With fewer than a third of council elections declared so far, the Conservative party appears on course to lose up to 500 seats UK politics latest updates At the start of a long weekend of election results, the first outcomes have been every bit as dire for the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak as analyst had predicted. With fewer than a third of the council elections declared, and none of metro mayoral yet in, here is the current state of play. Continue reading...

Result shows Starmer is heading for sizeable Westminster majority, while Sunak has failed to recover ground since taking over from Liz Truss For the fifth time since the start of 2023, Keir Starmer woke up on Friday morning to a byelection result that indicates that he will be prime minister by the end of the year. The Labour leader called the result in Blackpool South , where the partys candidate, Chris Webb, won with a swing of 26%, seismic and historic. Polling experts point out that even Ton

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news Rail ticket platform Trainline are the top riser on the FTSE 250 after doubling its operating profits in the last year. Trainline reported that its operating profits rose by 101% in the year to 29th February, from 28m to 56m. Continue reading...

Disastrous romp from producer Kevin Hart sees two teens desperately search for prom dates with unfunny results There are good reasons why many American teens stress about prom: its expensive, heightened, fraught with status and identity; the photos will haunt you forever; its a coming-of-age milestone freighted with significance, thanks in part to countless films and TV shows in which teens stress about prom. To that canon there is now a new throwaway entry: Hulus Prom Dates, a cringeworthy come

Court hears that Keith Davidson texted National Enquirer editor on night of Trumps 2016 victory to say What have we done? Donald Trumps Manhattan criminal trial enters its 11th day following raucous testimony about his increasingly unhinged underling and the tawdry business of celebrity sex scandals. Keith Davidson, the attorney representing Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, returned to the witness stand on Thursday. Davidson was grilled on his communications with former National Enquirer edito

With hints of orange, patchouli and even ginger beer, these uplifting fragrances are a joy for those turned off by overpowering bouquets I have three friends who loathe fragrance one because she suffers from migraines, one who thinks all perfumes smell the same, and another who just likes to annoy me. Ive cured all but the last with what I misleadingly describe as anti-perfume perfumes scents with a more natural aroma, that bed down politely on the skin without the dizzying whiff of department

Simon Chambers film about his late uncle David makes for candid and compelling viewing. Along with one of Davids former pupils, and a fan of his film, he talks care, contempt and infatuation Ive always liked the company of older people, says Julian Clary, still smoothly beautiful at 64. I like the fact theyve lived a life they are often assumed not to have done. He pauses. What old people dont know about recreational sex, he continues, cadence familiar as a cuckoo, you could write on the back of

The way that Wizards of the Coast is treating this venerable game is totally at odds with how its players see it The words hit players of the worlds favourite tabletop role playing game like a magic missile straight to the heart. Dungeons & Dragons has never been more popular, and we have really great fans and engagement, said Cynthia Williams, former CEO of D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast, in December 2022 at an investor-focused web seminar. But the brand is really under-monetised. In the ru

The policy has always been a sordid theatre of cruelty, and it is unravelling in ways that were entirely predictable Handcuffed and surrounded, faces pixelated for the video as if they were dangerous criminals, one by one they were bundled into vans. Doors slammed. Keys clicked in locks. The crude political message from this disturbing eve of election video , showing men and women being rounded up for deportation to Rwanda, couldnt have been clearer despite Whitehall rules precluding partisan a

Last year I logged into iFollow to watch Cambridge maintain their League One status. This year I did exactly the same As middle age creeps along, I am continually finding new, and less interesting, ways to measure the passing of time. For much of my 20s and all of my 30s I lived on a street with a food market and after a coupleof years of burritos and Turkish flatbreads, I realised the greatest advantage was the refuse collection. Everydaywas bin day. I took this freedom and wild abandon for was

Money is always the elephant in the room, and can be even harder to talk about than sex but we can all benefit from a frank conversation, says Annalisa Barbieri, kicking off our You be the judge money special The one item you will never see ina currency exchange table iswhat money sooften stands in for. It can take the place of things like love, thought, safety, attention or fairness. And the inverse is also true; you often dont need to spend a lot of money to make someone feel loved, or cared

I played on tour for 16 years and I was ready for Luca Guadagninos new movie to fail. But its the most accurate depiction of the tennis life I have seen on screen On a hot spring day in Munich, I went to a small movie theatre in the basement of an apartment building, dreading the prospect of missing an evening in the setting sun, possibly with a Bavarian beer in hand. The whole city seemed to be anxiously anticipating the upcoming Champions League semi-final between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid

