(DH2) On a floral-themed LP, squiggling melodies and quizzical distortion banish the winter gloom Dreijer brought to the Knife and his tracks with Fever Ray Swedish producer Olof Dreijer is best known for projects with his sibling Karin: namely their duo the Knife, plus Karin’s solo act Fever Ray, with whom he created four brilliant tracks on 2023 album Radical Romantics. For all that his beats on these records often had African-Caribbean-Latin syncopation, they also had a Scandinavian winter gloom. Conversely, his debut solo album seems to crane upwards towards sunlight like flowers – and each of the tracks has a floral name. Dance heads will already be familiar with some of them (having appeared on EPs stretching back to 2023) but together they show quite how distinctive Dreijer’s own musical accent is: you can tell it’s him sometimes from just half a second of music. Continue reading...
For anyone needing a break from binging The Pitt, you can always put in your own shifts as a hospital manager, surgeon, paramedic and of course as a demonic morgue assistant Like the rest of the western world, our household is currently binging medical drama The Pitt, revelling in its visceral depiction of life in a modern emergency department. So far the series has yet to inspire a video game tie-in (though there has been an amusing parody), but fans wishing to try their hand at tense medical (mal)practice, should not despair. Here are eight of the best hospital games spanning more than 40 years of gruesome interactive surgery. Squirt some hand sanitiser and come this way. Continue reading...
⚽ All the latest news and previews going into a big weekend ⚽ Premier League preview | Fixtures | Tables | And mail Yara Europa Conference League: Crystal Palace followed Arsenal and Aston Villa to become the third English team to make a men’s European final this season. Here is Ed Aarons’ verdict from Selhurst Park. There were ecstatic celebrations as Palace’s players completed a lap of honour in front of their adoring supporters who are still having to pinch themselves over the events of the past 12 months. Glasner may be set to leave after what will be the 60th game of a marathon season but whatever happens after this, he will always have a special place in the club’s history. One of the loudest cheers of the night came when the stadium announcer confirmed that Nottingham Forest – who controversially replaced Palace in the Europa League – had been thrashed 4-0 by Aston Villa in their semi-final. The captain Dean Henderson, admitted that the sense of injustice has been driving the FA Cup winners. “It’s pretty incredible really to even get into a European competition with Crystal Palace, let alone reach the final,” he said. “We’ve got to deliver something special. We’ve got to get back what we deserve.” We didn’t want to leave these games with any regrets, and I think we’ve done ourselves massive justice. We’ve had low moments. It’s a demanding club to play for but what we’ve done in the last few years is exceptional. The margins are so slim. If we lost, we’re the nearly men. When we go to Istanbul, we need to make sure we’re not the nearly men. I’m normally quite calm before games, but today I was nervous. Tonight was up with one of the best performances I’ve seen from a Villa team for a long time. Continue reading...
International Airlines Group expects to spend £1.7bn more on fuel than planned since US-Israeli attack on Iran Business news – live updates The parent company of British Airways has issued a profit warning and said it expects to spend about €2bn (£1.72bn) more on fuel than planned this year due to the Iran war. International Airlines Group (IAG), which also owns Aer Lingus, Iberia and Vueling, said it has hedged 70% of its expected fuel use for this year with costs expected to be about €9bn, up from previous forecasts of €7.1bn. Continue reading...
Patient remains in south Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, say health officials, as vessel heads to Tenerife Explainer: What is hantavirus? A third British national has been diagnosed with suspected hantavirus linked to a cruise ship outbreak, health officials have said. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) had already confirmed two cases among British nationals, who are in hospitals in the Netherlands and South Africa. It said a third has been reported on the south Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, where the patient remains. Continue reading...
