbling blocks, including the proposed length of the extension, and the WSL leaders are preparing for life without their star player. Continue reading...

The Wellington Phoenix coach reflects on the aftermath of the Olympic spying scandal and leading her team into a first A-League Women’s finals campaign Football is not the kind of profession that lends itself to time off for birthdays and the like. Especially when one is preparing to lead the Wellington Phoenix into their first A-League Women’s finals campaign, as Bev Priestman was last week. Yet, especially when contrasted with the year prior, when she was still in the midst of a one-year Fifa ban after the spying scandal that engulfed Canada women’s football team during the Paris Olympics, being among “her people” turned out to be a gift in and of itself. “It was my 40th birthday [last week],” Priestman tells Moving the Goalposts. “And it’s those moments, I think to a year ago, and how I felt. And then how I felt in the club [this year], around my staff, around the team. I do this job because I love people. I love the game, obviously, but it’s working with people, getting your energy with people, and trying to inspire people and help them find a better version of themselves. Continue reading...

The US and Iran have offered conflicting messages over the likelihood of a deal being reached imminently The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it has killed the commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan force, the most elite unit of the pro-Iran armed group, in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs. In a statement, the IDF named the Radwan commander as Ahmed Ghalib Balut, saying he was killed in a strike in the Dahiyeh neighbourhood in southern Beirut. Continue reading...

Retail group with 4,800 stores worldwide expects drop in profits this year amid ‘muted market’ Business live – latest updates The sports fashion retailer JD has warned that profits will fall this year amid a “muted market” hit by weaker spending by young people and concerns about the Middle East conflict. The company, which runs 4,800 stores worldwide including the JD, Blacks and Millets chains in the UK, said it expected profits of between £750m and £850m in the year ahead, after reporting £852m in the year to the end of January. Continue reading...

Interactive or imaginative, educational or just plain fun – whatever toddler you know, these gifts are parent, kid and play-expert approved • The best toys for one-year-olds: 25 fun, skill-building ideas Children really start to become little people by the time they’re two, with strong opinions on what they do (and don’t) like. Most are walking and running around – often at high speeds – as well as climbing and pulling themselves up on anything they can get their hands on. They’re also a lot of fun, constantly learning and developing physically, with fine and gross motor skills, along with verbally mastering new words every day. Continue reading...

In an exclusive interview from prison, Sadia Moalim Ali, a 27-year-old rickshaw driver, tells of her treatment after being arrested for demonstrating against the government A woman being held in prison in Somalia for taking part in peaceful protests has described how she was tortured by her guards. Sadia Moalim Ali, 27, told the Guardian she was stripped naked by two male guards in a room monitored by CCTV, kicked, beaten with a baton and left for two days in a small cell without food. Continue reading...

For 400 years, The Hare and Hounds in Bowland Bridge offered a warm welcome to locals and travellers. Then the rent doubled. With two pubs a day closing in England and Wales, can the community save this 17th-century gem? The Hare and Hounds in Bowland Bridge, a few miles from Windermere, is exactly how you’d want a Lakeland pub to be. A pretty 17th-century stone building, whitewashed, with a couple of dormer windows poking up from the slate roof and a view of the fells, it was originally a coaching inn on the route from Manchester to Glasgow. It is not, however, looking its best today. We arrive in a proper Cumbrian downpour. It should be warm and welcoming, with a place by the wood-burner to dry out and down a pint of Wainwright, perhaps. But the door is shut, the curtains drawn in one of the downstairs windows and no sign of life through the other. Attached to the front of the building is a sign; not a pub sign (the name of the pub is painted elegantly in grey over the door), this one has another message: FOR SALE. Continue reading...

World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind research It’s the stuff of science fiction cinema, or particularly breathless AI company blogposts: new research finds recent AI systems can independently copy themselves on to other computers. In the doom scenario, this means that when the superintelligent AI goes rogue, it will escape shutdown by seeding itself across the world wide web, lurking outside the reach of frantic IT professionals and continuing to plot world domination or paving over the world with solar panels. Continue reading...

People gathered at dusk under the fig tree canopy of Sydney’s Hyde Park to pay tribute to 32-year-old, who laid undiscovered for up to a week No one should be left to die in the middle of Sydney, alone and unseen. That was the powerful message delivered by homelessness support worker Erin Longbottom to a crowd gathered in Hyde Park to honour Bikram Lama. Continue reading...

Enchanting and a little eerie, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth is the second great game in as many years based on the classic children’s books Sleepy, happy-sad, and imbued with the mildest peril, Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories may seem an unlikely fit for the action-heavy medium of video games. Rather than embark on swashbuckling adventures, these milk-white, hippo-esque creatures prefer to potter about Moominvalley, only venturing further if the weather conditions are just right. Yet a small Norwegian video game studio, Hyper Games, is now on its second exquisitely charming Jansson adaptation. The first, 2024’s Snufkin: Melody of Moomin Valley, put players in control of the wily free spirit, Snufkin, as he dismantled overly ordered nature parks (and evaded authority-loving wardens). The latest, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth, sees young Moomintroll wake up at night in the dead of winter. With his parents still hibernating, the creature is all alone, thrust into a cold and unfamiliar world. Continue reading...

Who will join Coventry and Ipswich in the top fight: Millwall, Hull City, Middlesbrough or Southampton? By Opta Analyst For a while it looked as if Millwall would secure automatic promotion, but they finished a point behind Ipswich. Millwall have only spent two seasons in the English top flight. They won the Division Two title in 1987-88, finished 10th in their first season in the top flight and were relegated the following year having finished last. Continue reading...