At least 77 people killed in anti-corruption youth uprising in September, which began over a brief social media ban Nepal’s former prime minister, KP Sharma Oli, was taken into custody on Saturday as police investigate whether he was negligent in failing to prevent dozens of deaths during Gen Z protests last September. This week, a Nepali panel which investigated violence during the anti-corruption protests recommended that Oli, 74, be prosecuted for failing to prevent the crackdown on the protests. Continue reading...

US secretary of state says Zelenskyy’s claims ‘not true’ about Donbas; French TV criticised over Sergei Lavrov interview. What we know on day 1,494 US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, rejected Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s assertion that the Trump administration is demanding Kyiv hand over its eastern Donbas region to Russia to receive US security guarantees in any ceasefire plan. Speaking on Friday, Rubio disputed Zelenskyy’s recent comments and said the US has made no such stipulation in its talks with Ukraine. “That’s a lie,” Rubio said. “And I saw him say that. And it’s unfortunate he would say that because he knows that’s not true and that’s not what he was told.” Zelenskyy this week told Reuters the US was making its offer of security guarantees for Ukraine contingent on the ceding of the Donbas region, the industrial heartland long coveted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. French public television came under severe criticism on Friday for airing a prime-time interview with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. The France 2 television channel aired 10 minutes of the pre-recorded interview during its Thursday evening news, while the full hour-long version was posted online. More than four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion on Ukraine, Lavrov on France 2 claimed Moscow was intent on defending “international law”. Lavrov said US-Israeli strikes on Iran that sparked the Middle East war had breached these rules. But he rejected any notion of Russia breaking international law in Ukraine, claiming its forces never targeted “exclusively civilian” targets. Ukraine’s ambassador to France, Vadym Omelchenko, said on X people must be wondering why French television had given a platform to “a war criminal”. And the French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, responded by saying Russia does not defend international law either in Ukraine or Iran with its actions. “Mr Lavrov was able to calmly spread his propaganda last night on a French television channel … You do not defend international law by launching a war of aggression,” Barrot told reporters on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in France. Meanwhile, Moscow has denied reports that Vladimir Putin asked Russian oligarchs to donate to fund the Ukraine war, as covered earlier by Nadeem Badshah. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said one of the businessmen at a closed-door meeting on 26 March proposed donating money to the state, and Putin welcomed this initiative. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said the US still has a critical role to play in ending the war with Russia, adding that he had met Rubio on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in France. “Ukraine’s proposals are realistic and doable. Pressure on Russia is key to make Moscow end the war,” Sybiha posted to X on Friday. “We also spoke about the developments in the Middle East. Ukraine’s position is that the regimes in Moscow and Tehran work together to prolong the war.” There are fears the US-Israeli war on Iran has diverted attention away from finding peace in Ukraine. Continue reading...

England were disjointed against Uruguay but no wonder – the head coach’s team selection was an act of self sabotage Before this game Thomas Tuchel had said he would base his starting XI on what he saw on the training ground. Halfway through an evening at Wembley Stadium that felt like being stabbed very slowly through the eyes with a butter knife made entirely from death, ear wax and empty corporate leisure product, it was tempting to wonder about this. What exactly had the players left out done in training to be deemed ineligible for this England team? Turn up naked? Vomit into a traffic cone? Attempt to stage a game of Cluedo during set-piece practice? Perhaps Adam Wharton had killed a crow and stapled its innards to the dressing‑room door. Continue reading...

White jeered when brought on against Uruguay ‘It cannot be the majority,’ says England manager Thomas Tuchel called the Wembley crowd “disappointing” for booing Ben White’s international return and hammered the refereeing during England’s 1-1 draw with Uruguay. White was hero and villain on a night when Ronald Araújo escaped a red card for a painful tackle on Phil Foden and Noni Madueke left the stadium in a leg brace after suffering an injury during the first half. Continue reading...

Two others injured after sightseeing aircraft comes down on remote beach on Na Pali Coast A tourist helicopter crashed on a remote beach off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii, killing three people and injuring two others, authorities said. The helicopter was carrying one pilot and four passengers when it crashed on Thursday afternoon at Kalalau Beach, the Kauai fire department said. The beach is on the Na Pali coast on Kauai’s north shore. The area is otherwise reachable only by hiking or boat. Continue reading...

Actor outside Kennedy Center urges Americans to ‘stand tall against authoritarianism’ and resist free-speech threats The actor Jane Fonda joined journalists, musicians and writers outside Washington’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in urging US citizens to “break your silence” and “stand tall against authoritarianism”. At a damp but defiant rally hosted by Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment on Friday, around a hundred invited guests gathered to hear speakers and singers rail against book bans, political censorship and other threats to free speech under Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Chair says ‘staff are hurting’ after ‘difficult week’ Reform UK leader visited club on Monday The Ipswich Town chair and chief executive Mark Ashton has apologised for “any hurt, pain or distress” caused by Nigel Farage’s visit to Portman Road this week. Farage visited the club on Monday, with footage of his trip – including images of the Reform UK leader holding up an Ipswich No 10 shirt with his name on the back – being used by the political party on social media. Continue reading...

