The US military has begun moving aid ashore in Gaza, as the UN says truck convoys by land remain the most efficient way of getting aid in
Israel on Friday attacked South Africa’s case against it in the international court of justice as an “obscene exploitation” of the genocide convention, claiming it aimed not to protect Palestinian civilians but to defend Hamas militants.
Israel’s representatives told the court their country was fighting a war of self-defence it “did not want and did not start”. They said Israel had made “extraordinary” efforts to protect civilians, and had complied with orders from the court to let more aid into Gaza.
Jan Leike, a key safety researcher at firm behind ChatGPT, quit days after launch of latest AI model, GPT-4o
A former senior employee at OpenAI has said the company behind ChatGPT is prioritising “shiny products” over safety, revealing that he quit after a disagreement over key aims reached “breaking point”.
Jan Leike was a key safety researcher at OpenAI as its co-head of superalignment, ensuring that powerful artificial intelligence systems adhere to human values and aims. His intervention comes before a global artificial intelligence summit in Seoul next week, where politicians, experts and tech executives will discuss oversight of the technology.
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This morning, I saw a group of Newfoundland dogs dressed as punks being taken for a walk along the seafront. At Stanley Park, the spectators are gathering, caps, rucksacks, newspapers, coffee. Out in the middle, Ben Stokes, in shorts and t-shirt, is bowling.
Ben Stokes had not played a Championship match for two years. He had not bowled properly since the Lord’s Test last year, excluding that cameo wicket-with-his-first-ball five-over spell during England’s fifth Test innings defeat to India in Dharamsala in March. Blackpool’s amphitheatre might not match the majesty of the Himalayas, but it was good enough for Stokes on his comeback, pounding with increasing vigour across the Stanley Park clod.
Campaigners say move to electronic permits by end of the year is a ‘recipe for disaster’ that could leave immigrants without proof of status
Lawyers and migrant rights campaigners have warned that the government is heading for a repeat of the Windrush scandal after imposing a “cliff edge” deadline for immigrants to switch to new digital visas.
By the end of this year an estimated 500,000 or more non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK will need to replace their physical biometric residence permits (BRPs) – which demonstrate proof of their right to reside, rent, work and claim benefits – with digital e-visas.
In thrall to a character who may not truly exist any more, the Labour leader kicked off his election campaign in Purfleet
Tim Burrows is the author of The Invention of Essex
Call him Southend Keir. The kind of geezer who when in search of a new job – in this case the next prime minister of the UK – rolls up his sleeves and takes himself to dockside Essex. That’s where the Labour leaderlaunched his six pledges for the next election on Thursday, in an aircraft hangar-sized rehearsal space in Purfleet, a town in Thurrock known for its 18th-century gunpowder battery. But there were no explosive pledges. Instead, there were anaesthetised assurances that if elected, Labour will, tentatively, try to make people’s lives a little bit better. Just not straight away.
The significance of Essex was not lost on the Times, which pointed out the party’s attempts “to win over the modern equivalent of Blair’s ‘Essex man’”. Simon Heffer, the Telegraph columnist, came up with the term Essex man in 1990 to describe a new kind of voter who materialised during the Thatcher era. He had sharp elbows and worked as a trader in the City of London, near to where his unionised father had worked on the docks. He may have grown up in a socially rented east London flat, but he now lived in leafier environs on the other side of the newly built M25, where he was likely to have bought a council house.
The photographer and her husband came across an abandoned boat while out walking and took the opportunity to float a surreal idea
Every September, Carla Vermeend and her husband go on holiday to Terschelling island, in the Netherlands.
“It has lots of nature, right in the middle of the Wadden Sea, which is listed by Unesco as a world heritage site,” says Vermeend, a Dutch photographer. During their visit in 2014, the couple were walking by the sea together.
Make up a big batch of tahini sauce with herbs, quick preserved lemons, experiment with all sorts of pestos, or try zhoug and shatta, two punchy Levantine chilli condiments
I love the green tahini sauce with the roast cauliflower in your book Simple – it livens up even the most joyless of midweek meals. What other easy sauces should I have in my repertoire to give plain dishes a bit of zhoosh? Joe, Liverpool I’m so pleased you’ve asked this question, Joe, because sauces and pastes are one of the secrets to exciting home cooking. They’re little flavour bombs, sitting ready in the fridge, to drizzle over or stir into all sorts.
