Markets in Asia and Europe move higher, while crude hovers at about $100 a barrel amid cautious optimism Business live – latest updates The price of oil has dipped and Asian stock markets moved higher after reports that Donald Trump has sent a 15-point framework for peace to Iran, amid hopes of a ceasefire in the Middle East. Oil prices had fallen by 4% in the early hours of Wednesday, with brent crude futures sinking below $100 a barrel and even moving as low as $97.57 as trading was influenced by the prospect of an end to the conflict easing the squeeze on oil supply. Continue reading...

Ken Burns’ new three-part documentary shows why it’s not too late for us to learn from the great naturalist Henry David Thoreau is a new PBS documentary in three parts, each an hour long. The project comes with a voiceover cast of heavyweights, with narration from George Clooney, Jeff Goldblum playing the great essayist and additional voices from Ted Danson, Tate Donovan and Meryl Streep. The project first began life as a short film by Don Henley, the Eagles frontman having long worked to preserve Walden Pond. Henley wanted to capture Thoreau’s time spent in the woodlands outside Concord, Massachusetts, between 1845 and 1847 and the great book that resulted: Walden; or, Life in the Woods. After enlisting Ken Burns, the legendary documentarian, as executive project, the pair entrusted the project to two collaborators, brothers Erik and Christopher Loren Ewers. Like the ferns and fiddleheads that carpet the forest floor at Walden, the film began to grow. Continue reading...

Susie Wiles was on plane and witnessed event, according to files shown to House judiciary committee Federal prosecutors examined whether Donald Trump showed a classified map to people on his plane after his first term, including to his now White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to justice department materials produced to the House judiciary committee. The incident was described in a 13 January 2023 briefing memo prepared for the then attorney general, Merrick Garland – roughly six months before special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club. Continue reading...

Report by Verdant says rooting out waste, fraud and tax avoidance would save money that could help improve public services A “Doge of the left,” could save up to £30bn a year for taxpayers by rooting out waste, fraud and tax avoidance, according to the first report from a new green thinktank. Launched amid growing interest in the future manifesto of Zack Polanksi’s Green party, the Verdant thinktank will be co-chaired by James Meadway, a former adviser to Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and civil society campaigner Deborah Doane. Continue reading...

Drawing on a real-life 1960s experiment, this story of an out-of-work actor paid to cover himself in a black leather bag fizzes with wit and invention The unnamed narrator of Black Bag, an out-of-work actor living in London, has finally landed himself a role, and it’s a doozy. Advertised on the “admirably candid” website strange-acting-jobs.org, the role demands that he sit silent and unmoving at the back of a university lecture theatre for one whole term, dressed in nothing but a black leather bag. He will be paid in cash. He cannot believe his luck. “This is my big chance to do absolutely nothing, as thoroughly as possible.” Black Bag is the hilarious new novel from Luke Kennard, a poet whose second collection made him the youngest ever nominee for the Forward prize in 2007, and whose debut novel was the similarly surreal and equally enjoyable The Transition. Both works operate as Black Mirror-style satires of late-capitalist, technocratic societies, where discontented thirtysomethings find themselves embroiled in bizarre social experiments. Continue reading...

Dayton Webber’s former playing partner says: ‘Dayton has a great family, and I care about that family. Yet obviously, there is somebody [who] died’ The former doubles partner of a professional, championship-winning cornhole player who had his four limbs amputated in his infancy and is now accused of a deadly shooting says he was shocked to learn about the case, calling it an instance of at least two families being torn apart in one fell swoop. “I’ve been mad, sad – it sucks,” Mike Hoffman said of his past cornhole teammate Dayton Webber during a telephone interview on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Ministers will publish review by Philip Rycroft, which will make recommendations relevant to all the political parties, today Good morning. In December the government announced that Philip Rycroft, a former permanent secretary at the Brexit department, will lead a review into foreign financial interference into UK politics. The review is being published today, and it will include recommendations that we’re told the government will implement as a priority. The review will make recommendations relevant to all the political parties, but no one in government is trying very hard to pretend that one party in particular isn’t the main focus. Rycroft was hired for the job soon after Nathan Gill, the former Reform UK leader in Wales, was sentenced to 10 and a half years in jail for taking bribes to spout pro-Russian propaganda. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, dismissed Gill as a one-off bad apple, but other Brexit party MEPs gave pro-Russian speeches similar to Gill’s. Reform UK is the Brexit party under a new name. Continue reading...

Vehicles run by Jewish charity to provide medical transportation and emergency response were torched Two men aged 45 and 47 have been arrested in connection with an arson attack in London on four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community service, the Met police have said. Officers were called to Highfield Road in Golders Green at about 1.45am on Monday after receiving reports of ambulances on fire near the Machzike Hadath synagogue. Continue reading...

