General news

• The Queen eases her workload - slightly

  20-12-2016 13:22
  Queen Elizabeth will step down as patron from a number of national organisations in the coming months after she turned 90 in April, Buckingham Palace said in a statement on Tuesday. Elizabeth, the world's longest-reigning living monarch, will pass her patronage of dozens of charities, academic institutions and sporting groups to other members of the royal family. "Her Majesty will continue to serve as Patron to hundreds of charities and institutions but will now share this work with her family,"
  
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• Middle East crisis live: Israel launches ‘wave of strikes’ on Tehran as Iran prepares for Ali Khamenei’s funeral

  04-03-2026 09:39 via theguardian.com
  US-Israeli war on Iran enters fifth day, with Iranian state media reporting explosions in east of TehranTrump administration has still not settled on reasons for warMiddle East attacks intensify as Trump rejects Iran’s attempt to talkLebanese state media said that four people were killed and six more were wounded in an Israeli strike on a building in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon on Wednesday.“The initial toll is four killed and six wounded, and work is underway to rescue families from
  
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• Middle East crisis live: explosions reported in Tehran as Iran prepares for Ali Khamenei’s funeral

  04-03-2026 09:34 via theguardian.com
  US-Israeli war on Iran enters fifth day, with Iranian state media reporting explosions in east of TehranTrump administration has still not settled on reasons for warMiddle East attacks intensify as Trump rejects Iran’s attempt to talkLebanese state media said that four people were killed and six more were wounded in an Israeli strike on a building in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon on Wednesday.“The initial toll is four killed and six wounded, and work is underway to rescue families from
  
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• Spain’s Sánchez says ‘no to war’ after Trump’s threats over Nato spending and use of bases – Europe live

  04-03-2026 09:32 via theguardian.com
  Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez says he opposes ‘repeating the mistakes of the past’Sánchez says his position is not naive – and says “what is naive is thinking that violence is the solution” or that “democracies or respect between nations can come from ruins.”He says Spain’s position is “not at all naive, but consistent.”“We will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world and that is also con
  
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• James Talarico wins Democratic primary for US Senate in Texas

  04-03-2026 09:25 via theguardian.com
  State lawmaker beats Jasmine Crockett in fiercely contested election marked by record turnout and confusion at pollsJames Talarico won the Democratic nomination for a US Senate seat in Texas on Tuesday, capping a remarkable rise from state lawmaker and seminary student to the party’s standard-bearer in one of the key races of the 2026 midterm cycle.With his blend of faith-based populism, bipartisan appeal and generational energy, Talarico defeated Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a firebran
  
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• War in Middle East threatens UK living standards growth, as markets brace for energy shock – business live

  04-03-2026 09:24 via theguardian.com
  Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsReeves’s spring statement? The economy is great, don’t worry about the Middle EastGlobal stock markets tumble as Trump bid to avert oil crisis in strait of Hormuz fails to reassureUK government bond prices are recovering a little of yesterday’s losses.This has pushed the yield, or interest rate, on UK two-year, 10-year and 30-year gilts down by around 3 basis points (0.03 percentage points). A small move, but one that su
  
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• Why Sinners should win the best picture Oscar

  04-03-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Ryan Coogler’s artful action-horror offers superb performances, rich storytelling, historical detail – and a jook joint scene that tears the roof offIt’s a symptom of the modern entertainment landscape that movies are now either commercially successful or critically acclaimed, but rarely both. Look over the highest-grossing films of 2025 and it’s a familiar roll call of sequels and spin-offs; look over the critics’ favourites and they are mostly fine movies that not
  
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• The US and Israel gravely underestimated Iran’s response – here in the UAE, we are seeing the consequences | Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi

  04-03-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  My family is in Tehran; I am in Abu Dhabi. Across the region, ordinary people are paying the price for these attacksSince Saturday, my mind has been torn between the place I live, Abu Dhabi, and Tehran, which has been the focus of my work and research for more than 15 years, and where I still have family. When I saw that Israel and the US had attacked Iran, I started worrying for family, thinking about potential consequences. But I barely had time to consider that before Donald Trump announced t
  
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• Cuba charges six exiles with terrorism in wake of deadly speedboat attack

  04-03-2026 08:01 via theguardian.com
  Detainees accused of coming from the US with intent to sow chaos and attack military units on Communist-ruled islandCuban prosecutors have formally charged six people with crimes of terrorism after a US-flagged speedboat was involved in a deadly shootout with Cuba’s coast guard last week.The US-based Cuban defendants are accused of packing a boat with weapons and heading toward Cuba in hopes of destabilising the government in Havana. Continue reading...
  