Tahini sauce, green or otherwise, is one of my favourites. If I don’t have herbs at home, or if I just fancy a change, I’ll often mix in some miso or soy for a deep, savoury hit. Or, if I want some chilli heat, I’ll add chilli flakes, harissa or similar chilli pastes such as doubanjiang and gochujang; just remember to add plenty of lemon or lime juice to balance things out.
The singer on eating junk food in bed, a $100k holiday he didn’t even go on, and the perks of fame
Born Montero Lamar Hill in Georgia, Lil Nas X, 25, rose to fame in 2019 with his single Old Town Road, which won many awards, including two Grammys. In 2021, he released his debut album Montero, which featured the hits Montero (Call Me By Your Name), Industry Baby and Thats What I Want. The following year, he completed his first worldwide tour. The documentary Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero – directed by Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel and released on digital platforms on 20 May – sees him navigating issues of identity, family and acceptance as he embarks on the tour. He lives in Los Angeles.
When were you happiest? Maybe on tour when I was in Argentina. Yeah, or Brazil: oh my God, those people out there.
Game-changing books that offer hope, as recommended by speakers at this year’s Hay festival, including Theresa May, Tom Holland, Helen Garner and Jon Ronson
Last year British taxpayers spent 800 years waiting to speak to HMRC. This is the price of a world digitised on the cheap
In taking stock of how we spend our days, no one likes to think of all the hours we’ve spent on the phone to the tax office. Yet that and other necessary administrative evils are increasingly taking up our precious time.
Taxpayers spent an accumulated total of almost 800 years on hold on the phone with HM Revenue & Customs last year, according to the National Audit Office, the government’s spending watchdog. It’s one of those stats that short-circuits the brain: more than the combined lifetimes of all the people to whom our call is inevitably transferred, should anyone ever actually answer it.
Previous £25,000 maximum no longer enough to fund some home improvements, says building society
Nationwide building society has doubled the maximum personal loan it will offer borrowers to £50,000, citing the continued increase in building costs as the reason for the change.
The society previously offered up to £25,000 for qualifying customers but said this was no longer enough to fund some home improvement projects.
News avatars are proliferating on social media and experts say they will spread as the technology becomes more accessible
The news presenter has a deeply uncanny air as he delivers a partisan and pejorative message in Mandarin: Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, is as effective as limp spinach, her period in office beset by economic under performance, social problems and protests.
“Waterspinach looks at waterspinach. Turns out that waterspinach isn’t just a name,” says the presenter, in an extended metaphor about Tsaibeing “Hollow Tsai” – a pun related to the Mandarin word for water spinach.
There was more business than usual and some bemused regulars after El Califa de León was rewarded for its ‘exceptional’ offering
El Califa de León, an unassuming taco joint in Mexico City, measures just 3 metres by 3 metres and has space for only about six people to stand at a squeeze. Locals usually wait for 5 minutes between ordering and picking up their food.
All that changed on Wednesday, however, when it became the first Mexican taco stand ever to win a Michelin star, putting it in the exalted company of fine dining restaurants around the world, and drawing crowds like it has never seen.
The two fighters have experienced epic highs and crushing lows in the lead-up to Saturday’s undisputed decider
His eye-catching size and improbable name earned Tyson Fury attention but his amateur career was marked by frustration. Fury fought only 35 times (31-4) and his dream of going to the 2008 Olympics was shattered when David Price – responsible for one of those four defeats – was selected as Team GB’s super-heavyweight for Beijing. After a failed attempt to qualify for the Ireland team, a disillusioned Fury almost quit the sport at the age of 19. “My age of innocence was smashed,” he said. “For a while I didn’t go near the gym because I was so upset.”
Unusual storylines are growing ever rarer due to the influence of the super-rich and nation states in our national game
Admit it, when Erik ten Hag walked out holding a microphone after Manchester United’s final home game on Wednesday night you also thought he was going to start saying things like “Your job now is to support the new manager”, before marching off to write books containing anecdotes about Richard Branson.