Mayor of Hartford has fired a white police officer who fatally shot a Black man in a mental health crisis nine times Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox A white Connecticut police officer who fatally shot a Black man 30 seconds after arriving at the scene, where three fellow officers had spent several minutes trying to de-escalate the situation, was fired Friday. Arunan Arulampalam, Hartford’s mayor, said in a statement that he terminated Officer Joseph Magnano effective immediately in connection with the 27 February shooting of Steven Jones, who was on a city street holding a knife. The killing came eight days after a different Hartford officer fatally shot another man in a mental health crisis. Continue reading...

Ben White arrived to a chorus of jeers from the England support at Wembley when Thomas Tuchel introduced him as a 68th minute substitute. Of course he did. There ought to be no second chances for the Arsenal defender in the eyes of plenty of those present. He let the country down when he walked out on the England squad during the 2022 World Cup and made himself unavailable for the next two years. The real surprise was what happened next. It was one of those paper aeroplane Wembley friendlies, the fans making their own entertainment in the absence of very much on the pitch. It was listless stuff from Thomas Tuchel’s scratch lineup, the manager’s idea that fringe players could push their World Cup claims amounting to little. What did he actually learn? The only boost was his resting of his over-worked key players. Continue reading...

The Handala Hack Team published more than 300 emails from Kash Patel’s inbox between 2010 and 2019 Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Iran-linked hackers have broken into the personal email inbox of Kash Patel, FBI’s director, publishing photographs of him and other documents on the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday. On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel “will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims”. The hackers published a series of personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum. Continue reading...

‘Looksmaxxer’ influencer and his girlfriend are suspected of involvement in attack on 19-year-old woman, officials say Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox The social media influencer known as Clavicular has been arrested in Florida on battery charges. Braden Eric Peters, who maintains a controversial online presence among “manosphere” circles as a so-called “looksmaxxer”, was taken into custody on a warrant issued by the Osceola county sheriff’s office, according to local jail records and media reports. Continue reading...

Westminster insiders try to get to the bottom of Starmer’s awful unpopularity and frequent blunders – but fail to consider less palatable possibilities Why is Keir Starmer so unpopular? The basic question is easily answered by political broadcaster Lewis Goodall in his investigation of our prime minister’s historically awful approval ratings. In several elections and one big referendum, Goodall says, Britons have voted “for economic change, for material improvement in their lives”, but it hasn’t come. Starmer toured the UK in a campaign bus with “CHANGE” written on the side, yet life as an ordinary citizen has only got harder. The extent of the national disgruntlement is well known, but the programme underlines it by revealing the results of a shiny new survey – which is something documentaries of this kind like to commission because it guarantees them news coverage. Those headline-grabbing findings: a majority of respondents say Starmer should resign, that he has been too slow to make change, that he does not have a clear plan. Asked to describe him in one word, punters’ top responses were “incompetent”, “useless” and “weak”. Continue reading...

Film and theatre producer who made The Audience the starting point for The Crown, and was behind Another Country, The Lady in the Van, Iris and Notes on a Scandal Scion of one of the great theatrical dynastic families, Robert Fox, who has died aged 73, was a producer on stage and screen over a period of 50 years. He started out as an apprentice stage manager at the Royal Court theatre in London in the early 1970s and soon made telling creative relationships with the elite of British actors and writers. His crowning glory was, well, The Crown (2016-23), the Netflix television blockbuster series on which he was an executive producer alongside his British counterparts Stephen Daldry and Matthew Byam Shaw. Continue reading...

FAA investigating after plane carrying 162 passengers forced to change course to prevent collision A United flight came within a few 100ft of a US military helicopter near John Wayne airport in southern California, triggering an alarm directing the airline pilots to change course. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Friday that it was investigating the incident that happened at about 8.40pm Tuesday when a military Black Hawk helicopter returning from a training mission crossed into the plane’s path. The pilots of the passenger plane carrying 162 passengers and six crew members stopped their descent and leveled off to avoid a collision. Continue reading...

Golf star involved in rollover crash in Florida Sheriff says crash happened Friday on Jupiter Island Woods’ condition unclear as inquiry gets underway Golf star Tiger Woods was involved in a rollover crash in Florida on Friday afternoon, ABC News reported, citing the local sheriff’s office. The Martin County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Continue reading...

Updated prices of PlayStation 5 consoles to go into effect on 2 April as electronics makers face rising cost pressures Sony is raising global prices of its PlayStation 5 consoles, including a $100 increase in the US, marking its second hike in less than a year as the entertainment giant grapples with rising costs of key components such as memory chips. The tech industry’s race to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure has pushed memory makers to favor higher-margin datacenter chips, tightening supply for consumer devices like the ones Sony sells. Continue reading...