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• Women behind the lens: ‘The women watched the fuel tanker advance with uncertainty and fear’

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  On the Ecuador-Peru border the Siekopai people fight to protect the Amazon from the oil industry and other threats – and women are at the forefront of the resistanceIn June 2025, I accompanied a group of Siekopai women along the Aguarico River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Mothers, daughters, cousins and granddaughters had reunited to participate in the Binational Ceramics Gathering in Siekoya Remolino, a community that has remained free from oil extraction, mining and African palm monoculture
  
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• The Quantity Theory of Morality by Will Self review – raucously inventive state-of-the-nation satire

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Thirty-five years on from his debut collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Self takes aim at London’s chattering classes in an excoriating vision of moral declineIn Will Self’s 1991 debut collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity, an art therapist named Misha Gurney finds himself involuntarily sectioned in the psychiatric hospital where he is employed. In the title story, Misha’s father is revealed as a friend and early associate of the hospital’s chief ps
  
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• ‘That thrush just did something incredible’: tuning in to bird calls on a North York Moors walk

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  A guided walk through North Yorkshire woodland throws up some thrilling surprises by honing in on sound over sightAt the outset, Richard Baines says: “You don’t need binoculars.” This is not what I expect to hear on a walk where the main focus is birds. The sun has yet to rise, but we can see our way across muddy ground crunchy with ice. That is the next surprise in a day that will be full of them: we are still in February but Richard points out that ornithological spring is we
  
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• Sandra Jessen v Essen? Footballers facing nominative opposition teams | The Knowledge

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Plus: hat-trick heroes who were not named player of the match, managers sacked after big wins, and more Mail us with your questions and answers“A few weeks ago, Sandra Jessen started for FC Köln against Essen,” notes James Vortkamp-Tong. “Is this the first time a player has contained the opposing side’s name in their own?”It’s not actually the first time Sandra Jessen has played against Essen, as Alicia Butteriss points out. “From what I can tell sh
  
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• Quit ChatGPT: right now! Your subscription is bankrolling authoritarianism | Rutger Bregman

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon ValleyOpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is on track to lose $14bn this year. Its market share is collapsing, and its own CEO, Sam Altman, has admitted it “screwed up” an element of the product. All it takes to accelerate that decline is 10 seconds of your time.A grassroots boycott called QuitGPT has been spreading across the US and beyond, asking
  
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• Play Dead review – an intriguing high-concept horror that runs out of breath

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  A basement-bound thriller begins with a grisly jolt of invention before succumbing to diminishing returnsAs Carlos Goitia’s low-budget horror movie opens, we begin in medias res as a woman (Paula Brasca) wakes up in a standard murder basement: muted decor, very little natural light, a sturdy workbench with an impressive array of rusty tools, various masks made of skin. She immediately realises she is lying in a pile of corpses – all mutilated women. She herself is badly injured. Not
  
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• Liam Rosenior knows clock is ticking on Chelsea’s chance of Champions League spot

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  After ninth red card this season, Chelsea are running out of time to fix discipline issues and must turn things around at Aston VillaIt is natural for young people to feel they have all the time in the world. For Liam Rosenior, though, part of the challenge with Chelsea’s tyros is making them knuckle down. They have to realise the competition is about to heat up. The sun was shining at training this week and the warmer weather brings a greater sense of urgency. The yellow footballs ha
  
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• Iranian football enters post-Khamenei era with future shrouded in uncertainty

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  From the World Cup to the Women’s Asian Cup and the AFC Champions League, it is unclear what may happen nextA question about the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the head coach of the Iran women’s team before the Asian Cup was quickly, and unsurprisingly, shut down by officials in Australia. It is hard to know what Marziyeh Jafari could have said with events back home moving at an almost unimaginable pace. The former leader of Iran cast a large shadow over all walks of life and foo
  
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• Horizons and highways: Franco Fontana’s stunning photographic experiments – in pictures

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  A mesmerising new exhibition showcases the work of the Italian colour pioneer whose landscapes, motorways and swimming pools often seem more like abstract paintings Continue reading...
  
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• ‘He paints phalluses the way others paint landscapes’: the disturbing genius of erotica pioneer Félicien Rops

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  A new exhibition at Kunsthaus Zurich revisits the Belgian artist whose wild women of the demimonde scandalised the belle epoque – and still shock audiences todayDuring an oppressively hot week in Paris in 1878, the bohemian Belgian artist Félicien Rops painted a picture of a woman walking her pet pig. In it, the woman is blindfolded and naked – bar some stockings, long black gloves and a jaunty feathered hat – and the pig has a cute, pink curlicue of a tail. Pornocrates
  
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• Borthwick’s Six Nations spring clean makes a fresher-looking mix but raises questions over logic | Robert Kitson

  04-03-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Will it be the players’ fault if a slightly cobbled together England goes down in Roman flames after a selection that suggests the head coach’s patience snapped?The temperatures are rising, the daffodils are out and, within the England camp, the time has come for a major spring clean. Steve Borthwick has certainly snapped on his marigolds with rare vigour in his bid to banish his side’s February blues, with most areas of his team sheet either hosed down or completely flushed aw
  
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• A moment that changed me: my girlfriend criticised my kisses – and it led to the best decision of my life

  04-03-2026 07:45 via theguardian.com
  She said kissing me was like licking an ashtray, and I knew I had to quit smoking. But with a 40-a-day habit, it was no easy task ...In 1970, as an 18-year-old college freshman in Boston, living away from home for the first time, I started to smoke cigarettes. A pack a day grew in short order to two packs a day, or a cigarette about every 30 minutes.I choreographed my life around my smokes, puffing away after every meal, taking a drag with a drink and blowing smoke rings as I wrote, usually late
  
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• TV tonight: what really happened to John Cantlie in Syria?