In the event the most notable part of Ten Hag’s speech was how convincing he is when he frowns into a mic and says things. Ten Hag could stab himself in the eye with a kebab skewer and stand there in the centre circle, kebab skewer pyoing-ing up and down, explaining why this is actually a really good thing and a sign of genuine progress and you’d think, yeah, kebab-skewer-eye-guy really is on to something. He just needs time. Maybe with patience and a proper process he can stab himself in the other eye too.
The German’s nine-year Anfield tenure has contained some unforgettable highs – and a handful of agonising near-misses
Recruiting Jürgen Klopp was a coup for Fenway Sports Group – Liverpool were not what they are now in 2015 – and his willingness to end a planned year-long sabbatical after four months to take the job generated a level of excitement and anticipation among supporters rarely witnessed before. It would not be misplaced. After signing a three-year contract at the city’s Hope Street hotel, and before going for a drink with his family at a bar around the corner, Klopp gave his first interview as Liverpool’s manager. “The message to those Liverpool supporters?” he asks, rhetorically. “We have to change, from doubter to believer. Now.” He had the entire club onside from the word go.
Bournemouth’s manager on Marcelo Bielsa’s lessons, his love for cycling and why Unai Emery should beat him to awards
After an unforgiving start, Andoni Iraola has enjoyed an eye-catching first season in the Premier League, leading Bournemouth to their best points tally in the division, with a top‑half finish a distinct possibility heading into the final day. His work, imposing a breathless, aggressive style on a dynamic team, has earned him a nomination for the manager of the season award, as well as a new contract. As he approaches his first anniversary in charge next month, the closest thing to a grumble – as an avid cyclist – is the dearth of hilly terrain in Dorset. “The longest one is 200m,” he says with a smile, raising and then drooping his right hand. “It stops just as you are getting started.”
Raised in the Basque Country, the cycling heartland of Spain, Iraola has long been fascinated by the endurance and precision at the crux of competing on two wheels. During pre-season in Marbella last summer he was glued to the Tour de France over dinner and it was similar in his playing days, the majority spent at his boyhood club Athletic Bilbao, whom he captained to the Europa League final under Marcelo Bielsa in 2011-12. The pressures have changed since then.
Children crying out for stability are paying the highest price for Britain’s chaotic and exploitative residential care
I’m a patron of a small local charity that helps struggling children to rebuild trust and connection. It’s called Sirona Therapeutic Horsemanship, and it works by bringing them together with rescued horses. The horses, like many of the children, arrive traumatised, anxious and frightened. They help each other to heal. Children who have lost their trust in humans can find it in horses, which neither threaten nor judge them, then build on that relationship gradually to reconnect with people.
It’s an astonishing, inspiring thing to witness, as the children begin to calm, uncurl and find purpose and hope. It can have life-changing results. But, though I can in no way speak on Sirona’s behalf, I’m painfully aware that such charities can help only a tiny fraction of the children in desperate need of stable relationships, trust and love.
Gender stereotypes at home may hamper female students’ ability to progress in the classroom, research suggests
Parents are more likely to overestimate maths ability in sons than daughters, according to research that suggests that gender stereotypes at home may hinder the progress of female students.
The findings, presented in a lecture at University College London this week, found that parents tend to be overconfident about their children’s academic performance in reading and maths regardless of gender. But, in maths, parents overestimated boys’ skills to a significantly greater extent.
People who receive the new state pension can get thousands a year more than those on the old basic scheme
Sheila receives the basic state pension and says it is a struggle to make ends meet. “We’re supposed to survive on pocket money,” says the widow, aged 81. “I don’t go out because I can’t afford it. I used to go for a coffee to treat myself but not any more. It’s too expensive. If I buy clothes it is at the charity shop.
“The way we have to live is not nice at all. There’s masses of people in the same position. It makes you isolated because if you can’t go out and have a little spend it is not living is it?”
A vivid cultural of digestion, from ancient Greece to All-Bran
Some people, observed Samuel Johnson, “have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.” And while we are minding our belly, our belly minds us: so, at least, we are encouraged to think by modern hymns to the wisdom of the enteric nervous system and the gut microbiome, to which all manner of marvels are increasingly attributed.
Here, then, is a book-length exercise in minding the belly: a vivid cultural history of changing metaphorical, political and scientific visions of our guts. The stomach is a-flutter when we are in love, and the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, though not for laparoscopic surgeons. (That phrase was apparently coined by the 19th-century American journalist Fanny Fern.) But our guts are also cerebral: the Greek physician Galen first observed that the stomach seemed to possess its own kind of intelligence, and to trust your gut is to tune into a more reliable source of truth. Donald Trump is here marvellously quoted as insisting that his gut can tell him more than other people’s brains can.
