THE GUARDIAN

Voting booths open across Australia as last polls suggest Albanese set to be re-elected as Australian prime minister. Follow today’s news livePolls tracker; Election guide; Interactive seat explorerParty policies; Micro parties explained; Full election coverageListen to the latest episode of our new narrative podcast series: GinaGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastUnder a perfect blue sky perhaps more reminiscent of home than the customary grey of London, ex-pats in […]

In a court filing, administration asks justices to lift a federal judge’s order to block so-called ‘department of government efficiency’ from access to the dataThe seeds were sown for yesterday’s ousting of Mike Waltz as national security adviser long before “Signalgate”, notes Politco.The outlet reports that his approach to the job was unpopular and Waltz was seen as too cocky. One person close to the White House said:He’s a staff, but he was acting like a principal.Waltz has […]

That distinctive ‘new furniture smell’ is a sign that harmful compounds are being released. Here are ways to sidestep the environmental and health risks of cheap furnitureChange by Degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprintGot a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.comYou’ve heard of fast fashion – but what about fast furniture?It’s the cheap stuff churned […]

No longer must we wince through a jarring Cockney-Kiwi mix: Hollywood has finally cracked Aussie dialects. Is it the teaching, the spread of Bluey, AI – or something else?Get our weekend culture and lifestyle emailAustralian actors have been putting on different accents for so long, and so undetectably, that one often stumbles upon surprise Aussies in films and shows. Sarah Snook was not the only Australian in Succession, for example; Nate Sofrelli, the political strategist and Shiv’s […]

Syria says at least one civilian killed in latest strikes, while most Druze leaders rebuff Israeli protectionIsraeli warplanes have carried out a series of airstrikes outside Damascus and across Syria, after warnings from Israeli officials that the country would intervene to protect the Syria’s minority Druze sect.The airstrikes targeted a Syrian military site in the Damascus suburb of Harasta, as well as hitting unknown targets in Deraa province in south Syria and Hama province in north-west […]

After losing personal security challenge, Duke of Sussex says he wants to make peace as he does not know how long Charles has to liveThe Duke of Sussex has said it is “impossible” for him to bring his wife and children back to the UK after losing his legal challenge over personal security, and revealed he would “love” a reconciliation with his family.In an emotional interview with the BBC, Prince Harry said his father, King Charles, would not speak to him “because of the security […]

After Google lost its first monopoly trial, government asks it to sell off units of its core internet ads businessGoogle on Friday faced a demand by the US government to break up its hugely profitable ad technology business. The request came after a judge found the tech giant was commanding an illegal monopoly for the second time in less than a year.“We have a defendant who has found ways to defy” the law, US government lawyer Julia Tarver Wood told a federal court in Virginia, as she urged […]

Norris ‘more confident than I have ever been’Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli takes debut sprint poleLando Norris wants only to focus on his racing as he attempts to re-establish his challenge for the Formula One world championship this season. The McLaren driver insists he has never been so confident in his own ability before this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, where he qualified in third place for Saturday’s sprint race and Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli took his debut F1 sprint pole.The British […]

Tottenham face West Ham before Bodø/Glimt second leg‘With all these things there’s really only one remedy: win’Ange Postecoglou says the only cure for the anxiety at Tottenham is for the team to end their 17-year wait for silverware. The manager felt the mood inside the club’s stadium shift sharply on Thursday night when they conceded for 3-1 towards the end of the Europa League semi-final first leg against Bodø/Glimt.Before that the atmosphere had been excellent, the players […]

Securing league crown has enabled earlier preparationSlot: ‘It definitely helps to attract new players as well’Arne Slot believes the emphatic nature of Liverpool’s title triumph and the emotional celebrations that followed will help the club beat off competition for their main transfer targets this summer.The Liverpool head coach gave his players two days off as reward for clinching a record-equalling 20th league title on Sunday, when a party was held at Anfield after the 5-1 rout of […]

Manchester City and Kevin De Bruyne know how to time a run perfectly, even if their long-lasting relationship is coming to an end. The Belgian’s dart into the box and clinical finish secured a fourth Premier League win in a row, at the expense of Wolves, to put City into third place and a step closer to qualifying for the Champions League.City will be as pleased with the hard-fought victory, inspired by a humorous Neil Warnock team talk at training on Thursday, as Wolves are disappointed to […]

Going to the Mill was bought by the literary editor of the Manchester Guardian and had remained in the familyA rare painting by LS Lowry bought for £10 has sold at auction for more than £800,000.The painting, Going to the Mill, was bought by the literary editor of the Manchester Guardian, Arthur Wallace, for £10 in 1926 and has been in the same family ever since. Continue reading...

