Chancellor says she is ‘working through a range of options’ to boost the armed forces but does not want to put up taxes UK politics live – latest updates Rachel Reeves has warned “difficult choices” are required to increase defence spending and other budgets may have to be cut, including welfare. Under pressure for a faster rise in military spending amid the Iran conflict and Russia’s war in Ukraine, the chancellor said she was “working through a range of options” but preferred not to increase taxes or add to government borrowing. Continue reading...

Jay Bryant negotiating plea deal in New York death of Run-DMC star, over which one conviction has been overturned One of the three men charged in the killing of Jam Master Jay plans to plead guilty, court records show, in what would be the first admission anyone has made in court to any role in the Run-DMC star’s death in 2002. Jay Bryant pleaded not guilty to murder after his 2023 indictment, but his lawyer and federal prosecutors told the court in recent letters that they were negotiating a plea agreement. Continue reading...

Met police look into incident near office of Iran International after attempted firebombing of a synagogue Counter-terrorism investigators are examining three separate arson attacks in London against an Iranian dissident and Jewish targets amid fears the Iranian state may be behind them. The latest attack happened at about 8.30pm on Wednesday, against the offices of the parent group of a company that runs Iran International, a Persian news channel that opposes the regime in Tehran. Continue reading...

Leader of Tories criticises Farage after he says holding another independence vote ‘probably quite reasonable’ Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party, has accused Nigel Farage of being an opportunist who does not believe in unionism after he urged Scottish nationalists to back Reform. Farage said earlier this week he believed in “genuine nationalists” who do not support the Scottish National party’s bid to rejoin the EU, and urged them to vote Reform in the Holyrood election on 7 May. Continue reading...

Thieves believed to have escaped into sewers after holding staff and customers in Crédit Agricole branch for two hours Armed robbers held 25 people hostage at a bank in Naples for two hours on Thursday, before fleeing through a tunnel. The three thieves entered a branch of Crédit Agricole in the southern Italian city at about 11.30am, taking hostage staff and customers, who were freed by police a couple of hours later. Continue reading...

A deeply scarred country is caught in a war not of its making, seeking a solution which lies outside its hands The 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon that Donald Trump announced on Thursday is desperately needed. It must also be regarded with immense caution. Iran and mediator Pakistan believed that Lebanon was covered by last week’s US-Israel-Iran ceasefire, before Israel unleashed 100 strikes in 10 minutes – killing hundreds and wounding many more on “Black Wednesday”. Lebanon was pulled into this crisis by Mr Trump’s illegal war on Tehran, and should not have been excluded from his truce. The US president, desperately seeking an exit to the broader conflict, is now reining in Mr Netanyahu. But only up to a point. Israeli forces on Thursday destroyed the last bridge linking Lebanon’s south to the rest of the country and struck a school. The previous day they killed at least four paramedics – the latest of scores to have died. More than 2,100 people have reportedly been killed, including at least 172 children. Thousands have been injured. One in five of the population are displaced, some permanently: having occupied a vast swathe of land, Israel is wiping whole villages from the map. Its own defence minister described that as modelled on its actions in Gaza. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The spytech company and founder Peter Thiel should ‘have their hands ripped off our NHS’, say MPs during impassioned Westminster debate MPs have queued up to demand the government scraps its £330m NHS contract with the spytech company Palantir, calling it “dreadful” and “shameful” in a debate on Thursday, after which the government said it was “no fan” of the US company’s politics. Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs led the calls for Palantir, which also works for Donald Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown and the Israeli military, to be removed as a supplier to the NHS federated data platform (FDP), with one Labour backbencher, Samantha Niblett, questioning whether it could be “trusted as a custodian of the intimate health records of tens of millions of British citizens”. Continue reading...