The author, a health historian, displays a touch of that academic tic whereby a book constantly narrates that it has just talked about something and is going to talk about something else next, but she is an engaging writer and adeptly traces a network of fascinating changes in ruling metaphors. “Today we speak in ecological terms – adverts for probiotics encourage us to nurture the microbial garden within – but in early modern Europe the stomach was imagined as being more alike to the bustling kitchen of a great country house, while 18th-century physicians fussed over it as a nervously afflicted invalid and through the Victorian period it was frequently condemned as an irascible foe, an enemy within implacably opposed to its owner’s comfort.”
In the long-running fable of the body politic, meanwhile, the digestive system has been two opposed things in series: first, an unruly populace to be kept in its place by a wise head; then the site of authentic proletarian value. The 20th-century American philosopher Stanley Cavell, discussing such metaphors in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, concluded splendidly: “No one is in a position to say what the right expression is of our knowledge that we are strung out on both sides of a belly.”
For some, our ungovernable guts have always stood in the way of progress and humanity’s perfection, both technological and spiritual. The 17th-century hermit Roger Crab became famous for his ascetic diet of “herbes and roots”: only vegetarianism could lead to godliness. A prominent Victorian doctor, meanwhile, denounced the stomach as a “strangely wicked and ungrateful” organ that was “implacably opposed to man’s progress and comfort”. In the early 20th century, vivisectionists discovered new facts about the machinery of digestion by means of horrific experiments on living dogs in packed lecture theatres, and suffragists on hunger strike were force-fed by violence.
Women in particular, Richardson shows, have long been the focus of worries about digestion. Many accusations of witchcraft in the early modern period centred on allegations that women had spoiled food or milk; centuries later, constipation became coded as a particularly female complaint, to be cured by such quasi-medicinal products as Bile Beans (an Australian laxative introduced in 1899, to keep female customers “healthy, happy & slim”) and Kellogg’s cereals, which according to one 1930 advert for All-Bran would preserve a woman’s “bloom of youth” by keeping her regular. Contrariwise, to “have guts” in the sense of being tough is primarily thought of as a male virtue, while “intestinal fortitude” (coined by an American doctor after watching a football game in 1914) came to describe the warfighting capability of a nation’s men.
Now, however, our guts are peaceful: the alimentary system has been colonised anew by the wellness-industrial complex, with its probiotics and experimental faecal transplants. Dr Johnson might be tickled to learn that to mind one’s belly has become a cornerstone of mindfulness.
Eight-year-olds’ video, which racked up 14m views, hits a sore point for mobilers who have struggled with the cost of living
Like the totemic £8 pint or £5 coffee, the cost of a Mr Whippy ice-cream has become a barometer of a world gone mad. But really, nine quid for two ice-creams? Bloody hell.
That was the damning verdict of an eight-year-old whose TikTok rant over the cost of two screwballs from an ice cream van in the park has racked up 14m views at the time of writing.
Concerns raised as influencers promote pigment-injection procedure as latest cosmetic trend
From butter boards to viral dances, social media has spawned a host of fads, but experts have warned against the latest trend: eye-tattooing.
The procedure, known as keratopigmentation, is a recent development and can be used for therapeutic purposes to improve the appearance of eyes. This can include for people who have been left with scars on the transparent front part of the eye, known as the cornea, as a result of infection, disease or injury, or who have aniridia, a condition where the iris has not formed properly.
Sue Wathen, Joan Edgington and Nicola Leahey were diagnosed with hepatitis C after struggling through years of unexplained symptoms that were dismissed by doctors.
As fierce street battles between Russian and Ukrainian forces continue in the northern part of the town, a band of local police and volunteers have been journeying in daily to evacuate the last, terrified residents out of a place which was once home to 18,000 people.
For her debut book, the Irish photographer Eimear Lynch travelled around Ireland to photograph groups of girls immersed in the, often lengthy, ritual of dressing up and applying their makeup together
The attempted assassination of a leader sympathetic to Putin has Europe on edge. But exaggerating the fascist threat is also dangerous
The shooting of the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, has dramatised the increasingly angry and polarised landscape of European politics. With just weeks to go before the European parliament elections, it is time to step back from the brink.