Territory’s voluntary move comes as Trump administration makes good on pledge to end lawsuits against oil and gasPuerto Rico has voluntarily dismissed its 2024 climate lawsuit against big oil, a Friday legal filing shows, just two days after the US justice department sued two states over planned litigation against oil companies for their role in the climate crisis.Puerto Rico’s lawsuit, filed in July, alleged that the oil and gas giants had misled the public about the climate dangers […]

World No 5 beats Lorenzo Musetti 6-3, 7-6 (4)Draper will face Casper Ruud on SundayWhen he arrived in Madrid two weeks ago, Jack Draper was still just trying to find his rhythm on clay, a surface he knew he could play well on but one that had so far brought him nothing but misery.Now, after another of the best fortnights of his career, the 23-year-old will play for one of the biggest clay titles of all. He continued his sublime breakthrough run on Friday night by holding on in a bruising […]

Chinese sensation wins 17-7 after breathtaking displayWilliams hits back to level at 8-8 with TrumpZhao Xintong produced an amazing display of attacking snooker to knock out his hero, the seven-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, with a session to spare and reach the final of the World Snooker Championship.O’Sullivan was left helpless to respond to the brilliance of the Chinese sensation who had come through four rounds of qualifying to reach the final stages at the Crucible. Continue […]

The National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency are assisting with an inquiry, the group saidThe Co-op has apologised after hackers accessed and extracted data relating to a “significant number” of its customers from one of its systems.The group, which owns more than 2,000 grocery stores and more than 800 funeral parlours and offers legal and financial services, said hackers had been able to access personal data including names and contact details relating to an undisclosed […]

State Man secured his third straight victory in Champion Hurdle while Nicky Henderson said it was ‘a tough place to be’ after another poor showing by Constitution HillState Man, who was denied a repeat success in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham in March when he fell at the final flight, gained a measure of compensation here on Friday evening as he recorded a third successive win in Punchestown’s equivalent of the two-mile championship event. His task, though, was certainly made easier […]

Joseph Czuba, 73, killed Muslim boy and severely injured his mother in vicious attack days after war in Gaza beganAn Illinois landlord who killed a six-year-old Muslim boy and severely injured his mother in a vicious hate-crime attack days after the war in Gaza began was sentenced on Friday to 53 years in prison.Joseph Czuba, 73, was found guilty in February of murder, attempted murder and hate-crime charges in the death of Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen. Continue […]

With the pandemic in the rearview mirror it was clearly a boost for Fifa and Saudi Arabia but harmed grassroots sport and player welfareSound the trumpets, beat the drum, let loose the buttock-rockets of hope. One of the strangest and most unsatisfying things about the Covid‑19 pandemic, among a great many deeply strange and unsatisfying things, is that it never actually had a shared end date or ceremonial send-off.Jarringly so, because this was a period in the national life built around a […]

Five teams fight to avoid joining Cardiff and Plymouth in dropping to League One on the season’s final dayIt is high season for engravers, a fertile few weeks for after-dinner speakers to make hay at elaborate end-of-season dos, but not every Championship team has something worth celebrating. Last Saturday, three hours after Cardiff’s players sank to the turf when the final whistle confirmed their relegation to the third tier, a division the club has not played in for 22 years, the squad […]

Hard-right party wins byelection with 17-point swing from Labour and adds more than 500 council seats Local elections: full mayoral and council resultsNigel Farage claimed he had broken the grip of Britain’s two main political parties as Reform UK gained an MP and swept to a string of victories in England’s local elections, making deep inroads into Labour and Conservative heartlands.On a sobering day for Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch that brought immediate recriminations, Reform took […]

To mark the release of his new film, hundreds of people who sort of look like the actor gather outside Prince Charles cinemaOn a sunny, bustling late afternoon outside a cinema in Soho, central London, more than 100 people have gathered, a number of whom sort of, if you squint, look a little bit like the actor Nicolas Cage.There is a Raising Arizona Cage, moustachioed and with a Hawaiian shirt. There are several Con Air Cages in white vests, one of whom has a toy bunny in a small cardboard box. […]

Abbe Lowell, who defended Hunter Biden, launches Lowell & Associates with lawyers who quit over Trump ordersUS politics live – latest updatesA prominent lawyer in Washington who defended Hunter Biden against criminal charges has launched a new law firm to represent former government officials and others targeted by the Trump administration.Abbe Lowell left his large law firm, Winston & Strawn, to launch Lowell & Associates, which will defend clients including individuals, […]