As he plays a dodgy sheriff in Ben Wheatley’s Normal, Odenkirk will be here to answer your inquiries about a remarkable career that has taken him from Wayne’s World to Saturday Night Live and The Bear Bob Odenkirk has achieved one of the more improbable small-to-big screen transitions in recent years. He was only meant to stick around for four episodes as shady lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad. Instead, creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould liked what they saw and he became a series regular – and, after that, the unlikely centre of Better Call Saul, widely regarded as one of the finest spin-offs ever made. In 2021, he then popped up as a mild-mannered family man turned bone-crunching action hero in Nobody, a role for which he buffed up for two years. Released during Covid, Nobody was unexpectedly successful, leading to a sequel. Now he’s testing his knack for making deeply questionable characters oddly endearing by playing a dodgy small-town sheriff in Ben Wheatley’s new film, Normal, alongside Henry Winkler as the town mayor. Continue reading...
A stylish updated version of the Stephen King classic. Plus, a solid performance from Kevin Costner Continue reading...
Pressure is growing on government to act on legal threats designed to ‘harass and intimidate’ opponents Verity Nevitt was just 21, a student living away from home for the first time, when she learned she and her twin sister, Lucy, were going to be sued in the high court. Someone knocked on the door of her London house share with a big bundle of papers and asked her to sign for them. A year earlier, the sisters had reported a man to the police, accusing him of sexually assaulting Verity and then, after she had left the house, raping Lucy. When the case was dropped by police, they decided to name him on social media, in order to warn others. The man responded by suing them for misuse of private information, harassment and eventually defamation. Continue reading...
State experiences largest May snowstorm in 23 years, and extreme rainfall hits Eastern Cape of South Africa Colorado has experienced a late bout of winter weather this week as residents of Denver and the surrounding areas experienced their largest May snowstorm in 23 years. An outbreak of Arctic air brought freezing cold temperatures that allowed for rainfall to turn widely to snow on Tuesday afternoon, continuing into Wednesday for much of the centre and north of the state. Denver was the hardest-hit metropolitan area with snow depths of 10-15cm (4-6in) across the city, and 15-20cm in some southern and western suburbs. Denver international airport recorded 15cm, causing hundreds of flight delays, and 35 cancellations. Continue reading...
Two foreigners among the dead, say authorities, after early morning eruption that spewed ash miles into the air Three hikers have died and 10 are missing after an eruption at Mount Dukono on Indonesia’s eastern Halmahera island spewed an ash cloud about 10km (6 miles) into the air, local police have said. “There are three dead, two foreigners and one resident of Ternate [island in east Indonesia],” Erlichson Pasaribu, the police chief of North Halmahera district, told Kompas TV. Continue reading...
(Kranky) Essaying a broken heart, the New Yorker puts her voice front and centre for her most accessible work yet, though still with unexpected details – and a Schumann cover The new album from Ana Roxanne was written after a transformative experience of heartbreak. And just as you might wake up one day after a breakup and find yourself feeling OK, there’s a new clarity here. Where the New York-based musician’s vocals were once stretched out and suspended among hazy ambient textures, on Poem 1 they are front and centre. For the first time, we hear Roxanne’s lovely, wispy voice in lucid detail, as she contemplates loss and desire over slow and stripped-back compositions. The record opens with a collection of mournful ballads which draw more on pop songwriting than Roxanne’s usual amorphous style. Her yearning is tangible in the simple yet evocative lyrics, but also beyond: the tense vibrato of the strings in The Age of Innocence; the sustained keys in Keepsake. There are occasional traces of the experimentalism of her first two records, in the droning synths, or the faint, granular whirr of tape looming in the background. These elements, paired with Roxanne’s strength as a singer, give these songs a leg-up when they risk feeling too drab or generic. Continue reading...
Halifax says cost of typical home fell by 0.1% in April, the second consecutive monthly drop, with pace of annual growth down from 0.8%. to 0.4% Business news – live updates UK house prices fell for a second consecutive month in April, as Halifax halved its estimate for the annual rate of growth due to the conflict in the Middle East. Halifax, which is part of Lloyds – Britain’s biggest mortgage lender – said that the cost of a typical UK home fell by 0.1% in April, to £299,313. This followed a 0.5% fall in March. Continue reading...