The impunity with which organised crime groups operate in jails is scandalous. Blocking drones should be just the start To most of the public, the widespread availability of illegal drugs in prisons must be hard to comprehend. A Ministry of Justice that cannot prevent law-breaking within its own institutions is clearly failing to a disastrous extent. As well as undermining rehabilitation by perpetuating criminality, addiction and debt, drug dealing in prisons undermines the whole system’s credibility and purpose. Yet this is the situation in multiple English and Welsh jails, as set out by chief inspector Charlie Taylor. His last annual report highlighted the fact that 39% of prisoners surveyed in 2024/25 said it was easy to obtain drugs, while 19% of female prisoners had developed drug problems in jail. The rate of positive results in random drug tests regularly topped 30%. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Individuals such as Matt Goodwin and Lord Frost benefited from largesse of self-styled ‘illiberal democracy’ UK politics live – latest updates The last 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s rule have been kind to a number of British political figures – from the Tory peer David Frost to Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin and James Orr. All benefited from largesse extended by the self-styled “illiberal democracy” established by the Hungarian leader’s ruling Fidesz party, which took a particular liking for those on the harder right of British conservatism. Continue reading...

Bics fix accepts nose-bleed energy bills are a structural problem but pretends they are an issue for a narrow section of industry It is “bold action” to boost UK competitiveness, claimed the government. Not everybody shared that assessment of the British industrial competitiveness scheme (Bics), the long-awaited plan to cut electricity bills for UK manufacturers by up to 25% – or, at least, to cut them for a subset of firms that are aligned with the eight chosen sectors of the “modern” industrial strategy. “Gas intensive industries in the UK have been shamefully ignored by the government in this announcement – it’s a total disgrace,” said Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB union, banging the drum for the likes of ceramics-makers and brickmakers that aren’t deemed modern enough for support. Employer bodies mostly did the polite thing of welcoming government assistance of any form before using phases such as “drop in the ocean”. Continue reading...

Capital’s schools hardest hit in England and Wales by rising housing costs and falling birthrate, with further falls predicted in coming years Schools in London continue to be hardest hit by housing costs and the falling birthrate. Further closures and mergers of primary schools are expected after a sharp fall in the number of children entering reception classes in the capital. London’s boroughs will have nearly 3,000 fewer infants aged four enrolling at the start of the next school year in September, according to school place offers announced by local authorities across England. Continue reading...

John Gosden’s three-year-old was among those catching the eye at the Craven meeting, which has been attracting dreamers and optimists since 1771 Captain Cook was a few months away from landfall after his first circumnavigation of the earth when the first Craven meeting was held on Newmarket heath in the spring of 1771. It is older than any of the Classics, and old enough too to have the great Potoooooooo – who got his name when a stable lad was unsure how to spell potatoes – on the Craven Stakes’s roll of honour in 1782. For a quarter of a millennium, the first meeting of the year on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket has been Flat racing’s first rite of spring. “It’s what keeps everybody going,” Jason Singh, the marketing director of the famous bloodstock auction house Tattersalls said here on Thursday, “and I speak as a breeder and racehorse owner myself as well as a sales company employee. Continue reading...

The lack of a unified digital repository for patients and healthcare workers means that key medical changes are often missed. But the NHS can learn from US intelligence sharing Will Parman is the winner of the The Guardian Foundation’s 2026 Emerging Voices award (19-25 age category), recognising young talent in political opinion writing As she battles cancer, my mum fears that she will forget to tell her consultant something important. Like many people with complex and chronic health needs, she clutches a Post-it note with 10 bullet-pointed symptoms, such as “cannot stand” and “spasms”. It is her companion during stressful appointments. We rehearse her list before we enter, and worry that we deviated too much when we leave. Even then, her peer-reviewed lists, sometimes on the back of envelopes, are inadequate when her condition may change day to day. Each list, too, must be tailored for each of her consultants – many lists get lost in her tall pile of notes and letters. I hate those car rides home when we’re upset that we didn’t say something important, fearing the consequences of this omission. In a health system in which people can wait more than a year for an appointment, you wonder how meticulous these Post-it notes need to be to convey every change in their medical condition since the initial referral letter. It raises the question of how many people have experienced this unsettling ride home. Will Parman is the winner of the The Guardian Foundation’s 2026 Emerging Voices award (19-25 age category), recognising young talent in political opinion writing Continue reading...