  04-03-2026 07:20 via theguardian.com
  The first of a three-parter that investigates the missing British photojournalist. Plus, acerbic sitcom We Might Regret This. Here’s what to watch this evening9pm, BBC TwoWhat really happened to John Cantlie? This three-part documentary builds on the acclaimed Last Man Standing podcast to investigate the British photojournalist who “went into the hornets’ nest” for a news story and was kidnapped by a group of British Islamic State extremists in Syria. Fellow hostages, pol
  
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• Whuppity Scoorie: the Scottish spring ritual bringing a town together

  04-03-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Children racing round a church tower at Lanark Cross reflects a renewed sense of community and folklore in unsettled timesThe evening light is thinning at Lanark Cross and there is a hush. Then the wee bell in St Nicholas’s church tower, which has lain silent since last autumn, starts up its six o’clock chimes.The waiting crowd of children explodes into movement and noise. About a hundred youngsters, helped by grownups, then make three laps clockwise around the church, swinging homem
  
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• Want to stop Farage with your vote? At the moment you can’t – and Starmer must fix that | Polly Toynbee

  04-03-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  The PM’s in-tray is overflowing. But he can’t afford to neglect the real issue that is distorting our politics and the way we liveAt home and abroad, Labour and its leader are under siege. Though the Gorton and Denton result is history now, the repercussions roil his party and underpin the fight for its future.Abroad, the policy rift within the Labour tribe is just as bad, with the fear that the party will be dragged backwards into the wreckage of another illegal war in the Middle Ea
  
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• The girls of my Himalayan valley are not victims – education is the only bridge they need out of their isolation | Amreen Qadir

  04-03-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  In my tribe, the Dard Shin, girls’ dreams are often over by 13. It is time we cleared a path towards them all fulfilling their potentialI sit my office in Srinagar surrounded by the steady, safe hum of the secondary school where I work. As academic head, my mind is occupied with curriculums and pupil progress. But my soul is 130km north of the Jammu and Kashmir city, behind the jagged peaks of the Razdan Pass, in the silence of the Tulail valley.I am a daughter of the Dard Shin. We are a t
  
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• Stuffed peppers and aubergine dip: Sami Tamimi’s recipes for savoury Palestinian snacks

  04-03-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Peppers stuffed with freekeh, lamb and spicy tomato sauce, and a classic Levantine aubergine dip with preserved lemon and dillI still remember, when I was a kid, the end of spring and early summer when markets in Jerusalem and across Palestine overflowed with freshly harvested freekeh. As you approached, the air carried a smoky, earthy aroma. Freekeh is an ancient grain, a staple across the Middle East and Turkey, made from green wheat roasted over open fires to burn off the husks, which gives i
  
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• Protect caterpillars as UK’s moth population plummets, urge charities

  04-03-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Instead of removing plant-munching caterpillars, gardeners asked to take relaxed attitude to support the moths many of them grow intoAs spring unfolds and plants come to life, gardeners often fight a losing battle against the caterpillars who munch their cabbages.Traditionally, advice for gardeners regarding caterpillars would be about how to get rid of them and stop unsightly holes in plants. But the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and the Wildlife Trusts are asking Britons to take a relaxed
  
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• Middle East conflict offers economic lifeline to Russia’s flagging war machine

  04-03-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  With much of the world’s oil supplies out of action, Russia could step in to meet demand in China and IndiaA prolonged energy crisis triggered by the widening war in the Middle East could offer an economic lifeline to Russia’s war machine at a moment when it was beginning to show signs of strain.The sharp weakening and possible collapse of the regime in Iran would deprive the Kremlin of one of its closest regional partners. But that setback could be outweighed by an economic windfall
  
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• Young Sherlock review – the detective in Guy Ritchie’s geezerish caper has the charisma of a naff waiter

  04-03-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Loud, brash and blokey, it’s not nearly as fresh as the director’s last take on the sleuth 15 years ago. There are flashes of fun, even if Moriarty blows the lead off the screenGuy Ritchie has made a new TV series about Sherlock Holmes and the long and the short of it is … hmm. But first, some questions. Does the eight-part mystery-drama include scenes in which flippant young men in flat caps shout “Oi” while hurtling through the air in slow motion? It does. Are th
  
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• Three months into Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, has it been a success?

  04-03-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Getting platforms to comply with the restrictions was no small feat. But it’s too early to measure the real-world mental health outcomes As the UK becomes the latest country to consider following Australia’s lead on a social media ban for teenagers, a question Australians are repeatedly being asked is: how is it going?“Our data is still minimal,” says Caroline Thain, national clinical adviser with the mental health organisation Headspace. “We’re really waiting
  
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