Leadership in peril as party loses seats in heartlands and control of councils in Hartlepool, Tameside, Redditch and Tamworth Election 2026 live: latest news updates Full results from England, Scotland and Wales Hartlepool once nearly triggered Keir Starmer’s resignation – results overnight mean it may yet do so in the coming days. Five years ago, Labour crashed to a humiliating defeat in a byelection for the city’s Westminster seat, prompting Starmer to consider resigning as opposition leader. Continue reading...
Shelby Van Pelt’s best-selling book is adapted into an easily digestible, sweet-natured afternoon watch Every now and then, a strange forgotten chapter of life during Covid will interrupt my thoughts. Remember when we used to fake happy hour merriment on the Houseparty app? Or when Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor made an unwatchably awful film about stealing diamonds from Harrods during lockdown? Or how about when people developed an unhealthy obsession with a Netflix documentary about a man with an unhealthy obsession with an octopus? The unavoidability of My Octopus Teacher led to everything from a creepy spike in people googling “did octopus teacher sex with octopus” (time-saver: he didn’t) to an unforgivably undeserved Oscar win for best documentary (Collective, you were robbed) and then, while not a direct on-record inspiration, it at least paved the way for the success of Shelby Van Pelt’s best-selling novel Remarkably Bright Creatures in 2022. The book, which hinges on the bond between an elderly cleaner and a grumpy octopus, gave those still yearning for more octopus teaching a gentle summer read with no weird questions needing to be asked and now, inevitably, the adaptation lands on Netflix to be filed in the growing “inspiring octopus movie” section. Continue reading...
Many of us struggle to not get sucked into the content machine, even if we simply say: ‘This doesn’t matter’ Last week a video did the rounds of Diego Simeone getting annoyed with Ben White for walking over an enormous Atlético Madrid crest-doormat placed literally in the middle of the tunnel entrance which Ben White had to walk into to get to the room Atlético Madrid had themselves selected for Ben White to get changed in. Then on Tuesday night, Diego Simeone walked over an enormous Arsenal crest-doormat situated in the middle of the tunnel at the Emirates Stadium to get to the room Arsenal had themselves selected for Diego Simeone and the rest of his Atlético Madrid side to get changed in. Continue reading...
The great Mexican director is in England to pick up a BFI fellowship – and buy a haunted house. He talks gods, ghosts, monsters and almost being destroyed by the Weinsteins When Guillermo del Toro goes to the cinema, he buys three seats. “I’m an expansive fellow,” he says, occupying one end of the sofa in the library of a London hotel. “Between the popcorn and my elbows and my girth, I need more than one seat. But I also like the feeling of being in company and yet alone. Everyone says how great the cinema is as a collective experience, and I agree. At the same time, I enjoy it the most when it’s not packed. I like being semi-alone.” Those vacant seats must come in handy, too, if there are any ghosts in the vicinity. Ghosts and Del Toro go way back. The multi-Oscar-winning director was 11 when he first sensed a spectral presence at his family home in Guadalajara, Mexico. He insists this was his late uncle, who, before his death, had promised the young horror buff that he would pop back and tip him off if there were anything on the other side. Del Toro later heard a persistent sighing in his dead uncle’s room – a detail that inspired Santi, the sighing ghost-boy in The Devil’s Backbone, his 2001 horror set during the Spanish civil war. Decades later, when Del Toro was in New Zealand scouting locations for The Hobbit (which he co-wrote), his hotel room was filled with the cacophonous uproar of a murder in full swing, audible in a kind of surround-sound. And though there was no ghost as such when he stayed in an early-19th-century hotel in Aberdeen while filming Frankenstein two years ago, he felt “an oppressive vibe” about which he duly live-tweeted to his two-million-plus followers. Currently, he is looking to buy a haunted house in the UK. Presumably via Frightmove. Continue reading...
After Zelenskyy, Robert Brovdi is Moscow’s top assassination target owing to his long-range attacks deep within Russia Vladimir Putin has told Russians that victory against Ukraine is inevitable. But on Saturday no tanks or missiles will rumble over the cobbles of Moscow’s Red Square. For the first time in almost 20 years the annual celebration of the allies’ victory over Nazi Germany will take place without military hardware. The reason: the Kremlin is afraid of a Ukrainian attack. The man who has arguably done more to spook the Putin regime this weekend than anyone else is Robert Brovdi, the head of a Ukrainian military drone unit, Madyar’s Birds, named after his call sign. In recent months it has carried out a series of long-range strikes against targets deep within Russia, including ports, oil refineries and missile factories. Continue reading...