The former world champion fears for the current holder, who is out of form before title defence against 17-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju Magnus Carlsen fears that Ding Liren may have been permanently broken following the world champions poor performances at Wijk aan Zee in January and in the Freestyle event in Germany in March. Carlsen, who remains the world No1 despite abdicating the title in 2023 after a 10-year reign, made his comments on a podcast last week in which he and David Howell also disc

The best of this weeks wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Israel has not said how it learned of the death of Dror Or, who was kidnapped on 7 October It has gone 9.30am in Gaza and in Tel Aviv . This is our latest Guardian live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. An Israeli man held hostage in Gaza since the 7 October Hamas attack has been confirmed dead, according to the government. A UN agency said on Thursday that rebuilding Gaza will cost an estimated $30bn to $40bn and require an effort on a scale unseen since the second w

A bureaucrat in near-future London finds love with a Victorian Arctic explorer in a thrilling debut that takes a deep dive into human morality For a book to be good really good, keep it on your shelf for ever good it has to be two things: fun and a stretch . You have to need to know what happens next; and you have to feel like a bigger or better version of yourself at the end. Airport thrillers are almost always fun; much contemporary autofiction is just a stretch, largely because its very har

Experts fear children questioning their gender may turn to hidden economy to obtain hormones illegally Cross-sex hormones designed to masculinise or feminise a persons body are available to buy online for less than 11 a month, with experts warning that growing numbers of under-18s may turn to the medicines hidden economy. Last month the landmark Cass review of childrens gender treatment in England concluded there was a lack of reliable evidence supporting the use of cross-sex hormones and pubert

From a cottage built into sand dunes with its own stargazing room to an eco cabin-style home in a walkers paradise Continue reading...

Sundays Sounds from the Other City festival is a joyful celebration of Greater Manchesters leftfield culture On the first Sunday of May every year, Chapel Street, where central Manchester and Salford meet, comes alive with DIY art, music and spectacle at the Sounds from the Other City festival. It is a vibrant public celebration of the community spirit and collaborative working which co-director Emma Thompson says sustains much alternative culture in the region. Collaboration is core to what we

In history, as in romance, beginnings matter so what we do now will be crucial in shaping the future In these times of planetary polycrisis, we try to get our bearings by looking to the past. Are we perhaps in The New Cold War , as Robin Niblett, the former director of the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, proposes in a new book? Is this bringing us towards the brink of a third world war, as the historian Niall Ferguson has argued ? Or, as I have found myself suggesting on occasion, is t

Since 2014 Spanish photographer Daniel Ochoa de Olza has been portraying the girl participants in a spring festival held in Colmenar Viejo outside Madrid. His portraits bear witness to his fascination with the enduring nature of Spains rituals With obscure origins in pagan customs and dating back to medieval times, the festivities of La Maya offers a strange and colourful spectacle celebrating the arrival of spring. Every year on 2 May the families of girls aged between seven and 11 gather to de

Appeal tribunal orders firm to share details on hundreds of thousands of tonnes of outflows into North Sea A water company that tried to keep secret details of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of raw sewage discharges into the sea has been ordered by an appeal tribunal to release the data in the public interest. Northumbrian Water has repeatedly refused to release details about the scale of raw sewage discharges into the North Sea from an outflow at its pumping station in Whitburn, after a campai

Joel Edgerton leads a freaky, scary existential thriller about an abduction, and a wild new tale from the makers of Fyre and Tiger King We meet physicist Jason Dessen ( Joel Edgerton ) teaching students the theory of Schrdingers Cat: can two states of existence run concurrently? If so, can either of them be said to be real? In this moody adaptation of Blake Crouchs sci-fi novel (by the author himself), Dessen is about to experience a brush with quantum mechanics. He visits a bar to celebrate a f

The musician is an open book in a revealing interview. Plus: a dead cat gets in the way of a breakup in Avoidance. Heres what to watch this evening 11pm, BBC Four Continue reading...

As the climate crisis forces people to abandon their land in Rajasthan, a new industry has sprung up in the desert state, with thousands of gaily decorated vans setting off to sell ice-cream across the country The parched villages of Gangapur in the desert state of Rajasthan have a new season in their calendar. Between November and February , car workshops along the towns dusty mile-long market open before sunrise, cylindrical stainless-steel food containers are put on display, and traders stock

From sunglasses to sandals, our styling editor puts together outfits for stepping outside and shining Continue reading...