This eruption of violence in the midst of the campaign is so shocking that it may, at best, have a chastening effect, softening the venomous tone of political discourse by reminding democracies old and new of what they stand to lose.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
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Long-distance couples meet for the first time, including a pair who started out in a Game of Thrones roleplay chatroom. It is bizarre but strangely sweet to witness
When the internet was invented nobody used their real names on it, and I am starting to wonder if breaking that covenant was a mistake. “Starting to wonder” – correction, I am fully sure that was an error. We need to go back to usernames – xX_tha_0rin0c0_Xx, that sort of thing – and anonymity and no webcams and, ideally, screeching 56k modems. The internet is too fast, too accessible, too always-on. Our phones can suck internet out of the sky and the idea of “logging off” is extinct. I am planning to start one of those one-topic political parties that always get obliterated at London mayoral elections about this, by the way, so keep your eyes out.
Anyway. As we all know, what Channel 4 excels at is documentaries that can be described as “sweet but weird”, and this week The Nevermets starts (Friday 24 May, 10pm), which is a classic of the genre. The Nevermets follows a series of, as narrator Dawn French keeps describing them, “ordinary Brits”, as they look at their phone screens and smile in bed. This is because they are all in love with someone across the world who they met in a chatroom or on Snapchat, or from extended Instagram or Facebook conversations, and – despite, in many cases, the couples professing to be in love with each other – they have never actually, you know, met. So we get to see them meet.
From a burrowing clam to toilet cleaner, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 The OED’s first citation for “video game” mentions which Atari product? 2 Which river has Damietta and Rosetta branches? 3 Who were bribed in the 1950s payola scandal? 4 Which poet was nicknamed the White Myth of Amherst? 5 What athletics world record has stood at 7291 since 1988? 6 Which PM was described by Caitlin Moran as a “C-3PO made of ham”? 7 Which philosopher had a brother who was a celebrated one-handed pianist? 8 What brand name was used by M&S from 1928 until 2000? What links: 9 Bummalo; out first ball; Pacific burrowing clam; toilet cleaner? 10 John Deydras; Lambert Simnel; Perkin Warbeck; Mary Baynton? 11 Calderdale, West Yorkshire and Nova Scotia, Canada? 12 The Night Manager; Conversations with Friends; Notes on a Conditional Form? 13 Leda; Nut; Rebecca; Rhea Silvia? 14 Beaded; flush; keyed; recessed; tuck; V-grooved; weathered? 15 Relating to a city (8); devout (12); not guilty (13); merciful (14)?
TV presenter and naturalist Steve Backshall finds a camper truck the ideal way to give children an outdoors experience in untamed parts of northern England
Camping trips with a young family can be thoroughly challenging, especially in the UK, when the weather often skips from sunshine to deluge in the blink of an eye. My extra challenge is that my wife, Helen, can’t join us for our Easter break (she’s away training for her fourth Olympic Games – reasonable excuse). My three kids (twins of four, and an older brother not quite six) are a tornado handful at the best of times. I definitely don’t want to be flying abroad with them, but I want to give them a memorable wild outdoors experience. So what to do?
Inspiration comes in the form of Wild Camper Trucks, a small enterprise set up by entrepreneur Andrew Clark, who rents out a fleet of four-wheel-drive campers from bases in Kendal and Inverness. The vans are go-anywhere robust and reliable, but kitted out with enough home comforts that they feel like glamping on the go. Thanks to the additional roof tent, they’re set up to sleep four, but with kids as young as ours we could definitely push it to five. There’s a bijou kitchen and eating area, plenty of lounging and kipping space, and a huge amount of storage, which allows us to take all the outdoor toys we want.
Andrew has teamed up with websites Off Grid Camp and Nearly Wild Camping, which connect 4x4, campervan and canvas wild campers with landowners. Campers subscribe to the websites, and pay their hosts as they would at any campsite.
Edible oil droplets trap bugs without the harm to people and wildlife that synthetic pesticides can cause
Tiny sticky droplets sprayed on crops to trap pests could be a green alternative to chemical pesticides, research has shown.
The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger beneficial insects, like bees, are not trapped by the drops.
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