Law firm is preparing claim on behalf of 30,000 consumers who fear the FCA’s redress scheme will shortchange them Lloyds Banking Group is facing a court battle with 30,000 aggrieved car loan customers who are set to abandon the City regulator’s official redress scheme amid fears it will shortchange consumers and favour lenders. The claims law firm Courmacs Legal is planning to file a £66m omnibus claim on behalf of borrowers who believe they were financially harmed by car loan contracts set up by Lloyds’ motor finance arm, Blackhorse. Continue reading...

School food has suffered at the hands of politics and economics for almost 50 years Almost a generation has passed since Jamie Oliver’s four-part Channel 4 documentary series Jamie’s School Dinners exposed the unhealthy reality of the food served to pupils at lunchtime, including – notoriously – fat-heavy, meat-light Turkey Twizzlers. It proved a shaming and effective intervention. His ensuing Feed Me Better campaign led the then prime minister, Tony Blair, to pledge to make school lunches more nutritious and hand schools more money to do that, given the average lunch at that time cost just 45p to make. Problem solved? Unfortunately not. Continue reading...

Ryan Murphy’s series about the doomed marriage between Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jr is ‘prestige television without the usual weight’ The plane vanishes. Families are told. Ashes are scattered. So ends Love Story, Ryan Murphy’s schlocky, glossy nine-part melodrama about the doomed marriage between Carolyn Bessette and John F Kennedy Jr. Yet one thing is clear: the myth of Camelot – or at least this version – still captivates. This week, Disney+ confirmed Love Story is now the most streamed drama in the platform’s history. A rare sleeper hit, later episodes drew 50% more global viewers than February’s pilot, boosted by “social reach” and word of mouth. According to FX, which created the show, social media searches for JFK Jr and Bessette grew by more than 9100% in the past month. Continue reading...

Crisis in the Middle East, a Russian drone attack in Lviv, cherry blossom in Tokyo and the return of BTS – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Continue reading...

Could Israeli public support for the war in Iran give Benjamin Netanyahu a boost before this year’s elections? The vote will be the first chance for Israelis to have a say on their government since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison Continue reading...

Claimants say lost documents hide scale of alleged unlawful information gathering at publisher of the Daily Mail The amount of lost or destroyed documents relating to the Daily Mail publisher’s use of private investigators is “stark in the extreme”, the high court has heard. However, the thin surviving evidence of payments to private investigators contains “conspicuous and often shocking evidence”, according to lawyers for a group of claimants accusing the publisher of using unlawful techniques. Continue reading...

Party announces Corey Edwards’ decision to quit Senedd election campaign on grounds of mental health A Reform UK candidate for the Welsh Senedd elections in May has announced he is standing down because of his mental health, after a photograph emerged of him apparently making a Nazi salute as an imitation of Adolf Hitler. The announcement by Reform comes a day after Nigel Farage defended Corey Edwards, its lead candidate for the Pen-y-bont Bro Morgannwg constituency, saying he might have instead been impersonating the John Cleese character Basil Fawlty. Continue reading...

Two court cases have shown how companies can be forced to take responsibility for their impact on public health Debate about online harms has tended to focus on abusive and hateful content. But the form in which content is delivered is at least as important. That point is central to this week’s momentous decisions against Meta and YouTube, by two US juries. It will take more than these cases to loosen big tech’s tight grip on much of the world’s attention. But the fact that both companies were found liable in California, for deliberately designing addictive products that harmed a child, is a massive win for the coalition of campaigners aiming to use the US courts to force the platforms to change their products. The second case against Meta, in New Mexico, found it liable over the use of Facebook and Instagram for child sex trafficking, with a Guardian investigation cited in the complaint. The jury ordered it to pay $375m in civil liabilities; the state’s attorney general is seeking platform changes and financial penalties. Continue reading...

Adaptations of hit novels like One Day and Trainspotting help keep the genre in tune with the times Singin’ in the Rain it will never be, but Trainspotting the Musical is not as improbable as it seems. The yellow-brick road from cult novel to film to blockbuster musical is so well trodden that it was only a matter of time before an all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s gritty 1993 novel about a bunch of heroin addicts in Edinburgh hit London’s West End. Danny Boyle’s 1996 film, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, had already established Trainspotting as a story with a soundtrack. The musical will have specially written songs too. From Oliver! and Les Misérables to Matilda, Wicked and The Devil Wears Prada, many of the biggest hitters in the West End today started out as books. Even the global hit Hamilton was inspired by a hefty 800-page biography of the 18th-century American founding father Alexander Hamilton. Last autumn, Paddington the Musical joined their ranks. A musical version of another hit novel about the 1990s (although published in 2009) – David Nicholls’s One Day – opened in Edinburgh this month. The romance between Emma and Dexter might be more typical musical fare than the drug-fuelled antics of Trainspotting’s Renton, Sick Boy and Spud, but that doesn’t mean that the latter don’t belong in a musical. Welsh has revealed that this latest incarnation will “broaden” to include contemporary addictions to mobile phones and the internet. Continue reading...