Built on tar swamps and two tortuous decades in the making, LACMA’s latest addition used twice as much metal as the Eiffel Tower. How did America supersize revered architect Peter Zumthor? Driving down the palm-lined strip of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, a striking new crossing heaves into view. A ribbon of glass leaps over the road, sandwiched between two gigantic planes of concrete. As you get closer, the bridge swells out in sinuous arcs, swooping back on itself to inscribe an amoebic, shape-shifting blob, spreading out like an inkblot. From some angles it has a retro-futuristic air, recalling a Jetsons airport terminal, or one of California’s “Googie” style gas stations. From others, the curving roof looks like a great big tongue, flaring out to give the neighbours a raspy lick. This concrete colossus is home to the new David Geffen Galleries of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), a $724m mothership designed by the fabled Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. It is less a museum than a mighty piece of infrastructure, a 110,000 sq ft warehouse-cum-bridge, jacked up nine metres in the air and looming above the street with a brooding, muscular heft. Two decades in the making, and subject to tortuous years of delays, controversies and cost escalations – building on a tar swamp in a seismic zone is not straightforward – it finally opens this weekend. The Fitzcarraldian feat is the brainchild of Michael Govan, who became Lacma’s director in 2006 with an ambition to build a museum like no other, using the promise of a dazzling structure to lure donations of artworks and dollars ($125m came from LA county, the rest was fundraised). Govan cut his teeth at the Guggenheim, and on Frank Gehry’s Bilbao outpost, where he clearly got a taste for the transformative fairy dust of signature architecture. He later moved to Dia:Beacon, in New York’s Hudson Valley, where he commissioned Zumthor for a project that was ultimately unrealised. At Lacma, he was determined to make a monument for posterity, at any cost. Continue reading...

⚽ Europa League updates; kick-off 8pm BST (first leg: 3-1) ⚽ Nottingham Forest v Porto – latest | Live scores | Mail Niall Much like one of those old-timey “choose your own adventure” stories, Aston Villa have two clear paths to the Champions League. Unlike said books, there appears to be little immediate peril on either route. Villa are seven points clear of sixth-placed Chelsea in the Premier League, and got the job in this tie more than halfway done in the first leg in Italy. Get through tonight and Porto or Nottingham Forest (!) await in the semi-finals, while mid-table Sunderland and Fulham are up next in the league. Continue reading...

⚽ Europa League updates; kick-off 8pm BST (first leg: 1-1) ⚽ Aston Villa v Bologna – updates | Live scores | Mail Scott Six months ago this happened … … which has got to augur well for Nottingham Forest (even if it didn’t serve as much of a promising harbinger for poor old Sean Dyche). Throw in the fact that Porto have played 24 competitive matches in England and have yet to win one (D3 L21) and all signs point to YES for Vítor Pereira and his charges. The winner of this tie gets to play the victor of Aston Villa and Bologna, and the prospect of an ATVLand rammy for a place in the final is almost too much excitement for a brain to contain. So come on Forest, giddy up Villa, let’s make this happen. Kick-off is at 8pm BST, with the scores level at 1-1 after the fiasco-tinged first leg. It’s on! Continue reading...

E H Shepard drawings go on display for book’s centenary, showing how he brought AA Milne’s character to life Previously unseen drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh that show the honey-loving bear before he was introduced to generations of readers in the 1926 book have come to light. Two preliminary pencil sketches by E H Shepard have been shared for the first time by his family to mark the centenary of one of the most loved books in children’s literature. Continue reading...

Continue reading...