Current trophy is embossed with old WSL logo WSL2 trophy also set for a complete redesign The Women’s Super League trophy will be redesigned for the 2026-27 season when the league expands to 14 teams. It is understood that the WSL and WSL2 trophies are set for a complete overhaul to bring them in line with the WSL rebrand which was introduced last summer. The current WSL and WSL2 trophies are embossed with the old WSL and Championship logos, prompting the need for change. As a result, at the end of this season both trophies will have a smooth flat top, with the old logos removed, before new silverware is introduced next year. Continue reading...

East Kent hospitals NHS trust says it could have acted sooner to notify UKHSA after first reported case East Kent hospitals NHS trust missed an earlier opportunity to alert the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) of the meningitis outbreak in Kent, it has been reported. According to the BBC, the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate first reported a case to the UKHSA on the afternoon of Friday 13 March. Continue reading...

Five-times Ashes winner has since had a varied coaching career and believes the red ball is still fundamental to the modern player It’s a sunny spring afternoon, a new season looms, and just a short stroll down the road from Knowle & Dorridge Cricket Club, Ian Bell is in his local stressing the importance of County Championship runs. One of the purest Test batters England has produced this century, Bell is also about to fly to the Indian Premier League for a spell of coaching. Not that the two are necessarily a contradiction. Bell is excited to be joining Delhi Capitals as their new assistant coach before the IPL that starts on Saturday – a significant opportunity in his second career. But as much as T20 has transformed the sport, Bell insists that time batting against the red ball is still fundamental to the modern player. Continue reading...

Head coach has been preparing for playoff against Turkey in hospital and sees job as ‘duty to Romanian football’ Mircea Lucescu is fighting for one last World Cup while at the same time battling his own body. He has lived through thousands of games as a player and manager but these could be the hardest of them all: two playoff games to take Romania to their first World Cup in 28 years. Lucescu is 80 years old now and has not been well – but he has lost none of his energy, nor love for the game. Since December he has been admitted to hospital on three occasions but here he is, with an espresso in front of him, discussing his long career, the playoff semi‑final against Turkey on Thursday and Ukraine, a place he used to call home. He does not, however, want to disclose the exact nature of his illness for fear that it will become the focus over the next few weeks. Continue reading...

Plus: swift ascents up the pyramid, Steve Palmer’s maverick set of shirts and an infamous 2004 Olympic penalty Mail us with your questions and answers “During a rather animated discussion at the pub recently, the topic of footballers ‘retiring from international football’ came up,” says Edd Crick. “We were reminiscing about the days when footballers simply stopped being picked for international games, so who was the first to come out and declare their retirement this way?” We assumed this was a fairly modern development, but it goes back at least as far as the 1950s. Let’s look at the leading answers in reverse chronological order, starting with one of the stars of Italia 90. “Roger Milla is arguably responsible for popularising the concept of international retirement (not to mention elaborate goal celebrations) by famously unretiring at the request of the Cameroon president Paul Biya to play in the 1990 World Cup,” writes Tom Reed. “Milla had formally retired from playing for Cameroon at a jubilee event following victory in the 1988 Africa Cup of Nations.” Continue reading...

February annual rate in line with analysts’ expectations but outlook has shifted because of effects of conflict The UK inflation rate was unchanged at 3% in February, before Donald Trump’s Iran war drove up global energy costs, threatening a renewed price jump. Official figures showed the consumer prices index (CPI) remained at 3%, in line with economists’ expectations but still well above the government’s 2% target. Continue reading...

John Skoog’s monochrome film is based on an art installation, and that shows in the pacing, but his central character is intriguing and utterly unique Denis Lavant is an intriguing and vulnerable presence, somewhere between Quasimodo and Nosferatu, in this beautifully shot monochrome feature from Swedish artist, photographer and film-maker John Skoog, developed from a short film and installation project. Lavant plays farmhand Karl-Göran Persson who, in remote southern Sweden of what could be the 1950s or 1960s, is galvanised by an official pamphlet distributed to the public informing them of what to do in case of a nuclear war; he becomes obsessed with the idea of turning his primitive shack in the middle of a field into a “redoubt” that the entire community could use if the bomb drops. (Skoog has evidently based this on a real case.) Continue reading...

Constituents’ frustration with Richard Tice reflects growing problem for party and its leaders’ climate-sceptic stance “The worst part of it was the smell,” says Audrey Crook, 58. A full-time carer who lives with her 20-year-old son, Crook woke up at 11pm one night to find a foot of flood water on the ground floor of her home. “It was like black water. It had sewage and everything in it, it was absolutely disgusting.” Crook’s home – along with more than 30 others on Wyberton West Road and Park Road in Boston, Lincolnshire – was flooded in January last year when heavy rain swept across the region, raising river levels and exceeding flood defences. Continue reading...

