We simmered 40 batches of soup to see which makers are worth their stock, including self-cleaning wonders and the best for busy families • The best blenders, tested When our bodies crave something nourishing, few things fit the bill better than a bowl of thrifty, healthy and comforting homemade soup. Having a few soup recipes in your back pocket is an affordable and easy way to up your vegetable intake. However, homemade soups can be time-consuming to make – what with having to saute the veg, stand over the pan as you add liquid and simmer, before you finally blend into the finished soup. Not so with a snazzy soup maker, which will handle much of that faff with the press of a single button. And most of them take less than half an hour to run the programme from start to finish. Best soup maker overall: Tefal Easy Soup Best budget soup maker: Aldi Ambiano soup maker Continue reading...

Gay porn in the 80s was home to beautifully moody synth music that is only now getting rediscovered – tragically too late for many of its creators Michael Ely knew from the first moment he met James Allan Taylor that he had found someone special. The pair had separately hitchhiked to a gay bar, with fake IDs, in Sunset Beach, California. They connected, they danced and stepped outside for a kiss in the thick fog. “I was only 18 but I knew I had just met my soulmate,” says Ely. The pair remained a couple until 2015 when Taylor, who was nicknamed Spider, died from liver cancer. A new collection of Taylor’s music, Surge Studio Music – electronic pieces he composed for gay porn films – has just been released. “I was like: wait, there’s a fanbase for 80s gay porn music?” laughs Ely. “I had no idea. When Josh contacted me, I found the cassette tapes in a box in the back of the closet. They’d been there for ever.” Continue reading...

Acclaimed novelist and literary critic who was a staunch opponent of Scottish devolution In a career spanning more than half a century, the Scottish writer Allan Massie, who has died aged 87 of cancer, wrote more than 20 novels and numerous works of nonfiction. His diverse range of subjects included The Caesars (1983), A Portrait of Scottish Rugby (1984) and critical studies of Muriel Spark (1979) and Colette (1986). He was the Scotsman’s chief literary critic for more than 25 years, and as one of his editors there I looked forward to his faxed copy arriving invariably before deadline. Elsewhere he wrote columns, diaries, book reviews, essays and articles on everything from sport to the state of the nation for publications including the Spectator and Daily Mail. Continue reading...

Skeleton crew’s helmets ruled ineligible on eve of Games Great Britain appeal to court of arbitration for sport Great Britain’s best hopes of a gold medal at the Winter Olympics have suffered a significant blow after skeleton’s governing body sensationally banned Team GB’s aerodynamic helmets for being the wrong shape. Team GB’s Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt have dominated skeleton all season, winning all seven of the World Cup races, and making them strong favourites to win gold and silver here in Milan. Continue reading...

The artist’s work resurfaces skills and knowledge that colonialism buried. She explains how her drawings and sculpture weave botanical illustration and traditional craft to engage with generational trauma When the artist Charmaine Watkiss was a child, she frequently visited G Baldwin’s, a herbalist who sold natural remedies and essential oils in London’s Elephant and Castle, to pick up medicinal herbs and sarsaparilla for her mother. “They’ve had an apothecary for over 100 years,” she says. “It’s a place Black women used as a resource in the 1970s and 80s. You’d say: ‘I’ve got this ailment’ and they’d recommend something.” Watkiss’s mother was part of the Windrush generation who migrated from the Caribbean to the UK, and these memories sparked a new area of research for the artist before her first gallery show in 2021, The Seed Keepers, which explored the botanical links connecting the Caribbean, the UK and the African continent in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. “While in my studio, I thought: all this knowledge must have travelled with the enslaved.” Thus began Watkiss’s large-scale illustrated portraits depicting women of African descent alongside medicinal plants. Evoking historical botanical illustrations, the artist traces how the enslaved relied on herbal knowledge for survival. Continue reading...

As anti-migration policies sweep the continent, the Spanish PM is going against the tide by announcing plans to legalise the status of undocumented migrants • Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here You don’t need a degree in political science to understand why so many supposedly centrist European leaders have begun talking about immigration in terms that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. Far-right parties across the continent have fuelled their rise by seizing on the issue as a political cosh with which to beat their more mainstream and established rivals, whom they accuse of complacency, inaction and a failure to defend borders. Continue reading...