Our system is full of loopholes and vulnerable to millionaires and plutocrats demands. Voters simply need clean, fair politics Theres a sensible rule in British politics: it should not be funded by foreign donors . Democracy is meaningless if a country isnt run at the behest of its people. But the rule is riddled with loopholes. Those who have done the most to keep them open are those who most loudly assert their patriotism. Noisy patriots are always the first to sell us out to offshore capital.

Civil servant Josie Stewart spoke to media after government presented dishonest account, tribunal told A Foreign Office civil servant felt morally compelled to speak to the media about the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after the government presented a dishonest account of what happened, an employment tribunal has heard. Josie Stewart was sacked by the Foreign Office (FCDO) after blowing the whistle on the failures of the withdrawal from Kabul and disclosing emails indicating Boris Johnsons

Mutualits Libres among 140 health and environment experts calling for more clean air measures One of Belgiums mutual health insurers has been taking a closer look at the countrys three low emission zones. Dr Luk Bruyneel, a health and economics expert at Mutualits Libres , explained: As a health insurance fund, we have to protect the health of our members. As air pollution is a major health risk, we want to contribute evidence to the debate. Health insurance data for our 2.3 million members allo

Although it is often hilarious, Clarksons ever-compelling show is back with shocking and harrowing insights into the truth about British farming. Tissues at the ready! Oh, to be in charge at Prime Video. Imagine spending $465m on a Lord of the Rings remake that hardly anyone appeared to actually enjoy, when it turns out that sticking a few cameras on a tractor while a famous curmudgeon tries to explain the impossibilities of farming in Britain today will give you the biggest show on the platform

Advances in fields such as spectrometry and gene sequencing are unleashing torrents of new data about the ancient world and could offer answers to questions we never even knew to ask. By Jacob Mikanowski Continue reading...

Ex-central banker Lady Shafik, the universitys president, now faces calls to resign due to her handling of campus unrest Steering Columbia University through the choppy waters of anti-Israel student protests was never going to be easy for Minouche Shafik, a member of the UK House of Lords who took over as president of the university in New York after a period of relative calm running the London School of Economics. During her tenure as LSE director between 2017 and last year, academics largely r

Songwriting courses are exploding in popularity, with everyone from Mark Ronson to Alicia Keys as teachers. On a retreat in north Wales, our folk music critic tries to write her first song Imagine youve spent the past 20 years writing about songs but never had the chops to write one. This is my penance: sitting in a room in north Wales, with a tiny keyboard and notebook spidery with attempted lyrics, the only rhythm in my ears my rave-energy heartbeat, the only melody in my mind the lilting pani

Threats from the state have led many journalists across the world to flee their home countries to report from elsewhere. But for many the intimidation did not stop when they left Illustrations by Joe McKendry Fardad Farahzad, journalist, Iran International Continue reading...

Four in 10 politicians report low or very low mental wellbeing, and some are being driven out. What can be done to ease the burden? It was a political bombshell, one that prompted shock and set off debate across much of Spain. But for the film director Pedro Almodvar, news that the prime minister, Pedro Snchez, was considering resigning last week did not come as a surprise. Theres no human being who can resist what the most resistant of our presidents has been suffering in recent years, Almodvar

As humans enter what has been termed the third space age, its private companies not governments leading the charge If the 20th-century space race was about political power, this centurys will be about money. But for those who dream of sending humans back to the moon and possibly Mars, its an exciting time to be alive whether its presidents or billionaires paying the fare. Space flight is having a renaissance moment, bringing a fresh energy not seen since the days of the Apollo programme and, f

Chris Webbs byelection victory with more than 7,500-vote majority hailed as most important result of night by Labour leader Local and mayoral election results live updates Labour has regained the seat of Blackpool South in Thursdays parliamentary byelection, in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunaks leadership. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, called it a seismic win. The local and firm favourite Chris Webb won with 10,825 votes, followed by David Jones, the Conservative candidate, with a distant 3,218 v

The history of how the all-American breakfast snack was created is served up with lashings of goofiness in this comedy caper Standup veteran Jerry Seinfeld makes his directing debut with this decent family comedy that puts a surreal twist on the history of Pop-Tarts, one of the USs most beloved snacks: the sheer goofiness and disposable pointlessness are entertaining. Seinfeld created the film with co-writers Spike Feresten, Andy Robin and Barry Marder, the same writing team that worked on Bee M