The world No 1 lost to Jorden van Foreest, but squeezed into a tie for first and won the blitz playoff The world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, making a rare return to classical chess this week at the annual TePe Sigeman tournament in Malmö, Sweden, squeezed through to a blitz playoff in Thursday’s final round after Turkey’s 14-year-old talent Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus blundered fatally in the late stages after reaching a drawn position. Carlsen tied on 5/7 with India’s Arjun Erigaisi and won the blitz playoff 2-1. This was the final sudden death game. Continue reading...
My prank demonstrated how our minds can adversely affect our health, and scientists are increasingly showing that negative thoughts can produce very real symptoms For his last birthday, I gave my husband a monthly beer box subscription. While he saw it as a generous and delicious present, it spawned a mischievous idea on my part. One evening, as I watched him drain the last bottle, I opened my email. “We’ve just had a message from the beer people,” I said. “They’re issuing a recall on the last batch.” “What’s the problem?” he answered. “Some sort of contamination issue,” I replied. My husband’s face fell. “Are you OK? You look a bit peaky,” I said. Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of This Book May Cause Side Effects Continue reading...
Archives reveal how a format that even one winning manager wanted abolished four decades ago came to be As the playoffs begin for the 40th time, it is easy to forget there was once a world without them. But where did they come from? Whose idea were they? And how did they take root in English football? The EFL granted access to its archives containing the documents and meeting minutes charting how an idea, conceived to help lower-league clubs financially and add late-season spice, evolved into one of the most cherished fixtures in the English football calendar and gave birth the “richest game in football”, as the Championship final is known. It is hard to comprehend quite how broken English football was in the mid-1980s. In the 1988 book League Football and the Men Who Made it, Simon Inglis writes: “The year 1985 was the most devastating in the hundred years of the Football League.” Hooligans attracted headlines, fans were killed in riots and clashes with police drew the attention of the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who told football to get its house in order. Continue reading...
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
Barrister for actor Charlotte MacInnes, who is suing the Pitch Perfect star for defamation, also accused Wilson of ‘a complete revision of history’. Wilson has rejected defamation claims. Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Rebel Wilson has been accused in court of being a liar who made up terrible claims about her colleagues and completely rewrote history. The Pitch Perfect star copped the blunt assessment in the dying hours of a fiery defamation battle where she is being sued by Charlotte MacInnes, the lead actor in musical comedy The Deb which Wilson directed, co-produced and starred in. Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: Readers have flooded the crowdfunder of Steve Green after his inspirational story of DIY environmental activism was told • Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here For many people, owning a yacht is the ultimate dream. But recently I reported on what happens when that dream is abandoned, and one man’s uphill battle to clean up rotting boats left behind in Cornwall, England. In this week’s newsletter, it’s my pleasure to revisit Cornish boat engineer Steve Green, who says he “nearly fainted” when hundreds of Guardian readers flooded his crowdfunder with donations and notes of thanks after we told his story. The man who blew up a nuclear power station and disappeared How car-loving American cities fell so far behind their global peers on public transit As household bills soar, is it time for a working-class climate agenda? Continue reading...
Fearing the worst can lead to physical changes, according to this fascinating study of a strange medical phenomenon In Roald Dahl’s 1980 masterpiece The Twits, Quentin Blake’s illustrations demonstrate how Mrs Twit’s horrible attitudes eventually ended up deforming her looks. “If a person has ugly thoughts,” wrote Dahl, “it begins to show on the face.” In her latest book, science writer Helen Pilcher explores this very idea: that negative beliefs “can be physically transformative”. The nocebo effect, as this is known, comes from the Latin for “I will harm”, and strikes when a person’s negative expectations, whether subconscious or conscious, lead to illness. Continue reading...
From a picturesque countryside corn mill to a city flat in London’s historic waterside heartland Continue reading...