Anniversary depicts a rightwing takeover of the US inspired by a book of essays. But it’s fuzzy on the bits in between As we all know from history and the current news cycle, autocracy is bad. But it can also be boring. For every explosive confrontation in Minneapolis, there is a quieter, less tangible threat in the form of Kash Patel’s FBI seizing voting records from Fulton county, Georgia – a state Donald Trump lost by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020 – or the steady implementation of 900-page manifesto by the influential rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, neither of which lend themselves to blockbuster treatment. And so we have a problem: how to animate the quiet part of what’s happening in the US to reflect a dangerous but tedious reality – namely, that this thing ends not with a bang, but a combination of voter manipulation and federal electoral interference that undermines faith in the democratic process. I bring this up after a week of watching popular movies that resonate in Trump’s US, most of which go heavy on the firefights and light on the details of how we arrive at them. The latest, Anniversary, which launched this week on Netflix – a streamer increasingly uninterested in the subtleties of any situation, let alone this one – depicts a US in which an evil rightwing genius in the shape of a beautiful young woman talks the country into ditching democracy via the medium of (I love this detail; the sheer optimism of it) a stirring book of essays. Continue reading...

A new painting by the maestro of Trumpian kitsch offers a fever dream of musical unity – and fundamentally misunderstands orchestras and conductors. And where are the music stands? Events in the United States of Trumpland continue to reveal staggering new dimensions to the possibilities of orchestral music. Trump’s announcement that his “Trump Kennedy Center” is to be shut for a refit is a brilliantly cynical way to stop the noise when artists try to cancel their appearances during the rest of his presidential tenure: it’s shut already! Bigly losers, all of you! But that’s not the new dawn for the artform I’m talking about. I mean the inspirational painting unveiled by the maestro of Trumpian kitsch, Jon McNaughton (and stamped with the presidential seal of approval – ie a post on Truth Social). Continue reading...

The USMNT manager said players should stay out of conversations that don’t deal with soccer Last week, Mauricio Pochettino began a World Cup year with an unforced error. At the tail-end of a virtual press conference that covered a wide range of ongoing USMNT business, the 53-year-old Argentine – who has made himself commendably available to the American soccer press – was asked about recent comments by Tim Weah. Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on 12 May. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University. Continue reading...

Satellite images and witness testimony show destruction as IDF claims it was forced to take defensive measures Israeli forces have bulldozed part of a Gaza cemetery containing the war graves of dozens of British, Australian and other allied soldiers killed in the first and second world wars, satellite imagery and witness testimony reveal. Satellite imagery of the Gaza war cemetery in al-Tuffah, a district of Gaza City, shows extensive earthworks in the southernmost corner of the graveyard. Bomb craters can be seen around the cemetery, but in this area the destruction appears to have been more systematic. Continue reading...

Employees were told Wednesday that the paper’s sports desk would close among other cuts and restructurings Washington Post editor in chief Matt Murray on Wednesday morning announced internally a “broad strategic reset” that will result in “significant” layoffs across the company. Staffers at the Post have been on edge for weeks about the rumored cuts, which the publication would not confirm or deny. Leading up to Wednesday’s cuts, the atmosphere in the newspaper was “funereal”, one employee, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said. Continue reading...

Ministers urged to allow intelligence and security committee to review documents before publication UK politics live – latest updates Labour MPs have warned they will vote down a government amendment to limit the disclosures about Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador, with government sources saying they may be forced to change their own amendment. The former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and the chair of the Treasury select committee, Meg Hillier, have publicly asked the government to allow the intelligence and security committee to review the documents before public disclosure. Continue reading...

Company publicly denied allegations that primary forests were being cut down to fuel UK’s biggest power plant Senior executives at Drax raised concerns internally about the validity of the energy company’s sustainability claims while it publicly denied allegations that it was cutting down environmentally important forests for fuel, court documents have revealed. Britain’s biggest power plant assured ministers and civil servants of the company’s green credentials as it scrambled to defend itself against claims in a BBC Panorama documentary that it had burned wood sourced from “old-growth” forests in Canada. Continue reading...

Saltwater, survival backstroke and sheer mind over matter may have helped the teenager save his family, experts say Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast An Australian 13-year-old who swam 4km (2.49 miles) to shore and then ran 2km (1.24 miles) to get help for his stranded family has been described as “superhuman”. Experts say Austin Appelbee’s feat of endurance exceeded the limits of what is normally perceived as possible. So how was the teenager able to save the day, and is there any precedent for it? Continue reading...

The Games’ newest sport combines the seemingly impossible task of ascending a mountain on skis with hiking and then a rapid descent No one could suggest that the Winter Olympics are lacking in challenge. Skiers zipping down the slopes and flying through the air. Skeletons hurtling around at more than 100km/h. Ice skaters, metal-bladed, spinning, leaping and twisting. Slopestyle athletes pulling off the most outrageous tricks while landing the biggest air. But everyone from recreational skiers to the most extreme sports enthusiasts knows there is always room for more. Enter the new kid on the ice block at Milano Cortina 2026: ski mountaineering. The new challenge? How about going up the mountain, hiking a bit, followed by a rapid descent on the tiniest skis possible. Before you ask, “why”? Cast your mind over the other disciplines on the schedule and remember that the answer is almost always, “why not”? Continue reading...