The US president, Donald Trump, has said Israel and Lebanon will begin a 10-day ceasefire. In a post on Truth Social, he said he had spoken to the leaders of both countries today and claimed this would be the ‘tenth war’ he has ‘solved’. Israel reportedly has no plans to withdraw its military from southern Lebanon during the ceasefire, it has been reported. Lucy Hough speaks to senior international correspondent Julian Borger Continue reading...

The defense secretary said his prayer drew on Ezekiel, but wording closely matches Quentin Tarantino dialogue It was perhaps inevitable that a braggadocious Christian nationalist defense secretary elevated from his role as a weekend Fox News television host would pluck a fake Bible verse from a violent Hollywood blockbuster and present it at a Pentagon prayer session to rally the troops for the “holy war” in Iran. Certainly among a glut of stories swirling around Pete Hegseth this week, including articles of impeachment brought against him by a group of ambitious Democratic lawmakers, the bizarre allegation that the Bible-thumping Hegseth was passing off a fire-and-brimstone script by Quentin Tarantino, an Oscar-winning director, as the word of the Lord was far too compelling to ignore. Continue reading...

Heaven club neighbour admits offences under Licensing Act, as Met says fictitious AI-generated complaints a growing issue A businessman has pleaded guilty to making false statements in order to shut down a nightclub, which police believe were generated using AI. A Metropolitan police source said the use of AI to generate letters by complainants who do not exist is a growing issue. Continue reading...

Case of businessman using AI to generate false letters of complaint against Heaven nightclub part of a growing issue, say police A businessman has pleaded guilty to making false statements in order to shut down a nightclub, which police believe were generated using AI. A Metropolitan police source said the use of AI to generate letters by complainants who do not exist is a growing issue. Continue reading...

As Starmer tells tech bosses to take urgent action to make their sites safer, ministers are weighing up what they can do Starmer tells social media firms: ‘Things can’t go on like this’ Keir Starmer has told social media firms that “things can’t go on like this” in a meeting with tech bosses in Downing Street as pressure mounts for tougher restrictions on the industry. Ministers are considering imposing an under-16 age restriction on social media as well as other options to limit app use. Continue reading...

The Stand Comedy Club, Glasgow The northerner finds the funny in banalities with this raucous compendium of all-in-it-together bants Phil Ellis has been watching Netflix specials, and has noticed that all the alpha standups now have a hype-man to big them up pre-show. Here, then, is his own version, a shuffling fellow northerner (comic Tom Short) deadpanning a list of Ellis’s non-achievements in a threadbare American accent, punctuated by gunshot SFX and an airhorn. The modest success of a Taskmaster stint has not gone to Ellis’s head: with his new show, he continues to revel in the failures and banalities of his midlife, a 44-year-old man recently moved home with his parents – single, balding, skint. In Bath Mat, he turns all that into a raucous laughalong, inviting us to pitch abuse at him, straw-polling his observations with the audience, and laughing himself, throughout, to think he gets away with doing this for a living. Over two hours, I found the set more attenuated than the concentrated hits of Ellis I’ve enjoyed on the fringe. It’s a structureless compendium of barely related routines, with more emphasis on so-so standup than the tomfoolish antics that often characterise his work. With sections such as the chat he has with his crowd about roadkill, or another about luxury treatment for pets, we’re in the territory less of precision-focused comedy and more all-in-it-together bants. Continue reading...

Company says ‘sustained outperformance’ merited pay rise as it ups profit guidance by £8m for the year to January 2027 Business live – latest updates The Next chief executive, Simon Wolfson, took home more than £7m last year, his highest ever pay package, and could be handed up to £9.27m this year after the retailer announced plans to increase his basic salary and bonuses. The listed company said it was increasing its pay deal for the long-term leader of the fashion and homewares retailer, which now controls a string of brands in the UK including Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Cath Kidston, Reiss and FatFace, as his remuneration was 30% below the average for FTSE 100 bosses. Continue reading...