The charge that Labour promised change but is delivering more of the same speaks to anxious and angry voters across the political spectrumThere is no such thing as a “safe” parliamentary seat. Last July, Labour won Runcorn and Helsby with a majority of 14,696 and more than 50% of the vote. This week it was lost to Reform UK. Dramatic byelection swings are not new, and often overinterpreted. If Labour had won seven more votes, the outcome in Runcorn would have been different and the […]

Giant spiders, slides and masterpieces – the gallery has become a cultural institution without losing its edgeThe novelist Ian McEwan tells a good story about the opening party for Tate Modern on 11 May 2000, when he was introduced to the then prime minister, Tony Blair, by the Tate director, Nicholas Serota. Mr Blair shook the author’s hand and told him that he was a big fan of his work and had some of his paintings in Downing Street.Yoko Ono, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Tennant were […]

Guardian readers respond to the Runcorn byelection and the local and mayoral resultsThe sudden apparent collapse in support for Labour witnessed in Thursday’s elections was perhaps not unexpected. While long predicted, it has taken many years for multi-party politics to become a reality here. The main cause would appear to be our winner-takes-all voting system, whose demise should surely now be inevitable.Last year it delivered a massive majority for a Labour party that won barely a third of […]

Readers respond to a piece by John Harris on how we are increasingly leaving navigation to our phones John Harris’s observations on the implications of using unsuitable phone apps for navigation when walking in the wilds resonated with me (We now leave navigation to our phones. The result: more of us are getting hopelessly lost, 27 April). In terms of practical advice, though, rather than using the Ordnance Survey app backed up with a paper map, I do it the other way round.Using a 1:25,000 OS […]

Lydia Mugambe stopped young Ugandan woman holding down steady job and made her work as her maid, court toldA UN judge has been jailed for six years and four months after forcing a young woman to work as a slave in the UK.Lydia Mugambe, 50, was found to have taken advantage of her status in relation to the Ugandan woman in the “most egregious way” while Mugambe studied for a PhD in law at the University of Oxford. Continue reading...

Sea lion grooving along to hits such as Boogie Wonderland helps show scientists rhythm is not exclusive to humansRonan the sea lion can still keep a beat after all these years.She can groove to rock and electronica. But the 15-year-old California sea lion’s talent shines most in bobbing to disco hits such as Boogie Wonderland. Continue reading...

The funeral of Pope Francis, the blackout in Spain and Portugal, May Day rallies and Salah’s selfie: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Continue reading...

Daniel Graham tells court it was suggested he accept responsibility ‘because I have mental health issues’One of the two men accused of felling the Sycamore Gap tree has denied being responsible and said he was asked to take the blame because he had mental health issues.Daniel Graham said his co-defendant, Adam Carruthers, was responsible for felling the tree next to Hadrian’s Wall. Continue reading...

Nigel Farage’s Reform roared ahead, while Labour and the Tories each had disappointments to manageLocal elections: full mayoral and council resultsThe electoral picture is broad, and a few results are still coming in. But enough has happened for each of the five main parties to have a good sense of how well or badly they did in Thursday’s local elections. Continue reading...

No thanks for Reform’s new MP and mayor, they were mere decoration on Farage’s victory lapReform UK is main opposition party, Nigel Farage claims after election winsLocal elections: full mayoral and council resultsNigel Farage is one of this century’s survivors. A man who walked away from not just a plane crash but any number of iterations of parties carved in his image. Rising from near-death experiences time and again. The last cockroach standing after a nuclear holocaust.In Reform, […]

This week’s election results are a huge boon for Reform UK. But success comes with more pressure, more scrutiny and the risk of bruising exposureWhat else would you expect from a byelection? Governments lose and this government is unpopular. To lose by a hair’s breadth – only six votes – is scant comfort in the forever Labour seat of Runcorn and Helsby, while Reform UK’s win of the mayoralty in Tory heartland Greater Lincolnshire is a symbolic blow to Kemi Badenoch. Both parties of […]

Nicola Packer tells court she had feared hospital staff ‘wouldn’t help me’ if they knew she had taken abortion pillsA woman on trial accused of having an illegal abortion has said she told hospital staff she had miscarried as she feared them knowing the truth would affect the level of care she received.Nicola Packer, 45, took abortion medicine during the Covid lockdown in November 2020, after being prescribed the pills in a remote consultation with a registered provider, a jury at […]