Like the first cluster of snowdrops, a burst of white is a reminder to focus on the positive – just don’t go full snowman Everyone knows that the prettiest scraps of winter are the precious snow days. At this time of year, when it feels like we’ve been scurrying around in near-constant darkness like moles for as long as we can remember, we crave the brightness you get with snowfall – and the glamour of it, too. The disco-ball sparkle of frost is a counterpoint to chapped lips and three-week sniffles that won’t budge. We can’t make it snow, but we can create our own little flurry. A pop of snowy white is the best boost you can give an outfit right now. White is to January what rust and orange are to October: a colour pulled from nature to remind us of the best bits of the season. After all, autumn has grey skies and muddy puddles too, but we ignore them and lean into its gorgeous falling-leaf colours instead. Continue reading...

None of the six activists were convicted of any offence over break-in at Elbit Systems factory near Bristol in 2024 Six Palestine Action activists have been cleared of committing aggravated burglary over a break-in at an Israeli defence firm’s UK site. Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin were accused of threatening unlawful violence and using sledgehammers as weapons after a prison van was driven into Elbit Systems’ factory in Filton, near Bristol, on 6 August 2024. Continue reading...

‘Longest period of job shedding’ in 16 years taking place as business activity grows at fastest rate since August • Business live – latest updates Companies in the UK’s dominate services sector cut jobs last month, as they turned to “automation” rather than hiring new staff, a closely watched survey showed. The monthly purchasing managers’ index showed employment numbers fell more sharply in January compared with December, continuing a trend that started in October 2024. Continue reading...

Deal values cyber-attack specialist at a 60% premium and marks another loss for the London stock market A British company specialising in insuring against cyber-attacks which also covers fine art and luxury yachts has agreed to be taken over in a £8bn deal, as it became the latest loss to the London stock market. Beazley said on Wednesday it had agreed the deal with its larger rival Zurich, after the Swiss company raised its bid for the Lloyd’s of London insurer Continue reading...

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Wigmore Hall, London This young Berlin-based quartet impressed in a polished recital that built on Webern and Mendelssohn towards Beethoven’s enigmatic 0p 131 Even by the standards of Beethoven’s late quartets, his String Quartet No 14 in C sharp minor Op 131 is a strange piece. Opening with a lengthy fugue, it sprawls across seven movements – although one lasts only 11 bars and several run straight into each other. Moods shift quixotically. Motifs are obsessively repeated and developed. Beethoven supposedly considered it his finest quartet, but two centuries later this remains a work that asks a lot of its listener as well as its performers. No surprise, then, that the Berlin-based Leonkoro Quartet programmed this particular monument for their latest Wigmore Hall appearance since being shot to prominence with multiple wins in the 2022 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet competition. It’s an intensely serious statement of ambition from a group whose newest member was born in 2006 and who have recently garnered rave reviews for their second album. Continue reading...

Questioned at PMQs, PM says former US ambassador ‘lied repeatedly’ about depth of contact with child sex offender UK politics live – latest updates Keir Starmer has confirmed for the first time he knew about Peter Mandelson’s longer-term relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before appointing him US ambassador, saying the peer had “lied repeatedly” about the extent of his contact with the child sex offender. Questioned repeatedly at prime minister’s questions, Starmer said Mandelson had “betrayed our country” in his dealings with Epstein. Continue reading...

Cheshire coroner says there is ‘reason to suspect unnatural deaths’, with proceedings to begin in September A coroner has formally opened inquests into the deaths of five newborn babies who Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering. In a 20-minute hearing at Cheshire coroner’s court, the senior coroner Jacqueline Devonish heard brief details of the deaths before adjourning proceedings until September. Continue reading...

In the south American port city, an expressive Black ancestral community live full, self-fashioned lives protected by culture and identity Don’t already get The Long Wave in your inbox? Sign up here Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, it comes to you from Cartagena, Colombia, where I was attending a literary festival but, to be honest, have been mostly eating empanadas. It was my first time in Latin America, and I was not quite ready for a strange sort of culture shock, one that was as much about alienation as it was about recognition. I walked around the city in circles, trying to pound my way into absorbing a place of complex, layered histories. But it was Cartagena’s racial legacy that, at points, I found overwhelming. It sounds naive, but there is something about travelling halfway across the world to meet others of African descent that brings home the scale of the impact of centuries of enslavement. And it was in the “palenqueras” of Cartagena that I felt that history, in all its contradictions and legacies, resided. Continue reading...

Ryan Routh, convicted of attempting to kill the president at a West Palm Beach golf club in 2024, set to face sentencing Federal prosecutors will ask that a man convicted of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on a Florida golf course in 2024 be sentenced to life in prison at a hearing on Wednesday. Ryan Routh is scheduled to appear before US district judge Aileen Cannon in Fort Pierce. Continue reading...