Olivia Dean, Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, Jacob Alon, Self Esteem and Kae Tempest lead this year’s Ivors, with two nominations each Olivia Dean, Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice, Jacob Alon, Self Esteem and Kae Tempest lead this year’s Ivor Novello awards for excellence in British and Irish songwriting, with two nominations apiece. Self Esteem’s cowriter Johan Hugo, and Tempest’s Fraser T Smith, are also credited among the leading acts. Tempest will go up against himself in the best contemporary song category, with two nominations: one for I Stand on the Line, written with Smith, and one for Know Yourself, written with Smith and Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers. Both songs come from Tempest’s fifth album, Self Titled. Continue reading...

The ancient city – with its gardens, hammams and Moorish architecture – comes alive in spring and its Holy Week processions are among the most authentic in Andalucía As I turned the corner on a narrow, cobbled street in Granada, I felt as if I had stumbled upon a slightly sinister re-enactment society. Mysterious men dressed in white robes and tall, conical, face-covering hats with slits for their eyes were followed by women in black dresses and mantillas, holding pillar candles and crosses, then children wearing caped cloaks, carrying baskets of prayer cards. It was indeed a re-enactment of sorts, but deeply rooted in Catholicism, representing the Passion of Christ, staged during Holy Week (Semana Santa), which runs from 29 March to 5 April this year. Easter processions are held across the country, but this Andalucían city hosts one of the most authentic in Spain. Continue reading...

For six months out of 12, Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido is covered in snow. Elizabeth Sanjuan’s haunting images make the most of this monochrome landscape Continue reading...

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon Co-artistic director Tamara Harvey stages a well-acted production that never hits as hard as it should The bellicose patriotism in this, the last instalment of Shakespeare’s Henriad, makes it a perfect drama for today – showing us the repeated history of war, invasion and acquisition in the name of nationalism. Those parallels are unspoken in this production, traditionally rendered in period dress. Director Tamara Harvey begins with a flashback – from Henry IV, Part 2 – to an ailing Henry IV and a son keen to don his crown, to denote the ambition that now lies within the younger Henry. Alfred Enoch makes a genial young king, with a limber playfulness at the outset that carries the last embers of “wildness” from his dissolute days with Falstaff. Enoch harnesses his likability to spur on the fight in his “once more unto the breach” speech and Saint Crispin’s Day rallying call. Continue reading...

Sex, booze and subterfuge – the extraordinary friendship of Graham Greene and spy Kim Philby At the Café Royal in Regent Street in 1944 three intelligence officers bent over their plates while Europe held its breath. Outside, London braced for D-day. Inside, Graham Greene announced that he was resigning from MI6. Kim Philby, his chief in Section V, MI6’s counterespionage arm, blinked. Educated at Westminster, converted to communism at Cambridge and by then securely installed as Moscow’s man at the heart of the British establishment, he had helped orchestrate the deception on which Operation Overlord depended, persuading Hitler that the allies would land at Calais rather than Normandy. Greene had played his part in tending the illusion. Yet here he was, strolling off-stage before the curtain rose. Continue reading...

The fragility of the global food system fills me with dread – and the war with Iran has exposed just how close to collapse it is The fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. Vindication is what we dread. But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system. We cannot predict what the immediate trigger might be. But the war with Iran is just the right kind of event. Drawing on years of scientific data, I’ve been arguing for some time that this risk exists – and that governments are completely unprepared for it. In 2023, I made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into environmental change and food security, with a vast list of references. Called as a witness, I spent much of the time explaining that the issue was much wider than the inquiry’s scope. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

South Africa’s Venice pavilion left empty after Gabrielle Goliath’s ‘highly divisive’ tribute to Palestinian poet blocked A piece of performance art that was blocked from representing South Africa at the upcoming Venice Biennale over its supposedly “highly divisive” tribute to a Palestinian poet will go on display at the world’s largest art exhibition after all. South African artist Gabrielle Goliath’s project, Elegy, will be shown for three months from 4 May as a video installation at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin church in the Castello district, a venue in the vicinity of the main site that is not part of the Biennale. Continue reading...

The moment I stepped into English National Ballet’s studio, I stopped being just a patient. Among fellow spirits, I have rediscovered my sense of joy and agency Fourteen years ago, a neurologist told me: “You have Parkinson’s.” I remember his face before I remember his words: calm, certain, kind. Parkinson’s: a progressive neurological disease. No cure. In my mind, it was an old person’s disease. Something that happened to other people, later in life. Not to a single man in his early 50s who believed there was still time for romance, adventure, reinvention. What terrified me most wasn’t the tremors or the stiffness. It was the imagined future. I pictured a partner signing up not for love, but for care. I thought: who would choose that? Who would choose me, knowing this? Continue reading...

The abduction of Steven Stayner sparked a media frenzy, and the story did not end with his return. Plus: Lisa Kudrow returns in The Comeback. What to watch this evening 9.45pm, BBC Two A grimly remarkable story in which true crime begat content which, in turn, begat more, even more serious true crime. When seven-year-old Steven Stayner went missing in 1972, the search for him sparked a media frenzy. However, when he returned, it triggered something terrifying in his brother Cary, who claimed he had been neglected in favour of Steven and became notorious in his own right. Phil Harrison Continue reading...