With the threat of famine and the invasion of Rafah looming over Gaza, the leaders of Israel and Hamas are discussing a ceasefire deal. Julian Borger reports The outlook in Gaza appears bleak. A famine looms if not more aid is brought in, while Israel has said it is preparing to invade Rafah, the southern city where half the civilians in Gaza are sheltering. But there is a glimmer of hope. In Cairo a deal between Israel and Hamas has been tabled and the two sides are discussing whether to accept

Results from more than 100 English councils, as well as for several mayors, are announced as polls predict heavy Conservative losses. Find out what happened in your area Local elections: latest updates Continue reading...

Government arts spokesperson Todd Stephensons inability to name a New Zealand author for 20 minutes in an interview has rightfully raised eyebrows Politicians are used to being asked tough questions and voters are, by now, used to their stalling in response. Still, you might not imagine that name a New Zealand author could ever be one of them especially for a New Zealand politician, holding an arts portfolio. Yet thats exactly how the ACT partys arts spokesperson, Todd Stephenson, has surprise

Frances Macron stands firm on potentially sending troops; sanctions on Russian gas leave Gazprom with record annual loss. What we know on day 800 See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverage Continue reading...

The launch of the uncrewed Change-6 is part of Chinas effort to put a human on the lunar surface by 2030 China will attempt another mission to the far side of the moon on Friday, the first of three planned over coming years as part of its goal to land a human on the lunar surface by 2030. The launch of the uncrewed Change-6 is expected sometime between 8.30am GMT and 11am GMT and the mission if successful would go far to bolster Chinas ambitions to put a man on the moon by 2030. Continue readi

Voxelotor, which can help reduce need for blood transfusions, is administered as a daily tablet A new treatment for sickle cell disease has been recommended by the health watchdog in a move described as life-changing for people living with the condition in England. The drug, Voxelotor, has been recommended for use on the NHS in England by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) in people with the disease who are aged 12 and over. Continue reading...

(Warner Records) The British superstar has said her new album is influenced by Britpop, rave culture and Primal Scream, but you could go mad trying to find the evidence Earlier this year, Dua Lipa gave a lengthy magazine interview, the first salvo on the promotional trail for her third album. It wasnt very interesting shes smart enough to keep her private life and her opinions on anything contentious to herself in a world of over-sharing and constantly simmering online outrage but there was on

Hungerford, Berkshire: Behind all the top hats and ales, Hocktide is more than just a re-enactment of local folklore The knobbly pollarded street trees along Hungerfords broad rural high street are maypoled with ribbons. Its quietish, as usual. But at intervals, a small crowd in top hats, carrying oranges, baskets and beribboned poles of yellow and blue flowers, emerges from each house and enters another in turn. The pebbledashed frontage of two cottages conceals the two halves of a medieval cru

Post featured compromising image of the broadcaster Narinder Kaur, who said she was left incredibly upset Police are investigating a social media post by Laurence Fox in relation to an upskirting offence. The tweet, posted on Tuesday, featured a compromising image of Narinder Kaur, a broadcaster on Good Morning Britain and GB News. The post remained on Foxs account until it was deleted on Thursday. Continue reading...

Wigan 30-8 Catalans Warriors score 24 unanswered second-half points Given the standards Wigan have set in the past couple of years, there was plenty of intrigue over how they would perform here after the disappointment of their defeat to HullKingston Rovers last Friday. The coach, Matt Peet, and his players made no secret of how poor they were in that loss and while off-colour performances are inevitable from time to time in a marathon Super League season, it is how sides respond to those setbac

Unesco joint research dating back 15 years found violence and intimidation against about 750 reporters and 44 murders More than 70% of environmental journalists have been attacked for their work since 2009, according to a Unesco report, which warns of rising threats against those covering the climate crisis. At least 749 environmental journalists have faced violence and intimidation in the last 15 years, the UN body found. It said that 44 reporters were murdered between 2009 and 2023 but that re

Pair now expected to link up at the Scuderia in 2025 season Adrian has such a great history, says Hamilton in Miami Lewis Hamilton has said he would consider it a privilege to work alongside Adrian Newey at Ferrari if the British designer, who announced he was tois leaving Red Bull earlier this week, was to choose to join the Scuderia for whom Hamilton will race next season. Newey, the most successful F1 car designer of the modern era announced on Wednesday he was leaving after almost two decade